Trudeau claims Canada must subsidize CBC to ‘protect our democracy’

Trudeau failed to explain how the CBC could be an unbiased news source for Canadians when it is being funded by the Liberal party.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claims that Canada must continue to subsidize mainstream media outlet CBC to “protect our democracy.”

During the January 31 question period in the House of Commons, Trudeau promised continued funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s public radio and television broadcaster, arguing that the state-funded outlet is necessary for Canada’s democracy.

“At a time of misinformation and disinformation, and the transformation of our media and digital era, we need CBC/Radio Canada to be strong to protect our culture, to protect our democracy, and to tell our stories from one end of the country to another,” Trudeau said.

“We’ll always be here to defend CBC/Radio Canada, and we are going to seek to make necessary investments … to fulfill their mandate to inform and to strengthen democracy here in Canada,” he continued.

Justin Trudeau has the gall to say that state-run media like the CBC is good for democracy! Oh yeah, it's good for the government to subsidize all the media too. pic.twitter.com/QRWtcaPGm0

— David Krayden (@DavidKrayden) February 1, 2024

Trudeau’s statement was in response to a request from Quebec Member of Parliament Martin Champoux (BQ-Drummond) for increased government funding for the Quebec division of CBC, Radio Canada.

Trudeau pointed out that the Liberal government is already massively subsidizing the mainstream media.

Ironically, Trudeau celebrated Bill C-18, the Online News Act, a law which mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms.   

“This is why we put forth [Bill] C-18 which will help our journalists at all levels to continue operating,” Trudeau stated. “We’ll be here to support a free and independent press. That is professional. We know there’s a lot of work to be done still.”

However, thanks to his law, Canadians can no longer view or share news on Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which blocked all access to news content in Canada rather than pay the fees outlined in the new legislation. Google, on the other hand,  agreed to pay Canadian legacy media $100 million.

Additionally, Trudeau failed to explain how CBC could be an unbiased news source for Canadians when it is being funded by the Liberal party.

Indeed, many Canadians have pointed out that the massive subsidies have made the CBC into a wing of the Liberal party.

In April, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre labeled the CBC a “biased propaganda arm of the Liberal Party and frankly negatively affects all media.”

“For example, Canadian Press is negatively affected by the fact that you have to report favourably on the CBC if you want to keep your number one, taxpayer-funded client happy,” he said.

“We need a neutral and free media, not a propaganda arm for the Liberal Party… When I am prime minister, we are going to have a free press where every day Canadians decide what they think rather than having Liberal propaganda jammed down their throats.”

Poilievre added that if he becomes prime minister he will cut “corporate welfare,” including money to the CBC.

Despite being nominally unaffiliated with either political party in Canada, CBC takes in about $1.24 billion in public funding every year. This is roughly 70 percent of its operating budget. 

That subsidies are the CBC’s largest single source of income has become a point of contention among taxpayers who see the propping up of the outlet as unnecessary. 

Furthermore, the CBC was set to receive increased funding thanks to the deal with Google that followed the passing of Trudeau’s Online News Act.

The deal was finalized in early December. Under the new agreement, Google will pay legacy media outlets $100 million to publish links to their content on both the Google search engine and YouTube. 

As a result of the government handouts and the Google agreement, roughly half the salary of a CBC journalist earning $85,000 is estimated to be paid by the combined contributions of the Trudeau government and Google. 

Additionally, Trudeau recently announced increased payouts for legacy media outlets ahead of the 2025 election. The subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years. 

However, even these massive payouts may be insufficient to keep the CBC relevant amid growing public distrust in mainstream media. 

According to a recent study by Canada’s Public Health Agency, less than a third of Canadians displayed “high trust” in the federal government, with “large media organizations” as well as celebrities getting even lower scores. 

Large mainstream media outlets and “journalists” working for them scored a “high trust” rating of only 18 percent. This was followed by only 12 percent of people saying they trusted “ordinary people,” with celebrities receiving only an eight percent “trust” rating. 

Related Topics:#ClareMarieMerkowsky #JustinTrudeauCBC #LifeSiteNews #MainstreamMedia #SubsidizeCBC CBC

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Tucker Carlson: Longtime source says porn sites controlled by intelligence agencies for blackmail

Published on November 23, 2024

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Journalist Glenn Greenwald replied with a story about how U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson changed his tune on a dime about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to spy on American communications without a warrant. The journalist made the caveat that he is not assuming blackmail was responsible for Johnson’s behavior.

Tucker Carlson shared during an interview released Wednesday that a “longtime intel official” told him that intelligence agencies control the “big pornography sites” for blackmail purposes.

Carlson added that he thinks dating websites are controlled as well, presumably referring at least to casual “hook-up” sites like Tinder, where conversations are often explicitly sexual.

“Once you realize that, once you realize that the most embarrassing details of your personal life are known by people who want to control you, then you’re controlled,” Carlson said.

He went on to suggest that this type of blackmail may explain some of the strange, inconsistent behavior of well-known figures, “particularly” members of Congress.

“We all imagine that it’s just donors” influencing their behavior, Carlson said. “I think it’s more than donors. I’ve seen politicians turn down donors before.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald replied with a story about how U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson changed his tune on a dime about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to spy on American communications without a warrant. The journalist made the caveat that he is not assuming blackmail was responsible for Johnson’s behavior.

Greenwald told how he had seen Johnson grill FBI Director Christopher Wray about his agency’s spying and “could just tell that he felt passionately about (this),” prompting Greenwald to invite Johnson on his show, before anyone had any idea he might become Speaker of the House.

“One of the things we spent the most time on was (the need for) FISA reform,” Greenwald told Carlson, noting that the expiration of the current iteration of the FISA law was soon approaching. He added that Johnson was “determined” to help reform FISA and that it was in fact “his big issue,” the very reason he was on Greenwald’s show to begin with.

Johnson became House Speaker about two months to three months later, and Greenwald was excited about the FISA reform he thought Johnson would surely help bring about.

“Not only did Mike Johnson say, ‘I’m going to allow the FISA renewal to come to the floor with no reforms.’ He himself said, ‘It is urgent that we renew FISA without reforms. This is a crucial tool for our intelligence agencies,’” Greenwald reounted.

He noted that Johnson was already getting access to classified information while in Congress, wondering at Johnson’s explanation for his behavior at the time, which was that he was made aware of highly classified information that illuminated the importance of renewing FISA and the spying capabilities it grants, as is.

Greenwald doesn’t believe one meeting is enough to change the mind of someone who is as invested in a position as Johnson was on FISA reform.

“I can see someone really dumb being affected by that … he’s a very smart guy. I don’t believe he changed his mind. So the question is, why did he?” Greenwald asked.

“I don’t know. I really don’t. But I know that the person that was on my show two months ago no longer exists.”

Theoretically, there are many ways an intelligence agency could coerce a politician or other person of influence into certain behaviors, including personal threats, threats to family, and committing outright acts of aggression against a person.

A former CIA agent has testified during an interview with Candace Owens that his former employer used the latter tactic against him and his family, indirectly through chemicals that made them sick, when he blew the whistle on certain unethical actions the CIA had committed.

“This is why you never hear about CIA whistleblowers. They have a perfected system of career destruction if you talk about anything you see that is criminal or illegal,” former CIA officer Kevin Shipp said.

As a form of coercion, sexual blackmail in particular is nothing new, although porn sites make the possibility much easier. In her book “One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein,” investigative journalist Whitney Webb discusses not only how the intelligence community uses sexual blackmail through people like Jeffrey Epstein but how it was used by organized crime before U.S. intelligence even existed.

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Federal government’s latest media bailout another bad idea

Published on November 22, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

If the value of local radio stations, as measured by how much revenue they generate, is higher than the costs of running those stations, no subsidies are needed to keep them going. Conversely, if the costs are higher than the benefits, it doesn’t make sense to keep those radio stations on the air.

The governmentalization of the news media in Canada continues apace. According to a recent announcement by the Trudeau government, the “CRTC determined that a new temporary fund for commercial radio stations in smaller markets should be created.” Now, radio stations outside of Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa-Gatineau will be eligible for taxpayer subsidies.

Clearly a bad idea. Firstly, there’s no obvious market failure the government will solve. If the value of local radio stations, as measured by how much revenue they generate, is higher than the costs of running those stations, no subsidies are needed to keep them going. Conversely, if the costs are higher than the benefits, it doesn’t make sense to keep those radio stations on the air.

The government said the new funding is “temporary” but as economists Milton and Rose Friedman famously observed, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” Taxpayers may can reasonably expect that subsidies to local radio news stations will become an ongoing expense instead of a onetime hit to their wallets.

Indeed, the Trudeau government has a history of making temporary or “short-term” costs permanent. Before coming to power in 2015, the Liberals proposed “a modest short-term deficit” of less than $10 billion annually for three years; instead this fiscal year the Trudeau government is running its 10th consecutive budget deficit with the cumulative total of more than $600 billion.

Secondly, the governmentalization of media will likely corrupt it. Here again an observation from Milton Friedman: “Any institution will tend to express its own values and its own ideas… A socialist institution will teach socialist values, not the principles of private enterprise.” Friedman was talking about the public education system, but the observation applies equally to other sectors that the government increasingly exercises control over.

A media outlet that receives significant government funding is less likely to apply healthy skepticism to politicians’ claims of the supposed widespread benefits of their large spending initiatives and disbursements of taxpayer money. The media outlet’s internal culture will naturally lean more heavily towards government control than free enterprise.

Moreover, conflict of interest becomes a serious issue. To the extent that a media outlet gets its revenue from government instead of advertisers and listeners, its customer is the government—and the natural inclination is always to produce content that will appeal to the customer. Radio stations receiving significant government funding will have a harder time covering government in an unbiased way.

Finally, as a general rule, government support for an industry tends to discourage innovation, and radio and other media are no exception. When new companies and new business models enter a sector, the government should not through subsidies try to keep the incumbents afloat.

“The media, like any other business, continually evolves,” noted Lydia Miljan, professor of political science at the University of Windsor and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, in a recent essay. “As each innovation enters the market, it displaces audiences for the legacy players. But does that innovation mean we should prop up services that fewer people consume? No. We allow other industries to adapt to new market conditions. Sometimes that means certain industries and companies close. But they are replaced with something else.”

To summarize—there are three major problems with the Trudeau government’s new fund for radio stations. First, it will impose costs on taxpayers that, despite the government’s label, may not be “temporary” and the compensating benefits will be lower than the costs. Second, increased government funding will damage the ability of those radio stations to cover the government with neutrality and healthy skepticism. And third, the new fund will discourage innovation and improvement in the media sector as a whole.