Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, David LW4DAF, who shares this link from RCI news:
After seven days of walking, a group of supporters of Canada’s public broadcaster, has reached its goal on Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa.
The group calling itself “Tous Amis de Radio-Canada” is protesting the severe budgte cutbacks to the institution. They, and the English equivalent “Friends of the CBC” say the funding reductions from the federal government have resulted in severe staff reductions in the past couple of years, along with an inability to properly fulfill its role.
The group of marchers and supporters stood on Parliament Hill today after walking about 200 km to arrive in the capital on this National thanksgiving holiday to deliver a message to politicians now in the final stretch of a close federal election campaign.
The group says that Radio-Canada/CBC has always been a vital national cultural institution, and critical source of Canadian viewpoints on world affairs. It notes however, that role is increasingly more important in the light of a globalized digital world, where the voice of Canada as a producer, distributor, and aggregator of domestic and world news from a Canadian perspective, current affairs, and Canadian entertainment, is often swamped by the vastly bigger content from foreign sources.
Didn’t they already dismantle / destroy the antennas? I looks like the powers that be (Harper? I’m American, not Canadian) took ‘Canada’s Voice To The World’ and choked it to death by cutting it’s budget. It’s wrong at so many levels.
Harper did not cut Radio Canada International. It was the CBC that did it. The CBC had wanted to get rid of RCI since the early 90s. Funding for RCI came from the CBC. The CBC decided to cut RCI’s budget from 12 million to 2 million. In part because of a small budget reduction. But the CBC suffered a major lose of revenue when they lost Hockey Night in Canada to Rodgers. It was a loss of some 200 million a year. Money from the loss of Hockey Night in Canada, Olympics and other sporting events made the CBC re-think of what they were spending. Sports coverage was a major income maker for the CBC.
For years RCI’s budget was passed from Foreign Affairs to the CBC.
Justin Trudeau has said he will restore funding to the CBC. This won’t happen. Over the last 35 years. Liberal governments have made more cuts to the CBC than Harper’s government.
Keith said: “Over the last 35 years. Liberal governments have made more cuts to the CBC than Harper’s government.”
Keith: numbers, please, to support your assertion. We can get the numbers from 2001 onwards here:
http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/reporting-to-canadians/reports/financial-reports/annual-report-archives/
Wikipedia says:
“According to the Canadian Media Guild, the $115-million deficit reduction action plan cuts to CBC which started with the 2012 budget and were fully realized in 2014, amounted to ‘one of the biggest layoffs of content creators and journalists in Canadian history.’ The 2014 cuts combined with earlier ones totaled “3,600 jobs lost at CBC since 2008. The CMG asked the federal government to reverse the cuts and to repeal Clause 17 of omnibus budget bill C-60 ‘to remove government’s interference in CBC’s day-to-day operations.'”
All that occurred on Harper’s watch.
And the CBC didn’t lose the income from “Hockey Night in Canada” until 2013.
This situation will probably not last long as the likely winner, based on current polls ( http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/poll-tracker/2015/index.html ), of Monday’s election in Canada has pledged to restore and even increase funding to the CBC ( https://www.liberal.ca/liberals-to-invest-in-canadian-culture-and-middle-class-jobs/ ).
One inaccuracy in the article is that there are no ads on CBC Radio. In fact, they were added in the last year on CBC Radio 2.
The cutbacks to the CBC are just one reason why a lot of progressives in Canada will be voting for a change of government in the federal election on Monday, October 19th.