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by David Krayden

Lest we forget, it was a Conservative government under Prime Pinister R.B. Bennett that created what became the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

That federal government was also the last led by the Conservative party (before it added the dreaded “Progressive” prefix to its official title) until the advent of Stephen Harper and the new Conservative party. Bennett was never known as a “progressive” in the political sense of the word; a true believer in the importance of private enterprise and individual initiative. Creating the CBC was an apparent contradiction of his political bona fides.

Stephen Harper needs to examine the CBC from both an ideological and pragmatic viewpoint – something he has been adept at doing. He must ask himself, and Canadians, why this country needs a publicly funded radio and television network.

For a conservative who believes in limited government ownership, the CBC is clearly an issue. As for Canadians looking for Canadian content in the media, in today’s cable universe, the corporation is clearly redundant.

Like the proverbial child who refuses to leave the security of mom and dad’s house, the CBC has shown a definite reluctance to move from state sponsorship to the real world.

It is not as if the CBC is incapable of finding other sources of revenue. The television wing of the corporation sells advertising space like any other network, so why can’t it survive on these dollars alone? The answer is: it can, but like any government department, it will spend as much as taxpayers are forced to give. Without public funding, the CBC would be unable to pay the inflated salaries it does from junior reporter to senior bureaucrat. Its upper management commands top dollar while, at the same time, and like every government department, it offers wages to the rank and file with which the private sector cannot compete.

As a military public affairs officer, I noted time and time again that the CBC always arrived for a story with a minimum of three journalists, while other networks sometimes could only afford a solitary reporter who had to conduct the interview, carry the camera and put the story together. One CBC reporter once jokingly (I hope) related to me that one extra body on hand to cover a story was only there to “fetch the bagels.”

What about Canadian content?

This may have been an issue as recently as 20 years ago, but it has ceased to have any relevance today. With the explosion of cable television, there is no shortage of a Canadian perspective on your set, and these cultural offerings are available 24 hours a day on a myriad of subjects from cooking to antiques. It may be that most of the 150 channels available to cable subscribers carry nothing but trash, but a substantial portion of it is Canadian trash.

Which brings me to the last point. Just what has the CBC produced lately that is uniquely Canadian? Little Mosque on the Prairie? Please – give me a break.

Over the years, CBC has broadcast far more American programming than it has created Canadian classics. If you insist upon public television, then let the CBC at least be something like PBS in the U.S., which has produced excellence over the years, does not offer commercials and must raise its own money from viewers to survive.

It’s always tough to tell the kids that it’s time for them to grow up, move out and start earning their own way in life. That time has come for the CBC, and Stephen Harper needs to be parent who says it.

(David Krayden is Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies. A version of this article originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen.)