Incoming CBC boss's company asks CRTC for millions while MPs endorse an extra half billion bucks for the Mother Corp

Plus! Britain's left-wing government bans puberty blockers; Canadian media, pundits pretend it didn’t happen; CNN introduces pronouns for Jihadis, fact checks gone wild and more!

We’ve been waiting and waiting and …. nothing.

Several weeks ago, we were expecting to hear an announcement from Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge regarding the new mandate for the CBC which, as it stands, sits squarely in the policy cross hairs of a potential new Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre.

Most observers believed the new vision would be rolled out before the Mother Corp’s new president, Marie-Philippe Bouchard, takes charge in January. Bouchard, CEO of TV5 Canada, is part of the panel developing that new mandate, so we were expecting that she could hit the ground running and challenge Poilievre’s plan to defund the CBC. But it’s looking like that has all been put on hold until …. no one seems to know.

Meanwhile, Blacklock’s Reporter has a scoop this morning on a recommendation from the House of Commons Heritage Committee calling for the CBC to get as much as another half a billion dollars on top of the $1.4 billion it’s already receiving annually from the government. For that to become reality, of course, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have to rise from the political dead where, according to the polls, he currently resides.

That’s quite the juicy carrot to dangle in front of journos worried about their jobs in an election year.

Meanwhile, Bouchard’s current employer, struggling to balance its books, has filed an application with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for an increase in the fee it collects from cable companies. The industry news platform Cartt.ca reports that Bouchard’s firm is asking that its monthly per-subscriber rate be increased by $0.02 to $0.30 in French language markets and $0.26 in English language markets. If you live in English Canada, you are probably unaware that the CRTC years ago ordered that all cable and satellite companies must carry TV5 and pay it money, which of course gets passed along to you if you are a subscriber. So, while 28 cents doesn’t sound like a lot of money, multiply it by 12 = $3.36 x 9.7 million cable subscribers = $32,592,000. TV5’s rate hasn’t increased in decades, while cable subscriptions continue to decline. That, at least, is the case Bouchard’s company is making to the regulator.

I don’t think access to TV5 drives a lot of people to subscribe to cable but the CRTC thinks it’s necessary, largely because TV5 provides Quebec content producers with a global market, so there you are. In anglophone Canada, it’s a subsidy in all but name - particularly as you can watch its programs online for free.

Whether that move, which TV5 says will cut its forecast losses in the year ahead from $1.8 million to $350,000, provides you with a hint of where Bouchard’s business instincts are at, I don’t know. I’ll leave it with you.

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One issue that Canadian mainstream media have, for the most part, been unwilling to take on is the evolving science regarding the impacts of puberty blockers on children and teens dealing with gender identity issues.

The Cass Review published in the UK last year was largely ignored here. Although columnists at the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail did dive into it and the National Post has been unafraid to take it on, most have been disinclined to inform their readers, listeners and viewers of these developments. The Post, at the time of writing, was the only Canadian legacy outlet to report the latest - that Britain’s Labour government has taken a similar line to Alberta’s UCP government and banned them for anyone under 18 as an “unacceptable safety risk.”

One would think issues involving unacceptable safety risks to children would be a topic worth pursuing. It appears, however, that they are either too ideologically entrenched or too afraid of the radical trans lobby to do so. Canadian Press (CP) distributed an Associated Press (AP) story but I didn’t find any pick ups - at least not in the first 48 hours. Sweden, France, Norway, Finland and Denmark have all recently taken actions similar to the UK.

Meanwhile, Alberta’s laws continue to be labelled by much of the press as the manifestation of a far-right, transphobic, Charter of Rights-violating, socially conservative “culture wars” agenda. Just ask the Broadbent Institute’s Press Progress and Mount Royal University’s Keith Brownsey, who doesn’t seem to be following the science inspiring the Labour Party and the coalition of Liberals, Moderates and Social Democrats that governs Denmark.

Brownsey told Press Progress. “Transgender people are 0.25% of the population, yet governments like the Smith government have a focus on transgender people like they’re a threat to civilization. Here she’s simply playing to a very right-wing religious base. . . . It’s absolutely bizarre.”

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Time for a few laughs.

CNN really took the Woke cake when it posted an interview complete with proper pronouns for the leader of the rebels that ousted the Assad regime in Syria

Nothing quite says media in 2024 like making sure a guy who apprenticed as a terrorist with Al Qaeda isn’t misgendered.

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Speaking of CNN, one of its regulars, Van Jones, has clued in to what’s happening in media.

“Digital is the new doorknock,” Jones said at the New York Times/Dealbook Summit.

“The mainstream has become fringe and the fringe has become mainstream. There are platforms, there are people out there that are getting 14 million streams and we’re on cable news getting 1-2 million. Donald Trump understood that and we didn’t.”

Here’s a clip for those in the mood.

Meanwhile, the richest man in the world and occasional online Bond villain Elon Musk has for a few weeks now been commenting on posts by users on X - which he owns - that “You are the media now” while when it comes to legacy media “they are the past.”

Is he right?

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Fact-checking is an important function for media and few do so more enthusiastically than Reuters.

Here are some of its recent reports:

• The Economist did not publish a cover that warned of an apocalypse featuring images of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in November 2024

• Fact Check: Satire about ‘Allahu Akbar’ being UK’s most popular greeting taken seriously

• Fact Check: CNN did not publish headline about Musk melting down Statue of Liberty.

  

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A million years ago when I worked in media, I would be struck from time to time by the fact that some of my co-workers did not read their own paper and weren’t up to speed on the news. It was frustrating.

I thought of that when reading reports that federal cabinet minister Harjit Sajjan had received free tickets for him and his daughter to a Taylor Swift concert from a Crown Corporation. Sajjan’s office said he had, in lieu, donated $1,500 to a the Vancouver Food Bank.

According to the CBC Sajjan “accepted the tickets only after receiving clearance from the (ethics) commissioner.”

Next time you read that, please remember that Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein is on the record as saying his office does not give pre-clearance. Which it does not. It gives advice. Trust me. You can ask them “is it OK to accept tickets to a Leafs game from Rogers” and they will not say yes and they will not say no. They will say something like “that would be considered a gift under the Conflict of Interest Act.” In other words, they give “advice.”

OK, so it’s nuanced and I get that you might see it as parsing of words. But accuracy in news matters. So, reporters, next time you hear a comms guy say “we got pre-clearance” please remember that’s not how it works. Try to keep up. Sajjan, btw, gave up the tickets but still made the donation.

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CTV Toronto/CP24 has introduced a term that disguises the plight of homeless people.

Reporting on an illness outbreak, a recent post referred to the impacted community as the “underhoused” - a broad term that includes people with three kids and only two bedrooms. (Overhoused people are parents with three bedrooms whose kids grew up and left). Using “underhoused” to refer to people sleeping with cardboard bedding on pavement misrepresents reality and is bad journalism.

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I was busy last week popping in and out of Toronto to do some consulting work and, as a bonus, dropped in to see my friends at The Hub.ca. We’ll have more news on that in a couple of weeks but in the meantime, unless something dramatic happens I won’t be posting Christmas week. I will be playing with grandchildren and eating too much.

So, may the spirit of the season embrace you and may the light it brings to the world shine upon. And, as Paul wrote to the Romans (12:10) do your best to "Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other."

To my Jewish friends, for whom Hanukkah begins this year on Dec. 25, Chag urim sameach and may Canada be a much better friend to you in the year ahead than it has been in 2024. You will never walk alone.

Peace. Back in a couple of weeks.

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(Peter Menzies is a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, former vice chair of the CRTC, current Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a consultant and commentator on media and regulatory affairs)