Why Don't Liberals Just Get it Over With -- Call CBC Pravda or TASS

Liberals have big plans to make CBC a bigger and better propagandist

The Liberal government, if it remains in power, plans to elevate Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC to an even higher status by making it – get this – the guardian of Canada’s national security and sovereignty. Those words came from Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, a few weeks before Mark Carney was anointed Canada’s new unelected Prime Minister. Most people would think national security and protecting Canada’s sovereignty is the job of the combined efforts of Canada’s federal police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). But, as always the Liberals know better.

Not surprisingly, St. Onge says the current $1.5 billion in tax dollars Canadians currently fork over to the CBC annually won’t be enough for the broadcaster take on these new hallowed responsibilities. To do so, she believes somewhere in the neighbourhood of another billion is needed. Given the paramount importance of these broader obligations, the news arm of CBC will also no longer have to waste its valuable time to pursue advertising dollars from the private sector to fund its news and public affairs programming.

This means all of its news programming and streaming services and its 24 hour news channel — CBC News Network — would be supported by solely by tax dollars. Advertising on other programming would still be allowed, to help pay for at least some of its expenditures like the half million dollar salary (plus bonuses) for the CBC President or the $18.4 million paid out in bonuses to CBC senior staffers, including $3.3 million to 45 executives, including the president herself last year.

St. Onge says expanding CBC is ‘an investment in Canada’s sovereignty and security.

But according to St. Onge, this is all, “an investment in the sovereignty of our country, in the security of our country and also in the economic viability of our country.” In addition to the proposal to elevate the CBC to this new ‘national security’ role St. Onge also wants it to play another role in the critical battle against the ‘misinformation’ that ‘circulates on social media’ – because, of course, the CBC has never been guilty of propagating any type of ‘misinformation’ itself.

This terrible proliferation of ‘misinformation’ was a constant worry of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. So worrisome that he shepherded through an assortment bills to ‘address’ it in what can only be described as legislated censorship. First it was Bill C-10 to regulate programming distributed by streaming platforms like Facebook and YouTube to ‘promote Canadian content.’ A measure that critics maintain infringes on individual speech, because it allows the government to replace the algorithms of on-line platforms with government ‘content’. This essentially allows it to ‘hide’ content it doesn’t want Canadians to see and amplify content it does, under the guise of ‘promoting’ Canadian content.

This was followed by Bill C-18 which required social media companies like Google and Meta (Facebook) to pay for Canadian news content they posted on their platforms. According to former Heritage Minister Pablo Rodirigues the bill’s intent the bill was to “create a level playing field between online advertising giants and the ‘shrinking’ news industry.”

Requiring them to pay, led to companies like Meta deciding to no longer publish Canadian news content. This made it more difficult for independent subscription based Canadian media outlets like True North, the Western Standard and Countersignal to increase their online profiles and attract more subscribers. It was simply another way to censor independent media outlets who tend to be more critical of the Liberal government than the mainstream media.

Then there's the repugnant Bill C-63, the so-called "Online Harms Act, put forward under the guise of protecting children from online child pornography. What it's really about is the Liberals creating the government appointed ‘digital safety commission’ with sweeping powers to interpret what is and isn’t hate speech or a hate crime online, to make up rules and then serve as judge and jury on such matters. Meanwhile courts will have the power to impose ‘prior’ restraints on people, including jail or house arrest, if justices ‘reasonably’ believe may commit hate speech in the future – aka a ‘pre-crime’ or ‘thought’ crime. This legislation was on its way to the Senate when it was reset back to zero, when Parliament was prorogued in January. But, if the Liberals are returned to power after an election it will be resurrected by Mark Carney as Prime Minister.

St. Onge made other comments that are almost laughable if they weren’t so alarming. That being that she wants to ‘take the politics out of the CBC’ and make sure news is trustworthy, more local and more impartial. “These modifications would highlight the essential role of CBC/Radio-Canada in the trustworthy and reliable broadcasting of news and information in the fight against prejudices, real or imagined in today’s media.”

What is laughable is St. Onge’s pretense that CBC will somehow be less rather than more political than it already is as the purveyor of trustworthy and reliable news and information. This, while its also combating all that misinformation on behalf of an already censorious Liberal government — that has promised to shovel another billion dollars its way.

But, the Trudeau government had a clear strategy to make CBC its propagandist from the get-go by doubling its funding compared to what it received under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. And how did the CBC repay this largess? By helping the Liberals to stay in power for a decade, through biased reporting and attacking Conservative politicians, going so far as to sue the Conservative Party at one point. But that wasn’t enough, the Liberals also extended $600 million in funding to shore up the bulk of Canada’s mainstream media who were apparently ‘struggling’ to stay afloat.

With most media beholding to the Liberals and the CBC entirely dependent on them what might the end result be? Media that seldom questioned Liberal policies, but instead endorsed them? That their coverage of Liberal scandals would be minimal or minimized unless they were just too offensive or too corrupt to ignore such as the SNC Lavalin scandal that resulted in the dismissal of two high profile female Liberal cabinet ministers from the Liberal caucus and a finding of a second ethics violation against Justin Trudeau. Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion found Trudeau breached the Conflict of Interest Act for pressuring former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to offer SNC Lavalin a deferred prosecution to avoid facing criminal prosecution on fraud and bribery charges. Then there was the We Charity scandal in which Trudeau came within a hair’s breadth of another ethics violation, while his Finance Minister Bill Morneau did get hit with an ethics violation in the same matter resulting in his resignation from Cabinet.

Yet, there were no demands from media pundits for Trudeau to tender his resignation for these political scandals that revealed a disturbing level of corruption and chicanery within the government and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Yet, back 2012, under the Harper government, former Conservative cabinet minister Bev Oda was pressured to tender her resignation in what came down to expensing a sixteen dollar glass of orange juice on the taxpayers dime. But, no one batted an eye when Trudeau decided he needed a $6000 a night hotel room in London, when he was there to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and then tried to hide it, a story the Conservative leaning National Post newspaper covered.

CBC and most of the mainstream media also soft pedalled personal missteps by the Prime Minister such as his wearing blackface costumes on more occasions than he could remember. Few called him out on his hypocrisy given his affinity for calling anyone using cultural appropriation or disagreeing with him on immigration a racist and constantly virtue signalling his own ‘persona’ of inclusiveness and tolerance.

Yet after making contrite apologies and admissions that he didn’t really understand at the time just how offensive and hurtful these displays were the media let the scandal peter out never really holding him to account — during an election no less.

Then there was grope-gate when allegations surfaced in 2018 that some 18 years before, Trudeau had groped or made inappropriate sexual overtures to a young female reporter at a summer festival in BC. This came on the heels of the #MeToo movement, and after Trudeau had booted a couple of his own members from caucus when they were accused of sexual harassment, wherein he asserted that ‘all women are to be believed’. He then went on record to say, when asked, that he had never behaved inappropriately with a woman. When finally forced to confront the groping issue after first declaring he had no memory of it and tap dancing around it in other ways he finally said, “I’ve been reflecting very carefully on what I remember from that incident almost 20 years ago,” he said. “I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way. But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently.”

In both of these instances any Conservative politician would have seen his career in tatters, yet Trudeau managed to survive both of them — thanks to CBC, as well as the rest of the mainstream media minimizing these serious lapses in personal integrity and judgement that seemed to display Trudeau’s own elitism and hypocrisy. Take Conservative politician Patrick Brown who was forced to step down from running for the leadership of the Ontario Conservative Party after allegations of his sexual impropriety surfaced during his campaign. He has recovered somewhat now serving as mayor of the city of Brampton Ontario.

During the pandemic CBC’s and most of mainstream media’s allegiance to the Liberal government was never more apparent. It never questioned a single policy decision made by Trudeau or his ministers for the entire three years. From lock downs, school closures, forced quarantines and mask and vaccine mandates, to cancelling celebrations like weddings or graduations to holidays, and demonizing the unvaccinated, there was no criticism, only endorsements and shaming any who didn’t comply.

The plethora of vaccine mandates ranging from forcing CAF members to take the shot or be released from service to forced quarantines for unvaccinated travellers and finally the odious vaccine travel mandates that essentially forbade the unvaccinated from boarding planes or trains, thus denying them their right to move freely within the country or to leave the country. Court documents, as a result of a civil suit against the the travel mandates would later reveal the government had no medical basis at all for imposing them. Independent reporter Rupa Subramanya broke the story, which CBC and most of mainstream media, save for the Toronto Sun completely ignored.

Neither the CBC or any other major media outlets questioned or probed the assurances from Health Canada and the Liberal government that the vaccines were safe and effective, despite growing evidence that they were neither. Stories of people suffering from vaccine injuries were wilfully ignored by editors and journalists in an effort to discourage ‘vaccine hesitancy’ as witnessed by CBC reporter Marianne Klowak. She actually resigned from her position with CBC in frustration over its biased reporting on the pandemic overall and the vaccines in particular.

The CBC’s reporting on the Freedom Convoy reached its zenith in its fealty to its political masters. The range of lies and propaganda it — along with the rest of mainstream media — was prepared to manufacture to validate Trudeau’s claims that the Convoy organizers and participants were Nazis, racists, white supremacists and people ‘whose views should not be tolerated’ was breathtaking — and completely untrue.

Another seasoned former CBC journalist, Rodney Palmer, visited the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa and observed it, first hand. What he saw was nothing like what was characterized by Trudeau and other members of his government and the media.

“If you were there you’d seen that an earnest protest had turned into a joyous celebration… Countless sights of unbridled love and joy swirled around me. Everywhere young children walked, strolled or sat in wagons behind their parents as families joined peacefully to support the nation’s largest labour protest in history,”

“The media’s betrayal of its audience about was irrefutable… Canada was sliding into the behaviour of a totalitarian state. The CBC was being transformed from a public broadcaster into a state broadcaster to propagandize on behalf of the Liberal government.“

Palmer also expressed alarm on CBC’s reporting on Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act to crush the Convoy — how it seemingly endorsed such an obscene and authoritarian action on peaceful protest and sending a disquieting message.

“We fell into further into the practice of dictators… CBC publicly broadcast the physical punishment meted out to the most visible dissenters. I watched them being beaten by police on CBC, like a broadcast warning to all who objected to government policies.”

These are excerpts from the Forward that Palmer wrote for the the book ‘Unjustified” written by Canadian author and journalist Ray McGinnis. A recommended read for anyone who really wants to understand the Freedom Convoy and what the Trudeau government did to it.

Trudeau was also a huge proponent of the LGBTQ++ community regularly marching in Gay Pride Parades and supporting every element of the movement — including providing gender affirming care for minors.

And again, the CBC, and mainstream media were ‘all-in’ on his positions on this subject, seldom questioning any policies and swiftly condemning Conservative politicians who questioned or opposed them.

In 2023,when New Brunswick Blaine Higgs amended an education policy to require require schools to notify and involve parents if their minor children were changing their gender, names or pronouns,* CBC reported the move as controversial. CBC’s Rosemary Barton’s interview with Higgs on the matter was nothing more than a biased attack on Higgs, on a reasonable policy change that the majority of parents in New Brunswick supported. It was patently clear she was carrying water for Trudeau, who had publicly attacked Higgs himself calling him, “a far-right political actor imposing cruelty and isolation on vulnerable people.”

*The previous policy instructed schools not to report such changes to ‘protect’ the children

As for CBC becoming the custodian of misinformation, let’s remember this big misinformation blunder. It occurred in 2021, when ground penetrating radar at a former residential school site in Kamloops BC detected what First Nations groups alleged was the burial site of over 200 native children. CBC went into high gear reporting the discovery of ‘mass graves’ of students at a former Indian residential site. But it quickly had to back track on the ‘mass graves’ label, because it was called out for using it — because mass graves, as the definition vividly describes are ‘pits dug in the ground to receive a large number of corpses’ of people who were generally massacred or died at the same time. So ‘mass graves’ quietly became ‘unmarked graves’ as the story evolved with more First Nations groups claiming to have found more ‘unmarked graves’ at more residential school sites. The narrative was that native children died, and it was even sometimes implied possibly killed and buried in graves, their names unknown and the bodies never returned to their parents.

Trudeau in a photo op to perpetuate residential school graves myth.

Trudeau, at the time took all of this as gospel and milked it for all it was worth to again virtue signal his ‘unyielding’ support for First Nations people. The CBC covered it all, never questioning the veracity of the actual existence of these graves. Trudeau went on to admit to the international press that Canada was a genocidal country and ordered Canadian flags across the country to be flown at half mast for some six months to mark this ‘tragedy’.

Yet, since these ‘discoveries’, more than four years later not a single body has been found in any ‘unmarked grave’ at any residential school anywhere in the country. There have been no excavations of any of these sites to verify if there are bodies there, as ground penetrating radar only detects disturbances in the ground, not actual cadavers or even bones. And it turns out that alleged ‘grave site’ in Kamloops was actually at 2,000 foot long, three foot deep trench that has been there since 1924 to serve as a septic field to store sewage from the school. Given all this, it is a bit rich for St. Onge to designate the CBC as the it’s ‘soldier’ in the battle against ‘misinformation and a trustworthy and reliable news let alone a guardian of Canada’s national security.

Yet, with St. Onge’s announcement and her ‘plan’ it is almost as if the Liberals aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. They might as well just call the CBC TASS or Pravda, because CBC is really to the Liberal government what these news agencies are to Russia or the USSR, or what the People's Daily, the Xinhua News Agency, and the China Media Group are to China. Obedient propaganda arms of their authoritarian government masters. If Canadians don’t wake up to this, we will, to coin a phrase again from CBC alumni Rodney Palmer — be left with only a ‘facade a democracy’ as the Liberal government ‘quietly euthanizes Canadian journalism’ and Canadian freedom along with it.