Conservative war on CBC slowly coming to fruition

The Toronto Star:

Ottawa - A battle over access to internal documents at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has come to a head with opposition MPs accusing the Conservative government abusing their parliamentary powers to interfere with the court.

“This is not a partisan issue,” New Democrat MP Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay) said Thursday. “This is about the fundamental workings of Parliament.”

Conservative MPs on the Commons ethics committee passed a motion during a special closed-door meeting late Wednesday ordering the CBC/Radio-Canada to give them both the censored and uncensored versions of documents at the heart of a judicial dispute over access-to-information requests.

New Democrat and Liberal MPs on the ethics committee boycotted the Wednesday meeting in protest.

The requests filed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and media outlets owned by Quebecor Inc. — whose QMI Agency and Sun News Network have been running an ongoing series of stories about the spending habits of what they call the “state broadcaster” — were for details about employee income, a fleet of vehicles, financing of any programs or films about the erstwhile Quebec Nordiques hockey team and the planning budget for the CBC/Radio-Canada 75th anniversary celebration.

The CBC has exemptions under the federal Access to Information and Privacy Act that allows it to prevent the disclosure of records related to its journalistic, creative and programming activities — a power the federal information commissioner told the committee last month she believes is being applied too broadly, leading to what appears to be the arbitrary rejection of requests.

The CBC headed to the Federal Court of Appeals to argue that only a judge — rather than the information commissioner — should be able to see material the public broadcaster deems to fall under the exemption.

That is why opposition MPs are upset that Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough) went ahead with his motion ordering the CBC to allow committee members to secretly examine the uncensored documents.

They argue that it goes against what is called the sub judice convention — the tradition of Parliament reigning in its own powers a bit in order to avoid preventing someone from having a fair trial.

Continue reading here.


New Developments in Conservative Quest to Defund CBC

The Ryan Painter Show:

This past Monday two Conservative MP’s submitted petitions to the House of Commons. Their names and the text of their statements are below:

Mr. Rob Anders (Calgary West, Conservative Party of Canada):

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the first of thousands of petitions asking to end the patently unfair taxpayer subsidy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Canadians from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario all want to end the $1,160,000,000 taxpayer subsidization of the CBC. Rural Canadians from Innisfail, Alberta; Chemainus, British Columbia; Waldheim, Saskatchewan; and Exeter, Ontario are calling for an end to the $1 billion public subsidy of the state broadcaster. When we live in a 1,000-channel universe, why spend over $1 billion on a state broadcaster like the CBC? Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, Conservative Party of Canada):

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to present a large number of petitions from Canadians from coast to coast. The petitioners call upon the government to de-fund the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. They would particularly like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the Government of Canada funds the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to the sum of $1.1 billion per year and that the vast amount of the Government of Canada funding gives the CBC an unfair advantage over its private sector competitors. The petitioners call upon Parliament to end the public funding of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Please right away email these two MP’s and tell them that you don’t want CBC defunded. It’s more important then ever that we be as active as possible in supporting the CBC against these Conservative Party attempts to defund our beloved public broadcaster.

Please also visit Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and do what ever you can. Donate, sign the petition and email your MP.