It's like a race to the bottom:
Canada 🇨🇦 is a very very sick country. https://t.co/S9CexGDRm5
— Vivian Bercovici (@VivianBercovici) October 16, 2023
Justin can't be the only dictator without an official mouthpiece:
The Online News Act, Bill C-18, is the federal law forcing big tech to pay media companies when a link to a news story is posted on platforms such as Google and Facebook.
The hidden snare of Bill C-18 is that the CBC will capture the lion’s share of the online link money instead of privately owned news outlets.
Since the CBC is a wing of the federal government, this is now a new tax.
Cheerleaders for the government-funded broadcaster often rely on three arguments to keep the tax dollars flowing.
The first is the CBC is fulfilling its mandate by broadcasting Canadian culture back to Canadians. The second is that minority communities need the CBC. The third is that the CBC provides good value for money.
These arguments don’t hold up.
First, viewership for the CBC is abysmal.
Ratings from 2019 show viewership for the CBC’s local evening 6 p.m. news is about 230,000 across the country. Less than 1% of Canadians watch the CBC supper-hour news.
Recent ratings from Numeris ranked the most watched shows in Canada and CBC didn’t crack the top 10. It ranked 16th and the show was “The Great British Baking Show,” produced by a U.K. company.
Second, the claim the CBC provides programming for First Nations and minority communities that cannot be found elsewhere is questionable.
The CBC spent $18.3 million on its Indigenous language television, radio and online services from April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2021. Over that same time, the CBC spent more than $21 million on salaries and benefits for its eight senior executives.
In contrast, the Aboriginal People’s Television Network depends largely on subscriptions and funding partnerships with private media companies.
APTN got $1.7 million from taxpayers in 2022 — a fraction of what CBC takes every year. More than 27% of APTN’s broadcasts are delivered in Indigenous languages. APTN reaches more than four million people in Canada, with an average prime-time viewership of 712,000 per week.
For ethnic minorities, there are popular private stations across Canada that offer programming in about two dozen languages.
OMNI TV delivers TV newscasts in Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Portuguese, Tagalog and Italian.
RED (Reflecting Ethnic Diversity) FM radio broadcasts in Punjabi, Hindi, English, Arabic, Bengali, Croatian, Korean, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Sindhi, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil and Vietnamese.
Lastly, while getting poor ratings and trying to duplicate services already offered by private companies, the CBC spends lavishly on its executives.
The CBC has 143 directors. They get an average salary of $130,906, costing the taxpayer $18.7 million per year.
CBC CEO Catherine Tait takes in an annual salary between $458,500, and $539,300. She is entitled to a 28% performance award. That’s a bonus of up to $150,000 per year.
The CBC is sitting on more than $444 million in real estate. Most of that is sunk into its headquarters in downtown Toronto, assessed at nearly $314 million.
The CBC takes more than $1.2 billion per year from taxpayers. That could pay the salaries of more than 16,000 nurses. It could cover the grocery bills for more than 78,000 families. What we pay the CBC equals the annual income taxes for the population of Sudbury, Ontario.
Canadians are not watching CBC, minority communities do not rely on it and it doesn’t provide good value for taxpayers’ money.
Those who want to keep funding the CBC should pay for it through subscriptions and donations. The CBC can also raise money through advertising, as it already takes in about $198 million per year doing that.
This CBC:
Alberta Conservative MP Rachael Thomas, the party's Canadian heritage critic, said in a statement posted to social media that the idea is to hold the Crown corporation accountable for what she calls "its biased coverage of Hamas' attack on Israel."
She said an internal email about language guide policies that urges caution about using the word "terrorist" — which was subsequently leaked and picked up by other outlets, including Fox News — suggests the CBC is downplaying violence perpetrated by Hamas against innocent Israeli civilians.
She said the news organization should clearly refer to the attackers behind the "horrific, sadistic violence" as terrorists.
She also took issue with CBC guidance that says its journalists should be careful about describing the past Israeli presence in Gaza.
**
An attempt by the Conservatives to summon CBC executives over the network’s refusal to describe Hamas as terrorists was blocked Tuesday by the Liberals, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP.
Rest assured, the Liberals aren't done with censorship:
Canada’s promised digital services tax targeting the world’s biggest tech and social media giants will bring in double the amount of revenue as previously estimated, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
In a report released Tuesday morning, the PBO said the tax would “increase federal government revenues” by $7.2 billion over five years. Previous estimates put that number at $3.4 billion over five years.
The U.S. has warned of retaliation if Canada goes ahead with the digital services tax before an OECD deal is in place. But it’s unclear whether that stance will change now that the United States confirmed Monday it will itself miss the OECD-set deadline to sign the treaty.
**
At a conference on confronting antisemitism on Monday, Justice Minister Arif Virani repeated a standing promise of the federal Liberal government to combat online harms with new legislation, but offered no timeline.
**
The Department of Canadian Heritage seeks a bigger budget to monitor internet “disinformation.” Millions more are needed to keep up surveillance on internet users who promote incorrect “political beliefs,” it said.**
Federal departments and agencies have filed so many legal challenges to block disclosure of public records the Office of the Information Commissioner has increased spending on lawyers, the Commons ethics committee was told yesterday. “Some government institutions now routinely violate this law on a daily basis,” testified Commissioner Caroline Maynard: “Canadians don’t trust governments.”
No more will the world hear of Canada's support for anti-semitism with these bills enacted!
Also:
Foreign Minister yesterday dismissed criticism of slow Canadian response to war in Israel. “I am a busy woman,” @melaniejoly told reporters.
— Holly Doan (@hollyanndoan) October 12, 2023
There are “so many issues happening in the world.” https://t.co/8TeDDXEuzs #cdnpoli @GAC_Corporate pic.twitter.com/DWlB4giFv3
Some people were busy running for their lives, but whatever.
And - don't let her open her mouth:
Cabinet’s $191,000-a year “inclusion” advisor has avoided public events since October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists. Amira Elghawaby, Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, wrote in 2021 Toronto Star columns that MPs should “call out Israel’s actions, not only Hamas’ rockets” and dismissed Canadian history as “Judeo-Christian storytelling.”
But this is not the reason why the Liberals applauded a Nazi:
When an individual suspected of taking part in the Second World War murder of Jews in western Ukraine applied for admission to Canada in 1951, immigration officials did not follow up with potential witnesses who might have provided crucial details.
It is no wonder that no one will take Canada seriously.
Why should they?:
The crisis in Israel comes shortly after two events involving Canada that made headlines around the world.
The latest crisis to shake the planet, Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel last weekend, has provided one more indication that Canada is increasingly being left out of its allies' joint actions. ...A Ukrainian-Canadian veteran of the Nazi shock troops Waffen-SS was recognized and honoured in the House of Commons on Sept. 22, immediately after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had addressed the House. This in effect handed a propaganda victory to Russia, which claims its invasion aims to “de-nazify” Ukraine.A few days prior, on the first day the House of Commons reconvened after the summer break, Mr. Trudeau took the unprecedented step of rising in the House and accusing India of killing a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil.
Federal managers hid a police investigation from auditors-general:
Federal managers hid an ongoing police investigation from auditors reviewing the ArriveCan app, Auditor General Karen Hogan yesterday told the Commons public accounts committee. MPs ordered the audit a year ago and were never told of the RCMP probe: “There are allegations regarding identity theft, fraudulent forged résumés, contractual theft, fraudulent billing, price fixing, collusion, all with senior bureaucrats.”
Just try harder to stop oil drilling, the Supreme Court says:
“Environmental protection remains one of today’s most pressing challenges, and Parliament has the power to enact a scheme of environmental assessment to meet this challenge, but Parliament also has the duty to act within the enduring division of powers framework laid out in the Constitution,” Wagner wrote.The court has upheld the federal government’s ability to draft legislation in environmental issues previously, most notably with the federal carbon tax.
(Sidebar: this carbon tax.)
“There is no doubt that Parliament can enact impact assessment legislation to minimize the risks that some major projects pose to the environment. This scheme plainly overstepped the mark,” Wagner wrote.He encouraged the provincial and federal governments to work together on environmental legislation.
But don’t expect the Trudeau government to accept “no” for an answer. It enacted the IAA in 2019. Then known as Bill C-69, it replaced the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 (CEAA). Like the CEAA, the IAA established bureaucratic hoops for resource and infrastructure projects to jump through and reserved the final say on project approvals to politicians. But unlike the CEAA, which was designed to streamline, the IAA was built to obstruct. It expanded the matters to be assessed, including effects on “gender” and climate change. Projects that fell under provincial jurisdiction, such as oilsands projects and intra-provincial pipelines, could be caught in its web. Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney called it the “No More Pipelines” Bill. Last Friday, after the Supreme Court’s decision was released, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called it the “Don’t Build Anything, Anywhere, Anytime Act.”
**
Guilbeault will make sure that he mentions that he might be trespassing from now on:
Canada will now “collaborate with provinces” after the Supreme Court struck down landmark 2019 federal regulations on impact assessments, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. Five provinces opposed regulations subsequently ruled unconstitutional: “Tell me, what will the power of a minister or federal cabinet be?”
It's just money:
Indigenous Canadians combined account for more economic output than three provinces, says Bank of Canada research. Findings were drawn despite data gaps like the fact Statistics Canada does not track the employment rate on First Nations reserves: “Official statistics may thus understate the extent of Indigenous economic activity.”**
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland again missed key forecasts in her own budget, says the Parliamentary Budget Office. Analysts warned the deficit is up this year, not down, and is now 16 percent higher than Freeland predicted: “Has the government lost control?”
**
New Democrats have resoundingly urged their party to stand firm on negotiating pharmacare, even if it means ending their political agreement with the Liberals.
He barely survived a leadership review and he badly needs that golden pension. He will hang his proverbial hat on a plan that will never work.
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