By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Apr 20 1999 (IPS)

Canada, like many countries around the globe, is locked in debate over the future of government and publicly-funded radio and television broadcasts.

The issue, however, is felt more keenly in this large but underpopulated country of 30 million because of its proximity to the United States – the most dynamic exporter of news, culture and entertainment in the world.

Originally set up by the government in the 1930s as an alternative to popular U.S. radio programmes that swamped the airwaves, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has, for 63 years, borne the mandate of providing news and entertainment by Canadians for Canadians.

National regulations have kept the ownership of this country’s mix of public and privately owned TV and radio stations in Canadian hands but, for the most part, private broadcasters have become conveyors of financially-lucrative U.S. programming, notes political scientist Reg Whittaker.

“In the 1997 federal election, the CBC devoted a huge amount of resources in news coverage; while CTV (the largest private sector television network) spent virtually nothing,” says Whittaker.

Efforts by the CBC to satisfy the appetite for coverage of Canadian personalities and events led to the establishment of its affiliated all-news channel, Newsworld, to compete with the ubiquitous U.S. news organisation CNN.

Yet the pressures of globalization and free trade agreements have put a strain on Canada’s tradition of relying on public support for the maintenance and development of its economic and cultural infrastructure.

After the Liberal Party came to power in 1993, federal finance minister Paul Martin applied his scalpel to the country’s national public spending and reduced the role of government to its lowest level since the 1940s, in order to please international investors.

Along with a host of social programs, the CBC endured its share of reduced funds.

Now, after their re-election in 1997, the Liberals have been busy spending money on health, education and some cultural agencies after they managed to eliminate Canada’s deficit and buildup a budget surplus in the billions of dollars.

“But the CBC has been frozen out,” Whittaker observes.

In his 1993 political campaign, Prime Minister Jean Chretien promised to restore stable financing for the CBC, then reeling from earlier reductions in funds imposed by the government of Brian Mulroney and his Progressive Conservatives.

But once in office, the Chretien government slashed a further 270 million dollars from the CBC’s core budget, which is one of every three dollars available to the public corporation.

“The Liberals cut government operations as a whole by 19 per cent (during its deficit reduction exercise); they cut the CBC by 33 per cent,” says Ian Morrison, who heads the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

The public broadcaster has managed to fill out the shortfall in revenue with increased advertising on its television services.

However this has not been enough for CBC to halt the reduction of new programmes during the year and has led to an increase in repeated shows, less regional coverage and lower morale among overworked employees – who recently went on strike over frozen wages and working conditions.

“People end up taking leaves of absence because they can’t cope with the stress. The mandate of the CBC has been scaled down,” says Whittaker.

It has been estimated that Canada spends 18 dollars per person on public broadcasting, compared to 39 dollars per person in Japan, 40 dollars in Britain but only 1 dollar in the United States.

Recently, CBC management has talked of introducing commercial sponsorships for programs on its radio service, which enjoys some popularity because of its 20-year-old stance against advertising.

Jean Chretien, however, is “the most hostile prime minister to the CBC since it was created,” states Ian Morrison.

One common explanation is the suspicion, purportedly held by the prime minister himself, that Radio Canada – the French section of the CBC – harbours strong supporters of Quebec independence among its journalists. This allegedly is reflected in the news coverage of the province’s political affairs.

Chretien, a Quebecer himself is a strong believer in a united Canada. Add to this CBC management’s vulnerability to political pressures, regardless of who is power in Ottawa, and one can understand some of the problems of the corporation.

CBC relies almost entirely on federal government funding, which is not stable and can be raised or lowered “at the whim” of the finance minister on a year-to-year basis, says Morrison.

Also, the federal government appoints both the CBC president and his entire board, generally filled with appointees – mostly members of the party in power in Ottawa, he adds.

Recently, award-winning journalist Terry Milewski was taken off a story by CBC management, following his “aggressive” coverage of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s treatment of protesters during the visit to an international conference of Asian and Pacific leaders in Vancouver by then Indonesian President Suharto.

Milewski’s reports accused the office of the Prime Minister Chretien of quashing dissent by human rights activists during the Suharto visit. Subsequently, one of Chretien’s advisors complained to the CBC that the journalist had shown some bias in his reportage.

“I think Jean Chretien is trying to turn a wonderful institution into a Third World institution,” says Manjunath Pendakur, dean of the faculty of information and media studies at the University of Western Ontario.

By this , he adds, “I mean the political interference is similar to what occurs in developing countries where a public broadcaster is generally seen as an arm of the government.”

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