OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre asked Twitter and its CEO Elon Musk to label the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as “government-funded media.”
In an letter dated April 11 to Twitter and Musk, Poilievre wrote that he believes “Twitter should apply the Government-funded Media label to the CBC’s various news-related accounts, including @CBC, @CBCNews and @CBCAlerts.”
CBC gets around 70% of its operating budget, about $1 billion, directly from the Canadian federal government annually.
Poilievre wrote that Twitter defines government-funded media “as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.”
“Twitter’s Platform Use Guidelines refer to a source that describes the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (the ‘CBC’) as a publicly funded broadcaster,” he added.
Poilievre then noted that the CBC, as per its 2020-2021 annual report, shows it gets about $1.24 billion in public funding every year.
The whopping sum came after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2019 election promise that his Liberal government would give legacy media an extra $595 million in federal assistance over four years.
In closing his letter to Twitter and Musk, Poilievre stated, “As a result, and in the interest of transparency, I believe that Twitter should apply the Government-funded Media label to the CBC’s various news-related accounts.”
For some time now, Poilievre has consistently said that should he become Prime Minister he would defund the CBC, which in the past few years has come under fire for what he said is biased toward promoting the agenda of the government of the day, as well as being accused of promoting a “radical political agenda.”
His letter comes in light of Musk recently placing government-funded media labels on numerous BBC properties. Of note is the BBC is funded through mandatory license fees while the CBC gets its money directly from the government.
Last month, LifeSiteNews reported on former CBC producer Tara Henley, who last year left her job because of its “radical political agenda.” Henley said the future of Canadian journalism lies with independent media outlets that don’t have a liberal bias.
In February, LifeSiteNews reported on how the CBC will join a global “Public Spaces Incubator” initiative to combat online “misinformation” despite recently coming under fire from its ombudsman for violating its ethics code.
CBC viewership ratings have been steadily declining for years, with some estimates from 2021 putting the average national viewership rate at less than 3.9% of the Canadian market despite the Canadian federal government providing some $1.5 billion annually in funding.
As for the CBC, it has on multiple occasions come under fire for violating its own ethics code.
The most recent example came last month when it was reported CBC ombudsman Jack Nagler said the network, which gets over $1 billion a year from the federal government, violated its own ethics code over a 2021 article. The article suggested the nation’s Catholic bishops were not coming through on a promise to raise money for an “Indigenous Reconciliation Fund.”
The CBC was also caught spreading false narratives regarding the Freedom Convoy.
Last March, the broadcaster had to retract a story that falsely claimed most support for the Freedom Convoy came from foreigners.
Poilievre, who is for abortion while seemingly strong on certain issues, is weak when it comes to matters of family and life, notably how drag queen story times have seemed to proliferate across the country.