(LifeSiteNews) – Results from a new poll indicate the majority of Canadians would put their support behind the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) if it committed to fully defunding Canada’s state broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
According to the poll conducted by Angus Reid Institute, 64 percent of Canadians said that they would consider voting CPC if the party promised to strip the CBC of all funds.
The point put to poll respondents was, “The Conservatives would still maintain my support/interest if they adopted,” with “Defunding the CBC completely” being one of the options.
Most of the support for defunding the CBC came from People’s Party of Canada (PPC) voters at 98 percent. PPC leader Maxime Bernier has been a vocal opponent of COVID mandates and has said the CBC needs to be defunded.
Support among conservative voters to defund the CBC was also high, with 84 percent of CPC voters indicating they want the state broadcaster defunded.
Among those who vote for the Liberal party, 34 percent support defunding the CBC, followed by 37 percent of Green Party voters and 31 percent of NDP voters.
Male voters were more enthusiastic at defunding the CBC at 66 percent in favor, compared with 61 percent for women. Younger Canadians were also more favorable in stripping the CBC of funding.
The sample size for the CBC question was 3,086.
At least two of the candidates in the running to become the next leader of the CPC, MP Pierre Poilievre and Ontario MPP Roman Baber, have publicly stated that they support the defunding of the CBC.
The results from the poll about defunding the CBC came from a larger online survey regarding the CPC party leadership race, which was conducted between March 10 and March 15, interviewing 5,105 Canadians. The CPC will elect a new leader on September 20.
In 2021, the Liberal Party government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave the CBC $1.4 billion, which accounts for around 70 percent of its total revenue.
During the 2021 federal election campaign, Trudeau said he would give even more money to the CBC to the tune of $400 million over the next four years.
Recently, the CBC was ordered to pay nearly $2 million in costs and damages in a defamation case for failing to report in a “fair” manner, a judge ruled.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) recently called for an end to the massive subsidies given to the state-run CBC.
The CBC and other mainstream media outlets were quick to condemn the Freedom Trucker Convoy, which ended after Trudeau used the Emergencies Act (EA) to clear out the protesters.
Just recently, the CBC had to retract a story regarding the Freedom Convoy that falsely claimed most of the support for the Freedom Convoy came from foreigners.
The CBC had also earlier retracted a story from January that falsely claimed Russia was somehow behind the Freedom Convoy.
The CBC in mid-October had to apologize after it admitted it used COVID hospital training footage of a mannequin in an ICU on a ventilator in a video news segment to highlight the COVID situation in Alberta hospitals.