On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney revealed Steven Guilbeault will keep his position in cabinet as heritage minister, a role Carney first appointed him to in March.
With a renewed mandate, Guilbeault will be responsible for fulfilling Carney’s campaign pledge to “strengthen” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Part of that pledge included a promise of an additional $150 million in CBC funding — an amount that would be transformational for any other Canadian news outlet, but which is a mere top-up for Canada’s public broadcaster.
Industry experts are raising concerns about how the money will be allocated — and warn of potential ramifications for Canada’s media landscape.
“Giving a commercialized CBC … more money, making it more powerful, will kill private sector media,” said Peter Menzies, a former vice chair of the Canadian Radio-television Commission and current fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank.
“It’s really just a matter of how many [it kills] — unless you end up subsidizing them too.”
Questions of allocation
During the campaign, the Liberals promised to expand both the budget and mandate of the 88-year-old broadcaster. In its last fiscal year, the CBC’s total revenue was $1.93 billion, of which $1.43 billion came from government.
“Our plan will safeguard a reliable Canadian public square in a sea of misinformation and disinformation so we can stay informed and tell our own stories in our own languages,” Carney said at an April 4 campaign event.
Carney’s stance on the CBC was one of the few areas where he staked out a significantly different position from his chief rival, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre had promised to eliminate funding for the CBC’s English-language programming while maintaining the French-language Radio Canada.
Carney did not specify during the campaign how the CBC would be required to use the $150 million in additional funds. The Liberal platform says it will equip the organization to “combat disinformation.”
Heritage Canada, the department that oversees the CBC, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. A CBC spokesperson also declined Canadian Affairs’ interview request.
Menzies says “misinformation” and “disinformation” are “blanket terms” that can be challenging to counter with coherent policy.
“ You could go through this election campaign and probably find several incidents in which all parties could be accused of misinformation by the other parties,” said Menzies. “It can become very political.”
Local needs
Menzies says the impact of the new funding will ultimately depend on how it is allocated.
“What is the $150 million for?” he said. “Do they have bills that they’re in arrears on? Is it to sustain their bureaucracy? Is it to make sure that executives can get their bonuses without controversy in the future? Or is it to hire reporters?
“If it’s any of the first ones I mentioned, it adds no value to the viewer, listener [or] reader experience. If it’s the latter, then there could be some value added.”
In its 2023-24 fiscal year, the CBC ran a $40.5-million surplus, up from a $125-million deficit the year before. Its improved financial position was due entirely to a $165-million boost in government funding, the organization’s annual report shows.
Jeffrey Dvorkin, a senior fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, believes adding value for CBC audiences requires directing new funds toward local coverage.
“If that $150 million … is just spent from Toronto or Montreal, that changes nothing,” said Dvorkin, himself a former managing editor and chief journalist at CBC. “I think the investment of fresh money should be to reinforce and reinvigorate programming at the local level because that’s really where the deficit exists right now.”
Since 2008, 521 local news outlets have ceased operating due to closures or mergers, according to a 2024 study by the Local News Research Project, a project at Toronto Metropolitan University. Most of the outlets that closed were community papers.
In the same timespan, 228 new outlets have launched.
Per-capita parity
The $150-million boost in CBC funding may be the precursor to much larger government transfers to the CBC.
A white paper released in February by then-heritage minister Pascale St-Onge recommends increasing CBC funding to better align it with international counterparts, such as Britain’s BBC or Germany’s ARD.
“The average funding for a public broadcaster in a G7 country is $62 per person, per year,” St-Onge said at a press conference announcing the paper.
“In Canada, we’re second to last, with $33 per year, per person,” she said. “We’re closer to the United States than to any other country of the G7. And I don’t think that we want the United States to be our reference. I think we need to aim closer to the middle ground, which is $62 per year, per person.”
Carney has affirmed this position.
“When we compare ourselves to the U.K., France or Germany, we see that our public broadcaster is underfunded,” Carney said at the April 4 event. “That has to change.”
If the CBC were funded at a rate of $62 per capita, it would receive about $2.57 billion a year in government funding, up from $1.4 billion today.
For Menzies, a key concern is how the broader Canadian news ecosystem would be affected by such a change.
“[O]ne in three Canadian journalists works for the CBC,” Menzies said. “[If] you were to double its size — which is the long-term goal — what happens to everybody else?”
In addition to receiving government funds, the CBC also generates revenue through advertising, subscriptions and other channels. In its most recent fiscal year, CBC brought in $270 million in advertising revenue and $121 million in subscription revenue — money that might have otherwise gone to private market players. An even larger CBC would put even more pressure on competitors, Menzies says.
In Dvorkin’s view, the CBC should be focused on supporting local journalism rather than competing with it. “The CBC needs to be more complementary to the media landscape rather than simply competitive,” he said.
That would mean counteracting the growth of information deserts in Canada and making some of the CBC’s content available for free to private media.
Such changes would “actually help local newspapers, local websites and local broadcasters serve their audiences outside of the Toronto, Montreal markets,” he said.
