In our view, this should be a pressing priority for Parliament and indeed this committee. We are therefore both surprised and dismayed that so much committee time has been taken up to examine a single institution, CBC/Radio-Canada.
It is not that we believe CBC is above the law--far from it--but we do question the singular focus of the current study and can only conclude that the committee has been drawn into a dirty war against the public broadcaster. It is a war being waged by Quebecor, a private media company that has what we believe should be obvious to everyone: a private commercial interest in diminishing the role and presence of its main competitor, CBC/Radio-Canada, especially in the province of Quebec.
Quebecor has been running stories about the CBC and ATI for years in its newspapers and on TV. One series runs under the bombastic title of “CBC Money Drain”, implying public funds are wasted on public broadcasting.
A search on the Toronto Sun website found 60 posts connected to the series since 2008. More than one-third of the pieces have run since September of this year. They have titles such as “CBC refuses to reveal its secrets”, “CBC's loopholes and bonuses”, “CBC singled out for bad behaviour”.
University of Ottawa journalism ethics professor Marc-François Bernier has called Quebecor's approach to reporting on CBC a “propaganda campaign”. It is troubling to find that the very same narrow focus of Quebecor's concern about access to information, which seems to relate only to CBC/Radio-Canada, is being reproduced in this hearing.