Mr. Speaker, the CBC is Canadian stories. It is our voice. It is our sovereignty.
My first encounter with the CBC was in 1975 in Saint-Lazare, Quebec. As an anglophone Quebecer, the CBC and CTV were our two channels, other than the American channels we got. During the day, there would be game shows and soap operas on CTV, but on CBC, there was a funny man who drew pictures, dressed up, and talked to puppets. For a four-year-old kid, Ernie Coombs was the cat's meow.
Ernie Coombs fostered in me a love of art and a love of drama. He taught me things. He taught me good Canadian values. From that first encounter with that black and white TV set, I learned what it was to be Canadian and what it was to be an anglophone in Quebec. I learned the value of the CBC at that point.
In 1981, my grandfather St-Maurice's hotel in Quebec City burned down and he lost all his money and had to move in with my parents. Our TV programming underwent a shift at prime time. We were a family that liked sitcoms and American TV. We liked to laugh together. However, my grandfather liked les Canadiens de Montréal and les Expos de Montréal , so all of a sudden, we began watching CBC Hockey Night in Canada quite religiously. The transition took a bit of time, but I learned to love the theme song of Hockey Night in Canada and I learned to love the times we spent together as a family watching the games.
I am reminded that I went to my family last night and watched game seven of the Habs and the Bruins. There is a long tradition of matchups between these two teams. The Prime Minister can pretend that he is with the Habs, but he and his government, to me, act more like Boston. Here we have a team that is bullying, brutish, and, as we saw last night, desperate. When it is losing, it does not play a valiant game. It roughs up people against the boards.
While we are here, our party is defending the public broadcaster, and the Conservatives are piling up on our leader in this very House, pulling a Chara.
Hockey Night in Canada is a symbol of our cultural sovereignty. With budget cuts that have been made, the CBC could no longer compete for the contract for the NHL, because for a long time, at least 20 years, it had had challenges in its funding.
My colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor mentioned the 1990s and the $400 million in cuts the Liberals made, but I would like to mention something more recent. In 2003, Clifford Lincoln, the member for Lachine—Lac-Saint-Louis, prepared a report called “Our Cultural Sovereignty: The Second Century of Canadian Broadcasting”. This report recommended that the CBC get multiple-year stable funding. The Liberals had two years to do this. They had two full years to implement the recommendations in Mr. Lincoln's report. It was a parliamentary committee that prepared that report. However, we know the record of Paul Martin, and we know that he and his government had no understanding of the importance of the public broadcaster. Paul Martin, in the 1990s, cut $400 million at a time when the CBC faced the challenges of exploding channels and platforms. The Liberals could have prepared for the future, but instead, they cut the legs of the public broadcaster.
To return to my family and the 1990s, I remember sharing Radio One with my father. We would listen to the radio. We would listen to people like Rex Murphy , L. Ian MacDonald, and Bernie St-Laurent. We can agree or disagree with these political commentators, but there was public debate, ideas, and stories.
I mentioned at the beginning of my speech that I was an anglophone. My father, William Nicholls, was an anglophone as well. He was not a man who watched sports games. He listened to the CBC. He listened to the radio, and he listened to the public broadcaster for information, because my father was a dropout. His father was a town planner for the town of Pointe-Claire. His father passed away when he was 17, so he had to take care of his mother and his mentally challenged brother and never finished high school, yet this was the man who was my foil and my debating partner.
My father, who was a Tory, with a disdain for Pierre Trudeau, and who was from a family of Tories, loved the CBC, because it was public debate. It was political ideas. He could shout at the radio about something he did not agree with, but we were talking about these issues. He was a critical thinker, and when he did not agree with something, he debated it. He debated, he spoke about it, and we would talk as a family about ideas. We would argue ideas. He did not shut down debate. He was not afraid of debate. He was not afraid of being challenged. He would never have identified with the party across the way. He would have been like Flora MacDonald. He would be supporting our party these days, seeing that the NDP is the only reliable one left standing to protect our public broadcaster, the only one reliable and trustworthy enough to defend our cultural sovereignty and the right to tell Canadian stories.
We are not just paying lip service here. This is not just a market-oriented decision being made. This is changing the fabric of Canadian sovereignty by crippling what has built our identity for generations. We are not just saving money or making economies of scale here; we are actually destroying institutions that have built for generations our Canadian identity.
I know that some members of the government party believe that the CBC is biased. This has always been an argument. I mentioned that my father would sometimes argue with what people said on the radio or television. My grandfather did as well. He was from a different political persuasion as well. However, we had discussions about politics and ideas.
I know the current government's position with respect to the CBC and its feeling about it, because I listened to the member for New Brunswick Southwest at the official languages committee. He had questions for Mr. Hubert Lacroix. He asked Mr. Lacroix about political bias in reporting and what he was going to do about it. Mr. Lacroix was talking about making efficiencies in his organization and budget cuts, yet the member for New Brunswick Southwest questioned him on political bias. Right there it became clear why these budget cuts were being made to the CBC. It was not because the CBC was not effective in its role. It was not because it was not effective in telling Canadian stories. It was simply because the CBC often runs stories that are embarrassing to the government.
Let us not beat around the bush. The current government does not like the news reporting service of the public broadcaster. It is so focused on its partisan agenda that it cannot see the wider picture of what this public broadcaster does. It cannot see the wider picture of how it goes beyond these nine years of Conservative governance or the 13 years of Liberal governance before. It goes beyond that. It skips generations and brings generations together by telling our stories and sharing our stories and ideas.
The CBC is our Canadian stories, our voice, and our sovereignty. I ask all members of this House to vote for this motion in order to save this institution for generations to come.