Trudeau Enacts an Advisory Panel

After years of plummeting ratings and conservative criticism, the CBC hoped an advisory panel could spark its reinvention.

The advisory panel features predictable cast members like liberal professors, arts cronies, and CBC loyalists.

They’ll churn out tired plot lines to modestly freshen up a stale formula. Real risks and fresh perspectives won’t make the script.

However, the CBC’s issues lie much deeper than some yes men attempting to fix all of it.

With conservatives loudly advocating defunding the CBC, this initiative appears primarily aimed at political optics rather than instituting real change.

The Liberal government can claim it is taking action and buying time while avoiding difficult decisions on the public broadcaster’s future, but this move just essentially means that Trudeau knows his fun with the CBC is over, and that it’s time to toss them out and find a new shiny toy.

CBC Doubles Down

The liberal funded and corrupt public broadcasting company known as the CBC to unamused Canadians is just acknowledging now that it needs a lot of work done to change course and fix its abysmal reputation and falling numbers.

You would think with a statement like this, the CBC has listened intently to the Conservatives’ advice and are moving towards a more inclusive and unbiased reporting that doesn’t rely on bowing down to Trudeau or any of the liberal establishment, right? Well, what if I told you they actually doubled down, thinking this will be their saving grace?

Imagine if you are a broadcasting company that is being criticised by every Canadian and conservative for pushing the liberal agenda and publishing lies about the opposition; Your reputation is absolutely in the gutter at the moment with no serious professionals or experts showing you any form of respect. Now imagine you innocently think you have an opportunity to circumvent all that, but you run back to the same liberal government that put you in your position in the first place. This is basically how the CBC thought they could win.

But what exactly will Trudeau and the liberals do besides waste more taxpayer money on this failing media company? Create an advisory panel full of yes men of course. Because the CBC really needed an “advisor” fueling the cycle of bias and misinformation.

CBC gets Advised by Yes-Men

Creating an advisory panel does nothing other than pave the way for Trudeau to toss out the CBC and look for other broadcasting companies that can spin his crap without all the public backlash, he knows Canadians have caught up with the CBC’s Liberal agenda and he knows it is too late to fix things.

The advisory panel was specifically tasked with helping the CBC adapt to the digital age. It feels like a much more polite way to state that the company is incompetent in its main job and can’t get people to tune in – especially young Canadians, who Trudeau is of course trying to court heavily through every medium. However, a closer look at the panel’s composition reveals it is stacked with CBC allies and liberal elites.

So perhaps Trudeau is not so ready to let go of the CBC after all. Or perhaps this is all a game that we average Canadians are yet to learn the details of.

At first glance and In an already disrupted media landscape that sees the truth and the factual rise to the top, it seems that this group is unlikely to recommend the bold reforms needed to make the CBC relevant.

I mean we have on the advisory panel people like Jesse Wente, who is currently the chair of the Canada Council for the Arts. This government-funded arts organisation has a long collaborative relationship with the CBC. And Jesse Wente himself worked for two decades under CBC.

It is not out of the realm of reality to suggest that what this Council funds in terms of programs will end up getting extensive and favourable coverage on CBC platforms. A conflict of interest and a clear bias in the first name like never seen before.

Other panellists include liberal professors, a CEO for a B.C. video game industry group, and other liberal tv executives with some being famous for publishing LGBT content and media.

Now tell me exactly where is the exquisite and undeniable digital media expertise present in this panel that is going to save the CBC from being defunded? There is no need to answer because the information provided on this abysmal “advisory panel” speaks for itself very clearly.

Issues Deeper than Relevance

These are not the kinds of individuals that will revive the CBC and take it on a marathon through the digital era. The CBC’s problems are very much deeper than just being out of touch and embarrassingly incompetent.

The CBC is directly funded by the hard earned money of the same people it lambasts for their conservative choice. And yet even after all the taxpayer money being funnelled and wasted away on a stagnant entity, the CBC always finds itself needing more and more.

Simply put, all the money – that should go into the company, its development, its projects, and so on and so forth – is in fact going into the pockets of the top executives as bonuses for doing absolutely nothing but kiss Trudeau’s hand and praise him on a daily basis.

And then Catherine Tait has the audacity to act ignorant about all the bonuses and the money while using a stalling strategy straight from the playbook of Trudeau himself, as she is being questioned by conservative MPs.

Which brings us to the CBC’s other issue which is the deep relationship with Trudeau and the liberals that close a lot of avenues of thoughtful discussion and analysis that could be had by the CBC and for the CBC.

This CBC-Trudeau relationship has led to the broadcasting and media company’s worse articles that take obvious jabs at Poilievre and the conservatives.

This was pretty evident with Poilievre’s visit to some anti-Carbon Tax protesters being reported and signalled as if he had a secret meeting with white supremacists. The whole debacle was a clear cut expose for the bias the CBC has towards Trudeau and the liberals.

Poilievre simply stopped to chat with protesters near the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border. This group opposes carbon taxes, a stance the Conservative leader shares. Putting two and two together is not that hard but apparently it is a monumental task for the CBC, who saw a white supremacist group’s sticker in the back of one of the photos and thought that Polievre was aware and accepting.

In a democracy, opposition leaders frequently visit protesters and criticise the government. But the CBC implies dissent now equates to extremism. I guess that’s the Trudeau effect rubbing off hard on them.

Canadians deserve an honest review of public broadcasting starting from a blank slate, not insider tinkering aimed at self-preservation. Especially, when the problems are clearly deeper than just a lack of progress or transition to the digital media.

Either make the case for a reformed CBC adapted to today’s needs, or have the courage to pull the plug.

But don’t insult citizens with a sham review by CBC apologists who will only recommend more of the same. Canadians deserve better.