FACE TO FACE: Should Canadian taxpayers continue to help fund CBC?
Stop funding the CBC? My slash-and-burn colleague has gone too far. He has clearly drunk of the Tea Party Kool-Aid.
Were it not for the CBC, Canadians would be American mini-me's, transfixed with Kim Kardashian's rear end, monster tractor pulls and bombing small nations we don't like. I know, that's what Stephen Harper wants but if we sacrifice the CBC on his slash-spending altar, we'll have nothing else on which to transfix.
CBC TV and radio have reflected and promoted Canadian culture since 1936. In its many forms, the CBC has pulled our sparsely populated country together longer and stronger than anything else - in both official languages and eight Aboriginal languages.
What do Canadians in Dawson City, Yukon, White River, Ont., and Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut have in common? Along with their countrymen, they can listen to Cross Country Check-up with Rex Murphy, watch Hockey Night in Canada and other, sometimes not so profitable Canadian programming in the language of their choice. Beat that, CTV.
The mandate of the CBC is to promote Canadian culture, to inform Canadians in both official languages and to provide Canadians with different cultural views from different parts of their country.
Such a broad mandate can only be met by a publicly funded media network, one beholden to Canadians, not private shareholders and corporate interests. My colleague over there either thinks the mandate is not worth the struggle against The Simpsons, Survivor and Hannity, or that private networks could fulfill the CBC's mandate.
Either way, he's wrong.
The mandate is worthy and private networks can't replace the CBC, which gives life to our diverse culture and regions. What private network could sell its shareholders on airing The Tommy Hunter Show, Don Messer's Jubilee and The Beachcombers for over 20 years and in two languages, or to chance producing The National Dream, Road to Avonlea or Front Page Challenge?
To understand the profound effect the CBC has had on Canadians, one need look no further than Hockey Night in Canada. Canada's love affair with hockey may have been born in rinks all over the country but it was nurtured to the status of Canadian religion by Hockey Night in Canada, on TV and radio, in French and English, in every hamlet from coast to coast to coast.
Face to Face columnist Jim Nelson is a retired Tri-City teacher and principal who lives in Port Moody. He has contributed a number of columns on education-related issues to The Tri-City News.
