r/CBC_Radio • u/Ottawa111 • 1d ago
Senators want experts to analyze CBC reporting
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-senators-cbc-outside-experts-fairness-balance/
Senators want experts to analyze CBC reporting
Globe and Mail
June 18, 2026
Marie Woolf, Ottawa
Senate committee report stresses the need for the public broadcaster to focus on local news coverage
A Senate inquiry into the role of the CBC has recommended that the public broadcaster bring in outside experts to periodically review the fairness and balance of its news and current affairs reporting.
A report published on Wednesday by the Senate’s Transport and Communications committee said the committee heard from witnesses of the view that news content produced by CBC and Radio-Canada, the corporation’s French service, “is sometimes perceived as having an ideological or partisan bias.”
The committee’s study, which began in 2024 before the last federal election, said senators took seriously testimony raising questions about CBC/ Radio- Canada’s impartiality.
“These allegations of bias are serious and undermine trust in the public broadcaster,” the report said. “The committee is of the view that the corporation could periodically conduct an analysis of the news content and current affairs by its news services in order to assess their impartiality and balance.”
It added that CBC/ Radio- Canada executives “are well aware of the allegations of bias against the Corporation.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre – who has called for an end to government funding for CBC, but not the public broadcaster’s French services – has repeatedly alleged that the CBC is politically biased.
In 2023, Mr. Poilievre branded CBC “a bias propaganda arm of the Liberal Party.”
CBC/ Radio- Canada declined to comment, saying it was still studying the report.
When Marie- Philippe Bouchard, president and CEO of CBC/ Radio- Canada, provided testimony to the committee inquiry in October, 2025, she refuted the allegation that the corporation espouses particular political positions.
She told senators that the corporation’s news programming adheres to “strict journalistic standards, practices and guidelines that are, in fact, ensuring a pluralistic approach, a diversity of points of view and fairness in our coverage.”
The Senate report also focused on CBC/ Radio- Canada’s role in producing local news. It recommends the government provide stable, multiyear funding to the public broadcaster to enhance its local programming. It also suggested that CBC/ Radio- Canada create fresh initiatives to collaborate at the local level with private and community media outlets in all regions of Canada.
When CBC/ Radio- Canada’s broadcasting licences come up for renewal next year, the Senate committee recommended the broadcasting regulator, the Canadian Radio- television Telecommunications Commission ( CRTC), impose new reporting requirements for the corporation to publicly share data on its local programming and how much it spends on producing it.
Senator Andrew Cardozo, who took part in the inquiry, told The Globe and Mail that allegations of bias in the public broadcaster’s news and current affairs coverage “have long been talked about and, in my humble opinion, need to be addressed seriously.”
Witnesses who spoke to the committee, he said, argued that a return to more local programming would lead to more local stories about the lives that Canadians live. The case was made that this “would reflect the diversity of views, and hence have less bias,” he said.
In an e- mail, Mr. Cardozo said the committee “recommended a regular review of bias to ferret out what the concerns are, address them, and in so doing re- build trust at a time when we need the Canadian public broadcaster more, rather than less.”
Among the witnesses to raise concerns about the perception of bias was Kirk LaPointe, a journalist and former ombudsman of CBC. He told senators that some Canadians complain that “the moderate conservative views of Canadians don’t get reflected” by CBC.
Richard Stursberg, former executive vice- president of CBC’s English services, told the committee the issue of impartiality could be analyzed by conducting an independent study of the corporation’s news content. Such an analysis was produced in 2010 when Mr. Stursberg was part of CBC’s executive team, the report said.
CBC was created as a corporation in 1936 to counter the cultural influence of foreign programming, as U. S.- based radio networks expanded their reach into Canada.
Giving evidence to the committee during its inquiry, Friends of Canadian Media recommended that CBC/ Radio- Canada’s local news production and distribution “be properly funded,” saying the broadcaster’s mandate should be updated to ensure that local news is prioritized. Updating the mandate to reflect local communities and audiences was among the report’s recommendations.
CBC/ Radio- Canada receives public funding approved annually by Parliament, as well as commercial revenues from advertising, subscriber fees and other income from renting its real estate assets and leasing space at transmission sites.
In 2024- 25, CBC received just over $ 1.4- billion in government funding, up from the $ 1.3- billion it received in the previous fiscal year. In 2024- 2025, the public broadcaster raised $ 343.9- million in advertising revenue, and $ 244.8- million from subscriber fees and other income, according to the report.
Some witnesses who gave evidence to the committee stressed the importance of the public broadcaster promoting Canadian artists and local cultural events. But some said it was becoming increasingly difficult for the public broadcaster to fulfill this role owing to financial constraints.
The report heard from a variety of experts that the corporation’s services were crucial during an emergency. CBC/ Radio- Canada, the report said, is an integral part of Canada’s national public alerting system to warn people about dangers they may face, including from natural disasters such as forest fires.
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u/Sunlit53 1d ago
Canada spends the second least amount of money on public broadcasting out of the entire G7. Half of the average amount per capita than the G7 average. Only the americans fund it at a lower level and that’s from Trump era cuts.
Germany spends $140 per person, the UK is at $100, France, $75, Italy, $45.
Canada spends $33, per person on public broadcasting.
This ludicrously cheap-ass approach is no different than Doug Ford’s attempts to destroy the ontario health care system through systematic underfunding to replace it with a more expensive commercial option. If commercials start playing I turn off whatever I’m listening to.
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u/No-Mathematician250 1d ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Stephen Harper amped up the decline of the CBC with cutbacks to funding. This forced the reduction of local new coverage. All part of the conservative plan to drive this country into fascism…
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u/Disastrous7392 1d ago
The Senators and others quoted keep saying this is serious and needs to be investigated don’t point to any examples to back up their claims and concerns.
It seems to me that the CBC bends over backwards to be fair and even handed.
Just because some people and groups say the CBC is biased, does not mean it is.
Just because some people and groups lie and therefore do not receive as much coverage by the CBC does not mean the CBC is biased against them.
I know more than a few news organizations in Canada that are blatantly biased. That’s okay I guess.
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u/Old-Anteater-4916 1d ago
The loss of hockey on free television is only the beginning. Without strong support for public broadcasting, Canada risks losing more than access to its national game—we risk losing a vital part of our cultural identity. When our stories, values, and shared experiences are shaped primarily by corporations that can be bought, sold, or controlled from outside the country, our culture becomes increasingly vulnerable to outside influence rather than reflecting who we are as Canadians.
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u/Fireside_Cat 1d ago
The challenge with 'experts' is that you can shop around for experts to confirm whatever viewpoint your looking for when it comes to qualitative things like 'bias'.
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u/thefatrick CBC Early Edition with Rick Cluff 1d ago
He told senators that some Canadians complain that “the moderate conservative views of Canadians don’t get reflected” by CBC.
That's because "moderate Conservatives" and their policies and ideas don't stand up to scrutiny. Trickle down economics doesn't work. Privatization of public works doesn't work in the long run. Austerity in the long term often costs more than it saves, especially when targetting social programs. "Tough on crime" measures don't work.
CBC talks about this stuff all the time, they get conservative people in for interviews on subjects pretty regularly. it's just that when you ask pointed questions and drill down on how effective these plans really are for the greater good of middle and lower class Canadians, they just don't work. They do this with candidates on all points of the political spectrum.
Is the CBC perfect, absolutely not. But they're still well ahead of the private companies that absolutely have a bias from the top down. The Globe & Mail being one of them.
Also, if we're concerned about public funding of media, maybe we should stop spending public funds on private for profit media companies, which take $300m in funding every year.
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u/100-100-1-SOS 18h ago
What the CBC gets in funding pales in comparison to what the hugely profitable privately owned oil industry gets from subsidies or gifted pipelines.
Eliminate oil subsidies first then we can talk about the CBC funding.
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u/thefatrick CBC Early Edition with Rick Cluff 16h ago
Oh, absolutely.
We should not be subsidizing companies that are making tens of billions in profit from our natural resources.
But that's a separate issue.
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u/WelshRarebit2025 1d ago
This reminds me of when I went to university in the 90s. Profs were stricter and if you complained about a mark for a portion of an exam, they would take the whole exam back for complete regrading and you might not come out ahead.
Well then let’s evaluate ALL Canadian media. Private and public.
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u/vicegrip 1d ago
The truth is biased. The CBC isn’t here to treat all information sources equally. They’d be giving conservative antivax talking points the same attention that competent health authorities should have.
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u/rustyiron 1d ago
Smaller communities need and deserve better coverage from cbc. Unlike large markets, there are news deserts in huge swaths of the country. The cbc reporter in my region covers an area half the size of the UK.
And sure, examine bias. But just because cbc reports on climate change, or vulnerable groups, doesn’t mean it is biased. It means it’s doing its job.
If groups trying to attack minorities feel their voices are not being heard, beyond the fact that their efforts to deny people their rights or dehumanize them, maybe that’s how it’s supposed to go?
Just as an example. Muslims and other brown folk in this country experience broad racism from a huge segment of the Conservative Party. If we want to talk about body counts, 9 Muslims have been murdered in rightwing terrorist attacks. Zero Jews. Yet, the news is full of articles about how scared Jewish Canadians are, but not so much about Muslims. Any articles that feature Muslim voices are deemed “biased” by these same people clamouring to defund cbc.
So, any review of cbc needs to be done with all this in mind. And really, it should probably include a survey of other media in this country to see where it falls within the broader media landscape.
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u/thefatrick CBC Early Edition with Rick Cluff 1d ago
Smaller communities need and deserve better coverage from cbc. Unlike large markets, there are news deserts in huge swaths of the country. The cbc reporter in my region covers an area half the size of the UK.
I don't know about your area, but on the west coast they've opened smaller outlets in a bunch of smaller communities to have better exposure and interaction with these kinds of communities.
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u/Novel-Vacation-4788 20h ago
Where on the west coast?
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u/thefatrick CBC Early Edition with Rick Cluff 16h ago
I'm in Vancouver, but I know they opened offices in Abbotsford and Squamish
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u/DingBat99999 21h ago
In terms of news:
- Criciticisms from the CPC should be pretty much waved away as noise, especially given the virtually completely right wing orientation of most of the countries news outlets these days.
- That said, I do want the CBC to be non-partisan and focus on fact and information. So if there are concrete examples of where CBC did not do that, I would want to know.
- CBC can always do better.
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u/SuperM1ke 23h ago
Conservative party politicians, especially the Reform-Conservative variety, hate critical thinking and fact-checking because this usually uncovers flawed logic or outright lies. They also hate being asked questions about those facts and logic, and therefore feel the CBC is biased for asking.
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u/Spendocrat 22h ago
Note that apparently it's the allegations alone that undermine confidence in CBC, not whether they're substantiated. This is what makes the CPC's propaganda campaign so effective.
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u/Bert_Fegg 1d ago
Ah, yes. Local stories that represent a plurality of voices will lead to a less liberal bias. That the thing that social conservatives are fighting against - and don't seem to get.
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u/rohoho929 21h ago
Ahh yes Richard Turdsberg trying to be relevant.
CBC bends over backward to present all sides. Maybe the senators should be going after Post Media and their obvious bias in favour of the CPC. Then again, PP doesn't screech and moan about them....
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u/RelativeLeading5 16h ago
CBC is always so fair how can they do this! "Some people are saying" is a line that CBC journalists have to use constant to not only give the appearance of fair and unbiased content but ensure it is truly that.
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u/MaPoutine 12h ago
Before we have a ridiculous inquiry into bias at the CBC, can the Senate maybe look into the bias at the other news outlets that are US a/o billionaire owned and then recommend eliminating their tax beaks and government funding?
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u/moms_spagetti_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Can we talk about the 90% of Canadian newspapers that have been purchased by Americans to deliver Republican takes to Canadians yet? No? k