At Home in Hespeler

The CBC runs a piece about changes to income tax laws, complete with puff-piece picture of Prime Minister Trudeau and his family.

For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

bad journalism, CBC, Media doesn't matter Add new tag, CBC, Justinmania

So you’re the CBC and your under pressure to justify the $1.1-bilion taxpayer subsidy you receive. How to ease the pressure? How about, you turn the tables, and re-invent accounting for the people putting the pressure on.

Thus, Quebecor media, who is trying to hold the publicly funded CBC to account through legal access to information requests, actually received a $333-million subsidy themselves, according to the CBC. As Brian Lilley reports:

…when Quebecor bid on and won the right to set up a cellphone network in Quebec and Eastern Ontario, it received a $333-million subsidy…

CBC President arrived at this amount by claiming that we would have had to pay that much more to the government had Bell, Rogers and Telus been allowed to bid.

Leaving aside Lilley’s argument that paying $555-million is a strange definition of subsidy, what the CBC are talking about is opportunity cost, and it can apply both ways.

What is the opportunity cost of the CBC?

Well, that $1.1-billion is after tax money, what the CBC keeps. Forgone taxes, at 28% tax rate (Federal corporate tax = 16.5%, Ontario tax = 11.5%.) is $308-million – approximately what the CBC claims Quebecor got as a subsidy – turning their total subsidy to $1.4-billion.

But wait, that 1.4-billion has it’s own opportunity cost. What if the Government of Canada paid down debt with that $1.4-billion? At 3% prime interest rate, they would save 42-million, compounded yearly on interest payments. Just five years of paying debt, instead of the CBC, we would save $210-million on interest alone, assuming the interest rate doesn’t rise. And since we are borrowing the money to give CBC, therefore increasing our future interest payments by the same amount, we can actually double that money, meaning in five years, with compounding, we can easily add half-a-billion dollars to the CBC bill.

The above doesn’t take into account the effect of removing $1.4-billion from the productive economy to give to the CBC. Some estimates are that leaving the money in the economy, through not taxing it, could have a multiplier effect of as high as 1.5, meaning the cost to productive activity of subsidizing the CBC could be as high as $2.1-billion a year.

So yes, Brian Lilley, the CBC’s comparison of Quebecor to itself is “a load of bull.” However, spreading the load of bull across the whole field, and thing are much worse for the CBC than they at first appeared.

CBC, Economic Fundamentalism Brian Lilley, CBC, Sun Media

There has been a lot of discussion in Ottawa lately about secrets, lying, and withholding the truth. Mainly because it has been suggested by, well, pretty much every newspaper in the country, that this has become the standard operating procedure for the CBC. Now to be fair, this is not entirely the CBC’s fault… they start treating Canadians like, what’s the word I’m looking for here? Idiots.

Now I get this. I mean this CBC has things they want to do. Big things. They wanna build windmills, buy lattes, advertise. And that is their prerogative. The problem arises when the taxpayers get it into their heads that they should have some idea of what this is gonna cost. The CBC Solution? Tell the people nothing.

Now could you imagine if we all lived our lives like that? Imagine for a minute you want a new truck. Take a page from the CBC playbook. Look your spouse in the eye tonight and say, “I’m gettin’ a new truck. Your job is to pay for the truck, not know what it costs.” And then if your spouse is entirely unreasonable and still demands an answer, pull a Rick Mercer. Rant about the evil Conservative government

Because at the end of the day, that is the message this network is sending to the voters and yes, the children of Canada. The hell with the truth, the lie will set you free. And you know what? It’s not good enough. Because in a free and open society, when it comes to government operations, the people who pay the bills deserve to know the truth. And I know CBC, sometimes the truth hurts. But the truth will not harm democracy. Only secrets and lies will do that.

Thanks to Ron for the suggestion

CBC CBC, Rock Mercer

Well, not really, but John Tory ties himself into knots trying to explain why he supports the CBC, or at least did. His argument for supporting the CBC is basically, they are a National Broadcaster with a difficult mandate, therefore they will cost more. Fair enough, but the point many of us make is they are unnecessary and we shouldn’t be forced to financially support them (just as Margaret Atwood shouldn’t be forced to support Sun TV – or fake moon landing).

Yesterday, Tory met the final straw when it comes to the CBC, and swears he will never support them again.

Jeeze, a few more of these conversions, and we might just make a conservative of John Tory yet.

John 'Red Green' Tory Brian Lilly, CBC, CFRB, John Tory

I told them [The Liberal Party of Canada] that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitan versus parochialism, secularism versus muralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, they can go south and vote for Palin.

Note the subtext: they’re tolerant, you’re a parochial, racist, homophobic, autocratic, moralistic tea partier. As Conservative Party of Canada president John Walsh asks, “does the [public funded] CBC share Mr. Graves call for a ‘culture war…’”

Silly Liberals, Stephen Harper CBC, EKOS Research Associates, Frank Graves’, John Walsh

closer to the NDP than the Conservatives.

How can this be true? you might ask. This is how…

To quote one of the top five political minds in the country: stick a fork in him.

for whom the poll tolls CBC, Gerry Nicholls, Liberals, Michael Ignatieff

Whenever talk comes around to what to do with the CBC, the discussion always comes in as a culture decision. We want to save Canadian culture, we need to protect Canadian culture. However, the CBC is not in the culture business, they are in the entertainment business, and now that CBC executive vice-president in charge of English services, Richard Stursberg, has admitted as much, can we please do without the pretence?

Some want it to go advertising-free (which would reduce CBC’s revenues by roughly 40 per cent), stop pouring money into ratings-driven U.S. imports and gimmicky reality shows, and concentrate on high-quality Canadian drama, children’s shows, documentaries, news and current affairs.

Stursberg dismisses this option out of hand. The business of television is entertainment, he says. “It’s not a university lecture. It’s not a little literary magazine.”

Now that we have established new, more appropriate terms for debate, I’ll start: the Government of Canada should not be in the entertainment business. If it chooses to provide tax benefits to those who create entertainment, then someone who makes his living in the auto industry such as myself may have to concede the point. But directly financing entertainment such as Battle of the Blades and Super Speller? This is clearly not in the governments mandate.

CBC Battle of the Blades, Canadian Culture, CBC, Culture, Richard Stursberg, Super Speller