A GOOD THING GONE WRONG—-WHY WE HAVE TO TAKE BACK OUR CBC
On this, the 75th birthday of Canada’s CBC, most Canadians would probably say that it is a good idea to have a broadcaster whose purpose is to draw the country together. In many ways over the past 75 years, the CBC has worked to achieve this goal.
However, most Canadians will now say that something has gone wrong and that it is madness for Canadians to fund a national broadcaster when its employees promote policies that undermine Canada.
Our CBC would never admit to promoting the undermining of Canada. In fact, when accused of this, our CBC likes to play innocent. But there are so many thousands of cases of the CBC’s ideological bias that such a defence is easily defeated.
A recent CBC program called ‘The Big Fix” illustrates this bias. The program aired from Nov 21 to 23 on CBC Television’s The National. It consisted of five parts. The one we will describe here focused on Metro Toronto’s traffic gridlock (which the program referred to as Carmegeddon).
The segment lasted about six minutes and featured five short comments in addition to those of the reporter.
The first was by Carol Wilding, President of the Toronto Board of Trade, who agreed that traffic gridlock was a major problem and who tried to show the economic significance of Metro Toronto’s problem by stating that gridlock cost the area $6 Billion a year. She concluded : “So goes the Toronto region, so goes Ontario, so goes Canada.”
The second was by University of Toronto Professor Matt Siemiatycki who stated that many urban areas in the world used to regard Metro Toronto as a model of traffic planning. However, it has lost that status and is now regarded as having the worst commute times for both drivers and public transit users in all of North America.
The third came from Jim Curran, a CBC Radio traffic reporter in Toronto for 40 years. He said the traffic problem continues to get worse as the area’s population grows. In fact, the reverse commute has become as bad as the one to work.
The fourth was from a group of commuters in a van operated by a company called Powerstream which is one of 150 companies participating in a program to reduce gridlock and commuting time.
The last was made by Bruce McCuaig, Head of Metrolinx, the agency created to improve the coordination and integration of all modes of transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. In typical planner and “manager” fashion, he argued that the Toronto area needed more transportation systems. In his view, the one that would solve most of the area’s problems was a system that would go from Pearson International Airport to Union Station and would cost $50 Billion.
In all of the comments that were made, the word “immigration” was not mentioned once. This is strange indeed because the major factor in the population growth and therefore in the growth in the number of drivers in Metro Toronto and in nearly every other metro area in Canada has been immigration. To make this point even clearer and specific, the major factor has been “unnecessary” immigration.
The most damning points that can be made about omitting the word “immigration” are these : (1) Unnecessary immigration since 1990 of well over 2.5 million people to Metro Toronto and areas just outside is responsible for much of the gridlock and transit use. (2) Unnecessary immigration is responsible for huge public expenditures since 1990 and for most of the contemplated $50 Billion expenditure on Metro Toronto transportation alone over the next few years.
We say the phrase “unnecessary immigration” for a very important reason. Metro Toronto and surrounding areas did not need most of the 2.5 million people they received since 1990. And they certainly do not need the several million other immigrants that Ottawa plans to deposit there in the next 15 to 20 years. The same applies to the rest of Canada.
Yet if Ottawa has its way, Metro Toronto and other parts of Canada will get millions more unnecessary immigrants because, in Ottawa’s thinking, Metro Toronto can absorb limitless numbers of people. After all, don’t such environmental stars as China, India, the Philippines and other places have huge populations? What’s wrong with them, eh?
So, in this CBC program that dealt with a topic like gridlock, which has been caused by an abrupt and very large increase in population, the questions are these : (1) Why was the word ‘immigration’ not mentioned? (2) Most important, why was immigration reduction or an immigration moratorium not presented to any of those interviewed as a solution or “Fix” to gridlock and the overwhelming of the public transit system?
There are two possible answers. One is that CBC staff is grossly incompetent and does not have the mental capacity to process the concept and the consequences it has for not just Metro Toronto but all of Canada. The other is that our CBC has decided that CBC ideology (proclaiming the wonders of immigration and diversity) takes precedence over truth.
Neither of these answers flatters the CBC. The first tells Canadians that CBC reporting is in the hands of Canada’s dimmest. The second tells us that CBC reporting is in the hands of ideologues who are determined to tell Canadians what the ideologues think is good for Canadians and to suppress any views that the ideologues think will cause the unwashed masses to call for a reduction in immigration.
Canadians can take their pick. Whatever the case, utter incompetence or contemptuous suppression of the truth, the omissions in CBC TV’s “The Big Fix” are damning evidence against CBC’s head office in Toronto.
Hard as it is to believe, the CBC’s work in other parts of Canada is worse. For example, CBC Radio listeners in Metro Vancouver have reached the conclusion that the abbreviation “CBC” really means “Canadian Brown-nosing Central”. Some Canadians might think this is unfair exaggeration. But the fact is that many listeners have drawn this conclusion because every day, CBC Radio producers, hosts and reporters in Metro Vancouver fawn, grovel and collaborate before every immigration advocate, immigration profiteer, or immigration advocacy group they can unearth. And these CBC people know how to dig low.
To coin a phrase for our CBC, if something quacks like a duck, flies like a duck and walks like a duck, it is probably a duck.
Let’s return to our major point. Creating the CBC was a good idea. It has done good things. With some exceptions, its rival, commercial broadcasting, is in need of major improvement.
But our CBC on its 75th birthday has become a degraded institution. Its work on the immigration issue has plumbed new depths of low quality. It is the private domain of a small group of ideologues who think they are superior to most Canadians, but who represent very few people and who are really, as veteran Canadian journalist Robert Fulford described scathingly, “a herd of independent thinkers”.
The CBC has an obligation to broadcast the views of all Canadians—-particularly on an issue like mass, unnecessary immigration. The CBC is obliged to do so for two basic reasons : (1) Unnecessary, mass immigration has altered Canada in many negative ways in the past 20 years. (2) The CBC’s role should be to scrutinize what happens in Canada, not to propagandize for one side of an issue—-especially when that side has never provided a single sensible reason for this immigration.
It takes an enormous amount of arrogance to hold out one’s hand for close to $1 Billion from the Canadian public and, immediately after getting it, to then drive its other hand into the face of one’s benefactor. But that is what the CBC has done for many years. And it has been getting away with this.
The only solution is a thorough house-cleaning of all the ideologues at the CBC. The only language these people understand is a well-directed boot.
Canadians have to take back their CBC. The country can’t take much more of this abuse.
