(OTTAWA) Federal Conservative lieutenant in Quebec says party concerns about CBC don’t apply to French services, but Conservative Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu suggests there still needs to be a review as well Radio-Canada’s mandate.
The Quebec senator told reporters Wednesday morning that Radio-Canada’s mandate should be refocused on its core mission.
According to Mr. Boisvenu, the Conservative Party has always maintained that it was not healthy for public funds paid to the public broadcaster to be invested in programs that compete with private channels, such as variety shows.
The Conservatives’ stance to cut the CBC’s annual funding by around $1 billion has been making headlines this week, since Pierre Poilievre asked Twitter to add the label “government-funded media” to the public broadcaster’s main account. .
The social media giant granted the Conservative leader’s request on Sunday, prompting CBC/Radio-Canada to quit Twitter on Monday. CBC explained that its “journalism is unbiased and independent” and “to claim otherwise is false.”
Mr. Poilievre had not asked Twitter to do the same for CBC accounts. The Conservative leader has already explained in interviews that he considers it useful to offer services to the country’s French-speaking communities.
Pierre Paul-Hus, his lieutenant for Quebec, told reporters on Tuesday that the next step is to see how to separately manage the mandate of Radio-Canada, if funding for the CBC were cut.
Mr. Paul-Hus called Radio-Canada an essential service in Quebec as well as for Francophones outside the province, saying the party’s criticism was mainly aimed at the CBC’s English services.
On his way to the weekly Conservative caucus meeting on Wednesday morning, Senator Boisvenu echoed those comments from Mr. Paul-Hus. He felt that Radio-Canada’s services to Francophone communities outside Quebec are important and could be strengthened.
