One of the key issues the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, went into Canada’s spring federal election campaign cut to the heart of Canadiana: Defund the CBC.

According to Poilievre, the CBC was a “drain on public finances”, provided biased reporting and was irrelevant to Canadian society. According to Poilievre, private sector networks could easily replace the CBC and provide the services that it provides.

The Conservatives lost the election to the Liberals—and Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to increase CBC funding, not gut it. There’s a strong case for this approach.

Bang for Your Buck finds CBC critics wrong

In February 2025, the CCPA released a report that I wrote, Bang for Our Buck, which examined the issue of public trust and viewership, and contained a comparison detailing the very low rate of public funding the CBC/Radio-Canada received compared to public broadcasters in 18 other countries. 

The findings revealed a far different reality than the one painted by the Conservatives.

CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s most trusted media network

Public opinion polls indicate that among Francophones in Canada, Radio-Canada is the most trusted news source, with 78 per cent of respondents reporting they find it trustworthy. 

TVA, Quebec’s public TV broadcaster, comes a close second, with 69 per cent reporting they find TVA trustworthy.  

Among anglophones, CBC is the most trusted news source, with 67 per cent of respondents reporting they find it trustworthy. 

CTV comes a close second, with 62 per cent reporting they find it trustworthy. 

These levels of public trust for CBC/Radio-Canada are far greater than the trust reported for other media outlets and social media.

In fact, the vast majority of Canadians regularly tune into CBC/Radio-Canada.

Fully 78 per cent of francophones report they watch Radio-Canada regularly or occasionally. Among anglophones, 64 per cent report they watch CBC regularly or occasionally, making it the most watched English television network.

Comparatively, CBC/Radio-Canada receives very little public funding

On a per capita basis, public funding in Canada for CBC/Radio-Canada represents less than $36 a year—or less than 10 cents a day. 

In fact, public funding for CBC/Radio-Canada amounted to only 0.12 per cent of total government expenditures, which is 50 per cent less than the international average of 0.242 per cent. 

That’s a mere drop in the bucket to pay for public broadcasting that goes from the depths of the North all the way to Newfoundland and Labrador.

On average, the 18 other countries examined in Bang for Your Buck spend twice as much of total government expenditures on their public service broadcasters than Canada.

Among those 18 other countries, only three had lower per capita spending on public service media than Canada: the U.S., New Zealand, and Portugal. 

Bang for our Buck shows the many ways in which public broadcasting funding in Canada is good value for Canadians:

Public broadcasting costs less in Canada: CBC/Radio-Canada receives much less revenue from government than most of the countries in the international sample—nearly 60 per cent less. In 2022, it received $32.43, on a per capita basis on average, while the average, per capita, public funding of public service broadcasters in the other 18 countries in the survey was $78.76.

There is less reliance on government and more on commercial sources of funding: CBC/Radio-Canada relies more on revenue from commercial sources than most public broadcasters in other countries. Only three public broadcasters in the sample—Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand—relied on advertising and sponsorship revenues more than CBC/Radio Canada.

Overall, the cost to individual Canadian taxpayers is only 41 per cent of the average for taxpayers in other countries. In a country as large and sparsely populated as Canada, this is remarkable. Given the need to address local, regional and national issues—in English and French—in a huge country with low population density, there is every reason to strengthen its funding.

CCPA research in action

As well as publishing Bang for our Buck, the CCPA published a series of other reports about the worsening lack of local news availability in Canada, the need to fill the void of disappearing privately owned news publications and outlets, and findings from focus group research the CCPA did with Environics Research about how Canadians perceive the CBC/Radio-Canada. Montreal-based think tank IRIS did a separate report on Radio-Canada’s value.

Following the publication of these research reports, a union representing the CBC, the Association of Professionals and Supervisors (APS) sent a letter to all of the leaders of the political parties, which provided them with the findings in the reports and asked for the position their party would take with respect to the future of the CBC.  

Almost immediately following this request, Mark Carney issued a statement promising that the Liberals would increase funding to the CBC by $150 million to enable the CBC to strengthen local news with more local bureaus and reporters. 

He also promised to establish a new mandate, which would require a level of long-term funding in line with that of other national public broadcasters. 

Soon after Carney’s response, APS received a written response from the Bloc Québécois, which was in line with Carney’s statement. The NDP has a long history of supporting the CBC.

The future

The research reports produced by IRIS and the CCPA have provided much clarity to the support and trust that Canadians have with respect to the CBC. 

The new government has made promises that would address the underfunding of the CBC and hopefully lead to expanded and improved services. 

As the APS has stated: “The IRIS and CCPA reports lead to one overwhelming conclusion. We need to expand CBC/Radio-Canada, not defund it. With the enormous decline in private sector television, radio and print media the CBC is needed more than ever.

“Democratic societies depend on an informed population receiving truthful, objective information from trained journalists, not self-serving spin from public relations professionals. Faced with threats to our economy and national sovereignty, we need more accurate news coverage and analysis. Expansion of CBC/Radio-Canada is now more necessary than ever.

“In conclusion, it is worth noting the comments of Guillaume Hébert, author of the IRIS report, reflecting on the decline of accurate journalism he states: There’s a risk with this. We’ll end up with more and more actors in the public sphere who aren’t there to produce balanced information or aim for objectivity, but who serve a political or commercial interest. This can be detrimental to democracy.”

The CBC seems safe, for now. But if history repeats itself, there will be another election in two years or less. There is no reason to believe that the attack on public broadcasting in Canada is over. 

Hopefully, the discussion concerning the future of the CBC will be based on well-researched facts and not ideologically driven fiction.