“A strong public broadcaster is at the heart of successful creative economies around the world”, said Hubert T. Lacroix, President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada. “We believe that CBC/Radio-Canada can be that anchor for Canada’s cultural ecosystem. Today, we’re proud to share our vision for the future and start a conversation about how Canadian culture can thrive in the digital world.”

Key highlights:

• Canada should develop a cohesive cultural investment strategy, engaging all of the countries creators and creative industries, similar to what Britain accomplished with its “Creative Britain” initiative.
• CBC/Radio-Canada can play a key role in supporting that strategy by:
  • anchoring a strong and vibrant cultural ecosystem to strengthen our creative economy;
  • deepening our engagement with Canadians;
  • partnering more closely with Canada’s creators, creative communities and culture institutions to create even more great Canadian content; and
  • promoting Canadian content to the world.
• To allow that to happen we recommend removing advertising from CBC/Radio-Canada. This would allow the broadcaster to focus squarely on the cultural impact of our mandate. It would also free up advertising revenue to help private media companies transition to a digital environment.
• For CBC/Radio-Canada to become an ad-free public broadcaster, we recommend increasing per person funding to CBC/Radio-Canada to $46 – an increase of $12 per Canadian. This would enable CBC/Radio-Canada to remove advertising from its services, complete its transformation, and strengthen Canada’s creative economy. This amount reflects the (inflation adjusted) per person funding increase recommended by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in 2024. This is still well below comparable public broadcasters around the world, like the BBC, which receives $114 per person.

SOURCE CBC/Radio-Canada