WALKOM: CBC cuts show other side of Jim Flaherty

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WALKOM: CBC cuts show other side of Jim Flaherty

[ http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014 ... om.bb.html ]

By: Thomas Walkom National Affairs, Published on Fri Apr 11 2014

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QUOTE: "But Flaherty was also a willing and active participant in Harper’s dark experiment to remake Canada along Conservative lines. The omnibus budget bills that, to the dismay of the opposition, allowed this experiment to proceed were his."

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Two tragedies dominated the Star’s front page Friday. The first was personal, the second institutional.

The personal tragedy was the sudden death of former federal finance minister Jim Flaherty. His family was devastated. So were friends and acquaintances.

Most media devoted themselves to non-stop tributes.

The institutional tragedy involved the latest bloodletting at CBC. The national public broadcaster announced it is again engaged in a savage pruning of its radio and television services, in a last-ditch effort to save money.

The two tragedies are related. For it was under Flaherty’s watch as finance minister that the latest cutbacks in federal government funding to CBC occurred.

To point this out is not to deny Flaherty’s virtues as a human being. Those who knew him say he was hard-working, loyal to his family and possessed of an engaging personality.

There is no evidence that I know of to suggest that his motives were anything but public-spirited.

But he was also an integral part of a government determined to smash or cripple much of what makes Canada a livable country.

His death is a reminder that good people can do bad things for the best of motives.

The Conservative government’s dislike of the CBC is long-standing and, at the core, ideological.

For Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his supporters, there is little or no place for publicly funded broadcasting in Canada. The market, they argue, provides sufficient choice through private radio and private television networks like CTV or Global.

To have government fund something like CBC is, in this view, both an affront and a waste.

Which is why, in his 2012 budget, Flaherty announced that CBC funding would have its parliamentary appropriations reduced by $115 million.

The aim was to slowly starve the public broadcaster rather than take the political risk of killing it outright. Thursday’s announcement from CBC, that it is cutting back in areas like regional programming, suggests the strategy may be succeeding.

If the public broadcaster becomes irrelevant enough over time, no one will mourn its eventual passing.

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