Poilievre Responds to Remarks From CBC President That He’s Stoking ‘CBC Bashing’ in Canada

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre holds a press conference in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Jan. 25, 2023.The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has responded to recent comments by CBC’s President and CEO, Catherine Tait, who said that the federal opposition leader has been stoking criticism of the government-funded public broadcaster.

“CBC’s overpaid President & CEO is not even pretending to be unbiased,” Poilievre wrote in a Twitter post on Feb. 9. “She launched a partisan attack against me, proving my claim that the $1.2 billion corporation is a mouthpiece for Justin Trudeau.”

Poilievre included in his post a comment Tait made to the Globe and Mail in a recent interview.

“There’s a lot of CBC bashing going on—somewhat stoked by the Leader of the Opposition,” Tait said in a Globe article published on Feb. 7. “I think they feel that CBC is a mouthpiece for the Liberal government.”

The federal Conservative Party currently is running a campaign titled, “Defund the CBC,” of which Poilievre spoke frequently while running for the party’s leadership in 2022.

“We the undersigned call on the Liberal government to defund the CBC,” reads the campaign’s petition, adding that the public broadcaster “undercuts private sector and independent media and competes for advertising space while receiving more than $1 billion in direct taxpayer subsidies.”

It also says the CBC “mostly provides opinions and coverage that are widely available in a free and competitive media marketplace.”

The campaign calls on the Liberal government to “defund the CBC to save taxpayer dollars and ensure a free and competitive press in the Canadian media landscape.”

Tait’s comments about Poilievre came several days after the Conservative leader told an apparent CBC reporter during a media scrum on Parliament Hill that the CBC is “trying to help” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “out of a bad situation” following the federal government’s withdrawal of controversial gun-control amendments to Bill C-21.

“You are definitely with the CBC,” Poilievre said on Feb. 3 to a reporter who asked if the Conservative leader thought the federal government withdrew the amendments as a show of “good faith.”

“Obviously you’re from the CBC. You’re trying to help him out of a bad situation,” Poilievre said, adding, “CBC is trying to carry Trudeau’s water again.”