Trudeau Criticizes Tories for ‘Attack’ on CBC Following Twitter Label as ‘Government-Funded Media’

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listens to a question during a news conference in Ottawa on Feb. 17, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

In the wake of Twitter labelling the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a “government-funded media” organization on April 16, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau criticized the Conservative Party, saying that it has repeatedly attacked the public broadcaster.

“I think it says a lot about the Conservative Party of Canada. They’re choosing to constantly attack independent media organizations,” Trudeau said on April 17 in response to a reporter’s question.

According to Twitter, the “government-funded media” label is used for outlets where “the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.”

The CBC, which received more than $1.2 billion in federal government funding in the 2021-22 fiscal year, said it rejects the labelling.

“Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as cases where the government ‘may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content,’ which is clearly not the case with CBC/Radio-Canada,” CBC’s director of media relations Leon Mar told The Epoch Times in an email on April 16.

Following Twitter’s labelling of the CBC on the night of April 16, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre tweeted that CBC had been “officially exposed as ‘government-funded media’” and that “now people know that it is Trudeau propaganda, not news.”

Poilievre has repeatedly promised to defund the CBC if elected prime minister.

Trudeau said that CBC/Radio-Canada delivers local news to people across the country but that its ability to do so has been challenged in recent years. He said Poilievre has added to that challenge by “attacking this Canadian institution, attacking culture and local content.”

“And I think it is telling that in order to attack this institution that is important for many Canadians, he runs to American billionaires, the tech giants, that they continue to defend in committee and in their approach on our legislation to make tech giants pay,” Trudeau said.

Twitter also slapped “government-funded media” labels on National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the United Kingdom. The label on BBC was later changed to “publicly-funded media” since it’s funded via license fees.

On April 11, Poilievre wrote a letter to Twitter requesting that the platform apply the same label to the Twitter accounts of “the CBC’s various news-related accounts, including @CBC, @CBCNews, and @CBCAlerts.”

In his letter, he noted that the Crown corporation’s “2021-2022 Annual Report disclosed that it received almost $1.24 billion, the vast majority of its funding, from the Canadian government.”