Believe it or not, every few years — when they’re not in the U.S. — CBC brass must go cap in hand to the CRTC, seek approval of their plans and, hopefully, secure a long reprieve from another such meeting. License renewal, the last one was 2012, is about the only time we get a say in CBC operations.
This time, Mothercorp’s CEO Catherine Tait has requested the regulator require — wait for it —less oversight of their expenditures, specifically regarding the CBC’s beefed-up digital offerings, where the CBC needs greater “flexibility,” according to Tait. “She is asking the CRTC to renew its licenses for five years with slimmed-down regulatory scrutiny of its digital content compared to its radio and television programs,” the CBC itself reported on January 11. That sounds fair.
Clearly it’s unreasonable for us taxpayers, if CBC’s spending $1.2 billion per year of our money, to demand more accountability and transparency. Such amounts are, after all, known in Ottawa as “rounding errors”. But let’s stand on principle and have a look.
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