In The Weekly Wrap Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
Losing the CBC will not be a tragedy
If Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives are elected, they’ve been abundantly clear that a top priority will be to defund the CBC.
This weekend, my colleague, The Hub’s managing editor Harrison Lowman, has a provocative essay in which he describes such an outcome as a “tragedy” and “damn shame.”
I respectfully disagree.
The principal conservative case for defunding the CBC isn’t “revenge” as he puts it. It’s, as I’ve written several times before, because the public broadcaster has outlived its usefulness.
The CBC was established decades ago in the face of a genuine market failure. If it weren’t for a public broadcaster, many Canadians wouldn’t have had access to news and entertainment.
Today that’s no longer the case. The CBC is now one of the virtually infinite sources of information and cultural content available. This growing competition is reflected in its declining audience. Less than 5 percent of English Canadian viewers are watching CBC television and barely 2 percent are tuning into the CBC News Network.
(These figures are based on “all Canadians viewing all available TV programming at a given time” which means that the CBC’s viewership as a share of the total Canadian population is far lower.)
When Lowman writes that the plurality of Canadians who say that they intend to vote Conservative turn on the CBC won’t hear or see themselves, he’s wrongly assuming that they’re tuning in in the first place. The evidence is clear: not only are they not watching the CBC, but the vast majority of non-Conservatives aren’t either.
His diagnosis is therefore mistaken. The CBC’s chief problem isn’t its left-wing bias or even Catherine Tait herself. If that was it, then Lowman would be right that the conversation ought to focus on reforming the institution.
The real issue is that a combination of technology and evolving consumer preferences has rendered its public purpose obsolete. It can simply no longer make a justified claim on scarce government resources. The proper response therefore as a matter of principle and practicality is to defund it.
Nevertheless, as part of his defence of the CBC, Lowman makes a conservative appeal that tearing down institutions is harder than building them up. Fair enough.
But conservatism’s inherent aversion to change shouldn’t cause Conservatives (or conservatives) to defend institutions that aren’t worth preserving. Just because the CBC has been around a long time isn’t a case for its ongoing existence. Even Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, famously said “We must all obey the great law of change.” Conservatism, in other words, isn’t nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake.
Lowman also warns that the CBC’s disappearance, along with the broader decline in the traditional media, will necessarily result in the loss of “real intelligence, expertise, depth, accuracy, or seriousness” in our news consumption. This, too, risks succumbing to a mix of nostalgia and misplaced confidence in the mainstream media. It has in short a (Catherine) Tait-ian romanticism to it.
The notion that the legacy news media is somehow exempt from bias or errors compared to those of us in new media belies the experience of the past several years. Its seeming lack of interest in U.S. President Joe Biden’s infirmity is only most the recent and extraordinary example. That an American outlet rather than a Canadian one broke Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “blackface” scandal in 2019 is another. The list goes on and on.
A Poilievre-led government’s defunding of the CBC will undoubtedly engender a backlash from those who view the public broadcaster as part of their cultural or political identity. But it’s the wrong way to think about this issue. It’s not a drama or a tragedy. It’s about policymaking principles and the role of government itself.
The case for a public broadcaster has been superseded. The proper conservative response is to defund the CBC.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre applauds as he introduces Don Stewart, the new Member of Parliament for Toronto-St. Paul’s before Question Period, in Ottawa, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press.
Trump’s gain in cities offers lessons for Canadian conservatives
Now that the dust has settled on the U.S. election and we have close-to-final results across the country, one of the biggest surprises is that Donald Trump’s largest gains relative to his two previous elections were in America’s big cities. In New York City, for instance, where I live with my family, he had the best performance of any Republican presidential candidate in 30 years. He even outright won a precinct.
Although with Trump it is hard to discern how much of his political success (or failure) is contingent, it’s still worth studying to understand the possible lessons. As someone who didn’t grow up in a major city but has since lived in them for a good part of my adult life, one gets the sense that the success of Conservative (and conservative) politics will depend over the long term on its ability to make itself relevant in urban centres.
Canada’s major cities are where economic activity and population growth are disproportionately concentrated. They aren’t just “vote-rich” today as the pundits often say, but they increasingly represent the country’s economic and demographic future.
A new, must-read essay in City Journal by Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam and his colleague Charles Fain Lehman takes up the subject of the renewal of urban conservatism.
The mismanagement of cities by progressive politicians is a huge opening for Conservatives (and conservatives) to make the case for a political alternative. New York City may be a special case when it comes to crime and urban disorder in recent years. But it’s not like there aren’t any parallel Canadian experiences.
The rise of crime, drug abuse, homelessness, and mental health issues have disrupted the urban landscape. The progressive worldview has been poorly equipped to address these trends and has undoubtedly made them worse. The long-run future of Canadian Conservative politics rests on its capacity to seize on these issues and compete in our big cities by bringing conservative solutions to bear.
I’m writing to you from Calgary which is often characterized as the homeland of Canadian conservatism. But it’s not lost on me that today it’s led by arguably the most left-wing mayor in the country. Edmonton similarly has had a series of progressive mayors, including its current one.
As these cities’ politics shift to the Left due to a combination of migration patterns and Schumpter’s theory of the generational transfer of wealth, one can envision Alberta transforming into a “purple province” where Calgary and Edmonton become increasingly progressive and elsewhere is conservative. If so, demography wouldn’t be on the side of Conservative parties.
This point is worth underscoring: it demonstrates that an urban-focused conservatism isn’t just about making gains in Montreal, Toronto, or Vancouver. It’s about maintaining support in the Conservative (and conservative) homeland. Put differently: if Trump demonstrates the potential for conservative gains in major cities, the trend line in Alberta signals the downside risk of failing to do so.
Herein lies the good news of Trump’s campaign. It’s a reminder that urban voters’s political preferences aren’t that far removed from voters elsewhere. They’re still motivated by first-order questions like crime, order, and sensible government.
Poilievre’s own gains in cities, including the by-election win in Toronto—St. Paul’s, is a sign that Canadian urban voters similarly have their own limits when it comes to the excesses of progressive governance. The key is to ensure that they’re not just one-off, protest victories but instead represent durable inroads into urban centres.
A conservatism that can build on its long-standing support in rural communities with newfound popularity in Canada’s cities would represent a political coalition that would be tough to beat.
Canadian Conservatives from Alberta to Ontario and nationally should therefore study what parts of the Trump campaign contributed to its gains in major cities. It may represent a harbinger of the future here in our own politics.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford at the US-Canada Summit in Toronto on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. Chris Young/The Canadian Press.
Doug Ford’s surprisingly good week
The Weekly Wrap has been critical of Doug Ford’s government for its divergence from conservative principles and general lack of policymaking ambition.
This week however the premier and his government deserve credit for being uncharacteristically creative and thoughtful.
On Tuesday, Ford laid out the case that Canada should be prepared to abandon Mexico and trilateral North American free trade in favour of a bilateral agreement with the United States. Although it’s a provocative idea that some may disagree with, it’s precisely the kind of unconventional thinking that Canadian policymakers need to bring to bear on the Canada-U.S. relationship in a new Trump era.
The promise of democratization and market reform hasn’t really materialized in Mexico. Due to various reasons—including the powerful influence of the drug cartels—the country’s politics have moved in a more illiberal direction and its economy remains stuck in third-world status. Its GDP per capita for instance is just $13,970.
As someone said to me this week, that we continue to require visas in Mexico is a rather dim judgment on 30 years of free trade.
The U.S. and Mexico have major bilateral issues—namely drugs and illegal migration—that stand in the way of North American integration and can distract from the areas of shared interest between Canada and the U.S.
Ford is right therefore that as the review of the USMCA begins next year, the Canadian government should be prepared to walk away from trilateralism in favour of getting a better bilateral deal for Canada.
Unrelatedly, his government also deserves credit for doing a major deal with Starlink (Elon Musk’s satellite internet company) to bring internet services to rural and remote households in the province.
Canadian governments have been subsidizing rural broadband construction for more than a decade. It’s been highly costly and progress has been slow. One of the main problems is that these government programs haven’t been technology-neutral. They have explicitly preferenced fibre build-outs even if they’re costly and slow.
As Starlink’s network of low-orbit satellites continues to expand, it’s capable of delivering high-speed internet services to a large number of rural households at a fraction of the cost of a fibre build.
It’s to the Ford government’s credit therefore that it’s prepared to break from the technology straitjacket that has constrained other governments and instead leverage satellite technology to deliver high-speed internet to Ontarians who need it.
Even if—or perhaps precisely because—these two instances of good governance from the Ford government that divergence from its norm, they’re worth highlighting here.
Sean Speer is The Hub's Editor-at-Large. He is also a university lecturer at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, as well as a think-tank scholar and columnist. He previously served as a senior economic adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper....
