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Apparently, Justin Trudeau needs to be reminded that people shouldn’t throw stones if they live in glass houses. Hypocrisy is nothing new for him but he stumbled into yet another double standard recently – his tirade about Bell Canada’s job cuts at a time when CBC just finished paying out bloated bonuses to executives. In February, Bell announced it is laying off 4,800 workers, roughly 9 % of its workforce.
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An enraged Justin Trudeau called it a “garbage decision” and further added “I’m pretty pissed off about what’s just happened,” in a February interview. His indignation came on the heels of an announcement a few months earlier that CBC was going to slash 600 jobs – in a year where nearly $15 million was doled out to 1,100 executives in bonuses. And just to refresh everyone’s memory – CBC is a federal crown corporation that receives nearly 70% of its operating revenue in government funding (roughly $ 1.3 billion annually). So where was his outrage after that public relations disaster?
If Trudeau is so concerned about jobs perhaps he can address why some CBC executives earning six figure salaries also raked in six figure bonuses in 2023. It takes some incredible audacity for a Prime Minister to slam a private sector company for laying off staff in a feeble economy that he is principally responsible for right after a federal crown corp drops 600 jobs and bonuses $15 million to its top brass.
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When last I checked companies like Bell don’t get to rely on billions in government funding. Whereas CBC feeds voraciously from the public trough sucking up $1.3 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund lavish bonuses and yet still needed to shed hundreds of job. Perhaps that speaks to just how inefficiently run CBC actually is. Or at the very least it demonstrates the lengths that the government will go to prop up a public broadcaster that operates as a propaganda arm that supports and echoes its left-wing agenda. It’s amazing the loyalty you can purchase when you put people on the federal payroll.
And as if $1.3 billion per year for a puppet media corporation isn’t expensive enough, the Trudeau Liberals also doled out another $50 million in 2019 to add 400 more local journalists to the federal payroll for a program called the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI). Except that five-year employment hand-out is slated to expire at the end of March. It will almost certainly be extended or renewed when the next federal budget is handed down.
Buying journalist jobs doesn’t generate objective or balanced media – it buys a media dependent on the government, and a media that consciously or unconsciously knows perfectly well that a change of government would be bad for their employment prospects. Justin Trudeau prefers to pay for his journalism on the public dime because he thinks it buys a friendly media with minimal criticism of his policies. It’s not that our prime Minister enjoys local journalism so much, he just wants his media on his string. And $1.3 billion of your money buys him a lot of friendly coverage.
Every other media company in Canada has no choice but to run efficiently and cost effectively – it’s a basic principle of free enterprise. Those companies aren’t propped up by the Canadian taxpayer – sure they have shareholders but their revenues are derived from consumer demand for their products and services. Lay-offs are unfortunate but consumers would certainly not support the notion of paying more for services just so that the company could retain more employees.
But that’s what Justin Trudeau wants you to support – paying for local journalists that aren’t delivering balanced or objective journalism, only what he wants you to hear.
— Kevin Klein is a former Tory cabinet minister, a former city councillor and a former Winnipeg Sun publisher.
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KLEIN: Trudeau's Bell Canada criticism at odds with CBC double standard
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31.03.2024
You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.
Apparently, Justin Trudeau needs to be reminded that people shouldn’t throw stones if they live in glass houses. Hypocrisy is nothing new for him but he stumbled into yet another double standard recently – his tirade about Bell Canada’s job cuts at a time when CBC just finished paying out bloated bonuses to executives. In February, Bell announced it is laying off 4,800 workers, roughly 9 % of its workforce.
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Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
An enraged Justin Trudeau called it a “garbage decision” and further added “I’m pretty pissed off about what’s just happened,” in a February interview. His indignation came on the heels of an announcement a few months earlier that CBC was going to slash 600 jobs – in a year where nearly $15 million was doled out to 1,100 executives in bonuses. And just to refresh everyone’s memory – CBC is a federal crown corporation that receives nearly 70% of its operating........
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