At a recent Senate Committee meeting I questioned the senior brass of the CBC/Radio-Canada about bias on the network. Here is one of my questions: 

Senator Cardozo: As a strong supporter of the CBC, I would say that, by and large, the reporting is very unbiased. There are two or three people who do fact-check opposition members more than they do Liberal government members consistently and quite aggressively. Either you fact-check everybody, or you don’t fact-check everybody.

Here is how Western Standard reported, in part:

A Liberal-appointed senator is pressing the CBC to prove it is politically neutral, accusing some newsroom employees of targeting Conservative politicians under the guise of fact checking.

Blacklock's Reporter says Sen. Andrew Cardozo (Ont.) raised the issue at the Senate transport and communications committee, saying a “sizeable part of the population” believes the public broadcaster has a political agenda.

I think it is important for supporters to address any faults, even if they are far from agreement with the folks who want to close it down.  The question of perceived bias is perhaps the most serious existential threat to our legendary public broadcaster and if a major political party which almost formed government earlier this year, and will do so some time soon, wants to shut down English CBC, then it is essential for the corporation to be open to hearing their critique.

Catering to all viewpoints in Canada. The Canadian public broadcaster is expected to be a lot of things to a lot of people in terms of what it does and what it covers, and also expected to air a variety of perspectives, be they political, cultural or philosophical. 

So let me say clearly, I would give our public broadcaster something like a B+/A- on the issue of bias.  Not a bad grade, but with room for improvement, and in the same range of where the public is on trust in this broadcaster.

According to the most recent Reuters Institute Digital News Report (2025) CBC is among the most trusted English-language news sources (trusted by 62%), behind only CTV (63%), and equal to regional and local newspapers (62%). On the French-language side, Radio-Canada leads its competitors (71%).

And it is worth saying that the broadcaster has probably been accused of bias through its nine decades: too left, too right, to central Canada, too urban, too downtown Toronto, too downtown Montreal, too establishment, too separatist, too federalist, too white, too diverse, too woke, too Indigenous, Caucasian Broadcasting Corporation, Communist Broadcasting Corporation.  Why, even too critical of the Senate…horrors!

Various Prime Ministers have gnashed their teeth wondering why they fund a public broadcaster that spends so much time criticizing their government, uncovering problems or obsessing over some certain issues. What we have today for the first time, is two opposition political parties, the Conservative and People’s parties, who are the main critics and as a non-government members they feel less encumbered to keep those critiques muted, as a prime minister or minister would be obligated to, with a media organization the government funds.  It is not easy to accuse the public broadcaster of being biased in favour the government of Justin Trudeau, when you consider the extensive and sometimes aggressive coverage they, along with other media, accorded to controversies like the SNC-Lavalin or the We charity, but some feel otherwise.

I think it is fair to say that CBC/Radio-Canada does a good job on bias, by and large.  Consider the myriad programs they run nationally and regionally.  There are more than a couple of hundred hosts across the country, who do everything from present newscasts to moderate discussions to report on the news.  The vast majority of them do their job with little controversy. 

What the numbers say. I have done a cursory look through the key political programs on CBC and CTV (Power and Politics, Power Play) and counted up the political talking-heads they have on.  Both have an equivalent number of commentators like Conservative Fred DeLorey, Liberal Greg MacEachern and New Democrat Francoise Boivin.  In fact the CBC has a couple of much higher profile folks on their list with higher recognition levels, namely Lisa Raitt and James Moore – there being no equivalent Liberal guests.  Fair to say the Conservatives do better by the CBC than do Liberals.

I will highlight two recent episodes when it comes to very fair coverage of the Conservatives, examples of how more things can be done:

• The House on CBC Radio, August 22, 2025.  The hour long show did a deep dive look at where things were for the Conservative Party post-election.  It was a fair analysis with a range of supporters and critics, which included Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman, former federal and provincial member Jason Kenney and other Conservatives.
• Ontario Today (radio) September 11, 2025.  The subject of the phone-in show that day asked callers to reflect on the killing of American conservative radio host Charlie Kirk.  There were a range of perspectives, and to all the host was respectful and said she was appreciative of their call. (That simple act of respect is so missing in our polarized society these days.)  She asked several callers for more information, generally to explain their viewpoints more, rather than challenge or fact-check them.

The CBC should consider re-creating a program from the nineties, called Face Off, where two hosts, Judy Rebick and Clare Hoy, from opposite ends of the political spectrum, each brough on a guest to debate contemporary issues in depth every night..

The English side can also learn from Tout le monde on parle (everyone’s talking about it) on Radio-Canada, the very popular talk show every Sunday night that takes on many hot issues with a range of guests.

Conservatives boycotted CBC.  For some years before the 2025 election all Conservative MPs, Senators and party officials boycotted CBC, with very rare exceptions.  They did this largely because they felt they were not getting a fair shake from the public broadcasters.  Having done that they were further ensuring the fulfilling of their prophesy, problem #1.  To its credit, the CBC turned itself into pretzels to get conservative voices. They would run fulsome clips from the Conservative leader’s press conferences and then get commentary from numerous non-Parliamentary conservatives.  And here is problem #2 from a conservative perspective.  The CBC got to pick the conservative commentators

I suspect that while they are not systematically picking moderate conservatives only, they tend to pick a certain moderate mainstream from all parties, perhaps because they perceive that that is where the large part of the country is.  So you will equally not hear from a wild far-right winger than you will an extreme radical left-winger.  (I realize I am using these terms loosely.)

And here lies another problem.  Many of what were once considered wild far-right wingers are in the current Conservative Party, even in the mainstream of it.  So if you leave it to the CBC those far-right commentators aren’t getting much play.  And hard-right Conservatives tend to stay away from the CBC or their party is not putting them forward very often.

Fact checking.  What I referred to at the Senate Committee was that that there are times when conservative commentators are fact-checked more than others.  To be clear, this is not widespread through the corporation, but it is with two or three high profile hosts, high enough to get a lot of attention.  The clips of the encounters get shared widely on social media. 

Because these are high profile incidents, it is fair for me, as a supporter to call them out and address them.  In fact I feel I am obligated to do so.

Senior management of CBC/Radio-Canada point to the presence of policies that focus on high standards in journalism, and therefore seem to have a hard time recognizing the bias.

I find too many supporters of CBC will deny the presence of bias or not take it seriously.  They are not helping their cause when a major party that alleges deep bias, could for government and certainly has a sizeable following. Whether all the followers have the same view of the CBC is not relevant – they vote for a party that in its mainstream, plans to “defund the CBC” and save a billion bucks….which means they would cut into French Radio-Canada, but I am getting caught up in details here.

The CBC was created Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett in 1932 to counter the threat to Canadian nationhood from US broadcasters.  As all of Canadian media is in financial crisis, and much has closed down, while American social media and artificial Intelligence are fast taking us over, the need for a Canadian public broadcaster is infinitely greater the a century ago. 

It is important that Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault was able to deliver the promised additional $150 million in the recent budget.  While the amount is not huge, it at least means there would be no cutback here. Breathing room.

Without getting into the details of the complex case at the BBC, one should at least take from the debacle, that it is better to deal with problems of bias at the front end rather than deny, deny, deny, till it festers and blows up. 

A stay of execution.  Had the Conservatives been elected earlier this year, they were happily hell bent on shutting down the CBC.  Killing it.  The election of the Liberals is only a stay of execution.  If the CBC and its supporters refuse to understand the existential threat – the threat to its existence – the CBC could soon be a thing of the past. 

 

Andrew Cardozo is an Ontario Senator and former Commissioner at the CRTC.