Once a unifying force, the CBC now amplifies polarization, favouring echo chambers over engaging dissenting voices, and failing to bridge Canada’s irreconcilable divides: David Cayley.

From the National Post: In his provocative new book The CBC: How Canada’s Public Broadcaster Lost Its Voice (And How to Get It Back) — released by Sutherland House Books on September 16 — veteran producer and broadcaster David Cayley examines the decline of the institution he served for more than four decades. He argues that the CBC has abandoned its duty to speak to and for the whole country, retreating instead into narrow ideological echo chambers. In this excerpt, Cayley recalls how the broadcaster’s response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy crystallized its inability to engage with Canadians across political divides. [Read the original excerpt in full at the publisher’s website here].

In Brief by Probe International

When public broadcasting was born in the 1930s, Prime Minister R. B. Bennett presented it as an instrument for “the diffusion of national thought and ideals.” The man who led the lobby for public control, Graham Spry, saw the CBC, even more grandly, as a means by which Canada would realize its “destiny.” Both men saw Canada as a society animated by common ideals and bound for a common destination. They saw their country as developing within a broad, transnational consensus, whose pillars were science and democracy, progress and growth.

Cayley reflects on a time when CBC producers aimed to create programs that would serve a “coherent, if not always unanimous” audience, able to exist within the same civic framework across a spectrum of difference in points of view.

The upending of that programming assumption struck Cayley full force when the 2022 Freedom Convoy revealed the national broadcaster was no longer able to engage with all segments of the public, mirroring the broader fragmentation of Canadian society. Consensus had given way to its opposite — “dissensus”. The convoy, notes Cayley, represented a significant and vibrant public movement, as shown by the effort and support it garnered. Yet, upon arriving in Ottawa, the participants were not recognized as a legitimate public with important views. Cayley cites Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who labeled them as “often racists,” “misogynists,” and anti-science while the CBC’s coverage, he argues, focused on opposing voices rather than engaging with the convoy participants, failing to acknowledge the protest’s political significance and treating it as a mere issue of misinformation and public safety.

This approach, contends Cayley, not only neglects the nation’s growing polarization but also undermines the CBC’s statutory obligation to provide balanced coverage. He points to the CBC’s current strategy of choosing reaction over renewal — and its reinforcement of old certainties to combat misinformation — as a failure to address deeper societal fractures, ultimately jeopardizing its future as a public broadcaster. To regain relevance, Cayley calls on the CBC to re-establish a commitment to inclusivity and open dialogue among all Canadians.