Poilievre says no timeline for defunding the CBC

MONTREAL — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre now says he doesn’t have a timeline for when he would defund the CBC despite promising in December to do it “very quick.”

Questioned by National Post on Tuesday on whether the Conservatives would defund the CBC within 100 days of forming government, Poilievre refused to commit to a specific timeline.

“I don’t have a time frame, but we’ve already said, I’ve already made my position clear on that, and it hasn’t changed: We’re going to defund the CBC,” Poilievre said.

His answer is a notable change from his position just a few months ago, at a time when polls suggested Conservatives held a sizeable lead in the polls over the Justin Trudeau-led Liberals.

In December, Poilievre told Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley that he would defund the public broadcaster quickly after taking power. The public broadcaster receives roughly $1.4 billion in annual government funding.

“I’m going to defund the CBC. That’s my commitment. My commitment has been the same since I first said it at my very first leadership rally in Regina. I said, ‘We will defund the CBC to save a billion dollars.’ That was my commitment then, it’s my commitment now,” he told Lilley.

On Tuesday, he also provided some new detail about what would happen to the public broadcaster’s English service under a Conservative government. He said that Canadians would continue to “enjoy” the CBC as a “nonprofit, self-funded organization”.

He reiterated his commitment to maintaining funding for Radio-Canada.

CBC has previously said that separating its funding from Radio-Canada’s would require legislative change. In January, the new head of CBC/Radio-Canada Marie-Philippe Bouchard said that cutting funding to the public broadcaster would “cripple” both the English and French services.

“It is to some extent an existential threat because it wouldn’t be the same corporation that we have today,” Bouchard said on CBC radio show The Current.

“If we are imagining that we are going to go forward with only French, the math just doesn’t work. There’s a serious risk that it will, in fact, cripple not only the English services, but also the French service,” she continued.

A CBC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for details on what the public broadcaster’s services would look like if it were transformed into a “nonprofit, self-funded” organization.

Defunding the CBC was a key policy plank for Poilievre from the moment he won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2022.

He often repeated his promise to defund the English service at rallies and public events, earning raucous applause from party faithful.