CBC President Catherine Tait criticized Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s pledge to defund the CBC due to allegations of biased journalism, according to a letter obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.
After Poilievre ran his Conservative leadership campaign on the promise to defund the state broadcaster, Tait wrote a letter to the leader in November 2022 to request a formal meeting to discuss its implications.
“I have received a response from your office informing me that you are not able to accommodate my request to meet with you,” Tait wrote. “I must admit I find this disappointing.”
“Your party continues to run email blasts and Twitter and Facebook ads falsely accusing CBC journalists of bias and using the ‘defund’ promise to try and generate money for your party.”
“As head of the public broadcaster and as leader of the Opposition, I think Canadians can rightly expect that the two of us have a responsibility to discuss the implications of your promise.” wrote Tait before requesting another meeting.
Despite Tait’s claims that the CBC is unbiased, the state broadcaster has been criticized on numerous occasions for its anti-Conservative coverage and accused of being friendly towards the Trudeau government.
During the 2019 federal election. the CBC sued the Conservative Party after alleging that the party infringed on the ‘moral rights’ of two of its employees after using program excerpts of Rosemary Barton and John Paul Tasker.
Further, the Trudeau government used misleading reports from the CBC to invoke the Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy in February 2022.
According to filings with the United States’ Federal Election Commission, Tait donated to the presidential campaign of then-Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.
