The president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada defended the public broadcaster and its independence Thursday from a fresh barrage of pointed Conservative questions about its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

  • Xavier@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Hmm… some interesting things to perhaps review :

    In total, these four provinces provided at least CAD 2.5 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in fiscal year (FY) 2020/21 and 1.5 billion in FY 2021/22 (as of December 2021)

    Source: Blocking Ambition: Fossil fuel subsidies in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador by the International Institute for Sustainable Development

    based on recent data from governments and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the leading research organization analysing data on fossil fuel subsidies in Canada, there is a conservative estimate: the combined federal, provincial, and territorial fossil fuel subsidies in Canada total at least $4.8 billion annually in 2018 and 2019, and most were given by provincial and territorial governments. Federal subsidies tend to take the form of grants, but provincial and territorial subsidies are often from tax programs such as waivers and breaks as well as uncollected or under-collected resource rents or royalties

    Source: Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Canada: Governance Implications in the Net-Zero Transition by the Canada Climate Law Initiative

    These are simply about explicit funding by different government bodies in Canada. However, there are larger implicit annual subsidies (externalities born by government, society and the environment which tend to be completely ignored by most vested interest) of:

    US$ 36 billion

    Source: IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update; annex III. Total (Explicit and Implicit) Subsidies

    Compared to the portion of government funding received by CBC•Radio-Canada annual report (2022-2023, p.27) :

    Government funding: This year, operating funding was $1,174.9 million, capital funding recognized in income was $92.9 million and working capital was $4.0 million

    I dont mind cutting funding/subsidies where there is inefficiency/mismanagement. However, shouldn’t we start with the most obvious mismanagement? Why does our government pay subsidies (not loans, not investments, not shares, which I completely excluded for my comparison above) for large very profitable multi-national corporation?