November 25, 2024 To the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, I spoke to Senator Cardozo at the Carleton Political Science Society’s political networking event on Tuesday, who informed me that the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications was looking for input from young Canadians on their use of the CBC in order to determine its ideal future, especially with respect to local broadcasting. My experience with the CBC: I am an 18 year old male-identifying student in Carleton University’s Global and International Studies program.

I was born and raised on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, a community of roughly 10,000, and it is from the perspective of a Saltspringer that I draw most of this information from. I would say the CBC remains my most used source for news about Canada. I frequently watch CBC programming on YouTube, with Power & Politics being my most frequented program. On Salt Spring, I would say the most common way people I know consume CBC content is via the radio.

Because of the size of our community, I am not aware of any news-focused radio stations based on Salt Spring, and as such most people who listen to radio news that I know listen to CBC Vancouver, as most other stations we can get on the island are solely or mostly music and entertainment stations. I believe there are some local stations on Vancouver Island which also broadcast the news, however we are generally better able to get news from the eastern direction on Salt Spring, I believe as a function of our geography, limiting us mostly to stations in Vancouver and Washington State.

Obviously, the American stations don’t broadcast much Canadian news, and while there may be other news stations from Vancouver, I don’t know anyone who listens to news stations other than the CBC (I think this is because they usually have the clearest signal, but that’s a guess). As for CBC’s other services, I don’t know of anyone who watches TV news from any channel on the island. I know a few people who use the CBC’s Gem platform to stream entertainment content, though it’s far from being the most popular.

My opinion: As alluded to above, I think CBC’s most valuable programming for smaller communities is radio programming, as local radio stations are often more focused on music, or may not even exist.

While it would be excellent to have a CBC broadcaster in every town, this is obviously unrealistic, and as such I am of the opinion that investing in the highest power transmitters and relays available in centres like Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, etc. would be of service to small communities, allowing radio listeners (of which there are still many among commuters) to have access to high quality, well-produced national news programming. That said, TV programming is still important, as while it may have fewer direct viewers it is absolutely still being consumed in the form of clips and shorter-form content on line.

I think the CBC makes an important contribution to the media landscape in Canada, as, even though every news source is biased towards something, it does not take orders from corporate ownership, thus making the media landscape more diverse. To be clear, I have nothing against corporate media, I simply believe that it’s important to have high-profile news sources with multiple sources of funding, so that there are fewer blindspots in media bias. I hope this information is of use to the committee, and I appreciate the work done in government to preserve a competitive and varied media landscape in Canada.

Sincerely, Kieran Denny