James Moore (Stephen Harper) and the CBC

Hon. James Moore
Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam, B.C.
House of Commons
Ottawa

Dear James Moore, MP[i]
Minister of Heritage

I am writing to express my dissent with your government’s decision to slash the CBC budget by $115 million, a reduction by 10% of its annual funding.  It is clear you have trouble keeping your word longer than six months after an election.  This is reminiscent of Maurice Barrès, the French novelist and rather right-wing political figure, who explained about a century ago: “The politician is an acrobat.  He keeps his balance by saying the opposite of what he does.”

The other problem is that Conservative members of Parliament resemble public persons carrying out private aims.  We see this when, in the name of an earlier “economic stimulus,” $26 million were doled out to a dozen (private) evangelical colleges and universities.  Given their private interests, our “public” representatives anticipate exoneration from their “public” responsibilities and their “public” statements, and hence the CBC (where church and state are not in collusion) becomes victim to spurious calls for fiscal efficiency.

And do look out for the efficiency you want.  By turning it into a primary objective, you actually end up destroying efficiency, because you callously eliminate the processes of cooperation and agreement, essential “public” notions.  As goes the voter subsidy, so goes the CBC: they are both vital ingredients to a public life of inclusion, justice and fairness.  Our elected, “public” representatives are busying themselves with the elimination of things “public” (and quite possibly Canadian) in the name of a market mantra that is supposed to further competition.  As an active Minister of Disinheritage, you - along with the rest of the “Harper Government” - might get Canadians running on time (say, until they are 67), but what is an ideology of market efficiency becomes, in effect, a national deficiency.  What was considered effective becomes patently defective.

As Minister-who-is-supposed-to-know-something-about-heritage allow me to close with a rebuttal by the Huguenot thinker François Hotman, writing in 1573, who, in his historic resistance, establishes the idea of a “public” interest worth defending, including the likes of the CBC: “The royal patrimony, or domain, furnishes a clear example.  Kings have no right to alienate it except for great and necessary reasons, and those reasons have to be examined and approved by his council and by his Courts of Parliament and of Accounts.  This examination is conducted so carefully and with such tenacity and so much discussion that very few people request alienations of this sort.”

In other words, do you still want to be known as the Minister of Heritage – or as the ideologue helping to destroy the CBC?  Are you actually with the public – or against it?

Yours sincerely,
Joerge Dyrkton, D.Phil.

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[i] Variations of this letter have previously been published as a Letter to the Editor of the Coquitlam Now and/or emailed to MP Moore.