Bill C-60 aims to give the “Harper Government” control of collective
bargaining at CBC, Canada’s largest media organization and the nation’s public
broadcaster, thereby undermining journalistic independence, or freedom of the
press, simply put. If the Bill goes through,
then the CBC will no longer be operating at arm’s length from the government. Pravda
readily comes to mind, among other examples.
Here is what the American writer, thinker and abolitionist
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) would say to the folks at CBC, and to Canadians
at large:
Must the citizen ever
for a moment, or in the last degree, resign his conscience to the
legislator? Why has every man a
conscience then? I think that we should
be men first, and subjects afterward. It
is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the
right. The only obligation which I have
a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation
has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation
with a conscience.[1]
[1][1]
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” in Walden and Other Writings, ed. Joseph Wood Krutch (Toronto: Bantam
Books, 1981), p. 86.
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