Memo to CBC: You Are UnCanadian and Very Biased
The subject of anti-Israel bias in left media and the CBC especially is not new to Jewish Canadians and advocates for Israel. I am proudly Canadian and thoroughly disgusted with the CBC. So are many other Canadians. Especially Jews. Let me explain. Media folks call these ‘explainers’ to privilege their bully pulpits as if educated viewers are ignorant. I hope the CBC is paying attention.
First, the new President of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation appeared this week before a Parliamentary Heritage committee denying that the CBC is biased or threatening to politically diverse local news media outlets in its ongoing monopolistic tax supported expansions into local news coverage. Here’s that report.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbc-president-marie-philippe-bouchard-committee-9.7174302
We should be concerned about this increasing monolithic media concentration with related biased leftist and demonstrably anti-Israel ideological programming in Canada by the CBC at taxpayer expense, particularly in the context of escalating anti-semitic hate crimes. Jewish Canadians pay taxes too and deserve to be free from insinuating smears from our national broadcaster. We are not being unfair here. Israel’s political and media landscape is far more diverse.
There have been abundant surveys and reports on issues of media bias, and anti-Israel bias especially at the leftist CBC. Here are a few of them. I will be forwarding this report to them and I hope they will read it and take the necessary action, but I will not be holding my breath. Our Canadian human rights law should protect us from harassment on grounds of ethnicity, creed, conscience, and national origin. But apparently not at the CBC. Remember, this is the complacent patronizing Canadian national network that brought us the show, “Little Mosque On The Prairie”. I am pretty sure Jewish Canadians didn’t watch it. I know I didn’t.
https://honestreporting.ca/petitions/cbc-news-senior-reporter-raffy-boudjikanian-continues-to-launder-hardline-anti-israel-activists-transforming-their-complaints-into-news/
https://www.cija.ca/cbc_s_anti_semitic_and_anti_israel_bias_to_be_put_to_crtc_ottawa_life
Whenever there is a war on in the Middle East, and there often is, the CBC will dispatch intrepid-looking reporters in flak jackets and helmets who will then embed themselves with local Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim communities and handlers, some potentially supportive of terrorism or harboring anti-Israel sentiment, mirroring those of our 'big tent' Liberal party now in government, vastly supported by a growing Muslim electoral base hostile to Israel and Jews and Zionists, despite our compliance with the values of liberal democracy.
Note that our own Prime Minister Carney has threatened to arrest Israeli PM Netanyahu were he to land in Canada. Israel did not ratify the Rome Statute, and is not under the jurisdiction of the ICC. That doesn't matter to PM Carney. Or the CBC apparently, who used Flight Tracker Software to trace PM Netanyahu's recent flights to Washington over Canadian airspace for urgent meetings with US President Trump. This does not bode well for Jews in Canada or for Canada-Israel Relations, despite our existing Free Trade and Security Agreement.
https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-commerce/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/israel/fta-ale/index.aspx?lang=eng
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/israel-urges-canadian-pm-carney-drop-call-arrest-netanyahu-2025-10-21/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-canadian-airspace-9.7083737
Our PM has been so hostile to Israel and its right to defend itself from Hezbollah that the National Post was forced to commission this op-ed in reply. The Prime Minister has reportedly sought new global affairs advisors for his office. We can only hope that they will be better than the many Global Affairs bureaucrats on staff now slated for mass budget cuts, or our dogged and preachy Foreign Minister Anita Anand. When will she be reposted to another portfolio? Soon, we hope.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/beryl-p-wajsman-carneys-stance-on-lebanon-shows-he-doesnt-understand-international-law
I presume that the CBC would like to declare Israel and PM Netanyahu persona non grata. I think Jewish Canadians should return the favor. Switch off the CBC and send a letter to your MP on why you think it should be defunded! Why not start a petition campaign? I'd sign it. So would many others. The CBC receives $1.6 billion dollars of our taxpayer funds a year. Times are tough. We just can't afford their biases and scandals anymore. Why should we be forced to support this?
The CBC's 'activist' 'point of view' reportage is usually left of centre politically and seeks to engage viewers by manipulating their sympathies but never really speaking accurately of the reality at play. Terrorists and terrorist groups are never called by name. They are 'militant groups'. Israel is regarded as a war criminal, violator of international law and oppressive violator of human rights and general no-good-nik, and by extension so are all Jews. Do the math. We are vastly outnumbered here.
This is Canaduh. White folks here don't know too much about Jews or Israel, don't like them much, and don't take the trouble to research their stories or history very deeply. It's a little like 'proximal cause' blaming (like US weather forecasters blaming 'Canada' for their latest snowstorms) and their leftist 'activist' anti-Israel editorial perspective and selected 'talking heads' sources are very obvious. Even the smart LGBTQ activists like me don't talk to them anymore. Point counterpoint this! We are done with your manipulative debates of attrition.
The standard trajectory of shots on the CBC News for reports on Middle East wars even before the Gaza War appears as follows. Jeep enters Palestinian or Arab village in Gaza or the West Bank, or Lebanon, or Iran. Shots of bomb ravaged apartment blocks. Shots of forlorn dusty children in American sportswear and flip flops climbing the rubble. Interview with distraught Muslim mother in hijab or burqa gesturing helplessly at their destroyed home or village.
If a family member was slain by the IDF in an offense against terrorism in the village (against listed terrorist groups also posing dangers in Canada), there will be additional wailing and shots of elaborate funerals, and posing with the venerated pictures of the deceased often with the insignia of listed terrorist groups, as in the recent mass funerals for members of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Occasionally there will be additional shots and reports of Canadian family members concerned for their loved ones in Gaza / West Bank / Lebanon / Iran, having difficulty reaching them, with occasional community charity appeals, even though our Global Affairs bureaucrats and US Department of State and most western governments urged foreign citizens to leave these countries immediately, and even Israel warned residents in the region to evacuate in advance of military actions in the area. There are civilian casualties in any war, but the CBC and western media use 'body count' to suggest Israel is at fault.
Unfortunate civilian casualties which may involve those who have associates in terrorist groups will be reported as if Israel had deliberately attacked them or associated journalists, health workers, etc. There will be false reports that Israel wantonly targeted civilians or health care workers without warning, even when they entered dangerous areas or crossed lines designated by the IDF as 'no go' zones, or even when Israel was not at fault, as when terrorist groups used hospital sites as headquarters and rocket launch sites.
There will be manipulative cries of unfair innocent deaths in a war theatre. No one will care about the tragic deaths of Israeli civilians due to terrorist attacks or Israel's right to exist and defend itself.
I don't advocate or support terrorism but I do hope the leftist dupes at the CBC and their fellow travelers will one day be victimized by these same pro-terrorist communities they have championed. Think of Leftists and Stalin and Anti-Semitism. Has the left ever come clean on that? No. Will it ever? Not likely.
Aren't we tired of trying to educate them? Why bother. Walk away. They won't be convinced. Want to test free speech? Draw a picture of the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. How well did that work out at Charlie Hebdo magazine? Not well. I rest my case. But we have been obliged to tolerate this creeping ideology and anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment contrary to human rights law and associated risks and costs to all Canadians in the guise of free speech. This is unCanadian. Someone should say so. I just did.
No one mentions the elaborate pro-terrorist PR campaign and propaganda now becoming normalized in our Canadian culture, streets, and universities, manipulating our media and kind western culture, increasingly marginalizing and threatening Israel on the world stage, and Jewish Canadians here at home, who are facing unprecedented levels of hate crimes and harassment. Check out Warren Kinsella's new book, The Hidden Hand on this:
https://49thshelf.com/Books/T/The-Hidden-Hand
And here is a recent Canadian Press report from the relatively unbiased and more benign CTV News network on the relation of Muslim charities in Canada to money laundering schemes funding terrorism:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/cra-audit-of-muslim-charity-criticized-in-new-report/
At the CBC, no one mentions the involvement of members of these victimized Palestinian or Lebanese families in banned terrorist groups receiving income in 'pay for slay' from Iranian-funded proxy terrorism funneled through Qatar or other questionable money laundering initiatives, or that these same groups have notoriously put their own people at risk as human shields for terrorism rather than developing their economies and cultures and negotiating peaceful means of social advancement.
No one asks why their Palestinian leadership has diverted UNRWA funds to support multiple competing armed militias, why their schools and 'militant' groups preach the genocidal eradication of Jews and Israel and erase Israel from their maps, why there is no real rule of law or democracy or human rights or freedom of conscience or speech or LGBTQ or women's rights in the Palestinian territories, or in any Muslim or Arab state which are effectively ruled by armed gangs and juntas. Is this white western 'noblesse oblige' and liberal white guilt? It's not convincing us. You do not define 'Canada' or 'Canadian values' anymore.
This is not Israel's fault. As our former pro-Israel Canadian PM Stephen Harper noted in his speech to the Israeli Knesset in January 2014, Israel lives in a 'bad neighborhood'. And how. Israel is our first defense against anti-western and anti-democratic terrorism and the only real democracy in the Middle East. It has many flaws and many critics, just as Canada and the US do. There are active human rights groups and legal advocates working in Israel to support the rights of Palestinians, to address government corruption, and military excesses in the interest of justice and human dignity.
One cannot say the same for the surrounding Arabic and Muslim communities, many of whose people have yet to reject terrorism, embrace peace negotiations and admit to Israel's right to exist. They have yet to act effectively to remove terrorism and armed juntas from their midst. They are importing their ideologies to Canada to a hapless white western state so fearful of being accused of racism, still embracing a hyper macho code of violent and sociopathic toxic masculinity posing criminal threats to the west, to democracies, to Israel, to Canada, and particularly to Jews, women, and members of our LGBTQ communities.
Our CBC network is charged with broadcasting material of interest to Canadians, to provide a Canadian perspective of current events and politics, but is expected to act fairly and even-handedly. It has failed to do so. Its biases have been apparent, in ways that have been damaging and dangerous to our Canadian Jewish community, that have given air time to endless and useless debates of attrition, to the point that educated Jewish sources and institutions no longer reply to their requests for interviews.
Worse still, the CBC's Parliamentary Bureau seems to believe that 'being Canadian' and promoting 'Canadian values' means reporting verbatim and uncritically even the most insane and counterfactual quotes from our Parliamentary leaders, even when they are clearly mistaken or misleading.
That's called propaganda, and all Canadians deserve better than this from our national broadcaster. We don't support Al Jazeera. Why support the CBC?