Heritage Minister confirms his vision of a smaller, decentralized public broadcaster
Heritage Minister James Moore confirmed that downsizing and decentralizing the CBC is a goal for the federal Conservative government, Postmedia reports. In a year-end interview, Moore said, “the CBC is today — in terms of the way in which they have managed themselves internally — much more efficient and even smaller than they were when I became Heritage minister. They’re about 25 per cent smaller on the staffing side. Their footprint in Toronto and Montreal is smaller than it was before because — as we’ve said publicly — we want them to be in the regions more than they’ve ever been before.” Following the federal election, Moore shifted a longstanding commitment to maintaining funding to the national public broadcaster, and instead announced that he was looking for cuts of five to ten per cent, as in other federal departments.