The Liberals Secretly Polled Canadians on Cutting the CBC — And the Public Said Yes

For a decade the Liberal Party has positioned itself as the unwavering defender of the CBC, Canada Post and the constellation of Crown corporations propped up by taxpayer dollars. Now newly disclosed documents show the Privy Council Office — the Prime Minister's own department — quietly hired pollsters to ask Canadians whether those same Crown corporations should be cut. The Liberals never mentioned this in public. They never campaigned on it. They commissioned it in secret.

A Pollsters' Report They Hoped Nobody Would Notice

According to records released yesterday by Blacklock's Reporter, the Privy Council Office commissioned federal focus groups to test public opinion on cuts to Crown corporation funding — including the CBC, Canada Post, and others. Participants were "asked to identify areas where they felt the federal government could find cost savings." Their answer: cut the CBC.

This is, on its own terms, a remarkable finding. Canadians — not Conservatives, not "right-wing trolls," but the broad cross-section the Privy Council itself selected for these groups — looked at federal spending and identified the CBC as a place to start. After more than a decade of the Liberal Party telling them the CBC is sacred, untouchable national infrastructure that only "Americans" or "MAGA imports" would dare touch, ordinary Canadians said: cut it.

The Hypocrisy Is the Story

Remember the talking points. Every election cycle, the Liberals warn that the Conservatives will "destroy the CBC." Every funding announcement positions the Liberals as the saviours of public broadcasting. Every Heritage Minister speech treats the $1.4 billion annual CBC subsidy as a non-negotiable cornerstone of Canadian identity.

Meanwhile, behind closed doors at the Privy Council Office, the people who actually run the country were paying pollsters to find out exactly how unpopular that subsidy has become — presumably so they could decide whether the political cost of cutting it was worth the savings. This is the same Liberal government that just delivered the Carney Spring Economic Update promising $60 billion in spending cuts that the Parliamentary Budget Officer says are impossible to verify. Crown corporation funding is one of the obvious places those cuts would have to come from.

So the Liberals are simultaneously (a) telling the public they would never touch the CBC, (b) telling the public they will cut $60 billion in spending without saying where, and (c) commissioning secret polling to find out whether voters would tolerate cutting the CBC. Pick any two. They cannot be true together.

Why the Public Has Had Enough of the CBC

The focus group findings should not surprise anyone who has been paying attention. The CBC consumes roughly $1.4 billion in taxpayer subsidies every year while:

• Producing CBC News content that consistently aligns with Liberal Party messaging on every major file from carbon pricing to foreign interference;
• Paying senior executives bonuses while announcing job cuts to working journalists;
• Losing audience share to private and international broadcasters its subsidy is supposed to outcompete;
• Operating under a board and executive structure appointed almost entirely by Liberal cabinets;
• Functioning, in practice, as a captive arm of the federal government rather than an independent public broadcaster.

Layered on top of that is the broader $600 million Liberal media bailout, which subsidizes private newsrooms whose payroll depends on continued Liberal goodwill. Canadians are increasingly aware that the people telling them what to think are being paid by the people they are supposed to scrutinize. Cutting the CBC isn't an attack on Canadian culture. It is a step toward restoring an independent press.

Source

Primary source: Blacklock's Reporter, "Feds Polled On CBC Cutbacks" (May 5, 2026). The Privy Council pollsters' report was disclosed in response to access-to-information filings and confirms federal focus groups identified Crown corporation cutbacks — and the CBC specifically — as preferred areas for spending reduction. Cross-reported by Western Standard, "Liberals test public support for CBC funding cuts as internal polling backs spending restraint" (May 5, 2026).

The Bottom Line

The Liberals have spent a generation telling Canadians that touching the CBC is a third rail of Canadian politics. Their own taxpayer-funded polling, kept hidden until access-to-information forced it into the open, says the third rail is dead. Canadians want the subsidy reviewed. Canadians want the cuts. The only people in Canada still pretending otherwise are sitting in Liberal cabinet meetings — and even they have stopped believing it in private.

If the Liberals had any intention of being honest with voters, they would put CBC reform on the table publicly. Instead they will keep telling you the CBC is sacred while privately deciding when to cut it. That is not leadership. That is PR.