Office Of The Ombudsman,
My main point of contention lies with the idea that CBC, as a publicly-funded media broadcaster, has paid no attention whatsoever to the fact that a federal political party espousing the ideology of nationalism has been (for all intents and purposes) excluded from the democratic channel during and leading up to the recent 43rd Federal Election. It is unacceptable to justify this lack of coverage by claiming that the Canadian Nationalist Party is a “small party” and therefore does not warrant this kind of coverage when the subject-matter at hand demonstrates it is essentially impossible to grow any party who is not permitted to host public events and communicate their policies during an active election. This is a fundamental violation of our constitutional rights and self-determination.
In terms of mandate, the CBC is obligated to report on current affairs within the country which are in the public interest. The aforementioned claim is indeed in the public interest because Canadian citizens are not only being kept in the dark about the electoral policies of a federal political party but they are being denied meaningful representation when it comes to the ideology of nationalism. To not report on the exclusion of the ideology of nationalism from democratic proceedings in Canada is contrary to the public interest.
The Canadian Nationalist Party currently has active lawsuits in court regarding these claims. This too is in the public interest to know about – yet no coverage whatsoever has been brought to these very important issues which relate to the democratic and constitutional integrity of our society.
The willful lack of coverage of these developments, combined with the track record of CBC ubiquitously reporting negatively-oriented information about the same political party, provide reasonable grounds to conclude that our publicly-funded media broadcaster has departed from its mandate of journalistic integrity and balanced reporting.
Therefore, unless they can make amends and keep Canadians informed of these very serious violations against our democratic and constitutional integrity, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cannot be said to be acting in the public interest and should not expect the support of taxpaying citizens.
Signed,
