EDITORIAL: Accuracy at CBC? Might want to check your facts

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so Orwellian.

Published Jul 24, 2026  •  Last updated 21 minutes ago  •  2 minute read

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) building signage in Ottawa. Photo by Hyungcheol Park /Postmedia Network

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The ancient Romans knew how to hold powerful people to account. The poet Juvenal came up with the saying, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” In other words, ‘Who watches the watchmen?”

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It’s an expression that leaps to mind with news that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is considering making the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) the watchdog to combat misinformation in the media.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, an Ottawa-based online news service that focuses on the federal government, an April 13 government briefing note suggested adding additional resources to the CBC to make it a media fact-checker to “combat misinformation.”

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so Orwellian. The notion that the CBC is an unbiased repository of the truth is nonsensical. This is the state broadcaster that attempted to sue the Conservative Party in 2019 for using brief clips from its programming in a campaign ad. The suit failed, but the cost to taxpayers was reportedly close to $400,000.

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Commentators on CBC panels, wrapped in a Laurentian elite bubble, are frequently hostile to or ignorant of issues facing Western Canada and have become a divisive element at a time when this country desperately needs unity.

Recently, the shocking use of an elaborate fraud by a production company employed by CBC to make an Indigenous series, Northland Tales, left little doubt about the broadcaster’s integrity, or lack of it. The production company lured respected academics, authors, RCMP veterans and others into fake interviews to ambush them in an ongoing attempt to discredit Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.

While CBC says the production has now been “paused,” it demonstrated the lengths the broadcaster will go to discredit people who don’t share their slanted and frequently inaccurate view of history.

Until the scam was uncovered, CBC was prepared to go along with programming that would not just present fiction as facts, but name and shame historians who disagree with them. The arrogance is breathtaking. They humiliated people who are more knowledgeable about Canada’s history and who have dedicated their careers to studying Macdonald for having the temerity to disagree with CBC.

And the government wants this sneering state broadcaster to be the custodian of truth-telling? It should get its own house in order first.

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