Should the CBC run ads? It depends on a number of facts, most of which are not firmly established.
Is topping-up the CBC’s budget so as to free it from the necessity of selling $250 million of ads per year really the best use of public money? It’s hard to believe it is. Making CBC ad-free, as cultural nationalists have long demanded, seems a marginal sort of expenditure whose only saving grace is that many of the other things this government would do with the money are even lesser-value spending. Could we not buy the front end of an ice-breaker instead? Or a few guns for our soldiers? Or cut tax rates by a decimal point or two? Of course, in our system the government gets to decide and if no other party opposes it, and none seems ready to, ad-free will probably go through.
