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Lawyer Kevin Wiener just wanted to know how many people were visiting the CBC Comedy website.

But when he filed an access to information request, the national broadcaster sent him back a 401-page document that was mostly blank — almost everything was redacted. Huge portions were withheld entirely, and others contained titles or subtitles with no content underneath.

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The reason? The CBC says the information would help its competitors.

Photo by Handout, Kevin Wiener

“From a democratic perspective, knowing this information about how many people consume the CBC is something that should be open to public disclosure,” he said. “And I mean in general, not just when the CBC wants to brag.”

Wiener said he decided to file an access for information request because he had suspicions that CBC Comedy wasn’t attracting many viewers. But he wanted the data to speak for itself.

“Mostly I was just curious because I think CBC Comedy has for a while been a bit of an online punching bag,” he said. “Knowing to what extent the content (CBC) is producing is even being consumed by Canadians is an important way for us to hold our public broadcaster accountable.”