While some Conservative leadership candidates have been appealing to the traditionally anti-CBC Tory base by proposing to abolish the national broadcaster or make serious reforms to it, Michael Chong is digging in as the moderate voice in the race by calling the issue a “distraction.”

Last week, after Maxime Bernier proposed kicking the CBC out of the advertising market, Kellie Leitch and Brad Trost tried to out-do each other by proposing to either axe (in Leitch’s case) or de-fund (in Trost’s case) the CBC.

Chong told iPolitics late Friday that “this issue is another distraction from what we need to be focused on in this campaign and in 2019.”

Chong said the priority for Canadians is “jobs and the economy” and that’s where his attention is focused.

“For example, lowering income taxes to spur economic growth and job creation, and privatizing CMHC to make housing more affordable for Canadian families and credit more available for small and medium-sized businesses,” he wrote.

Chong said the CBC does need a mandate review, however. “With technology rapidly transforming the media landscape in Canada, CBC’s mandate has become outdated and needs to be refreshed,” he told iPolitics.

“The CBC plays a necessary role in providing news and information to Canadians, especially to rural and remote communities across our vast geography. For many rural and remote communities, there are few, if any, other information sources.

“For instance, anglophone communities in rural Quebec rely on CBC as one of the few sources of news and information, just as francophone communities outside Quebec rely on Radio-Canada. In this sense, the CBC plays a vital role in the unity of our country.”

Bernier is proposing to restructure the CBC’s funding model to mirror that of PBS and NPR in the United States. That would force the broadcaster to rely on sponsorships from corporations and foundations, as well as donations from viewers and listeners.

Under his leadership, the CBC would be prohibited from running ads on all its platforms — radio, television and web — and this, he said, would level the playing field between the CBC and private media outlets.

Leitch would scrap most of CBC, but said she would keep the part of the CBC that provides “emergency services” to remote and rural parts of Canada. Trost wants to privatize the CBC.