Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” He hosts Michael Harris Live, an Ottawa talk show on CFRA. His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies.

Over the years, I have worked for, competed against, ragged on and marveled at the CBC. I have been given my own television shows there, and I have been blackballed. I have been praised and I have been buried, but through it all I have never questioned the essential value of Mother Corp to the country.

So there is no pleasure in watching Pierre-Karl Peladeau and his hunting pack of news-hounds doing their best to tree the Old Girl. If there ever was an example of the proprietor coming over the newsroom wall to direct the coverage of his media empire, this is it. Citizen Kane, in any of his many embodiments, never has been a journalist and never will be.

Does anyone really believe that Quebecor’s onslaught is designed to demonstrate Sun Media’s commitment to public interest journalism? Quebecor’s heart continues to be its wallet. What it wants is CBC ads in its newspapers, a few more government bucks, and ultimately the Corporation’s head on a pike. Greater accountability for the public finances is merely the fig leaf that covers those intentions.

Yet I sympathize with Pierre-Karl to this extent. Competing against the CBC can be like fighting heavy artillery with sticks. When I ran what is now CTV’s affiliate in St. John’s Newfoundland, I had a news budget of $600,000, with no top-ups for special events. If an election came along we had to make do. That led to some tragi-comic situations as when the millionaire proprietor living on a mountain-top in Arizona ordered our master control operator to take the CBC’s feed when John Crosbie came to town to close the cod fishery!

Serving the same market, CBC’s budget was $7.5 million. They had state of the art equipment, we had vacuum-tube technology. They had a reporter army, we had half a dozen baked news zombies who were worked to death. You would think that the lopsided advantage in money, manpower and gear would be enough. It wasn’t. The CBC shamelessly vacuumed up the commercial market, a relatively easy thing to do because of its huge audience share. This upset me. But anger turned to fury when I found out that they were also undercutting our lowly ad prices – as if they needed the dough. We did.

But here is the other side of that coin. CBC’s station in St. John’s had a tradition of putting out brilliant television. Their newsroom tackled politicians and investigated on behalf of the public interest. Their financial independence was a counter-balance to the raw power of politics and business. Without the CBC, and a young Rex Murphy and Jennifer Davis, the worst excesses of Joey Smallwood’s imperium would have dragged on for years longer. Producer-hosts like Jack Kellam and Herb Davis created regional programming of national quality. Canadians got a look at the real Newfoundland from those broadcasts; and Newfoundlanders were able to look in the mirror of CBC television and catch a genuine reflection, not some hideous stereotype concocted up along.

One of the main reasons that the CBC is vulnerable to Quebecor’s frontal assault is its craving for popularity as a mainstream network. Where once the Corporation could point to uniquely Canadian programming to justify a hefty investment of public funding, it now offers an expanding side menu of American movies, shows like Wheel of Fortune, and highly paid ranters who bring in the viewers. Do the likes of Don Cherry and Kevin O’Leary belong on the public broadcaster; or should they be over at Sun TV where they pay their hosts to shout at guests and attack potted plants with chainsaws? Is the loss of credibility in return for viewers a good exchange for the CBC? I would argue it is not.

If the CBC insists on being just another mainstream network, I would argue that the Corporation’s days are numbered. If the CBC merely replicates much of the programming of the private networks, then the public grant is just an egregious subsidy that skews the marketplace, leaves private television at a gross disadvantage, and short changes taxpayers. It will have to go, or at least be seriously downsized, if that is the identity the CBC chooses.

Consider this: when the CBC jets down to Hollywood to buy U.S. programming, it bids up the price for the private networks here in Canada that earn their money from those shows. You can’t keep having it both ways indefinitely. Sooner or later, a federal government will come along willing to roll the dice on dismembering the CBC. The current occupant of 24 Sussex might just be the bucko to try, believing as he does that the CBC crowd spends all its time planning Mary Walsh’s next sortie against potty mouthed Tory mayors.

The list of CBC’s detractors is growing: the Information Commissioner, captains of industry, and MPs like John Williamson. But the controversies engulfing the CBC are mere symptoms of the great, unanswered question: Does the Corporation want to be a public broadcaster or just a private television network that happens to get a massive public subsidy? Does it want to be quintessentially Canadian and champion excellence, or go for ratings?

This much is for certain. It is foolish and perverse for CBC executives to think that they can take a billion dollars in public money and then refuse to tell Canadians how it’s spent – especially since the Corporation is now covered under the access to information law. Every day they fight this feckless battle in court is another day they resemble the information-suppressors they so often pursue and pillory on the public’s behalf. When you’re in the information business, going to court to keep your corporate secrets looks a lot like hypocrisy.

The CBC needs to resolve an identity crisis that has been growing for years. The path forward is finding the way back. If its executives decide it is a public broadcaster, it’s got to re-commit to Canadian content and eschew the siren song of private network principles. A good place to start would be to undo the centralization of the Corporation’s business in Toronto and reinvest in the regions which have been turned into mere bureaus of head office. Supper hour news shows used to be the glue that connected the CBC to Canadians in the hinterland. These shows are now yodeling down the well of irrelevance in many regional markets – including the one where I used to work. And it’s also time for the CBC to get out of private television’s pocket and get ads off the air.

At its best, the public broadcaster is revered by Canadians for showing us who we are and protecting that identity from a tsunami of crappy cop shows, two-bit reality programs, and half-baked newscasts from the United States. Giving us more of them is a self-administered death penalty.

If the CBC wants to be a national jewel again, it must give up the bling.