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This fiscal year, the CBC will receive almost $1.04-billion dollars of public money, according to the main estimates.

“The cultural challenge is so much greater here, and yet the money available to try to address it is so much less,” said Stursberg. “If it (the CBC) is financed properly,” he said later, “it can compete.”

His almost two hours of testimony were part of a study the Senate’s transport and communications committee has undertaken into challenges facing the public broadcaster. The study, which won’t be wrapped up until early 2015, has drawn attention from supporters and critics, and has already included a testy meeting between senators and the head of the CBC, Hubert Lacroix.

Stursberg was brought in to the CBC in 2004 to raise viewership, only to be fired in 2010. His controversial book, Tower of Babel, told an insider’s story of the public broadcaster and was critical of how executives ran the corporation.

He was no less critical during his meetings with senators, suggesting the CBC stop broadcasting sports and producing local television news. He said the CBC should focus on international news and investigative journalism, two areas where private news agencies have been scaling back due to declining revenues.

The committee was told about three-quarters of the resources at the CBC and Radio-Canada go into news, a figure that a small group of senators also heard during two weeks of visits to western and remote communities the CBC serves.

“The message we hear universally is we need the CBC, we need a public broadcaster, it serves an important purpose,” said Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos, the committee’s vice-chairman. However, he said when senators question supporters and critics of the CBC about how well it fulfils its mandate, “they (the CBC) seem to be falling short in most cases.”