Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier announced Tuesday that as prime minister, he would revamp the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s mandate and kick the public broadcaster out of the advertising market.

To replace lost revenues from advertising, Bernier said he would restructure the CBC’s funding model to mirror that of PBS and NPR in the United States and have the broadcaster rely on sponsorships from corporations and foundations, as well as donations from viewers and listeners.

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

“CBC Radio-Canada unfairly competes with struggling private media in a shrinking advertisement market,” he said. “It’s not fair.”

Bernier argued that this move would “ensure more quality programming” by eliminating the pressure to keep ratings up to sell ad space.

The Tory leadership candidate said he also would reverse the $150 million in additional annual funding the federal government recently gave the CBC — bringing the broadcaster’s funding back to $1 billion per year. Bernier added that he would review that funding after assessing the state of government coffers following the Trudeau government and the CBC’s refocused mandate.

On the subject of the broadcaster’s role, Bernier asserted it’s not the CBC’s responsibility “to please everyone” and said he would reform the federal Broadcasting Act to “clarify and refocus” CBC/Radio-Canada’s mandate.

Bernier argued the CBC should focus on producing content the private sector doesn’t already offer and chided the broadcaster for airing game shows, cooking shows and sports — and for running “bad Canadian copies” of popular American shows. Bernier also insisted Canada doesn’t need a public broadcaster that offers music streaming and opinion journalism.

“(CBC) tries to occupy every niche, even though it doesn’t have and will never have the means to do so, with the result being lower-quality programming,” he said. “CBC Radio-Canada should stop doing three quarters of what it still does, which any private broadcaster can do, and concentrate on what only it can do.”

Bernier said he was “not happy” when the CBC cut regional stations and regional coverage, and said he would like to see the CBC offer “more quality public affairs programs” outside of the big bureaus in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

“That’s their role and their mandate and they must do that,” he said.

The Quebec member of Parliament’s proposal offers a different vision for Canada’s public broadcaster compared to what many other Conservative MPs have called for over the years: the privatization of the CBC.

More recently, Conservative leadership rival Brad Trost introduced a private member’s bill on September 29 that, if passed, would legislate the privatization of the public broadcaster. Just two hours after Bernier’s announcement, Trost sent out a fundraising email criticizing Bernier’s proposal to model the CBC after public broadcasters in the U.S.

“An elitist, left-wing ‘public’ broadcast network that receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies? After a face lift and a new set of clothes, sounds a lot like the same old CBC to me,” Trost wrote. “Call it ‘CBC-lite.'”

Trost argued that rank-and-file members of the Conservative party want the federal government to “get out of the media business altogether” — which he says his private member’s bill will accomplish.

Bernier told reporters Tuesday that he agrees the broadcaster’s operations should come at less of a cost to taxpayers, but said he doesn’t believe privatization is the right path.

“I do believe there is still a role in our media landscape for a public radio and television network,” he said. “But it has to be something other than what the private sector already offers.”

When asked by a reporter what he thought of CBC President Hubert Lacroix’s recent open letter — in which he shot back at claims that CBC should rein in its digital presence and argued that Canadians “expect” the CBC to be in the digital world — Bernier said he doesn’t agree with Lacroix.

“I believe in reform,” he said.

Bernier is one of 13 candidates vying to replace Stephen Harper as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada — and one of the most active contenders in announcing policy proposals.