MAKICHUK: Why Chantal and the CBC must go

There she is. Once again.

Pontificating, on the CBC political panel.

Chantal What’s-her-name?

They drag her out of somewhere, God knows where, when they need a Laurentian elite to say stuff. Even if she doesn’t have a single clue what she’s talking about. Even if she hasn’t talked to the principals involved, such as Western experts or politicians.

Her words are golden and the CBC types kneel at her feet.

Chantal once said Pierre Poilievre is "a liability" to the Conservatives. A liability that just happens to lead in the polls.

Chantal credits "Liberal resilience" and says repeated Conservative failures have spoiled Poilievre's chances of becoming prime minister. The only failure I see is in the PMO's office.

Chantal says voters are returning to Bloc Québécois over fears provinces are "ganging up" on Quebec. As if we give a damn!

Chantal says "right-leaning premiers" (such as Alberta's Danielle Smith) are more likely to hinder than help. Right leaning? Or is Danielle right in her leanings?

Chantal says Canadians do have a choice: they have the NDP. Wonderful, just wonderful. God help us all if Singh got into power.

Chantal says, Chantal says ... it’s the same old, same old, same old CBC view, being shoved down your throat, whether you like it or not.

There are those, who say the CBC needs to up its game, to remain credible.

Such as sending Chantal on a permanent vacay. To somewhere, I don’t care. All expenses paid. A big fat golden parachute.

I would even contribute to the GoFundMe. Anything, just anything, to get rid of this woman. To spare us more of her obnoxious and dated pontificating.

Look, I don't deny Chantal's credentials, or her accomplishments. She is a very accomplished woman. Author, journalist, award winner, etc.

But how about, just for a change, a law professor on the CBC panel, whom we have never heard from?

OMG! Gadzooks! How dare we, try to find someone interesting and different! With different views!

Or how about a seasoned MP from any party. Any party!

Maybe a senator with decades of political experience? Those guys know stuff too. They've been to the barbecue before and they have insider insights.

And God help us, how about a political science professor we haven't heard from? Someone from the ivory tower, perhaps, on the prairies? Or even Vancouver Island?

Or, a seasoned journalist/columnist from Western Canada? We do have those, you know. And I know several of them, by the way.

It happens when you work in media for 40 years.

Clearly, our country has some intelligent people. And they don’t all come from Toronto.

We now have the technology to speak to anyone on earth, at any time — even during a war. We can even speak to astronauts in space.

I mean, when was the last time the CBC went to northern Alberta, to talk to the guys working the rigs in all kinds of weather.

The guys who generate the income that eventually ends up in Quebec as transfer payments, whose jobs and futures are now at stake. Does anyone give a damn?

Slidin' high side all night long. Or getting your mud weight right.

Do the CBC’s snobby intellectuals even know what that means? Does Chantal know? They don’t? Well, damn, they should learn.

In fact, they’ve got much to learn and they have no right to speak for you and me. None whatsoever!

And no doubt, the mere suggestion of this to the CBC higher-ups, would result in my demonization. Clearly, I must be an evil, right-wing, Nazi, truck-driving, child-eating, Jew-hating, one-eyed monster?

And that’s putting it nicely!

Some insiders also suggest, the Toronto-centric nature of political panels, appears to be driven by a desire to prioritize the Greater Toronto Area's audience numbers at the expense of the nation at large and, ultimately, the CBC’s mandate.

If that’s the case, it’s the perfect example of how the CBC’s drive for advertising revenue perverts its very purpose.

I mean, I don’t get it. I’m just an oldster in Sage Hill, NW Calgary. Do you? Do you understand these CBC types?

Why, oh why, does Chantal continue to appear, on political panels, along with the usual suspects. Who, by the way, all hate our guts.

They hate us Westerners. They don’t get us and they call us whiners. They don’t understand us and they don’t want to understand us.

The pat answer, is that the CBC just doesn't care. The exact opposite of what they claim.

I would even suggest that Chantal What’s-her-name, is a prime example of everything that is wrong with the CBC — a good reason, a damn good reason, for smashing the CBC into a thousand pieces.

Sell it off and get rid of it. The government and its media cronies should not be in the news business.

As much as we are spoiled by CBC pablum, patting ourselves on the back about how great we are — the network's holier-than-thou approach — it’s time to move on and break the obsolete BBC model.

CBC/Radio-Canada has seven vice-presidents. It could do without six of them.

Like SCTV’s hilarious CBC spoof, of the Hinterland Who’s Who, showing video shorts of creatures surviving “in snowy climes,” maybe it’s time to turn over the media in Canada to private interests.

And let the chips fall where they may.

Sell it and get rid of it. Put the annual $1.4 billion toward Canada’s military budget. Toward something that needs the money. I don’t care what.

Overpaid CBC prez and CEO Catherine Tait, says the CBC is accountable to all Canadians and not to politicians and that its journalists work independently of corporate management.

Accountable? LOL! Since when!

Of course, we all know, that’s a bunch of bull. A big, big pile of it, in fact.

While they do work somewhat independently, they clearly have an agenda.

And that agenda happens to be a Liberal, left-wing agenda, which builds on and promotes Western stereotypes, that we are all a bunch of knuckle-dragging rednecks in pickup trucks, ignorant of climate change.

Tait also said defunding the CBC would be devastating to its ability to meet its mandate to serve all Canadians and rural communities in particular.

Perhaps Tait doesn’t know this, but anybody who has Wi-Fi and a laptop, can connect with the Internet and learn all they want to learn, at the touch of a keyboard, in seconds.

Serve rural communities? Does Tait have a septic pumping business on the side? How in the hell do they serve anyone in Canada, let alone rural communities?

She also said losing the public broadcaster would be bad for Canadian democracy and she dismisses any criticism, by labelling it "CBC bashing."

Oh, so Tait and her wise legions are the defenders of democracy are they? Is this why they never, ever let a Westerner on their political panels?

Is this why Chantal What’s-her-name, is on every panel, pontificating her views, for our great nation? Is that what they call independence?

How in hell does it serve us to round up the same usual suspects and spout the usual Laurentian crap to our Prairie TV sets?

Over and over and over.

It's relentless. It's soul draining. And it's wrong.

Make no mistake, she is a damn good reason why the CBC must go.

And look, I used to be a defender of the CBC. I actually was. Foolishly thinking it was a necessity. The glue that held us together.

But times have changed. Its outdated mandate is no longer needed. It has become "boring and preachy," as columnist Rex Murphy says, "a desperately moralistic hectoring monolith," that now divides us.

And to be downright honest, the network has never matched the quality of its 1960s detective series Wojeck, the last CBC program I actually liked.

Actor John Vernon was fantastic and my brother Jim and I watched it faithfully.

Sell the CBC, and don’t look back.

Democracy will be far, far better for it and so will you and me.