The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - When Should the CRTC Clamp Down on Foreign Broadcasters?

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

The CRTC determines which foreign channels can be distributed in this country. In 2022, it banned RT and RT France, state-controlled Russian TV channels. Now some are arguing Fox News deserves the same treatment, as hosts on the network are questioning Canadian sovereignty and ratcheting up the trade-war rhetoric. But would dropping the channel be a threat to free speech? When does free speech become propaganda, and when - if ever - should propaganda be banned? To discuss, I'm joined by In Calgary, Peter Menzies Senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and former vice-chair of communications for the CRTC In Ottawa, Christopher Dornan Former professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University And in the studio... Joanna Baron Executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation and Jeffrey Dvorkin Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto's Massey College, formerly of NPR News and CBC Radio News See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renew your 2.0 TVO with more thought-provoking documentaries, insightful current affairs coverage, and fun programs and learning experiences for kids. Regular contributions from people like you help us make a difference in the lives of Ontarians of all ages. Visit tvo.me slash 2025 donate to renew your support or make a first-time donation and continue to discover your 2.0 TVO. Should Canada consider clamping down on foreign broadcasters? Given Fox News' inflammatory commentary questioning Canadian sovereignty, some are suggesting the CRTC consider banning it, as it did RT, the Russian state controlled channel. Does banning these channels constitute an attack on free speech? Let's discuss with, in Calgary, Alberta,

Peter Menzies, senior fellow at the McDonald-Laurier Institute and former vice chair of communications for the CRTC. In the nation's capital, Christopher Dornan, former professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. And with us here in studio, Joanna Barron, executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. And Jeffrey Dworkin, senior fellow at U of T's Massey College and a former journalist with NPR News and CBC Radio.

And it's great to have you two here in our studio and to our friends in Points Beyond. Thanks for joining us on TVO tonight. We're going to show a little clip to get our segment started here because I don't know how many of you watch Jesse Waters on Fox. You're shaking your head already. But he's, what shall we call him, colorful. And this is the kind of stuff he says. Sheldon, roll it if you would.

Yesterday, our neighbors to the north decided they wanted to do things the hard way. They slapped a 25% tariff on electricity coming into the country, which would jack up utility prices in New York, Michigan, Minnesota. Trump hit back this morning, announcing he was doubling the tariffs on Canadian steel from 25% to 50%. The Canadians didn't like that, and they fired the first official shot of the American-Canadian War. Let me be clear. I will not hesitate to increase this charge. If necessary, if the United States escalates, I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely.

That's an act of war. I almost don't know where to begin because Jesse is a very amusing guy, but he's, you know, an ignoramus and says stuff that I think is kind of, well, that Canadians probably think is completely ridiculous. But the question is, should it be disallowed on our airwaves? What do you say? So no. This is clickbait dressed up as commentary. Jesse Waters, even though he may echo some of the rhetoric from the Trump administration, he's an independent broadcaster.

He does not speak for the US government. And we should allow this, and we should respond to it in due course. Peter, what do you say? I get that people would find it offensive, but I mean I've listened to rhetoric coming out of Quebec for 50 years, doubting Canadian sovereignty and talking about outrages and that sort of stuff and we've survived. We move on through these things and I think just one kind of infotainment presentation doesn't justify removing these

guys from their cable license. Christopher, presumably there's some line somewhere which if you're on one side of it, you may not like what they say, but it's acceptable. And if you're on the other side of it, it is unacceptable and it is, I guess, illegal. Where does this fall on that line? Well, at the moment, it's certainly not illegal. I mean, Fox News itself, as an organization, is on record in a court of law saying that you shouldn't take what its hosts say seriously or literally. Tucker Carlson was sued by a former Playboy model who had been paid $150,000 by Donald Trump to keep quiet about an affair that they had. Tucker Carlson described

this as classic extortion. The Playboy model sued for slander, and Fox News's defense was that no reasonable viewer would take what Tucker Carlson says at that literal value, that he's an entertainer, he's a kind of circus freak, and the judge agreed with that defense. Okay, Jeffrey, where on the sort of scale of stupidity would you put that kind of statement? And is it egregious enough to warrant being chucked off our airwaves? It's weird.

It's stupid. But I don't think that taking him off the airwaves is the appropriate response. Because if the CRTC were to do that, then they would make themselves open to any other pressure points. For example, people who want to defund public broadcasting. And in that case, if one precedent has already

been set, and it has to a certain extent with Russian television, with RT, what's to stop a organized campaign from saying, let's get rid of the CBC or, God forbid, TVO? Thank you. Take your point. However, we do have the precedent, Joanna, of RT, Russian television, which was kicked off cable systems

here in Canada because CRTC in its wisdom decided it was just blatantly outright propaganda. You could say the same for Fox, couldn't you? So I'd say there's three important distinctions. First, RT is state controlled. Fox News, although again, it certainly seems to have a cozy relationship with Republican Party rhetoric, it is an independent broadcaster. Second of all, it was broadcasting

repeated systemic threats during an active military campaign. So it was directly acting as Putin's mouthpiece. Third of all, one of the rationales, and one of the things that links in with the CRTC statute, is that RT was also broadcasting propaganda against Ukrainian Canadians, which are an identifiable group protected under existing human rights, sorry, hate speech provisions.

So that is a very outside case, although maybe some of the other guests disagree with banning RT, but I think there's a lot of distance between the rationale of banning RT and what we're seeing now on Fox News. Peter, can we make that case that RT is so different that it's not a precedent for this a lot of distance between the rationale of banning RT and what we're seeing now on Fox News. Peter, can we make that case that RT is so different that it's not a precedent for this case? Well, yes, because RT was basically, to all intents and purposes,

the CRTC was directed to do that by the government. And by the time it made the decision, it was kind of moot anyway, because all the cable companies had already removed RT. It's worth noting that since 2019, the CRTC has been sitting on a complaint from Peter Dahl and the safeguard defenders against CGTN and CCTV, both Chinese state television,

which are available and still licensed in Canada. And his complaint was based on the fact they were showing forced confessions. The CRTC hasn't moved on that for close to five and a half years now. So left to its own devices, it is obviously kind of okay with certain, when this is a broader discussion, with certain propaganda-based state television networks. In which case, Jeffrey, let me ask this. Are foreign channels held to the same standards as Canadian-based channels when it

comes to the acceptability of having them on cable or whatever? I'm nervous when the government tells us what we can and cannot consume in terms of media. And I think that the public is sufficiently sophisticated, both in the US and Canada, to understand that there is a difference, maybe a difference without a distinction, about commentary and actual

information reporting. Fox News has actually a pretty substantial news operation, as opposed to its evening entertainment bloviating. And I think that to ban Fox News entirely would be a disservice to those Canadians who want to get a particular perspective from the United States. And I think that if we go down, if Canada goes down that line, we end up in a very shaky position when it comes to free speech. As I would tell my students when I was teaching at U of T Scarborough, you don't have the right students not to be offended by something. And at some point, when, God willing, you all get jobs with media organizations, your assignment editor

will say, we want you to go and interview someone with whom you really disagree. And if you were to say, oh, I'm too sensitive to talk to this person, you're in the wrong business. You're in the wrong business, exactly. Christopher, let me read a little snippet here from the CRTC's decision on why they decided to get rid of RT as an option for Canadian viewers,

and then have you come back with some comments on that. RT's programming is not consistent, says the CRTC, with the standards against which Canadian services are measured measured nor the policy objectives set out in the Broadcasting Act. The CRTC is also concerned with programming from a foreign country that seeks to undermine the sovereignty of another country, demean Canadians of a particular ethnic background, and undermine democratic institutions within Canada.

Okay, Christopher, couldn't you say that Fox, and Jesse in particular, was doing all of those things? Yes, you could. And I think that if the political temperature between Canada and the United States actually changes, then there may be a legitimate case and an urgent need to remove Fox News from Canadian cable and satellite channels. If it becomes, if it United States is genuinely and seriously has set itself on the economic ruin and the political subjugation and the territorial absorption of Canada, I mean, basically, if we're on a war footing, then it may become necessary, certainly, to threaten to remove Fox News from the Canadian media diet. Because just as you don't buy weaponry from

an enemy, we're revisiting the purchase of the F-35 fighter jets, you don't willingly give a propaganda platform to the same enemy. The RTKs said, well, we removed it because it was a propaganda outlet. That's actually not why we renewed it. We renewed it under the hate speech provisions that it was exposing Ukrainians and Ukrainian Canadians to contempt and putting them in harm. If the political temperature between Canada and the United States becomes so charged that we're on the verge of conflict, then the circumstances have completely changed. And we will have to revisit whether we would allow somebody like Jesse Waters to mouth off to our detriment.

All right, Joanna, tell me, Sheldon, quote board number two, please, tell me if in your view this rises to the level of hate speech. This is also from Jesse Waters, who said, the fact that they don't want us to take them over makes me want to invade. I want to quench my imperialist thirst. Does that sound like hate speech to you?

It sounds like satire soaked in insolence. I hate it. Do I think that the state should ban it? Absolutely not. And I also want to make a point. Think about this geopolitically. Do we really want to hand Trump and Fox News a perfect, wrapped with a bow, case example of liberal elites

banning conservative viewpoints? It wouldn't strengthen our position. It would make us a laughing stock. And we can handle this. We can laugh back. This is a joke. Peter, any risks in airing this kind of drivel? I don't think so. I mean it's drivel, right? I mean there's drivel all over the place if you

if you look hard enough for it. I think there's great risk in you know talking about banning things like this because as Joanna just said, I mean it would just, Fox News would just more than double down, they would triple down and say, Fox News banned by Canada, like in the way they'd go and just beat up on us more and more. It would be useless. It would also cut us off from a good platform that our politicians have been using to try to communicate to Trump's base, which is very much a Fox News crowd. Doug Ford, Daniel Smith, others have been

interviewed by them and been able to make the case against tariffs to that audience. So I think it would be, I don't think you find freedom through authoritarian acts. Let me put it that way. Freedom through authoritarian, okay that's an interesting way to put it. Jeffrey, how about to you on that one, how much bloviating, it sounds like, that was your word. I love that word incidentally. How much bloviating should a guy be entitled to do before he's nuzzling up against hate speech?

Well, hate speech has a certain definition, both journalistically and legally. And one has to be very careful in this country to determine the differences between or among the various points of view that get expressed. CRTC needs to understand, as I hope they do, that there's this new thing called the internet. And that people who want to consume

certain kinds of information can do it without the approval of the CRTC. So I think it's kind of an academic, if you'll pardon the expression, argument. And I was reminded of the good old days in the Cold War when the Russians would scramble the signals of the Voice of America or Radio Free Europe. I don't think we want to get into the scrambling business

anymore. We don't have someone like Lord Ha Ha, who broadcast German propaganda on Britain during the Second World War, or Tokyo Rose, who told American troops fighting in the Pacific that their wives were having affairs while they were away to try to demoralize them. We're not at that point.

And so I don't think we're, we need to use our media carefully and substantially in order to serve the public as citizens first and consumers of information second. That to me seems to be the essential element here. Do you see any risks at all in letting him continue to have access to Canadians via Fox News? Well, we've seen the opposite reaction, right? We've seen unprecedented amounts, surges of patriotism. The I am Canadian ad is back. So I personally have faith in the immune system of Canadian civil society to see this and reject it.

Peter, what about you? Any risks at all here? I don't see it. I mean, I think the risks are in the reaction and overreacting to these sorts of things. I mean, I think we should remember that Fox News isn't like on your basic cable or anything. If you're going to be watching it, you have to subscribe specifically to it just as you did have to do with RT and you have to do with CCTV, the Chinese state thing. So it is not forced upon you or it doesn't come to you unwillingly. You have to make the choice to accept it yourself and agreed with everything Jeffrey just said about the internet. Speaking of which... The CRTC actually said in the RT decision

that it wasn't an offense against free speech because after all people can still watch it on the internet. Right. Jeffrey? I spent a few years in Washington so I've drunk enough Potomac water to to be influenced by the incredible power of the First Amendment to the American Constitution. And Justice Louis Brandeis said that sunlight is the great disinfectant. And yeah, we are going to have to put up with some oddities, Jesse Waters being one of them.

But I think that in the end, the idea that people have the right and the obligation to understand what the heck's going on. And I think that sunlight really is the best disinfectant. It may be painful for a while to hear Jesse Waters do his thing, but I think in the end, reasonableness and good sense will prevail, both in the United States and especially in Canada. I mean, Christopher, one of the reasons we're doing this program is that there are plenty of comments out there on the internet, letters to the editor in newspapers, emails that we get from people who see these kinds of comments that Jesse Waters is making and ask themselves, how can this be allowed on Canadian television?

Shouldn't we ban that kind of thing? So let me ask you the opposite side of the coin, which is, what would be the risk in banning Fox News from Canadians? Well, as Joanna pointed out, if we were to do so now, you hand the American administration, you hand Fox News, you hand the right wing, you hand even Canadians themselves an example of government overreach or Canadian overreach, an attempt to silence viewpoints that you disagree with. I think, you know, Jeffrey's right,

you know, at the moment, reasonableness will prevail. But we're also dealing with a government south of the border that is not reasonable. And if things change, you know, if the temperature escalates between the two countries, then the circumstances change and then, you know, we may not go immediately to ban Fox News, but it may become a bargaining chip, where we threaten to do so, or we open public inquiries. I mean, one of the things that the cable and satellite providers could do is at the moment, when you get Fox News, it's bundled in with other news channels. They can choose to say, well, that's actually not a news channel, despite, as Jeffrey points out, that it does actually have a reasonably responsible news division. What it really has in the showroom window

is Hannity and Ingram and Waters and the Bloviators. And the cable providers could say, well, that's not a conscientious news operation, that's an entertainment channel. So bundle it with the entertainment channels. Joanna, let me give you another example and you tell me how, if you believe it is, this is different.

When all this mish michiga started happening, Doug Ford went behind a lectern and he said, I want every American made bottle of booze off the shelves of the LCBO. He banned an American product from Canadians, from Ontarians. How is this different? So first of all, the LCBO is one of the biggest purchasers

of alcohol in the world, so that actually kind of hits the Americans where it hurts. I don't think banning Fox News would do that. Second of all, I'm Canadian, so I'm more concerned about the effect of all of this on our culture and our country. And allowing the CRTC, if it were to take this step of going beyond the RT precedent, let's call it, what's to prevent a future government from directing the CRTC to ban Al Jazeera English or a progressive channel that's critical of climate policy? It would set this very dangerous broad precedent for state censorship. Peter, can I get you on that?

Apparently it was okay to ban American booze on our shelves. What's wrong with banning American channels on our TV sets? Well, I mean, there's a bit of nuance here, right? Okay, so having a cable license, being licensed as a foreign cable channel is much different than booze. One is a flow of information, one is the flow of a product. I mean you can say that information is a product, but I don't know that drinking Jack Daniel's is a risk to your sovereignty one way or the other, right? When you get into that. So in the CRTC, in the broader picture, as Joanna said, it really,

and I mean, I worked there for 10 years, you don't want to get into picking winners and losers, because somebody's winner is somebody else's loser. And you just go down that road and you start deciding what is acceptable speech in terms of that. And we have criminal laws that monitor that and I think those are more than sufficient. The CRTC to get into that, the next thing you know somebody's filing a complaint against CTV Newsnet for saying something that bothers them. But Jeffrey, it's not, I mean, Fox does not have the God-given right to be on our cable systems or to have access to Canadian viewers. It's a privilege for them to do it, right?

Do you make the distinction there? There's enough interest in a variety of sources of information, including Fox News and presumably RT, for some Canadians to want to consume it. Is it up to a government body like the CRTC to say what is acceptable speech and what is not? There's hate laws, and that's one thing. But to be offended by something, as I say, we don't have the right not to be offended.

And I think that part of the digital culture is the fact that it has become so democratic, small d democratic, and not always in a good way. Because it allows for a flourishing of various ideas that maybe a generation ago or maybe even 10 years ago we wouldn't be subjected to. And now I was seeing my students say, oh, well, that bothers me. That offends me. And I said, well, if you're offended, what are you going to do about it?

And the fact is that there is, in the information culture, there's enough information to work against what you find to be offensive. And as a journalist, I would tell my students, you have the obligation to present alternatives. And if you can't do that, as you say, Steve, they're in the wrong business. Well, let me find another scenario for Christopher to chew on, and that is this.

What if enough people who are, for example, cable company consumers, decided to have a protest every weekend down at, and fill in the blank as to your favorite cable company, and tried to pressure them to take Fox out of the offering mix. Would the cable companies be within their appropriate rights in a democratic society to bow to that pressure and remove Fox from the menu of offerings? A Tesla take down, but for Fox News. Well, you couldn't let the market decide, right?

As has been pointed out, by the time the CITC actually got around to formally deauthorizing the distribution of RT, it was kind of moot because the cable providers had already done so. They sort of anticipated the political mood and the public mood. There's nothing to prevent the cable providers from saying, it's not in our financial interest anymore to distribute Fox News. That this thing's kind of a blight on our brand name.

We get rid of it. We don't need the CRTC to tell us what to do. What about that, Joanna? If the cable companies decided to do it, then it's kosher? I think so. We saw something similar happen with Al Jazeera, not Al Jazeera English, which is permitted to air, but Al Jazeera Arabic.

The CRTC decided that it could air only if cable companies monitored it 24-7 to screen for hate speech, glorification of terrorism, anti-Semitism, et cetera. And all of the cable carriers decided this is just not economical for us to keep up with. We're not going to carry it. And that's very philosophically different from a state broadcaster decision. OK, Jeffrey, you having spent time in the States, I want to, OK, let's just admit off the top here.

I'm kind of reaching, but I'm going to give an example. You tell me if it makes any sense at all. Do you remember when this pizza gate thing happened? This guy went a little bonkers, and he thought that Hillary Clinton was running a child abuse ring in the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington, DC. And so he went there, because he heard it on TV, so it had to be true.

He went down to this place with a loaded gun, and he was going to shoot up the place to rescue these kids. And of course, the whole thing was bogus. It was a made up thing from somebody who was trying to create mischief. You know what if some disturbed person hears Jesse saying I want my imperial thirst quenched by invading Canada so okay Fox viewers let's get out there and let's make let's make some trouble for Canadians.

Are we getting closer to a point where you'd be concerned about Fox? I'm always concerned about Fox because it has a lot of influence and that is a problem for those of us who feel it goes too far. I think one of the things that it's important for media organizations, here's looking at you, kid, to determine is what constitutes reliable information? Has the information been verified? How can we help the audience figure out

what constitutes opining or bloviating, and what constitutes reliableining or bloviating, and what constitutes reliable, verified information. I think the obligation on media organizations is to help consumers of information determine what is reliable and what is just dumb. And I think that that's going to put more pressure on organizations like the Toronto Star and TVO and the CBC to calm down for a minute and help the public understand exactly what's going on here.

And I mean a friend of mine who works for the Toronto Star, he and I had the same nightmare scenario. We imagined the 82nd Airborne marching along Bloor Street. Now a year ago you would have thought that was completely crazy. Today maybe not so much. Exactly. So we need to help people understand what is acceptable content, acceptable information, how this can help us as citizens of either the US or especially Canada to make sure that we're not overreacting to ridiculous information. We need to be more measured, I think, in how we respond.

Okay, well that's not how I operate so I'm going to continue to be unmeasured as I look for another what if. Okay, Joanna, take this one on. What if Trump becomes even more explicit in his rhetoric about taking over Canada? I mean he's already said he wants to economically strangle us to becoming the 51st state. What if he starts musing about, as Thomas Jefferson said, it's you know merely for the marching. We're gonna muse about sending some troops up there to take over. Would you be at a point then to start questioning whether Fox has a place in our landscape? So if Fox was acting as a mouthpiece of the Trump administration and repeatedly inciting

violence against Canadians and Canadian democratic institutions, yes, then we've crossed arguably into a red line. I found the example then. All right. Peter, how about you? If Fox crosses that line, is that a bridge too far? Well, if it became a state broadcaster and it was doing that, then I think you could make the case before the CRTC that its cable

license should be removed. Again, you have to remember that unless you get into, you know, shutting down websites, the information is still going to be available in terms of that. But my sense of when you take these steps is more or less shots fired. I think that would be the point at which you do that. And that would be, at that point, you might shut down all American channels, because they would all be carrying Trump's message, some of them supportive, some of them unsupportive, but you would then, you would be in an emergency wartime situation and then you can justify those sorts of actions. But outside of that, I can't see it. Let me do a quick follow-up with you. You said if Fox became a state broadcaster,

you know there are plenty of people who think it already is, don't you? Well, there's people who think the CBC is a state broadcaster too, right? I mean, just because you think something doesn't make it true. Right. So I think we need to be careful about that. We need to be careful about, as Jeffrey was saying, emotional overreaction. You know, like, you know, like minor hockey coaches have 24-hour rules before you get back to them.

We all can fall into the trap of reacting emotionally to something that we find irritating or offensive. Okay. Coach Dornan, what would you, I mean, that example we've been talking about here, that if you started to see Fox parrot and or convey a more militaristic angle on the Trump administration's intentions about Canada. Would you be prepared to ban the channel at that point? Yes. And I remind you that the circumstances under which RT was deauthorized was because there was an armed conflict going on. The war wasn't happening here, but it was happening in Ukraine.

Okay. Sheldon, can I get a four shot for a second? Can you get all four guests? Perfect. That's what I'm looking for. Hands up, anybody who watches the evening primetime lineup on Fox News. Anybody here? Come on, somebody watches it. None of you are going to fess up that you're watching. My grandmother does. Your grandmother? Well, she's the target demographic maybe. None of you watches it, really?

I confess that I've watched it in hotels, but I don target demographic, maybe. None of you watches it, really. I confess that I've watched it in hotels, but I don't subscribe to it. I don't watch it. And when I watch it, it's when I'm traveling and I'm in a hotel, and I go, OK, this should be good. This should be entertaining. This should be funny, just to keep up with it.

But that's it. OK. Who's with me? Should we go down and burr down the White House? What do you think? Sorry, Christopher. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, I don't subscribe to it, but you get to see it anyway. The juicy bits get clipped and then recycled on social media. That is true.

And you see it on MSNBC and CNN. They all love to have fun at each other's expense. OK, thanks for that discussion, everybody. That's boy, we're living in interesting times, aren't we? OK, Peter Menzies, Christopher Dornan, Joanna Barron, Jeffrey Dworkin, thanks a lot for joining us on TVO tonight. Thank you. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Elbows up.