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Path: utzoo!utcsri!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!acton
From: acton@ubc-cs.UUCP (Donald Acton)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: (The CBC) Re: Nationalization/Crown Corps.
Message-ID: <1162@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Jul-85 23:54:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.1162
Posted: Sun Jul 14 23:54:16 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Jul-85 03:10:46 EDT
References: <300@looking.UUCP> <3283@garfield.UUCP>
Reply-To: acton@ubc-cs.UUCP (Donald Acton)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 85
Summary: 

In article <3283@garfield.UUCP> lionel@garfield.UUCP (Lionel H. Moser) writes:
>1) The CBC provides a service NOT provided by private industry. That is
>   precisely why it *is* provided by government.

I have a hard time thinking of any service provided by the CBC that is 
not provided by private industry especially a service that costs us 
in excess of 800,000,000 tax dollars a year. Even if the service weren't
provided by private industry that alone does not provide justification 
for the government becoming involved. Just because private industry
doesn't keep our shelves stocked with buggy whips doesn't mean the 
government should. I consider the CBC to be the broadcasting equivalent
of buggy whip manufacturers, they are providing a service at great expense
that very few people want. 

>   Nobody says that YOU
>   have to listen to CBC. But it's there, and WE, as society, have
>   decided to pay for it. 

It is quite obvious from market surveys that it is indeed the case that
people do not tune their radios to the CBC. Are you sure we have been 
asked if we wanted to pay for the CBC?  Maybe it is like the current
issue of separate school financing in Ontario. All parties support the
extending of separate school funding but no one has ever consulted with
the electorate to see if that is what they want. (It isn't exactly obvious
that it is.)

In reading comments on the legislation that resulted in the CBC I get
the impression that the CBC was, for the most part, suppose to be
funded through private means. That is hardly the situation today and
that alone should cause one to question the need for keeping the CBC.
If society has in the past actually decided to fund the CBC then surely 
it also has the right to withdraw that funding. 

>
>2) Just because YOU don't like something doesn't mean it's moral
>   (moral?) to allow you to NOT pay for it.

The question is really one of whether or not enough people use the 
service known as the CBC to justify its continued funding by the 
taxpayer. Government programs and ventures should not be considered 
sacrosanct as they currently seem to be. (Or as Brian would say a 
"sacred trust.") If the CBC has outlived its usefulness, and I believe
it has, then be gone with it. There was howling when the CBC was created
so a little noise shouldn't stop society from withdrawing its funding now.

> Do you want out of road
>   taxation? What about railroad wheat cars? What about national
>   defense? Where do you draw the line? 

Unfortunately our tax returns don't have little boxes we can mark to
instruct the government on how to spend our individual tax dollars. 
We draw the line by  trying to inform the government of the spending 
priorities we would like it to adopt. (It seems that most of the time 
government doesn't listen very well, sort of like students I guess.)
Hopefully the government would then use its (un?)limited tax dollars 
to fund partly or fully the programs we consider the most important.
With a deficit of 35 billion dollars and plenty of unemployment I don't
consider the funding of the CBC to have a very high priority. 

>   What is this, the "me generation" hotline? Sell the crown corps,
>everybody fend for him/her-self. Scrap anything provided by government
>in the national interest. If it doesn't make money, ditch it. If it
>does make money, give it away to the friends of the politicians.
>

For the first time in many years the people of Canada are questioning 
how much the government should be involved in their day to day lives.
An attempt is being made to determine the essential areas of government 
involvement and to get the government out of those areas that aren't 
essential. I don't know of anybody advocating that "anything  provided
by the government in the national interest should be scrapped." You
probably just have a different idea of what the national interest is. 
My definition of the national interest doesn't include funding the 
CBC or for that matter most crown corporations(CCs). How selling CCs
translates into every person for themselves I don't know. The selling 
of a CC doesn't result in that service not being provided, although
the delivery of it might change. If a CC doesn't make money then why 
do we have it and if it does make money then why do we need it?  Government
wasn't created to provide funds to allow bankrupt companies to keep operating
or to become a giant multi-national. 

I personally am a member of the Pepsi generation but I can't stand it 
or Coke (new or old).


Donald Acton