The CBC Should Restore Radio Canada International To Its Former Glory – Starting With Shortwave Radio

It’s been just over 10 years since the iconic shortwave transmitters that once dominated the horizon near Sackville, New Brunswick were demolished, truly symbolizing the end of Radio Canada International on shortwave radio.

Radio Canada International began broadcasting on shortwave in 1945, and was known as the CBC International Service until 1970 when it became the name we all know today, Radio Canada International (RCI).

Today, RCI is a shell of its former self. It’s hard to even call it an international service these days as, since 2021, it’s been geared towards immigrant communities within Canada and simply takes articles from the main CBC/Radio-Canada website and translates them into five different languages – Arabic, Mandarin, Punjabi, Spanish and Tagalog. Oh, and if you’re wondering, there is no English or French service as they closed both in 2021 after changes in the same year reduced RCI staff from an already measly 20 to just 9. This is a far cry from 1990 when RCI employed 200 people.

The downfall of RCI really began in 1991 though, when cuts brought an end to broadcasts in 7 of 14 languages and nearly ended the service altogether. The languages to go were Czech, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese and Slovak. Portuguese broadcasts returned in 2004. These cuts in 1991 also resulted in the end of all original English and French programming and had RCI resorting to using programming from the domestic CBC Radio One network.

The Canadian government stepped in and placed RCI under the control of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and it was decided that the government would fund the service by providing it a yearly grant for a period of five years. It wasn’t long before some original programming returned to RCI, including “Spectrum” and “Les Actualités Canadiennes” in August of 1991, which featured events and opinions from across Canada. By March 28th, 1993, a full schedule of original programming returned alongside some CBC Radio One shows such as the very popular As It Happens.

In December of 1995, RCI once again faced closure as the CBC and Department of Foreign Affairs announced that they were not going to fund it anymore, saying that RCI would be shut down on March 31st, 1996 unless a new source of funding was found. The result of this announcement was a worldwide campaign that saw thousands of letters sent to the Prime Minister and his cabinet members from people who listened to RCI on their shortwave radios from every corner of the world. Support also came from domestic broadcasters in Canada across the public, private and print sectors; RCI even saw support from competitors like the BBC World Service. This campaign was a success, and funding for RCI was provided by a combination of the CBC, Canadian International Development Agency, Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of Canadian Heritage and the Department of Defence. The Deputy Prime Minister at the time, Sheila Copps, proclaimed that “Canada’s voice to the world must not die”.

This win was short-lived, however. In 1996 RCI was facing closure for a third time, as the CBC again announced in December that they would stop funding RCI and that the service would shut down on March 31st, 1997. Fortunately, on December 12th, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lloyd Axworthy, announced in the House of Commons that the government would “be able to provide ongoing funding for RCI”. In 1997 the Department of Canadian Heritage announced annual funding of $15.52 million to RCI.

Fast forward to 2009, and another language service comes to an end as the Ukrainian service was broadcast for the last time. The final blow to RCI came in 2012, when the Conservative government under Stephen Harper announced a 10%, or $115 million cut to the CBC, which in turn cut 80% of RCI’s funding, reducing their budget from $12.3 million to just $2.3 million and resulting in the closure of RCI’s newsroom and shortwave service after 67 years.

Providing a shortwave service actually used to be required of the CBC in the Broadcasting Act of 1991 until the 2012 cuts. At that time, then Minister of Canadian Heritage James Moore undemocratically and unceremoniously recommended a change to the 2003 Order in Council that mandated the CBC “to provide that (international) service through shortwave, as well as through other means of distribution, as appropriate”. At Moore’s behest, this was changed to “to provide that (international) service through the Internet and, as appropriate, through other means of distribution”.

The act does still state in section 46, subsection 2 that the CBC must “provide an international service that includes the creation, production and presentation of programming intended for audiences outside of Canada and provided in English, French and any other language deemed appropriate”.

Well, precisely none of this is happening anymore. There is no service targeted towards an international audience, and there is no creation of any content as it all comes from the main CBC/Radio-Canada website. Additionally, as I explained earlier, there isn’t an English or a French service. Even if they were still writing articles targeted at an international audience, the only people who would be able to read them are people in countries with easily accessible and unrestricted internet connections. An international service without shortwave radio completely isolates what should be the main target audience, citizens of authoritarian and unfriendly nations.

In short, the CBC is breaking the law with their current setup of Radio Canada International and has gone completely unpunished for it.

With global peace falling under threat more and more each day, what with the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and incredibly tense relations between China and pretty much the rest of the Western world and then some, getting our message out to the world is becoming just as important as it was during the Cold War when shortwave service peaked across the world. Canada should be front and centre in spreading a message of peace, democracy, diplomacy and human rights.

We should be right there to provide factual news and other information to the citizens of nations like China, Iran, Russia and North Korea where freedom of the press is non-existent and access to outside information is shoddy at best and next to impossible at worst. I use these countries as examples because I consider them to be the biggest adversaries to Canada and our allies. While these countries lack free press, they do not lack government-controlled press, and three of the four countries continue to broadcast their state propaganda to us seven days a week via shortwave. Russia is the only of these four to not have a shortwave service anymore (they do still have an international radio service which can easily be listened to online).

However, our enemies aren’t the only ones to still maintain a shortwave service. To name just a few, the USA, UK, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Germany continue to broadcast on shortwave radio daily. The BBC World Service even brought back shortwave service to Russia and Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022. Why is it that the CBC and the Canadian government were so ignorant of the value of a shortwave service while some of our biggest allies and enemies were not? Even if the services of some of these countries aren’t as widespread or comprehensive as they once were, they can still restart broadcasts to anywhere in the world if necessary.

A return of shortwave broadcasts would also benefit Canadian citizens, both abroad and at home. In fact, the perk of RCI to Canadians abroad was a selling point in some old advertisements for Radio Canada International. Now obviously, these days most Canadians probably won’t find themselves in a country without internet access, but what about Canadian aid workers, the Canadian Armed Forces or even Canadians who may be in a country that unexpectedly experiences an invasion or a natural disaster of some kind? The Hamas invasion of Israel or the 2011 Japanese earthquake/tsunami come to mind. All of these people could gain greatly from reliable shortwave broadcasts that would be geared specifically towards them in a future hypothetical crisis scenario.

The use of shortwave radio by Canada would not just benefit people outside of our borders, it would also be very helpful to thousands of Canadians at home. In addition to the international shortwave service, the 2012 budget cuts ended the shortwave broadcast of CBC North to northern Quebec which provided radio service to isolated communities where internet service may be spotty or completely unavailable. The CBC did attempt to resolve this issue by applying for licenses for several low-power FM rebroadcasters in Northern Quebec, but obviously, they don’t have nearly the coverage that the shortwave broadcast had and installing enough FM rebroadcasters to serve everybody would be impossible.

Countless communities remain without a CBC rebroadcaster, not just in Northern Quebec, but also in Labrador and the Territories where internet access can be iffy. Shortwave broadcasts would fix this problem overnight as they would reach every square inch of the isolated Canadian North that over 100,000 people call home. This is simply a much better solution than the current practice of constructing FM transmitters in as many communities as possible.

The CBC’s $1.1 billion budget in 2012 was to be cut by $115 million over 3 years, and in 2015 the CBC received “just” $1.036 billion which understandably had them cutting some corners. However, the budget of the CBC for 2024-25 is expected to be $1.38 billion, albeit with millions of dollars continuing to go to CBC executives while journalists get laid off. Canada and the world are still left with a useless, sorry excuse of an international service even though the CBC is receiving more money now than they did in 2012 before the cuts.

If the Prime Minister and his government really cared about the CBC providing service to rural Canadians (they don’t) and if they really cared about promoting human rights, free press, democracy and diplomacy and Canada’s voice to the world (they don’t) then they would tell the CBC leadership to shape up, stop giving buckets of cash to themselves and spend money to restore its shortwave/international service to its former glory. Or better yet, completely separate RCI from the CBC’s incompetent shadow and directly fund it.

Canada could restart shortwave broadcasts tomorrow if the CBC or the Canadian government wanted to. We could do this by leasing time from transmitters outside of Canada for an hour or two a day, much like Radio Prague and Radio Slovakia do. It would be far better than nothing and who knows, maybe one day we could reconstruct our own transmitters to broadcast the voice of Canada to the world, straight from the source like the good ole days.