The CBC's misguided rollercoaster of madness into their nadir
The CBC denies giving a platform to both sides of the annexation debate—while doing exactly that
The nation once again held its breath as we collectively prepared to take more psychic damage regarding discussion of the “51st state.”
On Sunday, Feb. 23, CBC aired a controversial episode of Cross Country Checkup, titled “51st State: A Cross-Border Conversation” with US-based broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR)’s The Middle.
The show comes in the wake of a time where 27 per cent of Canadians see the United States see the US as an enemy nation, according to a Leger Poll conducted between Feb.14 and Feb.17, with a sample size of 1,500 Canadians. This means more than a quarter of Canadians view the US as an enemy state.
Troubling stuff. Even more unsettling, however, was that the Canadian broadcaster paid through the use of Canadian tax dollars was asked not to engage in this conversation, but went ahead anyway with host Ian Hanomansing and NPR co-host Jeremy Hobson, stubbornly dismissing the naysayers as overly hysterical on social media platforms like X and Blue Sky.
Well, even though I am not a newscaster, I have breaking news for Hanomansing and Hobson: talking about hypothetical annexation live on-air is a bad idea.
For more than a week, the Canadian public was gaslit by Hanomansing with assurances that the public broadcaster was taking precautions to handle the matter with the utmost care.
Except, it wasn’t. Kevin O’Leary, the most prominent Canadian arguing favourably for ‘annexation’ talks instead was given air-time to rhetorically call the Canadian dollar (CAD), Trudeau “pesos,” argue for more free-trade (implicitly endorsing deregulation), and then go on to suggest Canada should adopt a European model of transportation and access between countries when trust between nations is at the lowest it’s been post-World War II in the wake of Trump’s tariffs. This was met with minimal pushback by Hanomansing, who claims he didn’t have enough time to rebuff O’Leary’s rhetoric and encouraged the public to do their own fact-checking at the end; because when calls to “Defund the CBC” are being chanted across the nation, it’s important to remind the public how bad you are at being an actual journalist.
So while Hanomansing and Hobson contest that it was simply social media bluster telling them this was a bad idea, the public’s consternation was entirely justified as sound bites from the politically uneducated made mention of improbable and implausible claims such as Ontarians gaining easy access to employment in the city of Buffalo, an Albertan paying more than 50 per cent of their wages in taxation and suggesting Canada wasn’t free because he couldn’t get a family doctor for his kids (healthcare is a provincial concern, not a federal issue), among clips of Americans saying that they should free Canada from communism.
Of course, there were the sensible that called in. One caller rightly mentioned that any conversation about annexation without speaking of how it violates international law is invalid; a trans woman mentioned how her life would be under threat and would have to flee given the forceful Anti-LGBT rhetoric and policies the Trump administration has engaged in; and Americans called in to soothe their neighbours by assuring they would not engage in warfare with their Canadian counterparts at the behest of Trump.
But that isn’t the point. The problem wasn’t that we were going to uncover some secret truth that we secretly wanted the US to rule over us. It’s that the CBC understands the importance of representation and diverse voices to help normative discourse, but doesn’t understand talking about a hypothetical annexation does in fact normalize it by giving it oxygen.
For some reason, the idea popularized by Noam Chomsky of “Manufactured Consent,” completely eludes our Canadian national broadcaster. If we take it a step further and look at it through a structural analysis, the Marxist theory of utterances, completely validates concerns raised by the Canadian public. Linguist Valentin Voloshinov, argues that:
“Language, in the process of its practical implementation, is inseparable from its ideological or behavioral impletion[sic]. Here, too, an orientation of an entirely special kind-one unaffected by the aims of the speaker's consciousness-is required if language is to be abstractly segregated from its ideological or behavioral impletion[sic].”
- Marxism and the Philosophy of Language
For those unfamiliar with academic theory, this means words precede action. It’s why Hate-Speech is rightfully not allowed in normal society — why certain ideologies must simply not be entertained.
The fact that the CBC heard us, but chose not to listen, is an indictment in its mission to the public interest. In times of rising extremism and disinformation, the CBC must do better. The public deserves nothing less.