During the election campaign, the Liberals pledged a $150 million annual funding increase for the CBC. However, the recently tabled spending plan only raises the broadcaster's budget by $42 million to $1.43 billion. 

Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, responsible for the CBC, did not comment on the spending plan when questioned on Wednesday, according to Global News.

A 2024 Canadian Heritage report advocated for more CBC funding, even after controversial executive bonuses followed mass layoffs. The broadcaster's main income, a parliamentary grant, has grown from $1 billion to $1.4 billion annually in the last decade.

In a February 29, 2024 Main Estimates, former heritage minister Pascale St-Onge raised CBC subsidies by $96.1 million to a record $1.38 billion. The Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC) estimates the broadcaster has cost taxpayers $80 billion since 1937.

Before Tuesday, Canada funded the CBC at $33 per person per year. "We need to aim closer to the middle ground, which is $62 per year per person," St-Onge said February 20.

Broadcaster executives earlier testified that another half billion in subsidies should suffice, according to Blacklock's. "We need in the $400 million to $500 million range," CEO Catherine Tait told the Commons heritage committee at a November 25 hearing. 

"All Canadian media organizations face serious challenges," she said. About 450 newspapers have gone out of business since 2009, according to government data. 

Rival broadcasters cut staff and programming costs to stay afloat, with the CBC cutting at least 346 jobs last year. 

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has several times proposed to cut CBC subsidies. Canadian Heritage ignored those calls, and later stacked an advisory panel with seven beneficiaries of federal funding to justify a bolstered mandate.

A 2017 Conservative bill to privatize the state broadcaster within three years failed in a 260-6 vote. Though the majority of Conservative MPs rejected the motion, its tenets became Conservative policy in 2020.

Poilievre maintains those sentiments by supporting cuts to English-language TV programming. "The CBC frankly is a biased propaganda arm of the Liberal Party," he told reporters in 2023.

"We need a neutral and free media, not a propaganda arm for the Liberal Party. When I am Prime Minister, we are going to have a free press where everyday Canadians decide what they think rather than having Liberal propaganda jammed down their throats."