Mark Carney’s first federal budget gives the CBC another $300 million over two years. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne tabled the budget Thursday, saying the extra CBC money will “strengthen its capacity to meet the evolving needs of Canadians.” The broadcaster already receives roughly $1.4 billion, according to Kris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

On Friday’s Rebel Roundtable livestream, co-host Drea Humphrey asked Kris to walk viewers through the numbers. Kris said the new money is going to a broadcaster hardly anyone is watching.

“I need to always remind people that CBC’s viewership ratings are like rounding errors," she said. 

Kris said even the CBC’s main network does not break four per cent of viewers, and that its news channel draws about two per cent.

The budget also allocates $501 million for all other media, going to the roughly 95% of Canadian media that now takes money from Ottawa.

Tamara Lich, asked for her reaction, did not mince words.

“It’s funding propaganda, and there’s really, in my opinion, no other way to say it," she said. "You cannot pay media to do their job. The government cannot subsidize media.”

Co-host Tamara Lich said to watch how the mainstream media frames the budget and “where their paycheque is coming from.”

Kris said her objection has nothing to do with any one outlet or party, and that it would hold even if a broadcaster she admired were on the air.

“Even if the late great… Rex Murphy were hosting the CBC News … would I personally enjoy watching that a little more? Yeah, probably," she said. "Should it get one nickel of funding from government? Absolutely not.”

Kris said a free press is free from government control, influence and funding.

“You cannot hold the powerful government to account if you’re counting on that powerful government for your paycheque. Period."

Kris said the spending makes even less sense given Ottawa’s debt of $1.3 trillion, adding that interest on the debt costs taxpayers about a billion dollars a week.

“That is the equivalent, my friends, of building a brand new hospital every Saturday... Tear it down over and over and over every Saturday night all year," she said. "That’s what we’re wasting on interest. And yet we’re going to give the media more money.”

Kris noted that a handful of independent outlets, including Blacklock’s, Rebel News, Juno News and Canada Land, do not take government money, but said the group is dwindling.