Miranda Sellick
At the National Citizens Inquiry in Ottawa this week, Rodney Palmer testified to the panel that it came as no surprise to him when, in mid-April, Elon Musk, through Twitter, labeled the CBC as government-funded media.
The CBC threw an immediate hissy-fit and paused its Twitter account. Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon publicly disagreed with Musk. But, Says Palmer, “Musk had already done it for the BBC. He’d already done it for National Public Radio. And the CBC is government-funded media. It receives its funding from the government. So I wasn’t that surprised by it.”
Palmer would know government-funded media if he saw it. He worked for 20 years as a general assignment reporter for the Globe and Mail, as a daily news reporter at the Vancouver Sun, as a producer and investigative reporter for the CBC from 1996 to 2004, bureau chief for CTV News in India, Israel, and most recently China at the time of the SARS pandemic.
In his defense of CBC’s independence, Fenlon wrote, “We are beholden to no one; we report without fear or favor. We act only in the public interest.” But for Palmer, this was pure fallacy. “I knew all of these to be false. When I read it, I was quite concerned about this,” Palmer told the NCI. In previous testimony to the NCI, Palmer spent an hour and a half telling panelists why he believes that the CBC has become a government propaganda machine.
The most obvious and easy to follow is the use of “science specialists” on air. Repeatedly, Palmer told the NCI the CBC has used a rotating group of “experts” to cajole, convince and assure Canadians of the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines. But none of them are independent scientists, according to Palmer. The leader of the CBC scientist coven is Timothy Caulfield. Caulfield is a Canadian Research Chair in Law and Public Policy at the University of Alberta. The Canadian government pays for these research chair positions across the country. Moreover, on April 2, 2020, Caulfield received $380,000 from the Governments of Alberta and Canada to pursue research into misinformation around cures for COVID-19. “Well, two weeks into an emergency, there is no misinformation. There is only information that scientists are looking for; any information they can get worldwide. But Mr. Caulfield, a law professor, was going to focus on misinformation about cures and treatments. And he took $380,000 from the government to do it. And this is how he did it. He went on the CBC and talked about the government policy, whatever the government wanted to say.”
About one year later, in April 2021, Caulfield upped the ante. He helped to form an organization of actual scientists called Science Up First, and they had a foundational grant of $1.75 million from the Federal government’s Immunization Partnership Fund, whose mandate says that it is important that as many Canadians as possible get vaccinated against COVID-19. Caulfield was then interviewed on CBC to debunk the idea of boosting one’s immune system or using ivermectin to treat COVID-19.
Other scientists, such as Dr. Isaac Bogoch and Tara Moriarty, both at the University of Toronto, both with links to Science Up First, appeared on the CBC to push the safe and effective vaccine narrative. In fact, Moriarty appeared on Dr. Bryan Goldman’s show White Coat, Black Art as recently as May 2023, urging people to get vaccinated and wear masks. A researcher called Samantha Yammine was featured on a segment about her fear of needles; Anthony Morgan has been appointed as the new host of The Nature of Things, Canada’s leading science show; both are on the executive of Science Up First, an organization paid for by the Trudeau government. “Science up first has its prime directive to stop the spread of misinformation. What is misinformation? And who decides?” asks Palmer. “Apparently, it’s the Trudeau Government that pays them. Otherwise, why would they pay them? So, when Brodie Fenlon says the government has no or zero involvement in the editorial content of journalism, that’s not true.”
Palmer asserts that the CBC is all about misleading the public. “It’s not about news gathering or the dissemination of truth. Brodie Fenlon oversaw the betrayal of the audience, the betrayal of Canadians, a betrayal of every Canadian who listened to an expert on the CBC and thought they were an expert, not a spokesperson for the Trudeau Government.”
Palmer went on to warn listeners about the plans of the Liberal Party if re-elected. Posted on the Liberal Party website last week was the following: A re-elected Liberal government will require Canadian travelers on interprovincial trains, commercial flights and cruise ships, and other federally regulated vessels to be vaccinated for COVID. As well, a re-elected Liberal government will ensure vaccination across the federal public service.
“We know now the thing doesn’t work,” says Palmer. Government websites “show that people are dying from it. Thousands of people are permanently injured from it. A re-elected Liberal government will ensure you’re vaccinated or fired according to this platform.” And the Liberal platform says you must take more or lose your job. The CBC is the government’s way of convincing us to do that.
Twitter eventually removed the Government-funded media tags from all state broadcasters after pressure from the Global Task Force for Public Media, chaired by the one and only Catherine Tait from Canada’s CBC.
What to do with the CBC? Palmer is nervous about defunding the CBC. “I think it’s foundational to our democracy. Without journalism, we have no democracy because democracy requires the transparent distribution of facts on a daily basis. And from those same facts, we all make our opinions. And then, in an ideal situation, in a democracy, the majority of the opinions are where the decisions are made. But how can we possibly form an opinion when the facts are fake? When we don’t agree on what’s true, we can’t possibly agree on what’s right.”
Palmer recommends the dismissal of senior management at the broadcaster, as well as anyone proven to have participated in the propaganda disguised as a journalism initiative. “I recommend investigating who in the CBC participated in misleading Canadians by routinely suppressing the identity of government spokespeople for the purpose of promoting ineffective and potentially harmful experimental vaccines during the COVID emergency,” says Palmer. “The CBC is government-funded news; we know that. And Twitter was right because they’re using government-funded experts disguising them as independent, to give us government loyal messaging.”
Post-testimony Q&A session with the panel featuring Rodney Palmer:
Amy Mek
We have the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act. Traitor Homobama essentially legalized goverment sponsored propaganda and lies in 2012. That is why most smart people I know threw away their television programming device, and canceled their cable and newspaper subscriptions. Based upon the turnout in the Canadian Trucker protests, many people are fed up being spoonfed lies by marxist-satanist clownheads. Glad to see it. All legacy media is corrupt. Thank God for good websites, like RAIR and others for exposing liars!
Thank you!! I have been saying for some time that the CBC was a propaganda machine. Every time I pointed out misinformation they shilled, I was mocked, degraded, insulted, ridiculed. I’ve been speaking against everything going on since before March 13, 2020 and this is the worst “told you so” ever. 🥺 so many people are devastated financially, emotionally and physically by the last three years and the media was in cahoots with the governments world wide. They all need to face judgment for what they did to us.