Macleans has an interview with culture minister Bev Oda in which she’s profiled as a moderate and even the calming force that kept Prime Minister Harper from making the CBC a big issue in the last federal election campaign.

Oda’s reluctance to get embroiled in the summer scheduling furor is in line with her cautious approach so far when it comes to the CBC.
    Many had expected her to announce a sweeping rethink of CBC’s mandate at the recent Banff World Television Festival. But she put off that review, instead ordering a six-month Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission study into how new technology is changing broadcasting.
    Inside the CBC, the delay was greeted with sighs of relief, and Oda, despite her private-sector broadcasting background, began to be viewed by some CBC insiders as a benign figure — even a buffer against those Tories who are instinctively hostile toward Canada’s biggest state-owned cultural institution.
    But in an interview with Maclean’s, Oda left little doubt that she suspects the CBC’s English TV service may have lost touch with what Canadians want it to be. Although she declined to comment specifically on Mansbridge’s news taking a back seat to reality TV schlock, Oda did express skepticism about the CBC trying to follow the lead of profit-seeking networks. “If the CBC is going to provide service that’s very similar to the commercial broadcasters, if they are providing programs that are very similar, people are going to ask the question, ‘Why the use of public funds to deliver those services and programs?’ ” she said. “It’s a natural and very valid question to ask.”

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