Open letter to CBC

The following letter was sent to the CBC as well as ourselves.  We contacted the author and received permission to post it here.
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I respectfully request the ombudsman to investigate and correct several recent reckless examples of CBC's left-wing bias.

Recently, sensationalistic CBC exposés were broadcasted about Stephen Harper's supposed war on science. On Friday, CBC.ca ran a story under the headline "Research Cutbacks by Government Alarm Scientists"; an accompanying Fifth Estate documentary  --  titled "The Silence of the Labs"  was also released.

Both pieces tell harrowing tales of the "more than 2,000 scientists, and hundreds of programs" terminated under the Tories. The country's science leaders are deeply "concerned" says the CBC, "that Canadians will suffer if their elected leaders have to make policy decisions without the benefit of independent, fact-based science."

Silence of the Labs certainly had no shortage of factless partisan opinion: the Conservatives were said to be unleashing "a bitter conflict between ideology and knowledge" and a "sacrifice of scientific knowledge on the alter of political expediency" spawned from their "obsessive political focus on the economy" at the expense of all things clean and clever. (It should go without saying that these words were spoken amid lots of scary music and footage of lights being turned off.)

The CBC's is very selectives with facts. Between 2006 and 2011, the Harper administration increased federal funding for science and technology every year  --  a $9 billion spike, according to the "Investing in World-Class Research and Innovation" chapter of Minister Flaherty's 2013 budget. Even following a slight dip post-2011, overall annual funding still remain billions higher than in the Liberal years, and as Minister Rempel reminded a Twitter troll the other day, the Conservatives are still funnelling tonnes of tax dollars to a vast assortment of science-themed bureaucracies across the land, many of which they themselves founded.

Canada likewise ranks near the top of the G7 on a host of OCED science-funding related indicators, including percentage of gross domestic expenditures on research and development financed by government (third) and percentage performed by public universities (first). Why didn't the CBC mention this?

Indeed, if anything, the government is simply struggling to match supply with demand in a country's that's among the most science-obsessed on earth. As Maclean's science blogger Julia Belluz noted in an even-handed column on the "Scientists Vs. Harper" controversy a couple years ago, one of the underlying roots of this whole conflict is that "there are now more scientists working in Canada -- a 23 per cent increase between 2002 and 2007 -- so competition for dollars is now more intense." Why didn't the CBC mention this?

Many facts are deliberately absent from the CBC's coverage, which exclusively cherry-picks its sources.

Do Prime Minister Harper's science priorities reflect the best interests of Canada? It's certainly a question worth asking, but you won't find the answer by interviewing the folks guaranteed to have the most biased perspective: laid-off scientists and the left-wing union that represents them. Though that's the CBC's preferred approach.  Why didn't the biased CBC mention this? The CBC attacks a government for having a 'war on facts', while ironically and hypocritically waging its own very biased, selective same 'war on facts'.

I want the CBC to investigate, and try publishing some news that DEOSN'T attack the Conservatives and capitalism for once. I request an investigation and reply. Untruthful stories like this is precisely why the CBC's market share remains abysmal, especially in regard to news. You've printed lies. 

Please reply.

Jon M