If anything, this is the sort of service that’s most important for the CBC to be maintaining, IMO.
Segal, a member of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs committee and chair of its special Committee on Anti-Terrorism, says the busting down of RCI to an Internet radio station will block RCI from millions of people living under repressive regimes.
“In those parts of the world where the Internet is blocked, such as the People’s Republic of China, Iran and North Korea, there is no way for RCI’s messages of freedom and opportunity to get there,” he told the Senate. “I blame the board of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and its senior management, who cut far away from home rather than cutting here, because it was more convenient for them to do so.”
CBC is slashing 80 per cent of Radio Canada International’s budget, cutting dozens of full- and part-time jobs, eliminating much original programming and confining the 67-year-old Voice of Canada broadcast to a website.
In many developing nations, access to the Internet is either limited or non-existent, with millions of people relying solely on radio for national and international news and information.
