Messages
Message from The President and CEO
Today, Canadians have access to virtually unlimited content, from all around the globe, across multiple platforms.
As the digital space plays an increasingly significant role in the lives of our fellow citizens and with cultural borders fast disappearing, CBC/Radio-Canada is striving hard to remain a leader and creative powerhouse in the media industry. We have become a bona fide digital, multiplatform public service media organization.
Although our methods may have changed, our role as public broadcaster remains the same – to help instill in Canadians a shared national consciousness and culture. We still strongly believe in this mission and it’s what inspires us to unite Canadians around signature events.
In 2016, 32 million Canadians – 92% of the population – followed our coverage of the Rio Olympics, while 11 million watched our broadcast of the memorable The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration on one of our platforms. We also started 2017 off with a bang by bringing together over 6 million Canadians, on TV and the web, for our programming launch to commemorate Canada’s 150th birthday – Countdown to 2017 on CBC and Les meilleurs moments du décompte on Radio-Canada.
Our digital shift allows us to extend our reach even further and position ourselves as the public space for all Canadians. In 2014, we adopted our Strategy 2020 with the goal of doubling our digital reach to 18 million Canadians. We are well on our way to that target, as close to 17 million people now use our digital platforms each month – one million more than last year.
We aspire to position the public broadcaster at the heart of the country’s cultural ecosystem, allowing us to bring Canadian culture to the world and tap the full economic potential of our creative and innovation sectors. It’s what drives the vision for the future that we presented in response to the Government’s consultations on Canadian content in a digital world, where we called for a new, more sustainable funding model for CBC/Radio-Canada. Our detailed proposals can be found online at future.cbc.ca.
We would like to rally Canadians around this ambitious collective goal. Let’s be proud of who we are, of our stories and of our unique perspective; and let’s showcase our distinctiveness by making our public broadcaster the standard-bearer for Canadian culture.
Hubert T. Lacroix
President and CEO
