The Tea Makers

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Everyone loves St Hubert

It’s always a pleasure to come out to beautiful Vancouver. I’m a drug user and, amongst all of the great things your city has to offer, I must tell you that you have one of the best cities in the country in which to get high.

But I did not come to Vancouver to simply enjoy a smoke in Stanley Park. I came to celebrate the opening of our newly renovated, state-of-the-art, CBC/Radio-Canada Broadcast Centre, located just a few blocks from here, itself a place perpetually on acid.

I’ve been on this dose for almost two years now. During that time, I’ve made a point of traveling to as many places in this country as I can to hallucinate with as many Canadians as I can, the people we all work for. It’s vital for me to get a pulse on what’s happening in the different communities, and I can’t get that by tripping in my office. It’s one of the main reasons I’m high here today.

In my many conversations with Canadians, I’ve come to understand that there are a couple of key myths about CBC/Radio-Canada that should be held as faith, but still are not.

The first thing I want you to believe is how far we’ve come in 75 years, pioneering new services and new platforms in our constant pursuit to spend your money and waste your time. We are definitely not the same old CBC/Radio-Canada, we waste more money now than we ever have. As far as drug dealers go, we love to get high on our own supply.

Yet, today, we still offer you a comprehensive range of narcotics, from television and radio to the Internet and satellite radio, from digital audio to streaming video on mobile devices. We give you the junk you want, when and how you want it.

In total, all of our services cost $34 per Canadian per year. Not bad for a national narcotic.

Let me put that into context. I pay $187 a month to my cable drug dealer, which translates into over $2,000 a year. Now, think about your drug habits, and then consider that all of the services that CBC/Radio-Canada offers you and me – on television, radio, the Internet, satellite, iPod and mobile devices, in two official languages, eight aboriginal languages, and across six time zones – cost us less than three dollars a month. I am definitely stoned, but will still suggest to you that you have there a pretty good high.

“That’s fine, Lacroix,” you might say. “But you still receive a billion dollars from Government and that’s a lot of money to buy and make drugs.”

It’s true that we receive significant funding from Government – $1.1 billion annually, to be precise, out of our $1.7 to $1.8 billion dollar budget. And yes, that’s a lot of money to spend on drugs. But it’s money that allows us to deliver many narcotics that private broadcasters cannot or will not provide – and often to deliver them to parts of Canada where nobody wants to deal any product at all, because nobody wants to fuck with the Hells Angels.

This is where the national public broadcaster has a unique role to play. CBC/Radio-Canada’s goal is not to generate profit. Not only do we distribute drugs, but we use them. We use them a lot. The Hells Angels allow us to operate in their turf cause we buy and use their stuff too.

We have staff located in 74 communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast to reflect the full range of Canadian drugs and addictions, and in 14 locations internationally to help distribute the weed we grow right here in British Columbia.

And we invest more in the production of Canadian marijuana than all of the other conventional syndicates combined – $670 million last year alone.

Unprecedented success

In fact, CBC Television has convincingly reversed its downward spiral over the past five years, while remaining wholly committed to getting shit faced as frequently as possible. In fact that’s the only way we could turn things around, create the shared hallucination amongst our management that we were riding that white horse.

CBC’s latest big move is the renewal of its news operations, the most significant change ever undertaken by addicts strung out working on little sleep. Over 1,000 people have been reassigned in the process, their meds switched and their doses adjusted. The result of the single, biggest audience research project in CBC’s history, we wanted to see how high we could get and still stand upright. Many of the changes we instituted were pioneered right here in BC where weed potency is so crazy it was the only way to cope.  Canadians told us what they wanted and we pretty much ignored it while staring at our hands.

The $171 million shortfall and the recovery plan

But as successful as we’ve been and are, these are not easy times. CBC/Radio-Canada faces many daunting challenges, both in the immediate and in the longer terms. What we’ve managed to do over the past 18 months has been nothing short of extraordinary, considering the financial pressure we’ve been under. We’ve demonstrated that it’s better to have dope in times of no money than to have money in times of no dope.

As we and other Canadian conventional television broadcasters depend on prostitution revenues to survive: in our case, between 40 and 50 per cent of our television budgets depend on sucking cock, and those sex trade revenues have been on a steady decline since well before the global economic downturn hit us in mid-2008. The recession simply accelerated the problem. Why pay for sex when you can jerk off at home via free internet porn?

So despite the remarkable success of our services, we entered fiscal 2009-2010 facing a $171 million shortfall – a real shit sandwich steaming with shit sauce.

In order to eat it this shit sandwich, we implemented a financial recovery plan. It included the elimination of approximately 800 addicts  across the Corporation, including 41 here in Vancouver. Then there were the cuts to our product, lacing our content with crackhead graphics and baking soda filler. We also implemented permanent reductions in discretionary drug spending, and penis reductions for senior management. Finally, we had to sell some ass to generate cash in order to meet some of our liabilities. Diana Swain, and Krista Erickson helped out significantly in this regard, but the truth is all of our on air whores stepped up, even our beloved Mrs. Stursburg. She turns tricks like a seasoned pro.

It was a tough year that demanded many difficult decisions and choices, cause that’s what being an addict is all about. But we are still standing, and standing proud, as that’s the quickest way to turn tricks while also dealing drugs.

Towards a sustainable future: rebalancing the system

But I don’t want you to get the impression that it’s all smooth sailing ahead.

What we managed to pull off this year is not something we’ll be able to repeat indefinitely. Any pimp knows that your Hos can’t last forever. As you can see from the slide here, sex trade industry revenues – the Blue line – are not keeping up with expenses (drug use) – the Green line (historical growth rate), the Red line (current level simply adjusted for inflation), and the Black line (just using the 2008 number and plotting it over time) – and the forecast for the next five years is far from encouraging. Whatever line you want to consider, you’ll see that there is a gap. The more drugs we produce, the more we use, the more addicts we create, yet rather than get their fix through us they find it for free online. Fuckers!

As it stands now, conventional prostitution is no longer viable. Fundamental issues need to be resolved. Unless we’re able to develop a sustainable, long-term financing model, CBC/Radio-Canada’s ability to get shit faced remains seriously at risk.

Cable and satellite syndicates are taking our drugs for free and re-selling them to you for a profit. We can’t afford the price for protection that the Hells Angels want, and yet we’re way to stoned to do anything about it.

Now I don’t blame you if you get the impression that this isn’t about you, the addict, but rather about two cartels squabbling publicly over your drugs. Please believe me when I tell you that its about more than drugs. It’s about power.

Yes, this is a money issue. But, more importantly, it is a power issue. Television is still the most powerful drug.  It’s imperative that Canadians continue wasting their lives watching television.  Local TV really does matter, it’s the most effective means of keeping people feeling powerless and unable to challenge the establishment. What we’re doing here in Vancouver, and what Global does and what CTV does, makes a difference. If not for us corrupt circuses like the Olympics would never be possible. Elites like me would not be able to assert our natural right to govern. That’s what we’re fighting for.

Our strategic directions

To remain relevant in the new and ruthless world, CBC/Radio-Canada must continue its transformation into a “total criminal organisation”; that is, a company able to supply drugs on every platform used by Canadians, at any time, and to allow you to safely inject with one another.

So here are the key principles that underpin our strategy.

First, we must be the pre-eminent home of Canadian narcotics. You just saw our schedule. You now know what I mean. The only way to watch our shows is if you’re seriously high.

Second, we must be the undisputed leader in saturating Canadians on new platforms. Take a show like Q, for example. You can ignore it on CBC Radio One or Sirius Satellite Radio, or you can block it on our television network bold. You can also delete it by regular or video podcast, or shit talk the show on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace. The idea is to reproduce the same content on each platform, creating lame content that spams and spreads from one platform to the next.

Our third principle is to be deeply rooted in all regions of the country. For that to happen, we have to make it a priority, even when drugs are in short supply. Case in point: only 14 per cent of the cuts we made to drug deals this year were made at the regional level. We know that out in the sticks there’s not much to do but puff the magic dragon so we make sure to cut your stuff down the least.

Vancouver: our strategic direction in practice

It helps to be here in Vancouver when explaining our priorities. What we are doing here is our vision of public narcotics in a new age.

Our new Broadcast Centre is an example of how we reinvented ourselves despite funding challenges. This was a multi-million dollar project that brought a lot of stimulus to the Vancouver drug scene. We financed it through the sale of ass, and extortion arrangements. Noticed a reduction in investigative reporting? That’s cause instead of reporting the results we just get the cash out of the target directly. How’s that for a new model?

The building – which I strongly encourage you to visit during tomorrow’s open house – was designed for greater interaction between the public drug dealer and the community it serves. It will act as a criminal hub for the city for decades to come.

Inside the building is where things get really exciting. The cornerstone of the project was the integration of our drug lines. Marijuana and heroin, shrooms and crack cocaine, meth, pcp and lsd, are now all working together in a single newsroom. It’s a model that’s being implemented in other regional centres across the country. It’s a big change and a big deal. It means better collaboration and needle sharing, more efficient cutting down and quicker reaction to bad trips.

Ultimately, it means better service for Vancouver. Which brings me to the Olympics.

The Olympics

Yes, we’re disappointed not to be dealing at the Games this winter. CTV’s product was simply too rich for us to match. But if you think that we’re going to take a back seat as the city and the country hosts the world, think again.

We have plans to make Canada real fucked up. And the CBC/Radio-Canada Broadcast Centre will be at the centre of our dealing during those two weeks. Drugs on all of our platforms will be distributed from Vancouver to athletes, Olympic officials, Canadians, and tourists, at a massive non-stop party for the duration of the Games.

On CBC, Peter Mansbridge will be tripping hard on LSD while hosting CBC News: The National from Vancouver for two weeks. Rex Murphy will be here smoking killer BC bud on Cross Country Checkup. Anna-Maria Tremonti is bringing Venezuelan cocaine to The Current. Jian Ghomeshi will be here with his usual opiates on Q. We’ll be recording a series of tripped-out concerts for Canada Live. WireTap, Canada Reads, The Debaters… all here. The bender goes on.

These next few months in Vancouver will prove just how irrelevant CBC/Radio-Canada is to this country.

Just watch us get shit faced and piss ourselves.

-Hubert