Poilievre's pitch to defund CBC while keeping French services would require change in law

OTTAWA -If Pierre Poilievre wants to "defund the CBC" while maintaining its French-language programming, he'll have to overhaul the country's broadcasting law in order to do it. Past Conservative leaders have also taken aim at the Crown corporation, which receives its share of public money through Parliament when MPs vote on its federal budget. Poilievre's pitch to strip the CBC of its public funding is widely popular among Conservatives and earned loud cheers from the crowds who packed rooms to see him during last year's leadership campaign. "Almost everything the CBC does can be done in the marketplace these days because of technology," he told host Andrew Lawton. "I'm not sure politicians really want to go down the (road of) ... 'We are going to give francophones better service with public money than we're going to give anglophones,"' he said.