There are moments in Canadian political history so absurd, so revealing, and so casually memory-holed that it’s worth dusting them off, not for outrage (you’re welcome to it), but provide evidence about the tilted media landscape. One of those moments happened during the 2019 federal election, when Canada’s state broadcaster sued the official opposition.
That’s not hyperbole or a metaphor.
It’s exactly what happened. 
The CBC, funded by over $1.4 billion annually from Canadian taxpayers, took legal action against the Conservative Party of Canada just days before voters went to the polls.
Let’s remember how that went down.
The Scene: October 2019, Federal Election Campaign in Full Swing
The campaign was entering its final weeks. Andrew Scheer was leading the Conservatives against Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in what was widely seen as a competitive race. The usual political jostling was underway, attack ads, opposition research, media narratives. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the CBC filed a copyright lawsuit against the Conservative Party.
The allegation? The Tories had used CBC video clips in one of their online campaign ads and in a few tweets. These clips included moments featuring CBC journalists Rosemary Barton and JP Tasker, both prominent faces on the network’s flagship political programming. The Conservative campaign had used these clips in a compilation-style video criticizing the Liberal government.
CBC: A Political Actor?
At face value, the CBC claimed the issue was strictly legal: a matter of protecting its copyrighted material and journalistic independence. According to their public statement, the lawsuit had nothing to do with the election. It was merely a necessary defense of intellectual property.
Except the timing couldn’t have been worse, or more telling.
This was not a cease-and-desist letter. This was a formal Statement of Claim filed in Federal Court, and it named not just the Conservative Party, but also Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, and most controversially, CBC journalist Rosemary Barton herself was named as a plaintiff.
In Canada, many in the legacy media greeted the move with a shrug, if not active rationalization.
The Barton Blowback
It was Barton’s inclusion in the lawsuit that lit the most inflammatory spark.
The idea that a supposedly impartial journalist was suing a political party during a live election campaign didn’t sit well with anyone who still believed in the principle of media neutrality. Barton moderated the National Leader’s Debate and Barton was scheduled to co-host CBC’s election night coverage, and yet she was technically a litigant against one of the parties on the ballot.
Only after a barrage of criticism did CBC clarify that Barton and JP Tasker were only “included in the lawsuit” due to a technicality of personality rights, and that neither had any role in initiating the case. Barton was removed as a named plaintiff shortly thereafter. But the damage had been done.
The perception that CBC was not just covering the campaign, but participating in it had crystallized in the public imagination. And it raised uncomfortable questions about whether taxpayer-funded journalism can ever truly be neutral when it becomes entangled in electoral lawfare.
Conservatives Push Back
The Conservative Party, for its part, didn’t back down. They accused CBC of trying to “silence legitimate criticism” and “interfere in the democratic process.” Their position was that the clips used were fair dealing, a concept in Canadian copyright law similar to “fair use” in the U.S., especially since the clips were part of political commentary.
In other words, the Conservatives were doing exactly what media organizations do to politicians every day: using snippets of public statements to criticize, analyze, or mock. The only difference was that the roles were reversed.
And suddenly, when the broadcaster was the one in the spotlight, it ran to court.
The Larger Pattern
For many Canadians on the right, this lawsuit wasn’t an isolated incident. It was part of a pattern, a public broadcaster consistently aligned with the interests of the political left, particularly the Liberal Party, using its resources and reach to shape public opinion.
This perception wasn’t helped by the fact that, in 2019, the Trudeau government had announced a $600 million media bailout, designed to assist struggling news organizations with grants and tax incentives. The CBC, though already generously funded, stood to benefit from the climate this bailout created: a media ecosystem more financially dependent on government and, therefore, less inclined to bite the hand that feeds it.
In this context, a taxpayer-funded broadcaster suing the opposition party becomes not just legally questionable, but democratically problematic.
The Outcome? Quietly Dropped
In the end, the case went nowhere.
In March 2020, long after the election had passed, the CBC quietly dropped the lawsuit. The terms of any settlement were not disclosed. The CBC said it had “achieved its objectives,” whatever that meant, and moved on. There was no legal ruling, no clarity on fair dealing, no real accountability.
And no consequences.
Barton and Tasker went back to broadcasting. The CBC returned to its position as the self-appointed arbiter of Canadian political discourse. And the Conservative Party, having lost the election, chalked it up as another example of institutional bias in a country where the referee often seems to be wearing one team’s jersey.
Why It Still Matters
It’s tempting to forget these incidents in the news cycle churn. But they matter.
They matter because they expose the structural imbalances that persist in Canadian media and political life. They show how state-funded institutions can become political actors, cloaked in the language of neutrality and journalism.
They matter because they remind us that freedom of expression isn’t just about protecting journalists from politicians, it’s also about protecting citizens and political parties from journalists who wield institutional power without accountability.
And they matter because next time, whether in 2026, 2029, or later, it might not be a copyright lawsuit. It might be something subtler, but just as corrosive to the democratic process.
We should keep an eye on this
Remember when the CBC sued the Conservative Party? Of course you don’t. That’s the point.
It’s one of those stories that barely got airtime, was quickly memory-holed, and now lives on only in court records and the minds of those who keep track of such things.
But we should remember. Not out of bitterness, but to remain clear-eyed about the institutions we fund, the biases they carry, and the kind of democracy we want to protect.
Because if the referee gets to call the game and play on the field, it’s not really a fair match, is it?
