The Toronto Star's editorial board weighed in on the CBC lockout this weekend, as did Globe and Mail columnist Kate Taylor.

Methinks Taylor has more to say.

Some excerpts from the Star:

This year, Ottawa will contribute about $937 million to the CBC's annual budget. Another $400 million will come from advertising. By contrast, the CBC received $985 million from Ottawa in 1990. Despite claims by critics that the CBC is over-funded, the opposite is true. Compared to the BBC, the British public broadcaster, the CBC operates on a shoestring. The BBC gets the equivalent of $130 a year per person, most of which comes from a fee on every TV set. The CBC gets barely $30 per person.

Clearly, the Canadian government must decide whether it believes a public broadcaster is important for this country. If Ottawa wants such a service, then it must boost spending. It cannot expect the CBC to carry out its full mandate of contributing to national unity by providing regional and national coverage for French and English radio and television while giving it less money than it got 15 years ago

Special funding is needed to nurture the CBC, to promote Canadian culture. Well over 90 per cent of our television drama already comes from foreign sources, mainly American. The alternative would be to give up the field of drama and, increasingly, international news coverage, to U.S. networks. That should be unthinkable for an independent country.

The Star neglects to mention the BBC went on its own draconian restructuring last spring, trying to trim costs in some areas so it can spend more in others.

And while many CBC says the federal government spends more on the CBC, no one says how much more, where the money would come from or why the CBC should be treated as a higher priority than other areas.

The Star points to the amount of funding the BBC gets; is there really political support to jack up government funding of the CBC to over $4 billion to make it proportionally the same as the BBC?

The Star also asks this:

Is this contracting-out issue so important it required the disruption of the entire network? Does management have the right to effectively take the CBC off the air, when the union still want to work?

Uh, folks: You're the editorialists. What do you think?

Now, onto Kate:

The broadcaster has taken a huge gamble locking out the 5,500 members of the Canadian Media Guild, and right now that gamble is not paying off. The union members, who left work Aug. 15, are talking about staying out for weeks, and management is doing a laughable job of replacing their services.

It's also losing the public-relations battle: The press either sides with the guild, or shrugs off the dispute and the replacement programming as further proof of the CBC's irrelevance. Similarly, the public either doesn't care because it doesn't use the CBC, or complains bitterly about the replacement programming because it does. ...

I pressed the CBC this week to come up with examples of why it needs more contractors. Fred Mattocks, executive director of English TV production and resources, replied that in a world where new media can explode in popularity overnight (he cited podcasting as an example), the CBC is going to have to move quickly in creating new programs if it is going to satisfy Canadians' requirements. He pointed to producer and host as two job categories where the individuals shape the personality of the programming, and the CBC can't necessarily slot them back into other jobs when programs have run their course.

On the other hand, the guild already permits the CBC to hire contractors for pilot programs, and it estimates that the host and producer categories alone cover almost half its membership: After years of chipping away at the CBC's lax labour practices, which saw contractors kicking around for years working alongside permanent employees with job security, it is now facing a demand that would allow the CBC, if it chose, to make most new hires by contract.

The CBC's need for flexibility is perfectly reasonable, but so too are the guild's fears that management's proposals will damage their future members' ability to build secure careers that can afford them journalistic and creative integrity on the one hand and mortgages on the other.

Neither side's position is so unreasonable or entrenched that dialogue isn't possible, and since they also often misrepresent or exaggerate the other's position, it does look like a case where a hard-headed conciliator could successfully find a compromise.

Where I think Taylor falls down is the implications of contracting out more jobs. It means the CBC has a green light to gas people without regard to seniority and with no right to grieve dismissal.

Those two things are a big part of a union's existence.

Another thing is that the guild played a major role in getting many people off the casual/contract carousel at the CBC and into staff jobs.

If there are even fewer such jobs in the future, the guild loses even more clout with its members.

So when CBC management talks of "flexibility," are they really saying, "gee, it would be nice to deal with a really weak union?"

While the CBC might brag about being a top 50 employer, maybe guild members say to themselves, "Do I want to go back to being treated the way casuals and contractors are treated?"

I worked for the CBC as a casual for nine months, so my view is (ahem)  tainted.

That sets the stage for a bitter, protracted dispute -- which could leave the CBC with even less popular and political support than it has now.

I wouldn't describe that as a win-win situation.