Colby Cosh: Even the CBC doesn’t give a hoot about Eurovision - National Post

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out (FILES) The logo of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is seen on the facade of the Stadthalle in Vienna on April 1, 2026. The organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest announced a rules change on August 12, 2026 excluding any country in an armed conflict from hosting the competition. (Photo by HANS KLAUS TECHT / APA / AFP via Getty Images) / Austria OUT (HANS KLAUS TECHT/APA/AFP via Getty Images) By Colby Cosh October 31, 2026 at 6:18 a.m. On Wednesday the CBC was kind enough to zap me with a press release announcing its plans for pan-Dominion voting on Canada’s entry to the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest. This was mighty big of it, considering that in July I tried to call attention to the extreme awkwardness of CBC participating in Eurovision as a national broadcaster. To recap briefly: Prime Minister Mark Carney announced in the 2025 federal budget that Canada was joining Eurovision. Whoopee! It was clear that this was a promotional stunt to advance Carney’s Euro-facing foreign-policy agenda, which is back in the headlines this week.

Behind the scenes, as we know thanks to The Canadian Press’ Anja Karadeglija, the corporation noticed that this would require its participation as a host broadcaster. Along with some expense. It was also noticed that the prime minister’s announcement had the obvious character of a ministerial content directive to the CBC. Which, as any schoolchild knows, is forbidden by the Broadcasting Act. And which would contradict everything the CBC says, every day and twice on Sundays, about its political independence.

Nobody but me seemed to mind. (Not so long ago this country was positively swimming with “media critics.” Where can they all have gone?) The CBC was shoved or pulled into the European Broadcasting Union as a full member, by some occult magic, and Canada entered Eurovision 2027. The PM’s showbiz dreams were realized.

But this press release … I have to say, it kind of came out of nowhere. The names of the five finalists for the Canadian entry weren’t announced until Tuesday. The five were chosen from 320 entries, a process that could have involved a broadcast series of its own and some celebrity judges. Instead, it was done “at a meeting held in Toronto on Oct. 8.”

As a result of this closed-door selection procedure, there has been very little non-CBC media attention to Canada-in-Eurovision. Did you know the public voting is already underway? It is! Are your city and regional newspapers full of stories about and profiles of the Eurovision hopefuls? They are not! Who had time to report and write anything?

With the election in full progress, will the CBC have some sort of showcase for the finalists? A network could get hours of content out of that! Well, if I understand this slightly confusing press release correctly, on Thursday night the main TV network broadcast a package of Tom Power interviews with the lucky Euro five. And then, on Sunday evening, they’ll all have a live audition, delivering 10-minute performances … on CBC Radio One. Those mini-concerts will be replayed on CBC TV next Tuesday night, two days ahead of the close of voting. And that’s it.

I’ll just say it: this is manifestly hasty handling of what ought to be the broadcast opportunity of the decade! It really does look a bit like half-shameful compliance with a ministerial order, and executed on the cheap to boot! Did I mention there is no sign of any schedule for the announcement of the winner of this competition? You would expect this to be the subject of a two-hour main-network extravaganza full of suspense and glitz; so far all we’ve been told is that, “The voting public’s final choice will be announced by December.” Maybe at another meeting in Toronto.

In the meantime, the CBC has dutifully provided a webpage with clips of the finalists, and I suppose we shouldn’t be discouraged from assessing them artistically. If we were an actual European country with a history in Eurovision (that does not consist entirely of Céline Dion pretending to be Swiss), we would certainly be thinking strategically as well: what works best at Eurovision?

From that point of view, Ottawa’s lavishly costumed Talk probably has the inside track, although I had higher expectations from CBC’s description of him as a “rock opera singer-songwriter.” He’s nothing special as a vocalist but “Goodbye Forever” wouldn’t be out of place on side two of a late Ozzy LP, or in Jim Steinman’s trunk. Rêve’s “CTRL + ALT + DEL” has the right European DNA, and Eurovision values catchiness and good looks, but I’m afraid that even out-of-the-way parts of Europe produce this type of performer in heroic quantities. William Cloutier, from Victoriaville, Que., has the most attractive voice of the bunch by far.

But I am left wondering why we couldn’t just draft Angine de Poitrine, perhaps giving them military ranks like the Soviets used to do with hockey players, and send them to Bulgaria to bag the whole thing. As they surely would.

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