You won't find it listed anywhere in the CBC's official "mandate," but I'm pretty sure the public broadcaster's main directive is to anger and annoy Canada's conservatives.

This would certainly explain, for instance, why CBC news has recently taken to goading Maxime Bernier, a former Conservative MP and now leader of the newly- minted libertarian-leaning People's Party of Canada.

If you haven't heard of this goading epidemic, here's a brief recap:

In a report from a few weeks ago, the CBC hinted Bernier had purposely issued tweets dissing the Liberal government's "diversity" policies so they would coincide with the anniversary of violent, right-wing, racist protests in America.

This nasty suggestion, by the way, was offered with zero proof, which makes you wonder if the "C" in CBC stands for "cheap shot."

Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, while interviewing him on her show, the CBC's Wendy Mesley belligerently badgered Bernier with a series of off-the-wall questions, apparently hoping he would break down and admit to being secretly in league with an international cabal of super-rich libertarian-populists.

Needless to say, these attacks generated something of a conservative backlash.

Bernier denounced the CBC for trying to "smear" him; Financial Post columnist Terence Corcoran suggested the attacks were just one more reason to privatize the CBC, and conservative journalist Ken Whyte tweeted, "If you want to see why the CBC's ratings continue to tank and why so many people in Canada have trouble trusting it and attribute to it a political agenda, watch the Wendy Mesley 'interview' of Bernier."

Of course, there's nothing new about such conservative hostility towards the CBC.

The fact is Canadian conservatives, by and large, have traditionally seen the CBC as an enemy.

And no wonder, the CBC basically embodies everything conservatives oppose — big government, taxpayer waste, snobby elitism — and, of course, it has always been suspected of harbouring a left-wing bias against the right.

Yet, for the most part, this aggressively anti-CBC attitude was more of a grassroots thing.

"Establishment" conservatives, by contrast, were typically more supportive of the CBC and willing to play nice with it.

Even Stephen Harper's Conservative government, which was widely viewed in the media as rabidly right wing, officially at least, supported the idea of a state-run broadcaster.

As matter of fact, when he was the Harper government's Heritage Minister, James Moore called the CBC a cultural institution, saying in 2011, "The CBC is the infrastructure around which Canadian arts and culture is built, so of course it is central and it is key."

Sort of sounds like something a Liberal might say, yes?

But here's the problem for establishment Conservatives: given how the world is becoming more polarized politically and given how politics is getting nastier and given how the CBC is becoming stridently more anti-conservative, sounding like a Liberal when it comes to the public broadcaster won't cut it anymore.

In other words, when discussing the CBC, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer will be under pressure from his base to talk less like James Moore and to talk more like Ezra Levant or Donald Trump.

As Andrew Lawton put it recently here on Loonie Politics, "Politicians are supposed to be amiable and roll with the punches, but they shouldn't try to play nice when being slandered.  You can't meet malice in the middle."

So yes, to show he's a tough guy, Scheer will eventually have to meet CBC malice with CPC malice.

And just to get him started, I'd suggest he get in the habit of calling the CBC "flake news."

Ok, that's pretty bad, but you get the idea.

Mind you, for Scheer to openly battle the media (especially a taxpayer-funded entity like the CBC) is risky; as the old adage goes, "Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.'

But he might not have a choice; to paraphrase the Bible, Scheer's own base will want him to do unto the CBC, as the CBC would do unto them.

Photo Credit: National Post