Last Monday, Mary Walsh of CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes planted a heavily lipsticked kiss on Stephen Harper's mouth, leaving the Conservative leadership hopeful amply smudged and more than a little taken aback. It was a typical comic mission for Marg Delahunty, fan/scourge of high-profile politicians. But since then, the incident has been cited as proof of a leftist conspiracy at the network. (They must have missed what she did with Jean Charest's hair.)

Hard-line conservatives have long waged a campaign against the Mother Corp, which, they say, is just another niche service with a modest share of the highly fragmented viewing audience. "Hand it over to the private sector," wrote Gerry Nicholls of the National Citizens Coalition.

At the heart of the debate is a fundamental question: Does a society like ours truly need public-service broadcasting? In television's early days, the answer was clearly yes. The CBC served an enormous, nationwide viewership that had nowhere else to turn for Canadian programming. Viewers in this country now have their choice of more than 100 different conventional, specialty and pay networks.

But for all of our devotion to marketplace values, a surprising number of people in Western societies also appreciate the importance of the public domain. The broadcast spectrum is a public resource, like our forests and oceans. In fact, one possible approach for Canada is to formally establish a protected tier within the television system -- the equivalent of public parkland or urban green space -- for the CBC and other public-service channels.

Yet despite the public's protestation of support for public broadcasting, the resources we give it continue to slide. More than $300-million a year in government funding has disappeared since the early 1990s; an additional $10-million was lost in 2003, along with a $50-million cut to the Canadian Television Fund. Not surprisingly, ratings, too, were slipping. If 2003 audience trends continue, CBC Television's numbers could soon fall below those of the U.S. "Superstation," TBS. So is it any surprise then that the CBC now runs non-Canadian feature films in prime time?

The CBC is not alone in its troubles. In Britain, long-time critics of the BBC clearly have smelled blood since the broadcaster's reputation was tarnished last year over its flawed reporting on the Blair government's Iraq dossier. Rupert Murdoch-owned commercial rival BSkyB, in particular, has charged that the Beeb delivers poor value for money. Some fear that the current review of the broadcaster's charter, which is due for renewal in 2007, could lead to the elimination of its state subsidy.

The BBC has defenders too. Columnist Will Hutton of The Guardian has extolled the corporation as a shining example of "the great Western tradition that asserts that the public domain is an essential component of our civilization." The BBC, he writes, "is the champion of universality, equity and accountability in broadcasting -- a domain as vital to us as health and education because it plays such a pivotal role in our interior lives."

Can commercial broadcasters be expected or required to deliver such a thing of their own accord?

New Zealand, which opened up its broadcast arena to no-holds-barred competition more than a decade ago, has concluded that they can't, and has recently made dramatic moves to bring a public-service component back to the television system. Even Michael Powell, the deregulation-happy chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, has mused that Washington ought, perhaps, to make a stronger commitment to public broadcasting, if only to counterbalance the sheer volume of questionable content generated by the commercial sector.

Last June, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage delivered a massive report on the state of the broadcasting system. It recommended increased, stable, multiyear funding for the CBC. The government's response? It affirmed the corporation's significance within the cultural landscape, but offered no new funding commitments.

In Britain, the Office of Communications has just launched a 12-month review of public-service broadcasting with the aim of establishing "a clear view of what [it] is, and how it is best delivered." The study will focus on other public broadcasters besides the BBC, such as ITV and Channel 4, and the findings will feed into the Beeb's charter review.

Perhaps the time has come for a similar exercise here in Canada, encompassing not just the CBC, but others -- from provincial public broadcasters such as TVOntario and British Columbia's Knowledge Network to specialty services like VisionTV and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. Each, in its way, complements the work of the CBC, and each currently struggles to play on a field increasingly tilted toward corporate media giants.

The ideal solution, as Mr. Powell suggested, will balance civic and commercial interests, guaranteeing that all viewers have ready access to public-minded services while allowing for the free play of market forces. The market is not the sole determinant of value in our lives. We are citizens as well as consumers, and we deserve television that engages us as active participants in the collective enterprise we call Canadian society.

Bill Roberts is president and CEO of VisionTV, which is currently celebrating its 15th anniversary as Canada's multifaith television network.