By the time the latest leaked report, that of Pierre Juneau, Peter Herrndorf and Catherine Murray on the future of public broadcasting, is finally made public, it will have been so chewed up as to be all but indigestible. That's a shame, since the document has been savaged, unread, by the very people who ought to find it most congenial, and taken to heart, with scarcely better basis, by those whose principles it should most appall.

For what those notorious neo-cons Juneau and Herrndorf in effect propose to finance the CBC with is a user fee. Instead of being funded out of general revenues collected from a progressive income tax, the corporation would tithe cable, telephone and satellite users via a flat - i.e. regressive - monthly levy. Ostensibly the companies that provide these services would be responsible for paying the tax, but we all know who would pay in the end.

Granted, the proposal doesn't go all the way and apply the fee only to those who actually watch the CBC. But it would be a significant narrowing of the burden, from the general public to the viewing public. That's at least a reasonable facsimile: While the CBC attracts, on average, less than 10 per cent of the viewing audience at any one time, probably most viewers tune in at least some of the time. And so far as that levy on their monthly cable bill brought home something closer to the true cost of the CBC, it could only be to the good.

The CBC likes to advertise that it costs "each Canadian" - man, woman or baby - just "10 cents a day." That's true, as far as it goes: a parliamentary grant of about $1.1-billion, divided by 30 million Canadians. Of course, if you divide by the average taxpayer, you get a slightly larger sum, more like 20 cents a day (of which about 15 cents goes to the television networks, after advertising revenues are taken into account).

Now suppose that were instead divided among the roughly 10 million television-viewing households, the ones those cable and satellite and telephone companies will be taxing on the CBC's behalf. We're now up to 30 cents a day, or $9 a month, as much as four or five other channels combined. If you watch the CBC for three hours a night, that might still seem a bargain. But for the many more who might tune in for three hours in a month, the question would surely arise: Is the CBC really worth $3 an hour? As a cable-industry official noted, "what we saw last January and February," when subscribers rose up in rage at being forced to pay for channels they did not want, "will look like a love-in."

That Rogers uprising, like the earlier GST rebellion, showed the difference in public reaction when hidden taxes are made visible. Once the Juneau-Herrndorf levy alerts the public to the true cost of the CBC, we will finally be forced to confront the rationale for making those who don't watch or enjoy the CBC pay for those who do. At which point, the pressure will grow to do what we should have done long ago: put the CBC on pay.

The irony is that once there was such a rationale - when it was impossible otherwise to charge viewers directly for the programs they enjoyed. The only alternative was advertising, with results that all can see: Because advertisers tend to measure, and pay for, audiences in only one dimension - size, rather than how highly they value the experience - there is a bias to the lowest common denominator that is quite unknown in other markets. It is hardly to "give the public what they want," in the dismissive phrase, if significant sections of that public are consistently outvoted.

But the ability to scramble signals makes it possible to require those who choose to watch the CBC, or any other channel, to pay for it themselves. What then becomes of the case for forcing others to subsidize their habit? Bereft, supporters fall back on that hoariest of myths: The CBC is all that keeps the country together; it's what makes us different.

The mind reels. Look: Either we are different from the Americans or we aren't. If we are, we shouldn't need the CBC to tell us we are. If we aren't, why exactly should we pretend we are? It's no use saying we must be different to safeguard our nationhood; the fact of our difference was supposed to be the justification for it in the first place. If the suggestion is that the CBC's role is to invent differences where none exist, then either we should find some other reason for being or just pack it in. At any rate, it can hardly be the glue that holds the country together if nobody's watching.

As for that other threat to our nationhood, is it really to be argued - seriously, now - that Radio-Canada is a force for national unity?