what we're seeing in old media - and this has been building for a while - is this realization that government is no longer effective at controlling people, because there's too many alternative voices out there. the commenting system was probably intended as an echo chamber, but it's instead created an ability to hijack the propaganda and present an alternate messaging system instead - it's become a platform for culture jamming, and the government doesn't like that, for obvious reasons.

so, what the government is doing (and the government runs the cbc. it's state media.) in removing the comments is trying to better control the message by removing distractions - they don't want people analyzing the articles, they want you to shut up and be brainwashed.

and, they can rightly fuck right the fuck off - that's a reason to yell even louder, to drown out the propaganda being spouted by the journalists, and strive that much more to deconstruct the statist messaging.