The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that ads have been embedded in CBC programming since its radio network came into existence in the 1930s, but last week the public broadcaster proposed to leave the commercial sphere to its privately owned competitors. The Globe's Simon Houpt and Susan Krashinski write that all it wants is for Parliament to jack up its annual funding by a whopping 34 per cent, from $1.21-billion (in 2017-18), to $1.63-billion. At a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday, Conservative MP Kevin Waugh said the proposal "blindsided everyone," but CBC insisted it was only responding to Heritage Minister Melanie Joly, who said last spring that "everything was on the table" in a massive industry review. The public broadcaster argues that going ad-free will allow it to take bold creative risks akin to its well-funded U.K. counterpart, the BBC, and create high-quality flagship TV programs for Canadians that can be exported to the rest of the world. In recent years, with the business models of traditional media cratering and CBC expanding aggressively into on-line news and other digital services, executives at CBC's competitors have renewed calls for it to get out of the ad business.