If people are obligated to pay for public national media is that government-funded or crowdfunded.
It's subtle, but I believe they would like it to say "publicly funded" not "government funded" as the latter insinuates they're an arm of the government.
If money comes from government. Question is can the government change the funding structure. By changing law for example. If they can it is clearly government funded.
Well in theory the government is the public, as the public elects the government, as Canadian happens to be a Parliamentary Democracy. As it stands right now, the government has no control over the CBC and the public have not given it a mandate to do so. The funds go directly from public tax to the CBC. It would not be possible for the government of Canada to currently unilaterally make that change. If they did, I think it would be fair to change the label to a governmental media organization vs a public media organization. We would also presumably want to change calling Canada a democracy.
So would referendum be actually needed on any decision on anything related to CBC? Or could government with support of parliament unilaterally change for example funding?
If it is only and absolutely only the first then it can be considered public. If later in anyway clearly fully government funded.
The parliament has control over CBC, not the government. The parliament != the government, it's funded by parliament, not government. It's not particularly complicated.