[1] However, as the result of an 80 percent budget cut, shortwave services were terminated in June 2012, and RCI became accessible exclusively via the Internet.

[2] On December 3, 2020, RCI announced that its staff was being reduced from 20 to 9 (in contrast to 200 employees in 1990)[3] and that its English and French language sections would close and be replaced by curated content from the domestic CBC and Radio-Canada services.

Several studies commissioned by the CBC Board of Governors in the late 1930s had come to the conclusion that Canada needed a radio service to broadcast a Canadian point of view to the world.

Finally, in 1942, Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King announced that Canada would begin a shortwave radio service that would keep members of the Canadian Armed Forces in touch with news and entertainment from home.

Beginning in July, special once-a-week programs were broadcast to Scandinavia in Swedish and Danish and later in Norwegian, as well.

There were also Sunday night programs broadcast to Cuba, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador in Spanish and to Brazil in Portuguese.

At around the same time as the expansion into the Caribbean and Latin America, the CBC International Service became involved with the newly formed United Nations.

United Nations broadcasts through the CBC International Service continued until November 29, 1952, when they were transferred to larger shortwave facilities run by the Voice of America.

Throughout its early years, the CBC International Service concentrated on broadcasting to Western Europe in the aftermath of World War II.

By the early 1950s, several international shortwave stations began to beam programs into the Soviet bloc countries in an effort to circumvent heavy censorship of world news to their citizens.

Before beginning its Mandarin Chinese service, RCI produced a 40-week series called Everyday English which was broadcast in 1988 and early 1989 over local stations in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

After evaluating its own budget, the CBC decided it could no longer pay for Radio Canada International without extra funding from the federal government.

To save the service, RCI Program Director Allan Familiant announced a major restructuring that took effect on March 25, 1991.

As a result, six of the thirteen languages included in the programming (Czech, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, and Portuguese) were discontinued.

Its homepage press release read: "Radio Canada International is proud to announce that it will launch its new English programming on Monday, October 30th.

The Crown corporation subsequently translated this to an 80 percent reduction to the International service under its financial and managerial control.

In addition: Until 2020, Radio Canada International maintained a website, a mobile app, and a cyber magazine, in English, French, Mandarin, and Arabic that was updated with news items and features written by RCI staff.

[13] On December 3, 2020, RCI announced that its staff was being reduced from 20 to 9 - consisting of "five journalists assigned to translate and adapt CBC and Radio-Canada articles, three field reporters, and one chief editor"[4] and that its English and French language sections would close and be replaced by curated content from the domestic CBC and Radio-Canada services, and the Arabic, Spanish, and Chinese sections would also be cut in size.

Its web portal offered text in those languages as well as curated English and French material from CBC and Radio Canada.

In February 2021, an open letter was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed by 32 prominent Canadians including former prime minister and foreign minister Joe Clark, former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations Stephen Lewis, actor Donald Sutherland, author Naomi Klein, former CBC Radio managing editor Jeffrey Dvorkin, and others, calling on CBC to rebuild the international service stating that "In an interconnected world in search of truth, facts and honest journalism, countries like Canada cannot abdicate their role on the world stage.”[15][16] History of RCI Language Broadcasting Services[17][18][19][20] RCI's interval signal was the first four notes of O Canada played on a piano, followed by "Radio Canada International" pronounced in English, and then French.

Canada's only high-power shortwave relay station, Sackville also broadcast CBC North to northern Quebec and Nunavut.

"[26] On October 30, the CRTC granted a CBC request to revoke CKCX's broadcast license effective November 1.

[29] As of 2019, the Mi'gmawe'l Tplu'taqnn band plans to add the land to the Fort Folly First Nation Reserve and is still considering potential re-development options.

Frequencies, antennas and input feeds were switched in accordance with internationally agreed-on schedules which were renegotiated twice per year.

Newer Thales 300 kW transmitters could use amplitude and phase-shift keying (APSK), the design successor partially based on PSK modulation).