Today, after much consideration and discussion, the Canadian Media Guild took the unprecedented step of publicly declaring our lack of confidence in the CBC/Radio-Canada President and Board of Directors.
We join with our colleagues represented by the SCRC (the union that represents 3,000 Radio-Canada employees in Québec and New Brunswick) to ask for an end to the leadership of a team that is implementing a plan to weaken the public broadcaster, and that has lost our confidence.
Over the last eight years, CBC/Radio-Canada has been systematically crippled, with unprecedented programming cuts across the country and questionable plans to sell off production assets and buildings, which threatens the public broadcaster’s ability to produce programming in both official languages. Along with constant cuts to staff – more than 25 per cent of workers laid off in five years – this damage is the vision of this President and Board.
Six months ago, we asked Hubert Lacroix to be honest with Canadians about the crisis at CBC/Radio-Canada, and to publicly fight for the funding necessary to continue creating original Canadian programs and deliver quality news in communities across the country.
Mr. Lacroix and the CBC/Radio-Canada Board’s failure to step-up has broken our confidence in their ability to lead Canada’s largest journalistic organization and national public broadcaster. Instead of fighting for a strong CBC/Radio-Canada, accessible on different platforms, they have announced that even if the funding is restored, they will continue with the plan to diminish CBC/Radio-Canada.
After much consideration and meetings with our elected union leaders across the country, we are forced to take this step, before the plans implemented by this leadership at CBC/Radio-Canada leave irreversible damage, and a public broadcaster that is a virtual “distributor of programming” and not the creator, and leader it was meant to be.
Unlike Mr. Lacroix and the Board, we cannot remain quiet about the urgent threat CBC/Radio-Canada is facing given that, to quote the President, “like the proverbial frog in cold water that is slowly heated, (…) [CBC] is being boiled to death.”
Carmel Smyth,
National President, CMG