Ethics committee in a ‘dirty war’ against CBC, Media Guild says

The House of Commons ethics committee's singular focus on CBC/Radio Canada shows that it has been drawn into a “dirty war” against the country's public broadcaster, the Canadian Media Guild says. Karen Wirsig, communications coordinator for the guild, made the remarks with Marc-Phillippe Laurin, president of the guild’s CBC/Radio-Canada division, before the committee Thursday. Laurin told the ethics committee at a meeting Thursday that, according to a report from Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault, only a little more than half of information requests are answered within 30 days. “And worse, fewer than one fifth of access to information requests are fully answered,” he said. Laurin said the report makes it clear that there is more than one federal institution at the root of the access-to-information problem. He said the commissioner’s report showed a steady decline over the past two years in the areas of timeliness and disclosure for access to information requests. Wirsig said the group has been both “surprised and dismayed” that the committee has taken so much time to examine a single institution. “It is not that we believe the CBC is above the law—far from it,” Wirsig said. “But we do question the singular focus of the current study.” The committee is currently reviewing the CBC’s dealings with access to information requests. The Crown corporation is involved in a legal dispute with the information commissioner, insisting that its withheld documents fall under Section 68.1 of the Access to Information Act, which allows it to exclude documents from disclosure if they pertain to creative programming or journalistic activities. “It is a war being waged by Quebecor , a private media company that has, what we think should be obvious to everyone, a private commercial interest in diminishing the role and presence of its main competitor CBC/Radio-Canada, especially in the province of Quebec,” Wirsig said. Wirsig noted that University of Ottawa professor Marc-François Bernier, in a Sept. 15 column for ProjectJ.ca, referred to Quebecor's reporting on CBC as a “propaganda campaign.” She said Quebecor has been running stories about CBC for a long time, including those in a series under the title “CBC Money Drain,” implying that public funds are wasted on public broadcasting. Wirsig added that a search of the Toronto Sun website revealed 60 posts relating to the series since 2008, more than one-third of which have run since September of this year. “It is troubling to find the same narrow focus of Quebecor’s concern about access to information, which seems to relate only to CBC/Radio-Canada, is being reproduced in this hearing,” she said. Hubert Lacroix, president and CEO at CBC/Radio-Canada, appeared before the House heritage committee Tuesday and told reporters that the public broadcaster does not intend to go to battle with Quebecor. “I have no intention of throwing myself into any battle,” Lacroix said. “The important thing is that we talk about facts in a transparent way, so we can have an intelligent conversation about the subjects that are before us.” Lacroix was expected to appear Nov. 1, but the committee decided Thursday to now spend that time in camera. The hearings will be suspended while the committee seeks legal counsel on a motion proposed by Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro that would force the public broadcaster to give some of its withheld or unredacted documents to Parliament. Although rarely used, House committees have the power to order the production of documents. Legault told the ethics committee this week that CBC’s average response time was down to 57 days from 158. She said CBC reported that its refusal rate was down to 22 per cent from a previous record of 60 per cent, but she had not yet verified the information. Laurin told the committee that access-to-information should remain a tool that serves the best interests of the public. “It must never be allowed to be used as a weapon to serve the interests of a competitor, one that is not subject to it themselves,” he said. “We submit that the 1,000 requests filed by Quebecor must be scrutinized under that very lense.” The CBC's refusals for requests and delayed responses have caused politicians and private broadcasters to become suspicious of how the corporation spends its annual parliamentary appropriations of $1.1 billion. The Conservative government’s strategic and operating review is also under way, which seeks to find $4 billion in annual government savings, causing the CBC and other departments and agencies to submit proposals for budget cutbacks of 5 to 10 per cent. Ian Morrison, a spokesman for watchdog group the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, told the committee Thursday that, in terms of cutbacks, “CBC has more than prepaid its contribution to deficit reduction.” Morrison said that, in 1996, CBC’s annual parliamentary appropriation represented 92 cents of every $100 of government program spending. “This year, the federal government’s investment in our national broadcaster is 51 cents out of every $100 of federal program spending,” he said. Morrison also called for reforms to the way in which CBC’s senior management is appointed. He said a majority of Canadians support the non-political appointment of the corporation’s president as well as its board members. Del Mastro, the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, said that, unlike the CBC, private broadcasters are not withholding information, and called the CBC's witholding of documents a “high hill of hyprocrisy.” In an address to the ethics committee on Oct. 20, Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor, said that “despite what those who accuse us of waging a war on CBC/Radio-Canada think, we believe that our demands are not only legitimate and in the public interest, but quite consistent with the spirit of the law.” dgrenier@thewirereport.ca

Ethics committee in a ‘dirty war’ against CBC, Media Guild says

Broadcast | October 27, 2011

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