CBC, foreign ministry both deny considering ‘transfer’ of international broadcaster as outlined in department memo

This article originally appeared on The Hill Times Although a recently released document says that Canada’s public broadcaster pitched a “reimagining” of its fledgling international broadcasting service in 2023 and referenced its potential “transfer of operations” to Global Affairs Canada, both CBC and the foreign ministry deny considering the idea. The Global Affairs Canada (GAC) briefing note was prepared for Foreign Affairs deputy minister David Morrison ahead of a meeting with then-CBC/Radio-Canada president Catherine Tait, and strategy, public affairs, and government relations executive director Shaun Poulter on March 3, 2023. It was obtained by The Hill Times under the Access to Information Act after a 19-month wait. The memo details CBC’s proposal for a “reimagined international news service” with annual funding of $20-million to $30-million, which was attached as an annex to the memo. Under the “objectives” section of the briefing note, it includes a comment to “discuss proposal for reimagining Canada’s international broadcast service (currently Radio Canada International), including possible financial support from or transfer of operations to GAC.” In responses to The Hill Times, both CBC and GAC denied proposing a possible “transfer of operations.” “To be clear, CBC/Radio-Canada has never proposed shifting Radio Canada International (RCI) to Global Affairs. Canadians depend on trusted, independent sources of news and information, now more than ever. RCI, like all CBC/Radio-Canada services, operates independently of government,” CBC/Radio-Canada spokesperson Leon Mar told The Hill Times in a Feb. 3 email. RCI serves as Canada’s international broadcaster, with the intent of bringing the country to a global audience. RCI has suffered successive budget cuts in recent years, including most recently having its staff slashed from 20 people to nine as it was transformed into an organization to translate CBC and Radio-Canada news articles to other languages for a domestic audience. The change was much criticized for skewing the international mandate. GAC spokesperson Renelle Arsenault said the foreign ministry did not consider taking over operations of RCI. “The briefing note referenced was prepared for a meeting requested by the CBC. The note outlines CBC’s objectives for the discussion, and should be read accordingly. The meeting did not result in any follow up, as GAC was not considering a transfer of operations of RCI to GAC, nor is it in a position to fund RCI,” Arsenault said in an email. Then-CBC/Radio-Canada president Catherine Tait met with Foreign Affairs deputy minister David Morrison on March 3, 2023, to discuss the future of Radio Canada International. (Photo: Andrew Meade/Hill Times) Listed in the briefing note as an objective for the meeting was to “convey GAC’s initial degree of interest and possible level of resource commitment, to be further reviewed against departmental mandates including efforts to counter disinformation.” Mar said the objectives stated in the memo are not those of the CBC. In a subsequent Feb. 7 phone interview with The Hill Times, Poulter said he “can’t explain” how the memo has characterized the CBC’s position, calling it “bonkers.” “There has never been any consideration, discussion, or anything of the government running RCI or leading RCI. That has never been a consideration or discussion,” he said. “RCI is an important part of CBC/Radio-Canada, and like all of our platforms, its independence from government is the essence of its existence.” He said that neither the CBC nor GAC raised the issue of a “transfer of operations” during their meeting. Arsenault said the topic of a possible “transfer of operations” was not raised by either GAC or CBC during the March 2023 meeting. Asked why the suggestion was in the briefing note despite GAC and CBC asserting that neither was considering the idea, she said that it was “standard practice” for a memo to include “all possible topics that could be raised” in a meeting. “We made the case that a lot of public broadcasters around the world have their international service funded by their … because so much of the work that public broadcasters do aligns with more global democratic objectives, but certainly we would never consider that RCI would be run by, led by, organized by a department of the government,” Poulter said. The GAC memo contains a note that—during a February 2023 meeting with GAC officials—Poulter “proposed that a Canadian international news service would be more appropriately led by GAC and not CBC/Radio-Canada.” Mar said the memo is “incorrect.” “There may have been some misunderstanding on the part of the GAC memo’s author regarding a discussion point Mr. Poulter raised—namely, whether an international news service would be more appropriately funded by Global Affairs Canada, instead of Canadian Heritage,” Mar said, remarking that the note also references other international broadcasters that are funded by respective ministries. “There has never been any consideration or discussion of the government running RCI. That would be counter to the very principle under which RCI, and indeed CBC/Radio-Canada, exists: independence from government,” he added. Arsenault said that Poulter’s February 2023 meeting with GAC officials “touched upon various countries whose foreign ministries have mandates for international broadcasting.” “Canada’s does not,” she said. “No proposals in this regard were made by CBC or Global Affairs Canada.” Poulter said that meeting involved a proposal to increase funding for RCI. The CBC initially said that Poulter was unavailable for an interview, before he told The Hill Times that he “cannot speak to any meetings with the government.” The public broadcaster made Poulter available after this newspaper asked the CBC to respond to GAC’s comments that the briefing note “outlines CBC’s objectives” for the meeting, which they disputed. Poulter said CBC’s pitch remains a proposal, but to his knowledge there hasn’t been any movement since the last meeting in March 2023. A screenshot of the ‘Objectives’ section of a Global Affairs Canada briefing note prepared ahead of a March 3, 2023, meeting. Funding RCI within CBC’s existing budget to the extent that it had been pitched to GAC is not under consideration, he said. “Part of the pitch was that with the current levels of funding that we have, we just didn’t have the resources to expand RCI in this way,” he said. “Subsequently, we have added additional foreign bureaus in Taipei and in Mumbai to try to expand our international coverage on our CBC/Radio-Canada platforms. But with respect to RCI, we don’t have significant resources to do this kind of reimaging that we had proposed.” In December 2023, CBC/Radio-Canada announced that it would have to slash 10 per cent of its workforce as its coffers were short by $125-million. The government gave the public broadcaster an additional $42-million in the 2024 budget as job losses totalled 141 and 205 vacant postings were removed. In August 2024, the Canadian Press reported that CBC distributed $18.4-million in bonuses, including $3.3-million for 45 executives. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre (Carleton, Ont.) said were he prime minister that he would “defund” CBC, but has stopped short of demanding the public broadcaster’s French-language services to cease. ‘A reimagined international news service’ The proposal—which is marked “confidential”—mentions that the service would serve as a “complement to our existing suite of foreign news bureaus.” The memo notes that CBC/Radio-Canada has bureaus in New York, City, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Jerusalem, and Washington, D.C. But those operations are “nearly entirely devoted to serving domestic audiences.” During the initial phase of the plan, there would be enhanced presence and coverage in the Indo-Pacific, as well as assembling a “rapid reaction” news team that would be deployed in “emergencies and civic turmoil.” A subsequent phase in the plan includes an increased presence and coverage in the Caribbean, as well as in North and Western Africa. The GAC memo notes that the “proposal seeks to establish alignment with Canadian values and Canadian foreign policy objectives (promotion of democracy, human rights, gender equality, rule of law) and demonstrate that Canada’s favourable image abroad can be leveraged to position Radio Canada International as a trusted, respected international news service when compared to other foreign players.” After changes were made to RCI in 2020, former RCI reporters and supporters pushed to protect the international mandate through the Broadcasting Act modernization, but ultimately a Senate amendment to do so failed. As Bill C-11 was going through the Senate, Tait presented the proposal to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly (Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Que.) in December 2022, according to the briefing note. The 2021 mandate letter for then-Heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez includes an instruction of “strengthening Radio Canada International, so that it can continue to advocate for peace, democracy and universal values on the world stage.” Part of the process was an effort by GAC to address global disinformation. The memo notes that Joly had previously tasked CBC/Radio-Canada to “develop a strategy to counter disinformation,” which “lies at the centre of the current proposal.” Included in a briefing note for Foreign Affairs deputy minister David Morrison is to ‘convey GAC’s initial degree of interest and possible level of resource commitment’ to CBC’s proposal. (Photo: Andrew Meade/Hill Times) The briefing note states that while GAC is the government lead on cultural diplomacy, that mandate doesn’t extend to “broader public diplomacy activities.” “A dedicated team and strategy would be required to engage in public diplomacy effectively,” the note states. The 2022 report that the CBC/Radio-Canada proposal is based off was authored by Fran Unsworth, a former director of the BBC World Service and past director of news for the BBC, as well as Fred Martenson, a former head of strategy for the BBC World Service. It notes that the funding for RCI is the lowest compared to allied international broadcasting services. “Broadcasts in different languages, but has little impact on overseas audience,” the report suggests. “Editorial focus is too domestic, largely providing translations of existing Radio-Canada material.” It suggests that the reimagined international news service could support Canada’s “soft power” foreign policy objectives. “Canada needs a stronger voice in the world. This is in Canada’s own interest, but it is also the right thing to do. CBC/Radio-Canada is well placed to provide that stronger voice,” the report summarizes. The document also states that resources in a more ambitious RCI model could be an asset for CBC/Radio-Canada’s domestic operations. “The staff based abroad could enrich international coverage for Canadians audiences, giving them a wider understanding of the rest of the world,” it states. The report notes that funding for the plan would likely fall to the foreign ministry, noting the reference to “defending the right of free of expression” in Joly’s 2021 mandate letter. It also suggested that with a budget of $25-million, there could be 150 editorial staff. That increases to 300 editorial staff with a $50-million budget, and 600 editorial staff with a $100-million purse. A financial orphan Wojtek Gwiazda, who spent 35 years as an RCI broadcaster, said CBC’s treatment of the international arm shows that it doesn’t appreciate the work that it does. “The administration of the CBC does not understand the importance,” said Gwiazda, spokesperson of the RCI Action Committee, which seeks to protect the RCI’s international mandate. “The only time that they started really reacting was when they came up with their latest policy in 2020 that was basically going to destroy the whole international mandate of RCI, and suddenly they got pushback,” he said. As the CBC was pushing through changes to RCI in 2021, a group of 32 Canadians urged the public broadcaster to reverse course, including former prime minister Joe Clark, author Naomi Klein, and actor Donald Sutherland. Gwiazda told The Hill Times that he is not surprised that the CBC didn’t want to fund their reimagining of RCI. “The huge problem that RCI faces is we are appreciated by a lot of people, but we’re an orphan financially,” he said. “Nobody wants to pay for us.” Former high commissioner Gaston Barban, who served as a liaison for RCI during his time in the foreign ministry, said at question is the dilemma over who should be responsible for an international news service. “If it’s too closely nested with the foreign ministry then it could reek of a propaganda arm,” he said. “And if it’s too close to a domestic broadcaster then perhaps it’s too focused domestically and less internationally, and that doesn’t necessarily follow the national interest as it would if it followed the leadership of the foreign ministry.” He echoed Gwiazda, remarking that the situation led RCI to become an orphan as it “withered away” over the last 30 to 40 years as “CBC was never serious about an international service.” Wojtek Gwiazda was a broadcaster at Radio Canada International for 35-years. (Photo: Courtesy of Wojtek Gwiazda) Barban said GAC’s own budget shortfalls meant that it didn’t have any money to throw at an international news service. “I really would want to see Global Affairs Canada take a stronger role in public diplomacy, and I think that in terms of public diplomacy, one aspect of it is how to reach foreign audiences,” he said. “If you can reach foreign audiences in a way that’s somewhat distanced from the foreign ministry like an independent broadcaster then you can be more effective in reaching international audiences.” With neither GAC nor the CBC committing to increased funding, what is lost is Canada’s capacity to project its international image on the world, Barban said. “It’s not having—figuratively—boots on the ground,” he said. “It will be another player in the international sphere, which is Canadian, which wouldn’t be there anymore.” He said the less presence Canada has internationally, the harder it is for the country’s diplomats to do their jobs. “If RCI ends up in the ditch and is forgotten, we’ve just lost another tool from our toolkit to promote Canada internationally, and that’s what hurts,” Barban said. nmoss@hilltimes.com Read more by The Hill Times' Neil Moss: - New Finnish envoy hopes to see Canada’s EU trade pact fully online - Handling Trump emerging as defining issue for Liberal leadership vote, say politicos - Top court could offer clarity on ‘open question’ of constitutional status of parliamentary privilege, say experts - Hosting G7 summit will be first global test for a new prime minister

CBC, foreign ministry both deny considering ‘transfer’ of international broadcaster as outlined in department memo

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CBC, foreign ministry both deny considering ‘transfer’ of international broadcaster as outlined in department memo

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