By Glenn Wanamaker
Quebec media columnists are openly wondering this week how long 75-year-old Guy Fournier, an award-winning film producer, scriptwriter, journalist, and author, can remain as Chairman of CBC-Radio-Canada’s board of directors.
In the 11 months since his appointment, Fournier has provoked one outcry after another, first over his musings about Radio-Canada’s role in promoting national unity, then over his radio comments about the joys of defecating, and finally last week, over his comments on how Lebanese law regards bestiality.
In his latest column for the popular French-language magazine “7 Jours”, a Quebecor-owned gossip/entertainment publication, Fournier wrote that in Lebanon, “the law allows men to have sexual relations with animals, as long as it’s with females! Doing it with male animals could result in the death penalty!”
The comment drew protests from members of the Lebanese community in Quebec, and Fournier subsequently apologized, admitting the claim was false. He didn’t say where he picked up the information but acknowledged he didn’t check its veracity.
But he also tried to defend himself, pointing out that his column features news oddities and weird statistics, and that “it could have been [true] because there are so many strange things in different civil codes…even in our own”.
“I did it to make people smile. But it shocked people in the Lebanese diaspora and for that, I am sorry,” he told a Radio-Canada TV audience Sunday night on the talk show “Tout le monde en parle” (“Everybody’s Talking about It”).
Fournier said he’s told federal Heritage Minister Bev Oda that he has decided to drop all activities “not directly related to being chairman”, including his “7 Jours” column. He also said he does not intend to resign as chairman.
“We allow politicians to make errors,” he said. “Maybe you’ll allow me to make a few. I think that I learn very quickly from my mistakes, and I don’t repeat them.”
Oda had no further comments to make after Fournier made his apology, her press officer Véronique Bruneau told cartt.ca Monday. Last week, Oda had urged him to issue an apology and to “reflect upon the responsibility and role that he has” as the Corporation’s chair, especially given the fact that Canadians look to CBC as a source of accurate information.
But if his appearance on “Tout le monde en parle” was meant to clear the air, it may have had the opposite effect among viewers.
He spent much of his time talking about his comments on the joys of defecating, provoking howls of laughter and causing the show’s resident humorist, Dany Turcotte, to refer to him as the chairman of “Radio-Caca-nada”.
Few people had heard about those comments, made last May on a French-language Toronto community radio station. But viewers heard the tape Sunday night, on which he said:
“Defecating has almost the same sensation as an orgasm when making love…and what is the most extraordinary is that as you grow older, you continue to faire caca (defecate) once a day…while it’s difficult to make love once a day. So really, the pleasure is more enduring and more frequent.”
Fournier’s efforts to explain the context for the interview were drowned out by the gales of laughter from the studio audience.
He did, however, explain his comments last May about Radio-Canada’s national unity role when he said “Radio-Canada is not totally objective or very balanced in the information that it broadcasts.”
At the time, the comments earned him a rebuke from both CBC president Robert Rabinovitch and the executive vice-president of French Services, Sylvain Lafrance.
But Fournier said Sunday his comments were misinterpreted, perhaps because he was speaking in his second language.
His point, he said, was that Radio-Canada has done such a good job reflecting Quebec’s identity that it has “made us forget, to a certain point, the rest of the francophonie outside Quebec. What I simply wanted to say was that I wished we would broaden our view [of the country].”
Fournier, who became a member of the Order of Canada in 1992, was appointed to CBC’s Board in February 2005 and was named Chairman in October. In a 50-year career, he has scripted more than 50 documentaries, as well as drama series such as “Trudeau II” and “L’Ombre de l’Épervier”, and feature films. He created the Institut québécois du cinéma, and has written a number of books and humorous essays.
Glenn Wanamaker is Cartt.ca’s Quebec editor.
