MONTREAL – A day after the attack in Afghanistan, Radio-Canada’s Ottawa bureau chief Patrice Roy and his cameraman Charles Dubois are still in Kandahar. They will be flying to Germany tomorrow, said the public broadcaster in a press release.
Charles Dubois, who was severely injured, will be treated at the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany until he’s well enough to be repatriated to Canada. Reports say he may lose the foot injured in the roadside blast. Radio-Canada has assigned a representative from its Paris bureau to assist him. His spouse and brother will also be at his bedside. Patrice Roy, meanwhile, will be returning home shortly. By mutual agreement with Information management, he has decided to cut short his assignment in Afghanistan, which was originally slated to end on September 9.
While paying tribute to the two journalists, Radio-Canada executive vice-president Sylvain Lafrance reiterated French Services’ commitment to covering the Canadian mission in Afghanistan as comprehensively as possible:
"All Radio-Canada staff have been shaken by what happened to Charles and Patrice. These two individuals deserve our admiration and full support. As public broadcaster, however, Radio-Canada has the mandate and moral duty to directly report on a conflict involving our fellow citizens at this stage of the mission," said Lafrance.
After taking full stock of the situation, information general manager Alain Saulnier announced that Bernard Derome would be leaving tonight for Afghanistan as planned, with cameraman Gilbert Drouin and producer Bruno Bonamigo. He’ll be spending 10 days there as a journalist to produce reports for TV, Radio and RDI.
Bernard Derome’s presence in the field shows how seriously Radio-Canada takes this story. With over 35 years covering national and international affairs on Le téléjournal, Bernard Derome will bring a unique perspective to Radio-Canada audiences. Under the circumstances, Radio-Canada news management decided to postpone the announced plan to open the September 4 and 5 editions of Le téléjournal live from Kandahar.
In addition, Jean-François Bélanger, who was supposed to take over from Patrice Roy after September 9, will instead be leaving in a few days to spend at least one month in Afghanistan. Bélanger has extensive experience in war zones, having produced multiple reports from the Palestinian territories and covered various bloody conflicts for over five years as an African correspondent.
Alain Saulnier stressed that all those who go on assignment in Afghanistan do so on a voluntary basis and have undergone specialized training on war-zone reporting: "Radio-Canada management and its news professionals are fully aware of both the importance and risks of their job. Recent events have clearly shown that it’s impossible to control all the variables in these situations. That said, all possible precautions have been taken to ensure that our teams are well-prepared and adequately supported in the field."
