TORONTO – Two unions representing CBC employees are calling for CBC/Radio-Canada president Hubert Lacroix and the board of directors to step down, saying that employees have lost confidence in their leadership.
The Canadian Media Guild says that it has joined forces with the SCRC, which 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”.
“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”, reads a statement by CMG national president Carmel Smyth.
With both Lacroix and many of the board members appointed by the outgoing federal Conservatives, the statement claims even if funding to the CBC is restored under the incoming Liberal government, (as that party promised in its pre-election campaign), Lacroix and the board “will continue with the plan to diminish CBC/Radio-Canada.”
“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”, the statement continues. “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.”
