The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - March 11, 2026


Former CBC Host EXPOSES broadcaster as Liberal Front Group!


Episode Stats

Length

22 minutes

Words per Minute

174.40652

Word Count

3,862

Sentence Count

125


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.
00:00:06.360 Well, it was an exciting day on Parliament Hill today, with the Canadian Heritage Committee
00:00:12.320 interviewing a former CBC host, Travis Dunraj, who exposed the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
00:00:19.480 as being a massive liberal front group. Bullying, harassment, and Liberal Party propaganda abounds.
00:00:27.440 In just a second here, we're going to get into some of his testimony and talk about the greater implications this is going to have for Canadian politics and Mark Carney's Liberal government.
00:00:37.980 The Liberals are currently ahead in the polls right now, but if enough issues end up popping up for them, you could see that lead end up softening and start leaning towards the Conservatives.
00:00:49.220 this is one of those things that the liberals cannot have go too far, because if the CBC starts
00:00:55.140 losing trust, well, that means the liberals are losing power in one of their biggest propaganda
00:01:00.520 front groups. They need all of this propaganda in order to keep them popular, so the CBC taking a
00:01:07.040 hit like this is not good for them. Anyways, before we get into it, I just want to remind you guys,
00:01:12.320 if you like the channel, leave a like on this video, subscribe if you're not yet a subscriber,
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00:01:25.820 the show you can always also hit the join button and make a small monthly contribution but now
00:01:31.120 let's get into some of these clips with Travis Dunraj I think he did a fantastic job in this
00:01:37.200 committee meeting a lot of testimony could be dry in another scenario but I think he kept it quite
00:01:43.600 lively and he focused on a lot of stories that painted a picture of just how you i guess
00:01:49.120 politically corrupt and also just ethically corrupt the canadian broadcasting corporation
00:01:53.820 has become that need i remind you gets over a billion dollars of our billion dollars of our
00:02:00.700 taxpayer money every single year appreciate it good morning uh madam chair and members of the
00:02:07.060 committee as a kid growing up in alberta i wasn't like most of my friends every night i watched
00:02:13.500 The National with Knowlton Nash. He represented a public broadcaster that belonged to Canadians,
00:02:20.320 not to power, not to party, but to the public. And that is the CBC that I believed in. Now,
00:02:27.940 many Canadians know the story about one of my tweets. In April 2024, I publicly stated that
00:02:33.500 Canada Tonight had requested an interview with then-CBC President Catherine Tate,
00:02:37.980 and the request was declined. Facts. Shortly after, I was removed from the air.
00:02:45.320 Now, on May 7th, 2024, Tate told this very committee she was, quote, not aware of any
00:02:52.200 repercussions. Yet 24 hours earlier, ATIP records show her vice president, Barb Williams, briefed
00:02:58.740 her directly about my situation. And that matters because trust matters. The tweet was not the
00:03:06.500 beginning. It was the breaking point. For months prior, tensions had been building, not over
00:03:11.500 performance, but over control. While I was publicly held up as a bold, diverse host, my ability to
00:03:18.900 lead the very program carrying my face and name was quietly being stripped away. CBC's stated
00:03:25.260 commitment to... I just want to give a little bit of background for this story as well. Why he had
00:03:30.120 specifically reached out to Catherine Tate, who was the president of the organization that he was
00:03:35.720 working for and she declined it was because this is back when there was this scandal about how big
00:03:41.760 the bonuses inside the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were. People like Catherine Tate
00:03:46.660 were handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to just singular individuals in bonuses. At the
00:03:52.760 same time, they were laying off employees and they were stripping down their services. That's the
00:03:57.880 funny thing with the CBC. They get more money every single year, and yet the show quality goes
00:04:03.460 down they start removing programming they fire people and they seem to not be able to get any
00:04:08.480 actual credible journalists despite the fact they have a massive budget and all these people
00:04:12.860 effectively act as as liberal hacks you know they're not all bad but the problem is there are
00:04:18.060 way too many people who are effectively writing opinion when they should be doing the news and
00:04:23.600 they pretend that it is the news diversity contrasted with realities of tokenism still
00:04:30.680 I pushed forward creating a nightly panel to showcase real diversity including of thought.
00:04:37.320 I questioned unequal pay why for example one contributor who was indigenous always needed to be
00:04:45.480 while others weren't. When a prominent black journalist requested compensation after appearing
00:04:50.680 doing the exact same job I was told to reconsider booking him moving forward. I attempted to end
00:04:57.400 this discriminatory practice instead the panel was canceled when it came to so panel was canceled
00:05:04.600 because they were paying a first nations panelist more than other people and i i saw a tweet the
00:05:11.060 other day from the national post journalist tristan hoper and he said that it's not just
00:05:16.200 that people who call themselves anti-racist are in fact not just not only not racist but they are
00:05:22.240 racist they're like cartoonishly racist they will absolutely start basically paying people based on
00:05:28.820 their skin color and they'll even be doing it to other minority groups they would usually think
00:05:33.500 that they care about you know we should just be paying people what they're worth it has nothing
00:05:38.320 to do with your race but it's hilarious that the cbc who would consider themselves very woke and
00:05:43.680 anti-racist they are paying a first nations person more than a black person because they're first
00:05:48.320 nations and that person is not although if they could they'd probably then pay the black person
00:05:52.800 more than a white person because they're just cartoonishly racist while pretending to be
00:05:57.400 anti-racist politics interviews were blocked under guardrails governed by an internal document never
00:06:03.060 made public titled parameters for political guests political access was centralized booking decisions
00:06:09.840 control elsewhere it did not happen once it became a pattern it became the standard power
00:06:18.720 and politics hosted by david cochran was given gatekeeping authority over which politicians
00:06:23.360 could appear on canada tonight when i questioned that control and who was in control i was viewed
00:06:30.560 as disruptive at the same time i raised concerns about a toxic environment after i sat down with
00:06:37.120 speaker greg fergus for a conversation on black history month chief political
00:06:44.320 respondent rosemary barton circulated internal communications questioning my program
00:06:49.440 copying senior leadership insinuating she or mr cochran should have done the interview
00:06:56.240 it was an intimidation tactic which management ignored i and others raised concerns about
00:07:02.320 bullying behavior by senior figures including Mr. Cochran. But while he remained on air, I faced
00:07:08.100 discipline and marginalization. Now the transcripts of these meetings show the issue was not about my
00:07:13.520 journalism but about reputational risk to the corporation. I received a written warning carrying
00:07:19.080 the threat of termination. I was placed under confidentiality restrictions that prevented me
00:07:24.240 from correcting public and internal narratives. CBC silenced and intimidated me simply for trying
00:07:30.860 to do my job and fulfill my public service role to Canadians. Now this is not about left or right.
00:07:38.160 It's not about one tweet or one career. It's about systemic control, tokenism, selective enforcement
00:07:45.300 and a toxic culture where intimidation went unchecked. When I refused to waive my rights
00:07:51.480 under the Canadian Human Rights Act in a proposed confidentiality agreement right here and gag order
00:07:57.840 essentially. My role was not renewed. My union tasked with protecting my rights as an employee
00:08:03.960 told me explicitly, quote, it's very much a normal thing that we use. After 25 years in journalism,
00:08:10.960 my career ended. That dream I had as a kid of working at CBC shattered along with my trust in
00:08:17.340 it. Now inside the newsroom, the message was unmistakable and did not need to be spoken.
00:08:22.160 I raise concerns. I challenge centralized control and bias. I fought for real diversity and equal
00:08:28.220 standards. I tried to do my job as a journalist. And by the way, from hearing his public statements
00:08:35.020 elsewhere, when he even says real diversity, he does mean that in a genuine way. He stands for
00:08:41.240 diversity of thought, not just having what he calls tokens, a bunch of people who look different
00:08:47.240 than each other people who are different sexes than each other but which just share the same
00:08:52.460 opinions as david cochran and rosemary barton they will not let on actual conservatives onto
00:08:59.320 the cbc even the panels you'll notice on power and politics with david cochran a horrific show
00:09:05.880 terrible all of the panelists even the supposed conservative fred delori pretty much have all
00:09:12.740 the same opinions yeah they fill different roles on the panel one guy's there to you know speak on
00:09:18.240 behalf of the liberals one's there for the NDP one's there for the conservatives but not really
00:09:22.800 not really they all have basically the same downtown Toronto metropolitan views about everything
00:09:28.340 they just have slightly different you know takes on how their exact same politics should be
00:09:34.120 implemented in the country within months I was pulled off the air disciplined restricted from
00:09:38.980 speaking, stripped of my primetime program, and eventually out altogether. Now if you were still
00:09:45.060 working there, would you feel safe raising similar concerns? This is how silence becomes culture.
00:09:51.860 It's how whistleblowers are intimidated. Public institutions do not weaken from scrutiny,
00:09:57.780 they weaken when they avoid it. The CBC that I believed in was strong enough to withstand
00:10:03.140 accountability if it is to endure as a public broadcaster worthy of canadians trust and over
00:10:09.620 1.4 billion dollars of their money it must be strong enough to withstand it again accountability
00:10:16.420 is not destruction it is survival although this is the one place i disagree with travis dunraj i
00:10:22.820 think the cbc fully needs to be defunded that doesn't mean the cbc would go away that means
00:10:27.940 a private company would buy it up and they would use the asset to host their own shows. And guess
00:10:33.120 what? Maybe you would become more left-wing if that happened. But that's allowed. It's not using
00:10:37.800 taxpayer money. That's always the greatest insult. The Toronto Star is more left-wing than the CBC.
00:10:44.660 The Taiyi is more left-wing than the CBC. There are worse places in terms of liberal or NDP bias
00:10:52.300 than the CBC. But what makes the CBC so bad is the budget. The fact that they can put out
00:10:58.920 a liberal bias message to every home of the country, in theory. They can be running a YouTube
00:11:04.160 channel that can upload multiple times a day. They have such high production values, and they
00:11:08.440 have a brand that many people still trust. And it's all being funded by taxpayers. At least the
00:11:13.800 tie-ee, and these ones still get government money, but far less. At least if they suck at their jobs,
00:11:19.800 if they can't get an audience together they will go bankrupt the cbc could effectively have no
00:11:24.920 viewership and it would keep going that's the biggest insult of all but now we have this clip
00:11:30.140 of him talking about uh cbc staff who have been basically intimidated and scared away from being
00:11:36.280 able to share testimony i i do want to spend part of my time because i i am here speaking and this
00:11:43.060 is my story but over the past several days and even when this story initially came out there have
00:11:48.240 been other cbc employees current and former that have come forward to me that are afraid to speak
00:11:55.360 out publicly and they have sent me some statements so i'd like to if i can read into the record some
00:11:59.880 of what i have been getting from current and former employees uh this is a current employee
00:12:05.700 at the cbc i've been with cbc for 10 years and i have witnessed and experienced multiple incidents
00:12:10.860 of the misuse of taxpayer dollars racism favoritism nepotism sexual harassment and verbal abuse
00:12:17.360 and then she goes on to outline specific examples this uh next individual was someone that you would
00:12:24.820 all know if i said their name they left the cbc after a 10-year career uh the end of their statement
00:12:31.640 says without exaggeration i experienced toxicity every single day and it was almost always from
00:12:38.100 the same people it was not subtle it was not hidden it was part of the daily reality of working
00:12:43.440 there she goes on to say that uh she was set to interview uh catherine tate on air i introduced
00:12:50.960 myself to her in the makeup room as the host in front of others she responded i didn't know i'd
00:12:55.800 be interviewed by somebody who looks like she is 14 that moment stayed with me it was dismissive
00:13:01.560 inappropriate and reflected a broader culture in which respect was not always equally extended
00:13:06.900 to everyone remember guys uh peer poly of the conservatives are bullies for not liking the cbc
00:13:13.700 because they want the cbc defunded this makes them the bad people it basically makes them trump
00:13:20.220 and as we know from watching the cbc trump is hitler so them saying stuff that is like trump
00:13:26.440 even though it's not does in fact make them hitler as well but we have all this like people
00:13:32.120 are getting apparently like you know thrown out of office windows down at the cbc i'm being
00:13:37.200 facetious here you know people are having their heads dunked in fish tanks and you know chased
00:13:41.640 around the office with hammers again i'm being facetious and we're supposed to be mad because
00:13:46.360 polyev has once said a word or two that that offended somebody like like five people and now
00:13:52.700 polyev gets the negative coverage from the cbc and they wonder every five minutes of his political
00:13:58.880 career is going to be over. What? Oh, my goodness. On Mr. Cochran, this is one of his former
00:14:05.620 producers. His toxic behavior extended beyond editorial matters and was more often than not
00:14:10.340 deeply hypocritical. While he publicly presented himself as a supporter of diversity, he actively
00:14:15.820 undermined the contributions of colleagues who were minorities. This is somebody who left the
00:14:22.300 industry and had to go to another country. After about a year of working there as an anchor, this
00:14:30.060 is in Vancouver, I was suddenly removed from the anchor desk. I was told the decision was related
00:14:35.740 to the color of my skin, that as a white person I did not fit the diversity targets they were
00:14:41.020 trying to meet. No concerns about my performance had ever been raised. My concern was the system
00:14:48.300 and the reasoning behind the decision my frustration was never directed at the individual
00:14:52.620 who stepped into the role she was also said that she was forced to check a box if somebody of a
00:14:59.260 diverse background appeared on the air and she said that that was concerning to her i believe
00:15:03.820 it's important to include a broad range of voices and perspectives but reducing interview subjects
00:15:08.620 to a check bar box felt like an overly simplistic way of approaching something that deserves much
00:15:14.620 more care and thought and imagine that you're going to interview people for serious issues
00:15:20.780 for current events based on like oh we need a woman who's brown for this segment oh we need
00:15:29.100 a disabled person for this segment does it have anything to do with the story does it have anything
00:15:34.380 to do with getting to the you know to the getting to the bottom of a story like better getting more
00:15:40.940 truth more evidence no doesn't really matter and this is what we experience all the time with the
00:15:47.680 1bc party in british columbia obviously it's not just the cbc but you'll have panels full of people
00:15:54.520 attacking dallas brody and the party not one person who could actually come on to defend us
00:16:01.020 and i'm wondering if it's like ah 1bc's defenders are too white that's why they can't come on board
00:16:05.120 they they need to hit it a few more they don't hit enough check boxes to actually be able to come on
00:16:09.640 But you'll have the CBC host basically like 1984 style anger sessions against Dallas with nobody else to speak back at it.
00:16:19.640 Not even the host who's supposed to be neutral, who should be feeding more information into the system saying, oh, well, you're saying all these nasty things about Dallas.
00:16:26.260 But she did say this or she didn't do this. What do you say to that?
00:16:29.440 Because that would ruin all these activists shtick if they went on and someone actually threw some real evidence at them to contend with.
00:16:37.420 it would turn out that they would probably look really bad trying to smear someone despite all
00:16:41.640 the facts. And I can go on. There are a number of these stories and it is shocking. These people
00:16:47.380 have been traumatized. They are scared to come out. They're scared of the professional repercussions
00:16:53.520 and management like Andre Lau, like Brody Fenlon, like Katy Perry, like Chris Carter.
00:16:59.640 They are concerned about protecting the reputation of the organization as opposed to dealing with these issues when it comes to employees.
00:17:10.200 And so I guess what he's effectively saying there is you get these people at the top, the CBC, the executives who care more about hiding the truth about the organization and not facing any criticism than actually, you know, trying to make it a better place to work with more neutral news, more, you know, a better balanced panel.
00:17:30.800 They don't care about that. They are there to fight for the false idea that they are currently neutral. They haven't been neutral in a very, very long time. Probably never. It just probably used to not be as bad. But they don't want to actually make it neutral or try and be more objective. They are simply going to attack and fire anyone who would potentially pierce the veil and let people know that, yes, no, in fact, this is a left-wing front group.
00:17:56.240 here's him taking on the idea that it's basically a liberal front group uh in the uh taking it on
00:18:02.420 head on right in this uh next question or this next answer when it came to politics interviews
00:18:07.480 were blocked under guardrails governed by an internal document never made public titled
00:18:12.640 parameters for political guests political access was centralized booking decisions controlled
00:18:18.480 elsewhere well i think i already played that one that was in the longer one there but yeah that's
00:18:23.280 absolutely wild where we have the cbc getting again 1.4 billion dollars a year and political
00:18:30.840 guests are gatekeeps by people like david cochran and rosemary barton not only who's allowed to
00:18:36.700 appear but if you do appear who you must be interviewed by which is just wild that we
00:18:41.780 basically have these people treating it like some sort of like like hierarchy where if you get a
00:18:47.300 good guest well it's actually owed to rosemary barton because she's like the top dog on the on
00:18:52.180 the channel. But here is another CBC former host or former employee also speaking out about the
00:18:58.740 bias at the CBC or the intimidation, harassment, all that stuff. I was called a bimbo, that I
00:19:05.620 sounded like a bimbo. This morning at Exclusive, another former employee of the CBC comes forward
00:19:12.540 with allegations of a toxic workplace. What they're doing is wrong and in some companies,
00:19:18.460 illegal. She says she took her warnings all the way to the CBC president Catherine Tate
00:19:24.120 and they were ignored while she was showed the door. I didn't even have my belongings
00:19:28.780 and no person should be put through that. Nobody. Now for the first time she's speaking publicly
00:19:34.980 plus full coverage of Travis testifying before parliament. It all starts live at 10 a.m. only
00:19:41.160 on campus. Yeah thank you for the people who ended up clipping that part but this is why
00:19:47.640 i poly of the conservatives cannot back off of their promise to defund the cbc i've had people
00:19:53.520 say that oh they should walk that back it's toxic people get mad about it you could lose some of the
00:19:58.840 voters who really like the cbc still or at least they don't get why you got to take this battle
00:20:03.920 it's a hard one but polyev and the conservatives should just keep hammering on this hammer carney
00:20:10.480 on it the fact that he won't basically purge the cbc is just proof he wanted to stay a liberal
00:20:16.240 front group hammer them on this and it will actually benefit you greatly but we're going
00:20:21.760 to come back with more discussion in the future about the cbc and about travis dunraj uh this was
00:20:27.120 a good testimony that he gave while he was there and i hope that they end up uh you know following
00:20:31.920 up on it and actually trying to turn this into a big campaign issue this is why i keep saying with
00:20:36.720 polyeth he's doing a good job pivoting on trade but he needs to be bolder in other areas of his
00:20:41.920 agenda. He should revive the defund the CBC thing. I know he never got rid of it, but it needs to be
00:20:47.260 revived and made a front and center issue. Run on a big tax cut, run on heavy deregulation, run on
00:20:53.420 heavy criminal justice reform. Do all of that. If you're not running on something big, don't even
00:20:58.560 bother doing it. But yeah, this is the CBC that everyone says that you're just like, I guess,
00:21:04.600 a conservative hack if you don't like them. Their own employees who seem like Travis, probably
00:21:10.600 before all of this happened was probably a bit of a default liberal in terms of what his personal
00:21:15.600 views were on social issues and economics. You know, someone who actually tried to be neutral,
00:21:19.860 though. And even that person has basically been convinced that it's a corrupt system.
00:21:24.980 Their own people are telling you it's a corrupt system. I know people who used to work in
00:21:28.680 mainstream media. They hate it because, yes, once you get behind the camera and you're making
00:21:34.380 editorial decisions, that's when the bias comes out because they're not going to show the bias
00:21:38.640 right on screen oftentimes it slips out but not in a way where the average viewer would be like
00:21:43.740 oh my goodness this is just liberal swill it's all in the background and if if people don't want
00:21:49.760 to see that honestly we can't even help them anymore but the thing that we can do is that
00:21:54.360 the conservatives ever win you can defund them and you can put a stop to this anyways with that
00:22:00.700 all being said thank you guys for watching like share subscribe hit the join button and make sure
00:22:05.480 to hit the notification bell, and I'll see you all next time.