Western Standard - Travis Dhanraj breaks silence

00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:00:30.000 .

00:01:00.000 .

00:01:30.000 Travis and I are returning to our breaking news routes because this is the type of story

00:01:57.880 that we're going to have to cover today.

00:01:59.860 And the reason we're all here is because Travis is testifying before.

00:02:04.620 Now, Can't Be Censored was born out of Travis's very public dispute with the CBC.

00:02:10.380 It's centered on editorial freedom, on discrimination and inside Canada's public broadcaster.

00:02:17.080 That particular case is before the Canada Human Rights Commission.

00:02:20.580 And this morning, it's also before Parliament.

00:02:23.420 And so in just a short while, Travis will appear before a parliamentary committee in

00:02:27.620 ottawa to testify inside uh inside and tell us what happened at the cbc and the events that led

00:02:33.780 to his removal from the air and over the next several hours i'm going to stay with you we're

00:02:38.580 going to take you through the lead up to that testimony we're going to bring you inside the

00:02:41.780 hearing live as it unfolds we'll return here for reaction once it's over as well just you want to

00:02:46.740 stay tuned for this travis is going to be joining us right after but first we have travis himself a

00:02:51.300 A lot of Travis, Travis, Travis, Travis is joining us from Ottawa.

00:02:56.200 Travis, how are you feeling this morning?

00:02:58.740 You know what, Carmen, I am glad that we're streaming this.

00:03:01.680 We made the decision, you know, a couple of days ago that we were going to stream this.

00:03:06.500 And I was disappointed to see this morning in the Toronto Star.

00:03:10.240 You know, I made that challenge to Brody Fenlon, the editor-in-chief of CBC and the broadcaster to stream this.

00:03:17.080 And to have some transparency around exactly what went on.

00:03:20.500 And it's disappointing that they told the star this morning that they're not going to do that, that there are other places to stream it.

00:03:25.780 Well, if we have to be that place, then that is what it is going to be in terms of how I'm feeling.

00:03:31.440 You know, you know what you know, you're my co-host, but you're also my friend.

00:03:36.100 You know what this has been like for me, what a struggle this has been emotionally, mentally, in terms of my reputation as well.

00:03:46.940 But really, Carmen, this is about something much bigger than me.

00:03:52.180 It really is.

00:03:53.500 It's about whether or not employees should be subjected to a toxic work environment.

00:03:59.100 I know that you are going to be speaking with another former CBC employee in the next little while about her experience, which dates back well before my time on Canada tonight.

00:04:11.640 And I think, you know, really over the past several days since I put out that video and even before that, people started contacting me that were either at the CBC and say that their careers were completely destroyed or people that are still there that have raised concerns repeatedly to management about the environment, about the fact that they have a double standard when it comes to certain employees, about political bias, about all of these concerns.

00:04:41.640 And nothing has been done.

00:04:43.640 You know, there are tongue lashings that the president of CBC gets here at Parliament.

00:04:49.660 But really, the time for that is over.

00:04:52.760 It's time for action.

00:04:53.840 We really need to see some accountability in some of these, in terms of some of these really important issues when it comes to public trust and employee safety.

00:05:03.600 You know, before we get to that conversation, which we will, we want to show viewers some of those key moments that brought us to this day.

00:05:10.760 Sure.

00:05:10.920 And we've got to put together for you for, you know, how the story has unfolded and why today's testimony matters.

00:05:16.280 Take a look. Madam Chair, and thank you for being here today.

00:05:25.320 One of the CBC shows that I will admit as a conservative I'd like to watch is Canada Tonight Show.

00:05:33.960 And of course, this features Travis Dhanraj. And I'm wondering, do you watch that show?

00:05:39.740 All right. And then I'm a little bit curious as to why Mr. Donrush had this exchange with you, Ms. Tate.

00:05:51.800 He tweeted on April 19th, 2024,

00:05:55.920 at the time when the public broadcaster is under increasing scrutiny and when transparency is needed,

00:06:01.960 Candace and I request an interview with Catherine Tate.

00:06:06.200 We wanted to discuss the new budget funding.

00:06:09.080 what it means for jobs and the corporation's strategic priorities ahead.

00:06:13.500 Our request was declined.

00:06:15.360 This is unfortunate.

00:06:16.780 Why did you decline, Mr. Donraj's?

00:06:19.340 I was on annual leave.

00:06:21.000 I wasn't available.

00:06:22.300 Okay.

00:06:23.220 And then Mr. Donraj curiously tweeted on April 19th, 2020,

00:06:28.960 or sorry, after this tweet, he tweeted on May 2nd, my apologies,

00:06:32.000 on May 2nd, 2024, he tweeted he was back on Canada tonight,

00:06:35.940 Meaning he went into, he disappeared from the air for a week or ten days there.

00:06:44.020 Was this because of any type of repercussions?

00:06:46.620 Because he asked, he was calling out to you publicly missed it?

00:06:49.700 I'm not aware of any repercussions, no.

00:06:52.360 Because just on the heels of my colleague, Ms. Ashton's comments, I find it a little

00:06:57.300 bit strange that one of your stars, Mr. Donrush, calls you out publicly, and then he disappears

00:07:04.540 from the air for for a week or ten days and I would just like to point you to

00:07:09.040 your own conflict of interest policy that says our standards do not change

00:07:13.060 when the CBC or a partner of CBC becomes the public interest becomes the story

00:07:19.180 public interest guides our choices do you still stand by this statement of

00:07:24.880 course and I just to be clear I don't get involved in the programming and

00:07:28.700 scheduling decisions in the newsroom so I have to assume that that there's a

00:07:33.160 reason that occurred for Travis Danraj, but I'm not, again, involved in any of those discussions.

00:07:41.160 Okay, well, I mean, I'm not a booking agent for Mr. Danraj, but I would assume that he would

00:07:47.080 probably like to have you on the show again. If Mr. Danraj reached out to you, would you commit

00:07:52.360 to going on to a show? I will look at all invitations. As you can imagine, we have many,

00:07:57.800 many shows and that's just at CBC Hydro Canada so where I try to make myself

00:08:02.960 available to as many as I can given whatever is on the schedule at the time.

00:08:08.960 And just to finish up, you did give me a complete I guess rejection of my

00:08:16.680 premise that perhaps there was something off the fact that Mr. Damaraj was taken

00:08:20.360 off the air shortly after calling out you publicly. Can you confirm right

00:08:24.560 unequivocally to the committee that there were no reprisals or no negative outcomes to Mr. Donaraj

00:08:30.960 for his calling you out publicly for not appearing on his show. I'm not aware of any.

00:08:37.020 Okay, just to bring some context to that for people who are just watching, that was a past

00:08:41.400 committee hearing. This is the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that Travis is appearing

00:08:46.740 before today. That was a past hearing with past President Catherine Tate. What this committee

00:08:52.040 specifically looking into is the broader health of mainstream media it's got a particular focus

00:08:57.320 on cbc which you're going to be bringing that's why they brought catherine tate um to um to test

00:09:02.360 to testify and what she was saying which is one of the almost it wasn't the starting point for you

00:09:08.600 but it was one of the big things that happened where you had approached uh catherine at the time

00:09:14.680 when you know there's a story about executive bonuses and you wanted her to appear on your show

00:09:18.520 and because of that public call out you were disciplined for it well you know we had an

00:09:24.740 editorial meeting and i and i didn't make the request but it was one of the chase producers

00:09:29.240 that made the request to miss kate's office because there was this conversation going on

00:09:33.680 about executive bonuses and we wanted to ask her about that we wanted to ask her about broader

00:09:38.380 issues with the public broadcaster so i'm going into the studio on that day and i i i get a and

00:09:45.980 I know that, you know, the request has been declined.

00:09:48.620 And I thought to myself, well, that's unfortunate that, you know, we're talking about public trust here.

00:09:53.380 There should be transparency around some of these issues.

00:09:55.740 And the president, the then president, because she's not the president anymore of CBC, doesn't want to do an interview.

00:10:02.220 That's unfortunate.

00:10:03.240 So I tweeted two facts that we requested a interview with her and that it was declined.

00:10:09.960 It's unfortunate.

00:10:11.540 You know, what followed after that was just shocking to me.

00:10:15.140 As I am a former journalist now, but I was a journalist when this all happened, it was absolutely shocking that I was pulled into a disciplinary hearing.

00:10:24.480 There needs to be a separation between those that govern the corporation, has the corporation's interests in mind, and the news division.

00:10:33.220 That is sacrosanct. The news division should have separation.

00:10:37.080 So while I was going through all of this, my head was spinning because I'm like, am I in a twilight zone here?

00:10:42.920 what kind of message does this send to other journalists in the newsroom that simply want

00:10:49.180 to do their job and report the news and miss tate you know her testimony it it was surprising to me

00:10:55.880 as well because i brought to ottawa the receipts and so we will be discussing uh this morning in

00:11:02.580 my opening statement that you know example there but that really was kind of a bit of a breaking

00:11:08.920 point there were so many things that happened prior to that and after that but it really was

00:11:14.040 a shocking moment now there is a new president of cbc and i thought with the new president coming in

00:11:19.640 there would be some accountability around some of these issues but there does not seem to be

00:11:25.320 any change when it comes to really some of these fundamental issues that are core to

00:11:30.920 to be people being able to do their jobs without fear of reprisal uh travis we're gonna let you

00:11:39.720 go in a few minutes because i know you have to head in but i do what to expect today what you're

00:11:45.520 you know preview what you're saying sure yeah let me just let me just say this before before i take

00:11:50.740 off because i do have to head into the hearing i this i and i said this in in the video that that i

00:11:56.740 did the other day you know some people will say this is a partisan issue that you want to destroy

00:12:01.900 the public broadcaster i have said you know the story carmen i i grew up watching the cbc that i

00:12:08.480 worked there when i was 19 years old on jonavision i used to walk around the cbc broadcast center in

00:12:15.220 awe and the heart of this organization i would use to sneak into the newsroom when i was 19 years

00:12:20.680 just to look around because it was this place that brought canadians together so this is not

00:12:27.160 about whether or not you're a conservative or you're a liberal or ndp or green or bloc it's

00:12:32.600 about whether you're a canadian and you want an institution in this country that has been around

00:12:39.240 for 60 years to be able to you know have trust when it comes to taxpayer dollars it's 1.4 billion

00:12:48.360 dollars we're talking about here and some of these issues around workplace culture some of these

00:12:53.320 issues around bias that exists some of these issues about double standards that should not happen in

00:12:59.400 any workplace let alone a public institution so that's what i'll say i'll have more to say coming

00:13:05.160 up inside but and i'll talk to you as soon as uh we wrap up as well okay there we'll be watching

00:13:12.760 uh in the meantime as travis heads in uh i did have a conversation yesterday with someone else

00:13:18.520 um we've been getting a lot of you know um emails and uh messages from people who've had similar

00:13:25.640 types of experiences as travis and wanting to share their experience uh with the cbc at the cbc

00:13:31.640 with us uh one of those people her name is karen johnson now she's never met travis

00:13:37.000 I've never met her either. She reached out to us after hearing the story and for the first time

00:13:43.400 she's so I want to show you that conversation I had with her a little bit earlier. Our next guest

00:13:50.440 spent more than 25 years in television and radio including more than a decade at the weather

00:13:55.720 network and appearances on national programs like Canada AM. In 2017 she joined CBC as a weather

00:14:03.400 specialists in toronto but after raising concerns about what she called a toxic workplace less than

00:14:09.480 a year later she was dismissed and after exhausting efforts through her union and internal management

00:14:16.840 to raise the concerns she made a direct appeal in 2018 to cbc president catherine tate now she

00:14:24.360 describes systemic problems inside the newsroom including harassment bullying workplace culture

00:14:29.640 and management practices she ultimately left the industry altogether now she has never spoken with

00:14:36.520 travis before this week but reached out just days ago saying she wanted to share her experience

00:14:42.840 after seeing news of his story i want to welcome karen johnson into this program now karen thank

00:14:49.640 you so much for being here i told a little bit about your story where you say you joined cbc

00:14:54.920 it was a dream but then within days starting something happened tell us a little bit about that

00:14:59.640 I think it was probably my first week. I think I saw a lot of red flags. I guess starting with,

00:15:08.980 I actually had a friend who was doing traffic on the radio side of CBC, and she was having,

00:15:15.280 going into those sort of labor pains, and no one was going to take her to the hospital. 0.53

00:15:20.920 And so I'm only there maybe in my second day. So I said, I'll take her. So I took her in a cab.

00:15:28.100 and when i came back i was asked where where have you been like what are you doing where'd you go

00:15:33.060 and i said well i told you and you told me to go take her to the hospital and i did um so right

00:15:38.820 from there i just thought things were not normal and then my first week on the radio side just it

00:15:45.700 was probably icier than any sort of uh uh an ice box you could feel people were not friendly not

00:15:52.420 welcoming uh they were upset i got the job over i guess another employee that they considered um

00:15:59.860 probably a lot more credit to their name and who's doing the job previous so there were a lot of red

00:16:06.420 flags but i thought you know what be a team player you're new to the newsroom make friends just go

00:16:12.660 with the flow don't cause issues you know you later described what you experienced as part of

00:16:17.300 like a broader workplace culture problem not just those specific incidents that you mentioned what

00:16:23.380 led you to to believe that and what was happening behind the scenes so um you're when you're hired

00:16:30.980 if i don't know if anybody knows this when you're hired at cbc or any other sort of newsroom you

00:16:34.900 have a nine month probation uh during that nine months things should be brought up to you if

00:16:40.020 there's concerns or what have you that usually what happens i was actually days to my probation

00:16:47.780 being over when i got called in um to say that i wasn't standing in the right place of a weather

00:16:57.300 green screen which i've been doing for 25 years i wasn't giving accurate information but i've never

00:17:03.940 had a complaint about my my um my information so um all this started to tag on i was humiliated

00:17:12.980 in the newsroom when i was told to not go into studio told to wait i was berated i was screamed

00:17:18.660 at um and then told what am i going to make things better to improve the situation a situation that i

00:17:26.180 didn't even cause i was just doing what i was told to do uh things like that um i got written up for

00:17:33.140 having a thick eyeliner on my on my makeup on my my face and we had makeup artists who did our makeup

00:17:39.780 so that was a comment i had gotten from an executive producer she's nice but she wears too 1.00

00:17:44.340 much eyeliner out of my hands um i was called a bimbo uh um on day 10 that i sounded like a bimbo

00:17:53.220 uh on the air that was one of the criticisms that i had received i'd never been called that in my

00:17:58.180 life uh even a brown uh barbie which was um not great was that from someone who supervised you

00:18:06.020 yes that was actually my producer in day day 10 on the job and that led you eventually to

00:18:12.100 write to the president tell us about that yes so i went through the union i went through the

00:18:18.900 president i had a case i even hired an external lawyer um i was getting nowhere and i thought you

00:18:24.740 I have to bring it to somebody's attention because honestly, I felt like I was an Alice in Wonderland

00:18:30.040 and you have all those mirrors and you see these doors and you think that there's an opening and

00:18:34.580 there's a crack there and you can get through and it's not, it's fake. It doesn't exist.

00:18:39.540 And I was honestly, I was losing it. I was losing myself. I was yelling at my kids. I was taking it

00:18:47.160 out of my family. I was spiraling. And I thought, what better thing to do? Let me just try and reach

00:18:53.020 out and see if i can connect with someone show them my proof show them my evidence because i

00:18:58.780 kept detail account of everything and the door just got slammed in my face no one listened to

00:19:05.420 me no one heard me i feel like i just got failed i had a case we were in in arbitration um it was

00:19:14.700 our turn it was my turn to testify and our union lawyer bailed i mean it's been so many years and

00:19:21.820 i can still hear how this has affected you to this day um you know would you talk a bit maybe about

00:19:29.980 how this has taken a toll on your mental health what it was like emotionally i know you're talking

00:19:34.860 a bit about like how it affected your home life but talk to us a bit more about the impact

00:19:41.340 there's nothing like i just didn't know what to do i was at work i got called in and before i

00:19:47.180 knew it i didn't even have my belongings i was showed the door the side door to cbc on front

00:19:52.540 street i didn't even know what hit me i i'll be very honest with you i didn't understand

00:20:01.260 just reading everything going to the union i didn't understand the cause for dismissal

00:20:07.260 the same things that they were trying to reprimand me on i'd be looking and watching

00:20:12.460 looking at the social feeds looking at the show people were doing the worst or probably the exact

00:20:18.920 same thing and i just i couldn't put two together i really couldn't there's a lot of pretty pictures

00:20:25.340 on the outside and then when you get inside you know what the real story is and how people are

00:20:29.760 treated there's a two-tier system and people who work hard who are respectful who want to be team

00:20:37.260 players, they don't get recognized. And it's really sad because the CBC has really taken the flame

00:20:49.500 and extinguished so many great careers of journalists out there from reporters to anchors

00:20:55.980 to weather people for no reason at all. And it's like a little high school. It's favorites. It's,

00:21:02.560 oh, if you go out for drinks with this one, you know, they have that clique. I'm sorry. I'm past

00:21:07.740 high school. I'm there to do a job, do it well, inform the Canadian people. The CBC needs to be

00:21:15.520 just pivoting and understand what they're doing is wrong. And in some companies, illegal what they

00:21:24.280 do to people and the fact that they are protected is just absolutely mind-blowing just mind-blowing

00:21:32.620 and we're not talking just simple black and white things like these are things that are

00:21:38.220 you look and go am I crazy you question everything about yourself you question your credibility you

00:21:46.680 question your skills you question your talent you you question everything about yourself who you are

00:21:53.240 what you do and no person should be put through that nobody okay karen johnson we appreciate you

00:22:00.520 sharing your story for the first time on can't be censored thank you thank you

00:22:08.200 okay that was taped a little bit earlier uh earlier with karen johnson she is a former cbc

00:22:14.280 employee and those are really um tough things to hear uh i like travis was a former journalist

00:22:21.240 working inside newsrooms um if you miss karen what she said this is the first time she's spoken out

00:22:26.920 publicly she talked about being called a brown barbie um being called a bimbo being berated

00:22:33.160 in the newsroom in front of all her colleagues and the impact that that had on her in her career

00:22:39.640 which ultimately led her to quit journalism altogether um and uh you know in that interview

00:22:47.240 to this day she still sort of questions herself she um and it's the same thing with travis where

00:22:52.200 it's it's like you know am i seeing things the right way is it just me or does is does anyone

00:22:57.800 else see that um that's kind of like the common thread that i've kind of seen through this but

00:23:02.920 both have come to the realization that what they experienced was real and they want to

00:23:08.040 share their experiences and that's what travis is doing today uh in ottawa so for all of you that

00:23:14.040 are joining us i think we've got about a thousand people with us good morning my name is carmen

00:23:18.440 wong i am one of the co-host can't be censored travis as you know is the other co-host and he

00:23:24.040 is in ottawa today we spoke a little bit earlier uh what he's doing is at 11 o'clock we'll bring

00:23:29.560 this to you live he is inside of a parliamentary committee uh it is called the standing committee

00:23:36.200 on canadian heritage and what these committees do is they look at particular issues related to their

00:23:42.040 uh to their topics so this committee the heritage committee uh this step in

00:23:49.640 health of mainstream media in canada so that encompasses print broadcasts digital news

00:23:57.240 and there's a special focus on cbc's funding and mandate given that they're funded by taxpayers

00:24:04.440 by the government to the tune of over a billion dollars so that is what we are looking forward to

00:24:11.080 at 11 o'clock we've got a lot of um great interviews set up for you we've got catherine

00:24:17.160 marshall who is travis's lawyer coming up i also have brian lily who you might know as a sun

00:24:24.040 columnist speaking to us we've got colby hall who is the founding

00:24:32.200 of mediaite in the u.s and he talks about the intersection of politics

00:24:41.080 So we've got Travis right after the right after his testimony talking to us as well about what that was like.

00:24:50.400 And, you know, there's been a lot said publicly. Travis has put a lot out there publicly on our podcast in particular.

00:24:59.580 He's not done any interviews. And I know that he had said, well, I'm going to be speaking in front of committee under parliamentary privilege.

00:25:08.820 And a lot of people took issue with that. So they said, people are saying, why did you have to wait

00:25:16.620 for parliamentary privilege to talk about this? And the reason why, Travis will explain, is because

00:25:22.620 he wants to actually name names. And when you do that against someone who may work at a bigger

00:25:28.700 corporation, you expose yourself to the possibility of legal action. And so when you testify before

00:25:36.140 parliament you're protected under this parliamentary privilege supposedly and so uh what you say there

00:25:42.460 can't be used against you in a legal way um so that is what he meant by it i know some people

00:25:48.460 had questions of that um part of what he was fighting for um and his dispute with the cbc

00:25:53.740 had to do with not only workplace culture but um you know he says discrimination editorial control

00:26:00.940 and we've got some clips of uh of you know some of the things that he did on air

00:26:09.420 um with his show because he tried to bring a

00:26:12.380 Laura, listen, you know, I appreciate you doing this interview.

00:26:28.680 I think, you know, it's interesting to hear your perspective from being in the inner circle.

00:26:32.780 But a lot of people in this country and yours would not agree with that view.

00:26:38.060 They think that, you know, another potential Trump presidency would be disastrous.

00:26:42.380 What do you say to people, not only in the United States, but here in Canada, that have that view of the situation?

00:26:49.380 Well, I would ask them, what is it that they thought was such a disaster the first time around?

00:26:53.380 Was it that, you know, people were prospering here in America, unlike we'd seen in many decades?

00:26:58.380 You had things like manufacturing coming back, historic trade agreements with, you know, Canada and Mexico,

00:27:03.380 historic trade agreements with China, as I just alluded to, the Abraham Accords in the Middle East,

00:27:09.380 meetings with kim jong-un to denuclearize the korean peninsula how about an energy policy that made us

00:27:15.460 energy independent and gave us strength on the world stage those were very important things so

00:27:21.380 i think my question would be how was life for you as an american citizen or perhaps as a canadian

00:27:27.460 citizen when donald trump was in office and if you take the tweets that people didn't like out

00:27:32.340 of it and perhaps his personality out of it and people are very honest i don't think travis there's

00:27:37.460 a whole lot that people could say negative in fact i think you're going to see a lot of people

00:27:41.700 who voted for joe biden in this country in 2020 coming over to vote for donald trump in 2024 i

00:27:48.100 can't let you go without asking about the upcoming trials uh and the court cases do you think that

00:27:53.540 those are going to have a negative impact and do you know if your father-in-law is going to testify

00:27:58.180 on the defamation trial uh well i'll leave all the specifics of course to the lawyers but what

00:28:03.540 I can tell you is that people in this country have had what I believe is probably an inverse

00:28:08.600 reaction to the intention of all of these indictments. The reality is Donald Trump is

00:28:13.240 going to be the Republican nominee. It is time for Joe Biden and his Department of Justice to do away

00:28:18.820 with all of these indictments. I think a lot of people in this country feel like the goal of them

00:28:23.060 was to deter Donald Trump to perhaps throw mud his way and tell anyone who might potentially

00:28:28.980 support him, this might not be the guy for you. And it's actually Travis had the inverse effect

00:28:34.400 of that. He, every single indictment has gone up with his poll numbers, especially after that mug

00:28:40.020 shot in Georgia, poll numbers through the roof. I think the people of this country who feel that

00:28:45.260 this system here is not working for them understands that that same system is working

00:28:50.360 against Donald Trump. Why all of the effort against one man? Why the attempt to keep one guy

00:28:56.640 so much out of the White House. I think it only rallies support behind him.

00:29:01.440 And I think you're going to see proof of that tomorrow in New Hampshire. You'll see it in

00:29:04.720 Nevada, South Carolina, and I believe you'll see it on November 5th when he's elected as the 47th

00:29:09.800 president. Well, we shall see about that. No doubt who you are backing, Laura Trump.

00:29:14.320 Appreciate the time tonight. That is Laura Trump joining us from Palm Beach, Florida.

00:29:20.440 Okay. So that was a old clip of Travis's show, Canada Tonight. He had Laura Trump on. That was

00:29:25.760 one of the people he was permitted to have on, but he will tell you in his testimony today,

00:29:30.660 there was a lot of pushback when it came to having a diversity of voices, different perspectives of

00:29:35.520 political leadings on his program. So that's what we wanted to show you from that clip. Again,

00:29:43.180 just if you're joining us, I want to remind you, you're watching Can't Be Censored. This is a live

00:29:47.440 stream, a live broadcast leading up to the testimony 11 o'clock, which we will stream

00:29:52.840 live here on our channel. There's a comments button for you. If you want to send a comment,

00:30:00.220 if you want to send a question for me or for Travis, I will make sure we read that and get

00:30:03.960 back to you either on the broadcast or afterwards. But right now, I want to bring in someone who is

00:30:11.000 very experienced in these sorts of issues. Catherine Marshall is an employment and human

00:30:16.140 rights lawyer. She's the founding partner of Marshall Law, and she also happens to be

00:30:20.880 Travis's lawyer. Catherine, good morning. Thanks for being here.

00:30:24.800 Thanks for having me.

00:30:29.080 Okay, so Travis has his case before the Human Rights Commission. But in the meantime, he's also testifying in front of this parliamentary committee. So how do those two things, you know, work together?

00:30:43.200 Well, today is going to be a huge day because Travis is able to speak freely about the case

00:30:49.680 and the evidence and name names under the protection of parliamentary privilege. So,

00:30:55.920 the case, the Human Rights Commission case is continuing to proceed and that will

00:31:02.880 keep going and we'll see what the CBC has to say after today.

00:31:07.680 i mean they're what their line has been catherine is just you know they um they deny everything they

00:31:21.120 don't agree with his accounting of things that you know they stand behind their news and their

00:31:25.440 employees and so they kind of they're already giving us a sense that they're going to dispute

00:31:31.440 um most of what he's claiming um but maybe you can take us because you've been through

00:31:37.440 this process before take us through like kind of what a committee hearing might look like for

00:31:42.240 Travis like does he you know do an opening statement what happens for the committee hearing

00:31:48.880 or the human rights hearing oh okay yeah yeah the committee hearing um he'll get to do an opening

00:31:57.600 statement and then he'll be asked questions by the parliamentarians who are there and then the

00:32:03.680 members of parliament will be able to ask him really anything that they want and this committee

00:32:11.120 hearing is about a study that's going on and to the CBC so it will be the first of numerous

00:32:18.080 committee meetings but I think we can expect that Travis is going to be very uncensored and

00:32:26.800 look there's a lot of intimidation that happens in these kinds of cases

00:32:30.560 oftentimes people get threatened with lawsuits for defamation and they get intimidated and we

00:32:37.580 know in travis's case the cbc desperately wanted him to sign a gig order they wanted to muzzle him

00:32:44.060 today is their worst nightmare the idea that he gets to sit there in parliament really saying

00:32:49.940 exactly what happened to him and telling the truth i think is the the last thing they wanted

00:32:55.820 to see happen. So if there's power in today and being able to just tell the truth and not

00:33:03.600 be sued for it or not be intimidated for it. So I'm very looking forward to today.

00:33:12.480 And maybe you can just bring us up to speed on some of the key points in Travis's claim that's

00:33:20.300 going to go before the Human Rights Commission without going in too much detail, but the broad

00:33:24.720 strokes in terms of what you'll be arguing yeah so his claim is for discrimination um we're going

00:33:33.120 to be arguing that the cbc um created a very toxic and discriminatory work environment for travis

00:33:41.600 that they recruited him as a token they expected him to espouse a certain point of view as a

00:33:49.440 a racialized person. And when he did it, they retaliated against him. And they didn't allow

00:33:55.500 him to have freedom of speech or voice or thought or opinion. And then they essentially drove him

00:34:02.420 out on a leave and tried to force him to sign an NDA and tried to force him to basically give in

00:34:11.880 to whatever they wanted. And those are going to be the core issues of the claim. And we do expect

00:34:17.860 is going to go to a hearing and there'll be a lot of witnesses we plan on subpoenaing

00:34:23.380 many people from the cbc to come speak and we have a lot of former cbc employees who want to

00:34:30.740 speak out as well so it's going to be a significant hearing okay katherine marshall i appreciate your

00:34:39.460 time katherine is travis's lawyer she's a founding partner at marshall law and an employment human 1.00

00:34:44.340 rights lawyer right now i want to bring in um colby hall colby is the founding editor of media

00:34:49.540 it is a top u.s based website covering the intersection of media and politics

00:34:53.700 colby appreciate you being here hi

00:35:02.980 okay i think

00:35:07.220 okay i don't know i can't hear colby but maybe that's on my end

00:35:11.700 and he's our producer. He'll send me a quick note to let me know. But while we're trying to get that

00:35:18.400 up and going, I'll just say, you know, Colby doesn't know the ins and outs of what's about

00:35:23.480 to happen here at Parliament. But my co-host, Travis Danraj, is testifying before a parliamentary

00:35:32.760 committee. And this parliamentary committee, it is called the Standing Committee on Canadian

00:35:37.900 heritage we just shortened that to the heritage committee they're looking at the broader um health

00:35:43.500 of mainstream media in canada uh that can include print and broadcast and digital news and um a

00:35:49.500 specific look at you know public funding of the broadcaster and i think we have colby back with

00:35:55.100 colby can you hear me now i can how are you good sorry about that i don't know what happened i just

00:36:01.820 magically worked um so i thought we'd chat with you about so travis and i were both come from

00:36:07.180 mainstream media uh earlier travis left a short time ago and today we're doing this special

00:36:14.380 live coverage because he's testifying before a parliamentary committee about um his experiences

00:36:19.660 at the public broadcaster it's called the cbc uh which the government funds this tune of over a

00:36:24.060 billion dollars here and so at issue is um you know trust in traditional journalism um and also

00:36:31.980 kind of you know where audiences are going is what i want to cover with you because

00:36:35.500 we're we're we're podcasting we're on youtube we're doing all sorts of things that aren't

00:36:39.500 um you know mainstream media and that seems to be the direction of of most things now where

00:36:44.620 people are heading and tuning into a hundred percent um you know it's a really sort of

00:36:50.460 disruptive and confusing time for media in general and you know the travis uh story is a fascinating

00:36:56.940 one um there are parallels to what happened in the united states with uri milliner and um npr

00:37:02.860 and allegations of sort of bias but a lack of diversity of voices i think the situation in

00:37:09.420 canada is different of course because cbc plays such a more central role in the media landscape

00:37:13.820 whereas npr is more sort of um that created more of a broader conversation about sort of media bias

00:37:20.860 in general but what all this does is it sort of we've entered this weird sort of um through the

00:37:27.340 looking glass where we are assessing how stories are reported and not just the stories that are

00:37:32.780 being reported and there is a real crisis of trust with legacy media um some of it is earned some of

00:37:39.980 it is as a result of like long-term or really effective rhetorical attacks on outlets that

00:37:46.300 aren't are pretty specious those attacks but in that kind of ugly milieu has been this sort of

00:37:52.140 wonderful rise of independent outlets um and the independent outlets like this and many others

00:37:59.820 you know is a dual-edged sword what's great about it is you can find reliable outlets that are well

00:38:04.940 informed and smart and have a strong point of view of course there's also the sort of more pernicious

00:38:09.820 side of it of independent outlets that just go for kind of zazzy click bait and may not

00:38:17.260 you know they sort of pollute the the reservoir of information in a toxic way

00:38:22.780 so it's a good news bad news thing but i think you know big picture we're going through this

00:38:26.620 massive massive transformation in a very short period of time it's as if the you know sort of

00:38:31.900 the printing press was you know invented and they had five years to create guardrails we we don't

00:38:37.740 right like we've between the rise of independent media social media ai algorithms like we all feel

00:38:46.380 pretty untethered and it's what makes travis's testimony so fascinating because it's getting to

00:38:51.660 the essence of what are facts and what is truth yeah and you know i think travis and i take great

00:39:00.460 pains to say that we're not journalists anymore like we don't there is a need for journalism

00:39:04.780 there is a need for people who gather facts and report them in an objective way that's not what

00:39:09.100 we're doing um but there's also you know a lot of local news deserts in the country in us and in

00:39:15.740 America and Canada, where people don't have access to what's happening inside their community. So

00:39:20.140 there is a need for journalism, for local news. And that's why the CBC, the argument Travis is

00:39:27.860 making is not that we need to defund it, that we need to get rid of it, but we need to make sure

00:39:31.700 we improve the workplace culture, but also any sort of perceived bias. And part of that, I want

00:39:38.420 to ask you about whether people have an issue with CBC being funded by the government, but is it any

00:39:44.980 better when things are funded by big corporations you know it's like what's what's the trade-off

00:39:49.940 there well they're similar honestly like if you watch you know i cover uh us media and so as a

00:39:56.740 result like the vacuum of sort of political leadership has been filled with sort of loud

00:40:01.940 voices on cable news and so i mean to our previous conversation i think we're sort of seeing the end

00:40:07.460 of the golden era of cable news which is probably good but cable news for example is largely funded

00:40:14.260 if you watch any cable news for any extended period of time all you're just washed over with

00:40:19.060 just sort of a raft of pharmaceutical commercials in the united us that's that's okay and that's

00:40:24.820 legal and guess what is never really covered on cable news anything critical about sort of

00:40:31.940 pharmaceutical industry and so to your point like when big corporations who who aren't necessarily

00:40:39.140 committed to journalistic standards are are looking to sort of make money and fuel their big

00:40:47.220 corporations they are dispassionate about that they don't really care necessarily they should

00:40:52.340 be fact-based and often are fact-based but often turn into analysis and um you know so and the

00:40:59.780 decisions getting to culture the decisions of bias aren't necessarily saying someone on the left is

00:41:05.140 bad and someone on the right is bad or anything like that it's more about choosing what not to

00:41:09.860 cover right you see it on conservative media in the united states well they'll never say anything

00:41:14.660 critical about president trump he wore a cap during the sort of service at dover when fallen

00:41:21.220 soldiers arrived had that happened under a democratic president that would have been 0.87

00:41:25.060 outraged for a week non-stop so to your question i think when the government funds something like cbc

00:41:32.820 or or npr like i think it raises a different set of questions and i think it it what it what it's

00:41:39.540 what makes travis's sort of complaint so interesting and what i thought was really

00:41:43.940 smart about his complaint is that it's a cultural thing that there is a tendency for newsrooms and

00:41:52.180 networks to have a level of groupthink that they're not even aware of and as our audience

00:41:58.900 becomes really balkanized with like sort of more you know across the spectrum you know it becomes

00:42:04.740 increasingly important to be fact-based and truth oriented but also share voices that you may not

00:42:11.060 agree it's a it's sort of what the heterodox is like make it a marketplace of ideas where you

00:42:16.580 can hear other people as long again as it's responsible and it's fact-based then that's i

00:42:21.460 think responsible journalism the other thing i have to say and i hate to even bring it up but

00:42:25.460 but we're in this weird kind of post-truth world.

00:42:28.560 Journalism is a fact-based, purely objective thing.

00:42:33.480 And I'm not sure in a postmodern world

00:42:35.100 that exists to the degree that we'd like for it to believe,

00:42:37.620 that you can always find bias in anything.

00:42:40.540 And I think we are really struggling

00:42:42.720 with some navel-gazing obsession

00:42:44.940 of people wanting to find problems when there aren't.

00:42:49.380 You can't please all the people all the time.

00:42:51.280 So this testimony today,

00:42:54.860 I'm not fluent necessarily in Canadian media landscape, but it's fascinating because it's

00:42:59.820 really about how media, how we consume media in general, internationally.

00:43:05.180 Okay, Colby Hall, appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.

00:43:07.820 Thanks for having me.

00:43:10.460 Okay, next up, we want to bring in conservative MP, Phil Lawrence. Phil, good morning to you.

00:43:17.500 How are you?

00:43:18.700 Good morning. How are you, Carmen?

00:43:20.140 good and we actually played a clip of you uh earlier this morning on our um on our broadcast

00:43:27.660 it was you questioning catherine tate uh in a previous session of this um of this committee

00:43:35.180 and uh so that was you we'll just tell people that that clip that we played um and today you're

00:43:40.540 taking part in the committee again so uh let us know kind of what you'll be talking about and what

00:43:46.220 you expect today and and how it's been going in terms of this uh this study yeah so so first off

00:43:53.260 i remember that testimony that exchange changed with katherine tate about travis and it really

00:44:00.060 goes to i think some of the heart of what know what mr donrush has been talking about on can't

00:44:04.380 be censored in other places is to um if you're going to hold yourself out as a journalist if

00:44:09.660 you're going to hold yourself out as a national broadcaster one who is responsible for telling

00:44:15.500 truth to canadians you have to hold yourself accountable and the look on kathleen tate's

00:44:20.300 face uh when i asked her uh about what was going on with travis donraj at the time of course he

00:44:25.660 had asked her to appear on his show uh and uh i don't know if the video really captured but being

00:44:31.580 in the room there um you're you're an interviewer so you would you would realize this but there's

00:44:36.540 when when you have someone there who's completely flat-footed you can just sort of read it in their

00:44:41.260 face, right? And she was completely, it appeared to me, I don't want to cast aspersions, but it

00:44:47.660 appeared to me that there was something not right, I guess I'll put it that way. And so I'm really

00:44:51.780 looking forward to Travis's testimony. I won't ask, I want to be candid, I won't actually be

00:44:56.300 asking Travis any questions today, but I am very much looking forward to him, Mr. Don Raj, telling

00:45:02.580 his story. And of my six-year career, that interaction with Ms. Tate, it is one of those

00:45:09.460 vivid memories I have in those six years of her sort of being completely flat-footed and me

00:45:14.760 thinking something is definitely not right here. Yeah and you know through all this I mean I think

00:45:20.640 Travis and I are both you know we're not necessarily proponents of like defund the CBC get rid of it

00:45:26.380 all of it's bad but there are problems within it that need to be addressed for having you know

00:45:31.080 the risk being the recipient of over a billion dollars worth of government funding so I'm

00:45:36.020 wondering from you know conservative party's perspective or do where do you stand in terms of

00:45:40.460 uh you know how things go forward the cbc their funding and what what are your expectations from

00:45:45.380 them yeah so number one what and uh we of course campaigned in the last test and the last campaign

00:45:52.420 about defunding the cbc but i would tell folks that my problem with the cbc i didn't know i don't

00:45:58.760 didn't want to end it either um but if they are going to be receiving over a billion dollars i

00:46:04.160 they're up to almost 1.5 billion dollars in taxpayer dollars just like any other organization

00:46:09.600 that receives funding uh from a hospital to a child care they have to be accountable to the

00:46:15.440 people of canadians to the canadian people and quite frankly miss tate's answers were extremely

00:46:20.240 evasive and cbc continues to not uh not be fully forthright about what's going on and that's what

00:46:27.360 like every other canadian should be i'm very interested in hearing uh what mr donrush has

00:46:31.680 to say at heritage committee so yeah and i think with my previous guest we're talking a little bit

00:46:36.320 about um the decline of traditional media the decline of traditional journalism but also the

00:46:42.560 need to have like journalism to have local news to have some and uh at the committee today the

00:46:48.720 witnesses also include uniform includes news media canada it's got two digital news um startups and

00:46:55.120 you know you represent a rural Ontario writing and so where do you kind of see um where do you

00:47:01.760 kind of see the future of journalism of mainstream media of that sort of thing uh from someone who

00:47:07.760 represents a rural writing who may not have access to to you know coverage like we do in big cities

00:47:14.000 yeah my my own belief is that no one has a monopoly on the truth and that often the best

00:47:19.600 way of sort of filtering out the truth is to get it through multiple different sources and so

00:47:24.400 uh i heard your last interview it was excellent about uh the gentleman was talking about the

00:47:28.560 vulcanization uh of of our media and the fact that we're that what's going on now is that many

00:47:34.800 people across the country are just hearing from select sources i would encourage everyone to step

00:47:39.200 out of their echo chamber um and and hear from multiple you shouldn't be just listening to cbc

00:47:45.200 you shouldn't just be listening to a one particular podcaster you need to get a variety of sources so

00:47:51.120 that you can get a full picture of what's what's been going on um and so like i said i mean it's

00:47:56.960 trite to say at this point that the echo chambers sort of put us all uh so we all think we only know

00:48:02.320 that bit of the truth uh we really need that wide variety and once again for for uh news outlets

00:48:09.120 like the cbc and many others quite frankly who are receiving government money there must be

00:48:12.960 accountability there must be transparency okay i'm not going to keep you i know you're trying

00:48:19.680 to get into committee as well um so i've got a vote actually to get to speaking to maybe some

00:48:24.240 other point in time anytime thanks very much okay take care okay next uh next up i have i want to

00:48:32.000 bring in brian lily um brian is a veteran of canadian media he is currently part of the sun

00:48:37.520 news network he's built one of the most followed independent conservative media presences here in

00:48:43.040 this country through his sub stack and through his youtube channel lily unleashed and a friend of the

00:48:47.840 show brian hi how are you good to see you and a long time ago wrote a book all about cbc and the

00:48:54.080 problems with it that how old is that book 2012 it came out is there anything in there that's

00:49:02.560 changed or is that different different from what you wrote well you know the um listening to you

00:49:10.480 uh speak with colby and then with phil um you know and phil was talking about catherine

00:49:17.840 not disturb um talking about catherine tate showing up a committee and being dismissive

00:49:26.720 there's whole chapters in there at one point the the largest libel settlement in canadian history

00:49:33.380 was with cbc and a doctor out of ottawa who they smeared his reputation claimed he was taking uh

00:49:40.460 his his findings were because he uh was taking trips from a pharmaceutical company uh was proven

00:49:47.220 that wasn't true he asked for a simple apology they refused to admit they did anything wrong

00:49:52.120 uh and so um they ended up having to pay a million dollars because they wouldn't say sorry

00:49:58.520 when i first started with the sun in 2010 cbc had just become um uh subject to the access to

00:50:06.360 information act and you know there were limits you can't find out about their journalism or

00:50:10.800 sources or things like that but how the business is run they were supposed to be like any government

00:50:14.920 department and there was a stack of uh a tips that our company had filed paid for filed but

00:50:22.680 it was all nothing they wouldn't admit to anything and so i made that the story at one point carmen

00:50:27.960 um hubert la croix the then head of cbc was hauled before committee and asked why

00:50:35.000 uh they were claiming that they ran the entire network with one uh ford sedan and one truck

00:50:42.600 because we just asked a simple question how many vehicles does CBC own or lease for their network

00:50:50.360 everything was redacted except they admitted to one sedan it was like a Ford Taurus or something

00:50:56.920 and one truck yeah they just wouldn't admit to basic things that everyone else is supposed to

00:51:04.360 do and and I remember writing at the time if CBC is allowed to get away with this

00:51:09.960 then every other department will learn and the access to information program will become worse

00:51:15.840 well guess what cbc wasn't held to account that was under a conservative government definitely

00:51:20.320 not under the true to liberals and the access to information system that journalists rely on

00:51:25.480 has become worse you find out less information it takes you longer they charge you more

00:51:30.520 um everyone learned from cbc you can get away with ignoring the public ignoring those pesky

00:51:36.200 journalists why do you think why do you think that they operate like that like you know without

00:51:44.280 transparency they you know they do receive so much government money um is it like a culture thing is

00:51:50.760 it systemic is it like sometimes maybe there's nothing even to hide like why why would it be a

00:51:55.320 big deal to tell people people expect businesses to run with vehicles it's it's not something that

00:52:01.720 you may necessarily need to hide why do you think there is this culture of secrecy

00:52:05.000 um there's an arrogance with cbc that you don't find elsewhere now look i've never been employed

00:52:14.480 by cbc but i have worked for uh bell media the old chum uh set up um you know i think the only

00:52:24.020 major private one i haven't worked for is rogers and and each major corporation has their own way

00:52:32.700 doing things their own views through but cbc just operates on a different level and you know so over

00:52:40.460 the years a lot of their journalists have been frustrated with the the secrecy and long before

00:52:45.580 we're not just talking about travis uh some of my best sources for cbc stories over the years have

00:52:50.700 been people inside cbc i remember um talking to one outside of the uh uh ottawa headquarters

00:52:59.660 and they just pointed at the building and said you've got 12 floors of uh paper pushers in there

00:53:06.140 no one knows what they're doing uh compared to the the folks that are actually on the air

00:53:11.020 whether on radio or tv but yeah it's a systemic culture of arrogance um they don't owe the public

00:53:17.660 anything um you know think of how many times cbc has done stories about uh misdoing uh bad treatment

00:53:28.860 of employees um sexual harassment of employees and they are holier than thou and yet we know

00:53:37.820 these things have happened inside cbc one of the access to information requests that i got

00:53:43.580 was almost entirely redacted um i believe it was 14 we asked for in a very specific time frame

00:53:51.180 just the cases of uh sexual harassment um in ottawa toronto and montreal got back 1400 pages

00:54:01.080 almost all redacted there was one email that they didn't take everything out of and it was

00:54:05.900 two of the hr people that have to deal with this uh saying oh sorry i got confused too many cases

00:54:12.540 um that they are holier than thou if it's the mounties or somebody else and look all of this

00:54:20.640 stuff should be called out, but they deny that it exists in their own environment when we know

00:54:25.880 it absolutely does. And I got to tell you, it's 1053, and I'm looking forward to Travis testifying

00:54:32.800 soon and seeing what he spills the beans on. You and I have heard the stories elsewhere.

00:54:50.640 I don't know if I'm frozen or you're frozen.

00:55:17.920 madam chair okay i think we're having a bit of issue with the connection with brian so i want

00:55:23.680 to thank brian for joining us um he has been a guest on travis's show when he had it on the cbc

00:55:31.120 um brian you saw him holding up that book uh he had written about the problems with the cbc

00:55:36.480 uh long long long before we started talking about them he said he wrote that book in 2012 i think

00:55:41.680 it was oh we got brian back um sorry about that brian can hear me yep uh yeah it might be my

00:55:48.800 connection actually sorry about that uh so i want to take you back to um travis a bit and what's

00:55:53.360 happening with him because you were a guest on his program when he was on the cbc and that was

00:55:59.840 that came as a surprise to you to be um allowed to be on the cbc at that time so um i he called

00:56:08.240 me to tell me about the show and um i guess it would have been december 2023 and um i was driving

00:56:18.400 around california with my wife and he's so he's on speaker and he knows her as well and he says

00:56:24.320 i've got the show and i want you to come on and i started laughing out loud and he said no i'm

00:56:29.360 serious i said travis they will never let me on cbc television i think i've been on once or twice

00:56:35.760 when I was part of a story that was central to being able to tell the story.

00:56:41.760 But, you know, CBC, over the years, they have all kinds of different journalists

00:56:48.240 and opinion makers and columnists on, but they don't have me on.

00:56:53.180 And I've done pre-interviews, and the pre-pre-interview that they do,

00:56:58.320 folks that don't know this, they will interview you ahead of time

00:57:01.020 to find out what you're going to say, and then if they don't like it, they cut you.

00:57:03.800 And I've always cut before broadcast.

00:57:06.960 Travis's show did not do the pre-interviews.

00:57:08.980 I love that.

00:57:10.220 But he said, I'm serious.

00:57:12.980 They told me I could have you on.

00:57:14.220 And I said, if you can get me on, I will show up just for you.

00:57:18.360 And I was maybe four times on the show around there.

00:57:24.040 And it created so much controversy for people that didn't like to hear other points of view.

00:57:29.400 i was on there with people that i disagreed with but we're all cordial and we are all respectful

00:57:35.620 i mean you watch the show if you would have discussions real discussions and you know i

00:57:42.480 remember um mixing it up real good with gara's hands saying on the couch one day uh whatever we

00:57:49.840 were debating we yeah we had a real debate about it and then at the end it was like oh good to see

00:57:56.700 shook hands we walked to the subway together um and chatted about life and our families you know

00:58:02.540 so it they allowed me on and then and others that were irritating to uh part of the cbc audience

00:58:11.820 because talking about silos they really just like to have a silo mentality very narrow band of

00:58:19.340 what's allowed um the audience complained a lot and travis would show me the text messages the

00:58:25.260 the tweets, everything that he would get for daring to have not just me, but other people

00:58:30.920 with views that don't neatly match up with CBC.

00:58:34.560 And Brian, I'll just read. We got this from a current employee, a message to us today. It says,

00:58:39.660 the CBC's political bias is an open secret. No honest person can deny to start speaking to all

00:58:48.880 Canadians and end the sanctimonious march towards irrelevance. And by the way, I just

00:58:54.500 got a message from Travis as well that CBC has sent a camera to his testimony to

00:59:00.440 cover it so I wonder what you think about this idea so from this employee

00:59:05.500 their political bias is no oh are we do we have Travis okay Travis does he know

00:59:13.400 he's on yeah I can hear you guys it's very low I'm getting my ear pods but I

00:59:18.920 just wanted to update you hey Brian how's it going I'm excited on what is

00:59:23.840 going on there's a vote in the house right now so there's a bit of a delay uh and so the chair

00:59:30.160 is happening from liberals is in the room right now and uh some of the other panelists that will

00:59:35.200 be on it's quite a large panel today but they're just waiting for some of the other members that

00:59:38.960 are still in the house so i heard i just heard like a little bit of a snippet of your commentary

00:59:44.080 but you know brian you have been on the show before you know that this was not something that

00:59:48.160 was just about getting conservatives on it was about having a diversity of opinion and i love

00:59:53.280 that really was a shame that they they decided to cancel the panel i got my airpods now so

00:59:58.160 i'll probably be able to hear you guys better there you go technology it's wonderful

01:00:06.720 are you connected yes is this the first day with your iphone i'm watching you guys now yeah so i

01:00:11.680 can hear you i'm sorry i'm used to having a network brian so i i'm a network orphan now my friend

01:00:20.400 but no I mean listen yeah as I was saying right that this was about having a diversity of

01:00:26.400 perspectives it was about actually reflecting uh the the true Canadian conversation and not in an

01:00:33.360 Ottawa bubble way a lot of these you know panels that we see are in the Ottawa bubble it's insiders

01:00:39.280 talking to insiders I wanted to pop that bubble and actually have the real conversation so you

01:00:44.480 know some of the things that happen behind the scenes which I'm going to get into when we get

01:00:48.480 into the committee here were very problematic in terms of some of the decisions that were made

01:00:53.520 around that panel which I have actually never revealed before but I mean I guess I would ask

01:00:59.120 you what was your experience on the panel I had you on time with Sheila Copps and Faye Johnstone

01:01:05.680 that's a pretty I don't know if you can get further on the ideological spectrum than Brian

01:01:10.560 Lilly and Faye Johnstone. Look it was a respectful conversation we all said our pieces we debated

01:01:18.480 You know, I can tell you from my experience with Sheila Copps on X, not always respectful.

01:01:26.220 And that's from her end.

01:01:27.480 And I've known her a long time because I'm from Hamilton.

01:01:29.760 She's a Hamilton MP.

01:01:31.200 And I covered her when she was still in cabinet.

01:01:33.780 So we've known each other a long time.

01:01:37.480 She can get really pointy elbows on X. 1.00

01:01:41.100 We had a respectful discussion on your show.

01:01:45.640 Yeah.

01:01:46.120 and i mean i think that that is also something you make a good point because i think

01:01:50.440 that was things can things can get very heated on social media you know people can be keyboard

01:01:56.680 warriors i'm sure she would say the same thing about you sometimes she would have criticism

01:02:00.120 yeah i sometimes have elbows up yeah but it's a it's a different thing when you're there in

01:02:05.480 personal work where you're in a format where everybody is there together having a conversation

01:02:10.600 and i think it was a very canadian panel because you get you can have it out and then you could

01:02:16.840 leave maybe hearing even a bit of what the other person said and changing the perspective that you

01:02:22.440 might have a little bit and that's what we need we are in silos right now right so i i mean it

01:02:30.280 it was a shame and i think that you know there were several panelists that put an op-ed out after

01:02:34.760 uh saying that it was unfortunate that cbc did that that's just one of the many issues

01:02:40.360 there's a canadian human rights uh complaint with the commission right now those who go to systemic

01:02:46.760 issues of tokenism right i i mean essentially this is what the case argues that that i

01:02:54.280 if you're going to give somebody a show with their face and their name don't make them just

01:02:59.320 a teleprompter reader and that's essentially what i became and i'm like i'm not here i'm not here to

01:03:04.440 be a teleprompter reader if you're elevating somebody to this level they should they should

01:03:08.680 have a voice well that that was my experience is when i've had shows and on radio and television

01:03:16.520 hosted shows where it's built around you and your personality you have to let your personality show

01:03:21.960 and um you know every outlet um you know you're playing in someone else's sandbox so every outlet

01:03:30.920 has you know the the measurements or the uh the sides of the sandbox you play in that sandbox

01:03:38.040 but it's it shouldn't be as constraining as what you were dealing with uh you know you were talking

01:03:42.920 about getting voices on that you don't hear elsewhere i had a really popular um uh video

01:03:49.880 chat i don't call mine podcast because i don't i don't have a schedule and i don't do it regularly

01:03:54.520 like you guys do so i just invite people on for chats and i post them and on my sub stack ad on

01:03:59.480 keith wilson who's from alberta he's a leader in the separatist movement we've talked to each other

01:04:05.640 before smart guide we completely disagree but i had him on to say okay you tell your point of

01:04:11.640 view i'm going to explain why i disagree with you it was incredibly popular and people liked hearing

01:04:16.840 the different viewpoints you don't really get that you get people denouncing alberta separatism or 0.96

01:04:23.960 diminishing it they're all yahoos idiots rednecks keith's a king's council lawyer very smart guy 1.00

01:04:31.160 wrong but smart um so uh you know but it's important it's it's very important what you're 1.00

01:04:37.240 saying to have uh to have folks that disagree with you to have conversation to them even when

01:04:42.520 we were figuring out the lineup for this show you know i was talking to our producer and what about

01:04:47.240 this person they disagree with you i said that's great excellent let's have another perspective on

01:04:52.040 the show i am not you know fragile in terms of hearing uh what other people think uh if they if

01:04:58.040 they don't agree with what's going on we have to engage with folks that we disagree with to get

01:05:04.440 to a conversation where there can be a consensus uh in terms of just what what's fact what's

01:05:11.800 fiction and i just think that that it's lacking right now because the way the algorithm works

01:05:16.600 you're just fed the same kind of news over and over again so anyway i gotta get back in there

01:05:24.120 carmen oh you're hi carmen hi no i just my my skills no good okay i'll see you later um okay

01:05:31.480 it could be a while you guys yeah it's gonna be a little while um it's okay bye but uh

01:05:39.320 it's the brain i see people kind of like tuning in more we're getting our numbers are

01:05:43.960 are ticking up because they're expecting this um this committee to get started at 11 o'clock

01:05:49.240 but we're hearing uh from travis that there is some sort of vote going on so that's why it's

01:05:54.440 been delayed a bit uh brian are you okay to to hang out a bit longer or do you i can stay for

01:06:00.120 a little bit um oh the votes uh isn't being called for another 20 minutes so this is going to be

01:06:07.640 a bit i'm just pulling up parlview um as we talk on our feed as well um and i'm checking it out

01:06:15.240 and uh so yeah the uh committee hearing hasn't started and um for those uh who know parliament

01:06:23.240 um they're ringing the bells they call it um there's a fun tradition they do it over at queen's

01:06:29.240 park where my office is now um but when they're calling people to vote they ring bells and lights

01:06:36.680 flash uh so that mps or mpps know that they have to go to the chamber uh even though a lot of them

01:06:42.920 are just going to vote on their phones but you uh were both on both sides you worked in politics

01:06:48.920 and you uh covered it do you like this voting on your phone thing i mean listen if you're gonna

01:06:56.280 vote you should be able to vote in person i think like it's not too much to ask and votes don't

01:07:00.840 happen all the time right like it's like if there's like a super big exception like you're

01:07:05.640 having you're in labor you're gonna have a baby okay let's have you vote by proxy but otherwise 0.71

01:07:12.200 maybe show up to vote um i i forget if it was a justin trudeau news conference i think it was

01:07:19.320 a trudeau one before he left and of course they brought it in for the pandemic but it stuck around

01:07:25.320 we're at a news conference and the vote came up and they had to pause the news conference

01:07:30.600 and they all stepped aside from the microphone just like two steps aside and they're on their

01:07:35.400 phones and swiping and hitting a button and this is the most bizarre thing i've ever seen

01:07:41.960 uh go to the chamber being that if it's an important vote be there and you can figure it out

01:07:47.400 yeah with with some small exceptions um okay let's just i want to get this um this this heritage

01:07:57.240 committee because it's like they're talking about other things it's not just the cbc but um and

01:08:02.920 they're talking about kind of the health of mainstream media and they're talking about like

01:08:06.920 you know cbc's funding which has become the flashpoint and i wonder if like

01:08:12.680 like do conservatives want to see the cbc go like is that kind of the end goal like what is well

01:08:20.920 you know you heard from phil there and if you listen to pierre pauliev they've kind of backed

01:08:26.920 away from some of that yeah um because of the uh uh well they lost the last election but i'll say

01:08:38.120 this during the uh the election in the lead up to the election and during the election

01:08:46.680 every time pierre poly have stood up and said and we'll define the cbc it would be the loudest

01:08:52.680 applause line. It is very popular with a large part of the base. And the reason for that is the

01:09:00.280 inherent bias. It's not just a soft liberal bias. It's a hard capital L liberal bias. The first

01:09:12.900 person that I ever heard complain about media bias on the Hill, by the way, when I got there

01:09:19.940 21 years ago,

01:09:21.720 was he on NDP Staffer,

01:09:23.260 who said,

01:09:24.340 it's ridiculous the way we get treated,

01:09:27.320 and the whole gallery 0.64

01:09:29.460 just loves the liberals.

01:09:31.180 When I was in the gallery,

01:09:32.320 there were 308 people there,

01:09:34.080 I believe is the number.

01:09:35.500 A third of them were from CBC.

01:09:37.300 Wow, really?

01:09:38.160 Yeah.

01:09:38.960 But that includes producers,

01:09:40.560 camera techs,

01:09:41.760 reporters.

01:09:42.440 You've got an office

01:09:43.380 inside Ottawa.

01:09:46.260 Yeah.

01:09:46.840 So there's a lot of people

01:09:48.660 that cover the hill or used to be a lot of people that cover the hill um about a third of them were

01:09:55.020 CBC or Radcan and uh you know you you get to know each other uh over years of standing around in

01:10:03.320 scrums waiting for things to happen as you know uh what do journalists do hurry up and wait for

01:10:08.780 politicians and and so you know you can you can kind of guess or judge what people's politics are

01:10:15.340 And in the gallery, it was rare to find conservatives or people that would be open to the conservative ideas, far more likely to find a new Democrat inside CBC.

01:10:28.400 That's even more concentrated. And so the conservative voting base, a lot of them just look at it and say, this thing is is too biased.

01:10:37.340 If they took it seriously and tried to fix it, I think people would be less angry and demanding that it be shut down.

01:10:45.740 But, you know, there's a couple of decent conservatives that go on CBC on power and politics, but they try and keep the ban pretty narrow.

01:10:57.380 And David Cochran argues with everything that the person representing the conservative side says and amplifies everything the liberal person says.

01:11:07.340 yeah people notice that uh you know if david wants to just admit that he really likes liberals

01:11:15.580 and liberal policies he'd be a more interesting host but if you're going to be neutral because

01:11:19.980 that's the type of host i've been before carmen like i've been people know that i lean conservative

01:11:25.340 way but doesn't mean i don't pick on the other side just ask you know doug ford um had his

01:11:31.100 government on the front page of the sun yesterday morning uh beating them up over the lcbo stuff

01:11:35.980 uh and you know i'm gonna see peter bethlin fall be the minister i was picking on uh he's speaking

01:11:43.600 at the empire club that's the thing i've got to go to in a little bit um you know i'm gonna see

01:11:49.700 him after giving him bruises on his shins that i was kicking yesterday but you've got to be calling

01:11:55.400 out both sides they don't do that there um i don't find that uh there are two main

01:12:00.980 sorry and the hosts the difference between you and the hosts on the cbc like you are like it's

01:12:09.220 been a many media literally here right like you're so you're allowed to have an opinion yeah right

01:12:19.620 um they're supposed to be more objective right so there there's a difference okay so let me pick on

01:12:25.060 someone that used to work at cbc then worked with me at bell media always claimed to be neutral

01:12:31.380 was anyone surprised when evan solomon the former host of power and politics

01:12:37.460 announced he was running for the carny liberals

01:12:42.100 no um so we we know their politics but they won't admit it pretend they're neutral

01:12:49.620 and but then you know it's it's how they interact and if you are constantly fact-checking the

01:12:58.740 opposition but not the government because well the government's liberal and the opposition's

01:13:04.100 conservative then the people that support the conservators are going to be saying hey wait a

01:13:08.600 minute i'm fine with you fact-checking all right is what they're saying correct but what about

01:13:12.700 doing it to the other guys the guys that are actually in power um and they don't have that

01:13:18.820 balance you know i i would say that fashion capelos who is hosts the power play over at ctv

01:13:26.660 pushes back against all sides she annoys an awful lot of politicians because she does that 1.00

01:13:33.860 but that's her job and um you know to the politicians to get angry at me when i cause 1.00

01:13:40.660 them headaches i'm not your friend and i'm not here to be your friend i'm here to do a job and

01:13:47.860 and so do that job and i think you know you can look at uh uh vashi at ctv you can look at mercedes

01:13:56.500 stevenson uh at um global she's way on that leave right now they do that um the folks at cbc

01:14:05.940 do not they're not fair and balanced to use the fox news term

01:14:10.340 I want to read another comment we got in from a former CBC employee. In my view, the problems at

01:14:22.320 the CBC are about ideology, not about partisanship. During my years at CBC, I observed that the

01:14:27.760 majority of its workforce came from the same demographic, urban, university-educated, secular,

01:14:34.360 and politically progressive. Hiring practices and other internal policies from CBC leadership

01:14:40.960 reinforces uniformity of worldview, contributing to an unhelpful form of group thing in terms

01:14:47.560 that ignored or dismissed other views and distracted from the CBC mandate to all Canadians

01:14:53.620 forge so i would say that's like travis well he has he has said in the past that when they hired

01:15:05.220 him they thought they would be getting that right oh they thought they were as he said to me they

01:15:11.780 thought they were getting a specific type of brown guy hey he's a brown guy he's got to be you know

01:15:16.820 just like us oh you have different thoughts you don't line up neatly um i i think they were shocked

01:15:25.620 when they hired him and you know travis's uh views on all kinds of things are all over the map

01:15:33.300 it's what makes them interesting um but what you described i've heard it put this way cbc likes to

01:15:40.820 broadcast to the deepest darkest parts of the annex in toronto which for people that don't

01:15:46.180 know that aren't from toronto it's a is a leafy wealthy neighborhood near the university of

01:15:51.780 toronto is that where you live is that where you know i i am yorkville adjacent um i must that's

01:15:59.940 much better i i live right near queen's park everyone that follows me on social media knows

01:16:08.340 that because i i post videos walking around with my dog talking about politics uh the dog doesn't

01:16:13.540 talk about politics that then i'd be very wealthy because that that would be something um you know

01:16:19.460 so there's a clip that you can find on um cbc's archives it's on their own website and it dates

01:16:26.500 back to i think 1960 and there was a young mp from uh thunder bay before it was even called

01:16:35.780 thunder bay named doug fisher doug fisher went on to become a uh columnist for the toronto telegram

01:16:43.540 And then the Toronto Sun. And a bunch of his sons worked in political journalism as well. But back then, Doug was a CCF MP. So it's before the NDP ever got in.

01:16:58.920 And he's doing an interview with CBC on the Hill, and he's been complaining about them.

01:17:06.000 And he described something very similar to what your viewer had written in.

01:17:14.400 And they said, well, what's your problem with CBC?

01:17:16.280 And he said, it's a metropolitanism.

01:17:18.760 And they said, well, what do you mean by that?

01:17:20.900 He said, they only broadcast to that triangle, the one I mentioned earlier, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.

01:17:25.360 all and and they don't uh think about the rest of the country i would say that on cbc radio they do

01:17:31.400 a better job of that of touching into uh smaller communities across the country uh but look this

01:17:39.540 this is a problem and it's not just cbc it is a problem with a lot of our uh legacy media is that

01:17:46.200 they don't think about that uh you know yeah this is a big country and you've got to get around and

01:17:52.380 and see it i am a downtown toronto urban elitist latte sip or sushi eater sure but i get out across

01:18:00.700 the country and you know visiting small town uh saskatchewan not always by choice got to go where

01:18:09.220 family is but you know get out there um i've been on both coasts in the last little while um i'm

01:18:17.440 fortunate enough to be able to travel some people can't but the media the media is too focused and

01:18:24.880 i think that's what your your writer was saying there is that uh it it broadcasts to a smaller

01:18:30.640 version of canada than we should be seeing if you can hear me that's fine i i see you twice now

01:18:47.280 you're um you're the new host of can't be censored apparently apparently you're you're

01:18:52.320 well i i do have to run shortly um so i i won't be able to continue

01:18:57.520 continue hosting but happy to help out here when i i know what it's like to have to dance on a live

01:19:02.640 show um okay in the interest brian i'm gonna i'm gonna thank you and let you go in the interest of

01:19:16.560 um you know saving our viewers from my glitching i want to thank you brian i want to play you um

01:19:24.240 air this morning um it was an exclusive uh interview with someone who has never spoken

01:19:29.600 out before uh she is from the uh she worked at the cbc and she wanted to tell us a bit about

01:19:37.280 her experiences working gone a lot of um people talking to us about their experiences inside the

01:19:44.880 cbc they've been encouraged by hearing travis's story also i want to let you know that our

01:19:50.960 comments uh section is open if you have any questions or if you have any comments i'd be

01:19:56.320 happy to share them here on our live stream um and uh and you know we're in a bit of a delay

01:20:03.920 because there's a vote happening inside of parliament right now and um committee was

01:20:10.080 supposed to start at 11 o'clock and this was a parliamentary committee it's called the heritage

01:20:16.400 committee that was going to look at a number of things they're going to hear from travis they're

01:20:21.040 going to hear from a number of people and it's going to be about you know the the health of of media

01:20:31.280 the cbc

01:20:32.080 the Canadian government to the $2 billion. That number is being adjusted slightly as we lead up

01:20:43.280 to the budget period. It looks like previous funding that they got will be cut by a little.

01:20:53.280 So he's going to testify before this committee today. It is made up

01:20:57.200 of mps from all three parties uh he does an open statement um they get to ask him questions uh

01:21:06.880 in this committee before catherine tate who is a previous president of cbc has appeared she's

01:21:14.000 been questioned we showed you this clip earlier of mp philip lawrence questioning her over what

01:21:20.800 happened with travis and if she had any knowledge of it so uh we know that this is an issue um

01:21:27.200 that has been brought up in this committee before it's something that has been brought to the

01:21:31.740 attention of Travis's former employer of the CBC. I understand from Travis that the CBC is

01:21:37.800 sending a camera to cover it today. Before his appearance, Travis had issued a challenge to the

01:21:45.920 CBC to broadcast its proceedings live so people could see the discussions for themselves unedited

01:21:51.620 firsthand. They're not going to do that, but we are going to do that, which is what we're waiting

01:21:56.160 for. I've had a lot of interesting people come through our live stream today. We talked to

01:22:02.180 Catherine Marshall, who is Travis's lawyer, when he makes his case before the Human Rights

01:22:08.360 Commission. Catherine is the founding partner of Marshall Law. She has represented a lot of people

01:22:13.500 on employment issues and human rights. And I've got, have I got Amrit here? Yeah. Hi. Hi. What's

01:22:22.660 going on there? Are they going to start soon? Yes, so we should be starting shortly. We're

01:22:27.440 just waiting on a vote in the House to clear, and then we'll be on our way.

01:22:34.600 Okay, so Amrit, introduce yourself to folks here.

01:22:38.620 So I am a lawyer at Marshall Law. I have been working alongside Catherine on Travis's case

01:22:44.700 from the beginning and deciding to go forward with a human rights complaint and really advocating

01:22:50.620 for Travis and all of the other CBC employees

01:22:53.560 who are being discriminated against

01:22:55.560 within a toxic workplace environment.

01:23:01.300 Yeah, and as Travis is running co-host,

01:23:03.200 I've kind of seen him through this process

01:23:04.700 and I've seen all the work that you guys have put in.

01:23:07.980 And people think it might be easy

01:23:10.660 to just say, you know, make a complaint and make a claim.

01:23:14.680 But there is so much documentation,

01:23:16.920 so much thought and so much work

01:23:18.620 that goes into putting all those things together and I noticed today Travis is carrying two binders

01:23:26.860 to his personality it says the receipts on it and so he's got a lot of evidence to support what he

01:23:35.180 is saying and the claims he's making about you know workplace culture about discrimination about

01:23:40.140 tokenism about editorial bias and editorial control and those are some of the central issues

01:23:46.380 that he'll be covering today and i i suspect that's you know the crux of what's going to be

01:23:51.020 before the commission as well yes so what the commission is looking at really is the state of

01:23:57.100 journalism in canada and what travis's complaint really demonstrates is that there there's issues

01:24:03.340 there's systemic issues in place and what's happening is there is so much centralized control

01:24:10.060 over media outlets right now for example the cdc that we're not actually seeing the diversity

01:24:16.060 in news reporting we're only seeing diversity on the screens and what travis is here to do

01:24:21.580 essentially is shed light on that issue within major organizations such as the cdc he's really

01:24:27.180 advocating for true diversity from within the system not just externally and that's what we're

01:24:34.220 here to do today um and how like you've worked on these sort of complaints before uh these

01:24:42.300 issues that you know employees have had with really big corporations like the cbc like bell

01:24:49.820 media uh where you are just one person going up against a giant corporation who has a team of

01:24:57.820 lawyers uh you know lots of money yeah they spend as much time and money as they want on something

01:25:04.780 like this and so it's like it it's pretty challenging to go up against that as you know

01:25:10.580 just one person like travis like people that represented and you guys do a lot of that work

01:25:16.920 yeah so it it can be challenging when you're going up against large corporations but it's not as

01:25:24.760 challenging when you have the truth on your side for example travis's folders of receipts right like

01:25:29.360 he has the truth on his side the facts on his side and it only really takes one person like

01:25:35.900 Travis to start making a wave within the system for example you guys recently had a CBC employee

01:25:42.560 who discussed the same issues similar to what Travis faced right like long before he was on

01:25:47.200 Canada tonight it takes one person to start a motion and once that motion is started it's

01:25:52.960 really hard for these larger organizations to to continue taking the stances that they take

01:25:58.500 yeah and i wonder if that like so we went since travis has spoken out like we've gotten a lot

01:26:03.620 people coming to us and telling their stories i think that's the case for you as a law firm as

01:26:09.060 well like once you've represented some of these folks who have uh issues people all of a sudden

01:26:13.780 come out of the woodwork and it's a little easier for them to try to approach this process and try

01:26:19.380 to you know talk about what happened to them so have do you see more of that like once these cases

01:26:23.780 become a little bit more public yeah so that's that's the one thing our firm really specializes

01:26:28.820 on is helping the the the individual where we don't represent employers and that's for a reason

01:26:35.700 right the people need to see that they have advocates on their side willing to fight for them

01:26:40.980 and that's what we're here to do it once somebody sees that a individual is able to speak up and

01:26:46.660 use their voice usually they will start taking follow yeah okay so i hear that the bells have

01:26:54.340 stopped so that means that they are we do not go inside but it was really good to speak for you

01:27:00.180 today thank you thank you amrit okay if you're just tuning in that was uh one of travis's lawyers

01:27:05.860 who's joining him in ottawa today he is on parliament hill testifying before the heritage

01:27:11.940 committee. We are waiting for that to start. It was supposed to start at 11 o'clock, and that was

01:27:17.300 delayed because of a vote. And you would have heard when I was talking to Amrit that those bells

01:27:23.100 going off, that signals for people to get ready for the vote. Once those bells stop, then the MPs

01:27:30.880 actually have to vote. So I think we still might be a little while away if I'm remembering

01:27:35.720 parliamentary procedure properly. So they'll have to vote to actually vote, then they'll have to get

01:27:40.540 into a committee and so i hope you'll stay with us because we are like one of the only people that

01:27:47.100 are going to be live streaming the whole testimony unedited um travis had issued a challenge to his

01:27:54.060 former colleagues at the cbc to the managing editor there to to stream it as well and they

01:27:59.660 have politely declined uh to do that but we do know that they have sent a camera to cover this

01:28:05.660 story um inside of parliament inside of heritage committee and i could tell you a little bit more

01:28:11.740 about what's going to happen in there uh travis is not by himself they've kind of stuck him in

01:28:17.340 with a with a group of people to present to this committee uh along with him there will be the um

01:28:24.940 digital news uh there will be someone from quebec community broadcasters there will be someone from

01:28:39.100 the friends of canadian media uh the director of uniform which is canada's largest private

01:28:45.980 union sector that represents journalists they'll have someone there the director of

01:28:50.620 media from uniform honest reporting canada is there their pro israel media watchdog that

01:28:57.180 monitors and critiques canadian media coverage they'll be a part of that panel as well they'll

01:29:02.940 have someone that is focused on technology ai and new funding models for journalism presenting to

01:29:10.540 this committee today they'll also have someone from news media canada they are a newspaper

01:29:17.820 digital news industry lobby group in canada and so we have a particular interest of course in

01:29:24.540 watching what travis does but the reason why he's been grouped with all these people is because this

01:29:30.140 is a meeting a committee that is taking a look at the health of mainstream media as a whole but

01:29:37.660 what is particularly special and important is cbc's funding their mandate and their future

01:29:44.780 as uh as the public broadcaster and oh i'm so happy my friend sarjit kor is going to be joining

01:29:51.660 us i see that she's uh entered she's not quite ready yet she's gonna she's gonna be here soon

01:29:57.980 but i see her getting ready in my little window sarjit is the co-founder of kapow communications

01:30:05.420 she and i have worked together before she is often called on to be a commentator on media

01:30:11.820 and she specifically has been on CBC's Power and Politics, which is their flagship political show.

01:30:19.020 So she's got a pretty interesting perspective. I think Sarbjee, I'm not putting words in her mouth,

01:30:24.700 she'll say this herself, but she probably considers herself a progressive voice in politics.

01:30:30.720 And I know we've had a lot of conservative voices here on the program, on the live stream this

01:30:37.340 morning but i you know i really don't think this is a super partisan issue that we're talking about

01:30:43.580 uh there are concerns legitimate concerns from both people who lean right and lean left

01:30:49.100 um and so that's why i wanted to bring sergeant on i'll give her a moment just to get ready

01:30:54.220 and i'll hear from my producer when she is ready and we can bring her in otherwise i'll just let

01:31:00.300 you know again my name is carven wong good morning it's 11 30. we're expecting the test

01:31:05.180 the committee to get started at 11 o'clock and it is delayed because there was a vote i'm hoping

01:31:10.940 that that committee will start pretty soon but in the meantime yay sarjit is here thank you sarjit

01:31:17.500 hi hi good morning hey thank you so much for jumping on i know we were expecting to talk to

01:31:23.180 later on but the committee got delayed it's um the mps had a vote so they they pushed the committee

01:31:29.420 back a bit by 30 minutes but you know all morning i've been talking to people who have you know

01:31:37.340 have had issues um we see or their former employers or they have a perspective and a lot of that has

01:31:45.580 been conservative views right and so i know that you yourself would probably say you are more

01:31:51.980 progressive in your political leanings um you were asked to be a contributor on power and politics

01:31:58.060 for a few more time but then you weren't so tell us about your experience there and what you think

01:32:03.180 happened um so i i was for a time very frequently on cbc power and politics before that i was on

01:32:11.500 many other channels as well global ctv over the years just being someone who was uh pretty

01:32:17.100 outspoken and had many years of experience in politics working in provincial politics many

01:32:23.020 campaigns. Oh, did I lose Sarbjit? No, there she is. Okay. We're having a problem with Sarbjit's

01:32:41.900 Wi-Fi. She's like me. Wi-Fi is working against us today. So I apologize for that. We'll try to

01:32:47.560 bring her back in as soon as she's ready. And I think I might have her back, but I have

01:32:52.980 no volume, maybe. Sergi, can we hear you?

01:32:59.120 She can hear us, but we can't hear her. It's okay. Listen, we are not CTV News. We are not

01:33:05.440 CBC. We are not global. We are not a big media conglomerate who's got like six cameras pointed

01:33:11.740 at me um and the technology to live broadcast we are um we are a uh live stream so we are

01:33:21.740 live on the internet and so we sometimes have some technical difficulties here and i apologize

01:33:28.380 for that but i'm seeing all your comments thank you for engaging with us um can't be censored

01:33:33.500 is a podcast that was born out of travis leaving mainstream media uh talking about his issues at

01:33:39.980 the cbc and his issues with uh editorial content editorial direction with workplace culture with

01:33:49.340 the idea of tokenism and so when he decided to leave cbc i had already left mainstream media

01:33:57.180 about six years ago and uh we decided we wanted to do this program uh it's called can't be censored

01:34:03.420 And normally, if you watch our podcast, we do long form interviews with people and on our terms who we want to talk to the way we want to talk to them.

01:34:13.080 And even though we don't consider ourselves journalists anymore, we try to have a balance of perspectives, a balance of people on our podcast.

01:34:23.180 And so you can see that I'm tap dancing a bit here because I'm hopeful that committee will get started very soon.

01:34:30.220 If you're tuning in, you'll know that the Heritage Committee was supposed to start at 11 o'clock this morning.

01:34:36.420 It has been delayed because of a vote.

01:34:38.400 This is a committee.

01:34:39.880 It's called the Standing Committee of Canadian Heritage.

01:34:42.900 It's made up of a number of MPs who sit on this committee.

01:34:47.400 They get to talk to people.

01:34:48.900 They get to listen.

01:34:50.160 I get to talk to Sarah Jean again.

01:34:51.700 Hi.

01:34:52.280 I'm trying really hard to join you guys.

01:34:56.280 Okay.

01:34:56.720 So you were telling us about being on Power & Politics.

01:35:00.960 Yeah, so I was on Power & Politics amongst many, many other media outlets.

01:35:04.640 But there came a time where my profile was so high that it clearly started getting under certain people's skin.

01:35:10.980 And they would start these online attacks against me and start tagging CBC or whoever

01:35:16.580 and claiming that I was their journalist and I was their employee and that I was getting rich, rich off of CBC tax dollars.

01:35:23.940 And I think the funniest one was I posted something about me at a restaurant.

01:35:28.800 I took a selfie in the washroom and, you know, it was a very organized campaign, organized and orchestrated campaign by conservatives and those right wing little online people to say that I was Marie Antoinette of Canada, living high off CBC tax dollars.

01:35:46.400 And they just kept tagging CBC, CBC, CBC.

01:35:49.580 Other times, you know, I would speak very, very bluntly.

01:35:53.700 i'm not a person who's kind of afraid to say what i think needs to be said i used words like calling

01:35:59.620 what was happening in gaza a genocide uh later i learned that cbtc doesn't use that term but

01:36:06.260 in the long story short um i was suddenly asked to stop coming on wasn't really given any proper

01:36:12.340 explanation um i went from going on very frequently to weekly to not at all even during the election

01:36:21.220 and when I asked questions about why it was I was just given kind of nonsensical non-answers and you

01:36:27.300 know at least Travis knows what happened or why he wasn't allowed to come on but I know for sure

01:36:32.340 that you know saying things like genocide again now you have these outfits like honest reporting

01:36:37.940 and whatnot that have targeted people like myself and many other people that as soon as you say

01:36:43.060 something that is pro-Palestine or what they perceive to be against their cause they start

01:36:49.140 flooding those newsrooms with emails and we know this from people who work in those newsrooms

01:36:54.180 that it's become very very difficult and there's a chill around uh those kind of conversations

01:36:59.860 it's just unfortunate that the media kind of caves into this and lets those tactics actually succeed

01:37:06.900 yeah because they've gone so far with you as to give you a contract right to give you

01:37:12.660 you'll be on our program is to signal there's an arrangement between you and

01:37:23.040 that program so that you appear there and that you know that will be a regular

01:37:26.980 contributor so that was like roughly pulled away yeah and it's like you know

01:37:34.740 a contract but it's not like a job job you get a small honorarium for every

01:37:39.120 appearance it might cover you know your time your hair your makeup whatever so you're not you're not

01:37:43.520 getting rich off of this but it still is a slot that you get every week with the same panelists

01:37:49.200 and it was all formalized and quite frankly i always got really really good feedback um that my

01:37:55.360 my contributions were were good and valued and uh people really liked it and i think that's why

01:38:01.040 i went from being um a very regular contributor to being somebody that was contracted to have a

01:38:06.800 regular slot okay so there's some issues with my wi-fi still um but i i wanted to ask you use the

01:38:29.280 idea of cbc being nervous that they got all this like the negative things about you sent into them

01:38:39.040 use language that uh you know they didn't they didn't um necessarily accept themselves and i

01:38:47.040 wonder like you're kind of making the same arguments as conservatives will make in terms

01:38:52.160 of being censored right in terms of a public broadcaster not allowing a diversity of thought

01:38:59.680 and that's something that not only happens on the right side but what we're hearing from you

01:39:03.760 is that something that happens on the left yeah i actually think the standard and the bar is much

01:39:10.960 higher for the left because on the right side when we say you know there should be some level

01:39:16.240 of standards or filtration we're talking about you know people who are on should have some background

01:39:21.440 in politics they should have some experience in journalism they should have some credentials but

01:39:26.640 some of the people that um i would say the right wing wants to present and platform are people who

01:39:33.260 don't have any of those things they just have an online large following some of them have very

01:39:37.420 problematic views whether they be associated with um you know uh racist organizations or you know

01:39:44.080 there's somebody who goes on tv who called me a see you next tuesday on twitter and uh you know

01:39:49.400 he had a little time out and then he was back on. So I think there's actually a double standard

01:39:54.100 where the conservatives do a really good job of causing a fuss and claiming that they're being

01:40:00.520 censored, whereas actually there's a ton of people on the left or who are progressives

01:40:05.200 who are quietly being sidelined. And I don't really know what to make of it, except that

01:40:12.060 there should be similar typical credential standards to look at and people tagging or

01:40:19.280 just claiming and complaining about people should not be enough it should be a decision made by those

01:40:25.420 producers and again they never told me they never gave me a reason which is also annoying to me so

01:40:31.080 I can only speculate as to why I wasn't on but I've heard this from many many people whether it's

01:40:37.280 CBC or other broadcasters that, you know, they, when they say something that is a little bit out

01:40:43.460 of the kind of safety box, they, they are not invited on again. Yeah. Okay. I might check in

01:40:52.340 with you later, but I've got to run right now. Thank you so much for jumping in. I know that

01:40:57.920 we're supposed to talk this afternoon, but I really appreciate you coming on a bit earlier.

01:41:01.700 So if you're just tuning in, please stick with us. We are still waiting for the

01:41:06.080 a way the Heritage Committee it started 11 so I haven't seen signs that that

01:41:15.980 might be starting yet but hopefully soon the reason why we're broadcasting live

01:41:21.860 today it's special can be censored

01:41:26.180 that he will name names, that he will talk about his experience inside the CBC a little bit about,

01:41:43.500 but he's going to go into way more details. He is more comfortable, according to his lawyers,

01:41:49.180 to name names in this sort of situation because of parliamentary privilege.

01:41:53.200 And that is, if people don't know what that is, that is the idea that what you say inside of a parliamentary committee is protected speech.

01:42:02.420 It can't be used against you to sue you for defamation or libel or whatnot if it's said within the Confidence Committee for the purposes of their meeting.

01:42:11.760 It would be different than if you were to say it maybe on this platform or maybe in front of a microphone in the media.

01:42:18.060 So that's why we are listening very closely to what Travis has to say this morning, pretty soon to be this afternoon if they don't get started.

01:42:26.660 It's 1141 right now and this committee still hasn't gotten underway.

01:42:31.100 We know there was a vote that delayed things.

01:42:33.600 So it seems like my signal is pretty stable, Wyatt, when it's just me.

01:42:39.080 It's just when we have other people that it sometimes gets a little glitchy.

01:42:43.000 so maybe i'll just keep talking for a little bit until i see that um i see that it's problematic

01:42:49.640 and then i i do have something i want to show you guys again it was a story that we got exclusively

01:42:56.360 from someone who used to work at the cbc she was called a brown barbie she was berated in

01:43:02.520 front of the newsroom yelled at she was called um and you know that's just sort of the tip of uh 1.00

01:43:16.200 the tip of what we've received and you know i'm getting i'm getting a message that my wi-fi is

01:43:21.800 not good so i'm going to spare you all for a few minutes i'm going to run that package uh that

01:43:26.520 is a former employer, employee of the CBC. Our next guest spent more than 25 years in television

01:43:36.120 and radio, including more than a decade at the Weather Network and appearances on national

01:43:41.200 programs like Canada AM. In 2017, she joined CBC as a weather specialist in Toronto. But after

01:43:49.160 raising concerns about what she called a toxic workplace, less than a year later, she was

01:43:54.580 dismissed. And after exhausting efforts through her union and internal management to raise the 0.99

01:44:01.540 concerns, she made a direct appeal in 2018 to CBC President Catherine Tate. Now, she described

01:44:08.380 systemic problems inside the newsroom, including harassment, bullying, workplace culture,

01:44:13.120 and management practices. She ultimately left the industry altogether. Now, she has never spoken

01:44:19.980 with Travis before this week, but reached out just days ago saying she wanted to share her experience

01:44:26.140 after seeing news of his story. I want to welcome Karen Johnson into this program now. Karen,

01:44:33.140 thank you so much for being here. I told a little bit about your story where you say you joined CBC.

01:44:38.580 It was a dream, but then within days starting, something happened. Tell us a little bit about

01:44:42.780 that? I think it was probably my first week. I think I saw a lot of red flags. I guess starting

01:44:51.340 with, I actually had a friend who was doing traffic on the radio side of CBC and she was

01:44:58.020 going into sort of labor pains and no one was going to take her to the hospital. And so I'm

01:45:05.220 only there maybe in my second day. So I said, I'll take her. So I took her in a cab and when I came

01:45:12.360 back i was asked where where have you been like what are you doing where'd you go and i said well

01:45:17.240 i told you and you told me to go take her to the hospital and i did um so right from there i just

01:45:23.880 thought things were not normal and then my first week on the radio side just it was probably icier

01:45:31.480 than any sort of uh an ice box you could feel people were not friendly not welcoming uh they

01:45:37.480 they were upset I got the job over, I guess, another employee that they considered. Probably

01:45:43.960 a lot more credit to their name and who's doing the job previous. So there were a lot of red flags,

01:45:50.480 but I thought, you know what? Be a team player. You're new to the newsroom. Make friends. Just

01:45:56.140 go with the flow. Don't cause issues. You know, you later described what you experienced as part

01:46:00.880 of like a broader workplace culture problem, not just those specific incidents that you mentioned.

01:46:06.740 what led you to to believe that and what was happening behind the scenes so um you're when

01:46:14.020 you're hired if i don't know if anybody knows this when you're hired at cbc or any other sort

01:46:17.780 of newsroom you have a nine-month probation uh during that nine months things should be brought

01:46:22.980 up to you if there's concerns or what have you that usually what happens i was actually days

01:46:30.420 to my probation being over when i got called in um to say that i wasn't standing in the right

01:46:39.060 place of a weather green screen which i've been doing for 25 years i wasn't giving accurate

01:46:45.300 information but i've never had a complaint about my my um my information so um all this started

01:46:53.860 to tag on i was humiliated in the newsroom when i was told to not go into studio told to wait

01:47:00.420 I was berated. I was screamed at and then told, what am I going to make things better to improve

01:47:07.720 the situation? A situation that I didn't even cause. I was just doing what I was told to do.

01:47:13.840 Things like that. I got written up for having a thick eyeliner on my makeup, on my face. And

01:47:21.400 we had makeup artists who did our makeup. So that was a comment I had gotten from an executive

01:47:26.340 producer she's nice but she wears too much eyeliner out of my hands um i was called a bimbo 1.00

01:47:32.900 uh um on day 10 that i sounded like a bimbo uh on the air that was one of the criticisms i had

01:47:39.780 received i'd never been called that in my life uh even a brown uh barbie which was um not great

01:47:46.820 was that from someone who supervised you yes that was actually my producer in day day 10 on the job

01:47:54.340 and that led you eventually to write to the president tell us about that yes so i went

01:48:01.060 through the union i went through the president i had a case i even hired an external lawyer

01:48:06.180 um i was getting nowhere and i thought you know i have to bring it to somebody's attention because

01:48:11.140 honestly i felt like i was an alice in wonderland and you have all those mirrors and you see these

01:48:15.620 doors and you think that there's an opening and there's a crack there and you can get through

01:48:19.940 and it's not it's fake it doesn't exist and i was honestly i was losing it i was losing myself

01:48:27.940 i was yelling at my kids i was taking it out of my family okay we want to interrupt right now to

01:48:34.340 take you live to parliament hill where the heritage committee is getting underway we're

01:48:37.540 going to listen in live our code on that card that links to a short awareness video if you

01:48:46.180 need more information pursuant to the routine motion adopted by this committee i can confirm

01:48:51.780 that all the witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of this meeting

01:48:57.860 please wait until i recognize you by name before you speak and all comments should be through the

01:49:04.500 chair pursuant to standing order 108 and the motion adopted by the committee on monday september 22nd

01:49:10.660 2025 this committee is meeting to study the state of the journalism and media sectors so

01:49:17.940 quite a broad study and with us today we have travis danrash former journalist association

01:49:26.420 de radio diffuser communautaire du quebec angela carrero executive director welcome freshnet news

01:49:34.420 janet clo and mario bartell with friends of canadian media we have raj shown and randy kit

01:49:43.300 honest reporting canada we have mike fagelman amanda eskenazi and dr haran shani narcus

01:49:52.500 please forgive me if i've butchered your name and paul deacon from news media canada good to see

01:49:58.100 you again sir so everyone or your organization will have five minutes for an opening statement

01:50:04.580 and then we'll open up the floor to members for questions we'll start with mr danrush you have

01:50:12.260 the floor now for five minutes sir that's precious there we go appreciate it good morning uh madam

01:50:19.220 chair and members of the committee as a kid growing up in alberta i wasn't like most of my

01:50:25.140 friends every night i watched the national with knowlton nash he represented a public broadcaster

01:50:31.700 that belonged to canadians not the power not to party but to the public and that is the cbc that

01:50:39.940 i believed in now many canadians know the story about one of my tweets in april 2024 i publicly

01:50:46.500 stated that canada tonight had requested an interview with then cbc president catherine tate

01:50:52.100 and the request was declined facts shortly after i was removed from the air now on may 7th 2024

01:51:01.060 tate told this very committee she was quote not aware of any repercussions yet 24 hours earlier

01:51:08.820 a tip records show her vice president barb williams briefed her directly about my situation

01:51:14.500 and that matters because trust matters the tweet was not the beginning it was the breaking point

01:51:22.400 for months prior tensions had been building not over performance but over control while I was

01:51:28.240 publicly held up as a bold diverse host my ability to lead the very program carrying my face and name

01:51:35.540 was quietly being stripped away CBC's stated commitment to diversity contrasted with realities

01:51:42.260 of tokenism still I pushed forward creating a nightly panel to showcase real

01:51:48.320 diversity including of thought I questioned unequal pay why for example

01:51:53.900 one contributor who was indigenous always needed to be paid while others

01:51:58.020 worked when a prominent black journalist requested compensation after appearing

01:52:02.720 doing the exact same job I was told to reconsider booking him moving forward I

01:52:07.780 I attempted to end this discriminatory practice.

01:52:11.360 Instead, the panel was cancelled.

01:52:14.440 When it came to politics, interviews were blocked under guardrails,

01:52:18.000 governed by an internal document never made public,

01:52:21.060 titled Parameters for Political Guests.

01:52:23.500 Political access was centralized.

01:52:25.760 Booking decisions controlled elsewhere.

01:52:28.260 It did not happen once.

01:52:29.720 It became a pattern.

01:52:31.100 It became the standard.

01:52:33.360 Power and Politics, hosted by David Cochran,

01:52:35.400 was given gatekeeping authority over which politicians could appear on canada tonight

01:52:40.680 when i questioned that control and who was in control i was viewed as disruptive at the same

01:52:47.240 time i raised concerns about a toxic environment after i sat down with speaker greg fergus for a

01:52:53.560 conversation on black history month chief political correspondent rosemary barton circulated internal

01:52:59.640 communications questioning my program copying senior leadership insinuating she or Mr Cochran

01:53:07.480 should have done the interview it was an intimidation tactic which management ignored

01:53:13.080 I and others raised concerns about bullying behavior by senior figures including Mr Cochran

01:53:18.520 but while he remained on air I faced discipline and marginalization now the transcripts of these

01:53:24.120 meetings show the issue was not about my journalism but about reputational risk to the corporation

01:53:29.640 I received a written warning carrying the threat of termination.

01:53:33.400 I was placed under confidentiality restrictions that prevented me from correcting public and internal narratives.

01:53:40.020 CBC silenced and intimidated me simply for trying to do my job and fulfill my public service role to Canadians.

01:53:47.360 Now, this is not about left or right.

01:53:50.860 It's not about one tweet or one career.

01:53:54.100 it's about systemic control tokenism selective enforcement and a toxic culture where intimidation

01:54:00.660 went unchecked when i refused to waive my rights under the canadian human rights act in a proposed

01:54:06.980 confidentiality agreement right here and gag order essentially my role was not renewed my union

01:54:14.420 tasked with protecting my rights as an employee told me explicitly quote it's very much a normal

01:54:20.020 thing that we use. After 25 years in journalism, my career ended. That dream I had as a kid of

01:54:26.680 working at CBC shattered along with my trust in it. Now inside the newsroom, the message was

01:54:32.480 unmistakable and did not need to be spoken. I raised concerns. I challenged centralized control

01:54:38.020 and bias. I fought for real diversity and equal standards. I tried to do my job as a journalist.

01:54:44.400 Within months, I was pulled off the air, disciplined, restricted from speaking,

01:54:48.180 stripped of my primetime program and eventually out altogether now if you were still working there

01:54:54.980 would you feel safe raising similar concerns this is how silence becomes culture it's how whistle

01:55:01.380 blowers are intimidated public institutions do not weaken from scrutiny they weaken when they avoid

01:55:08.020 it the cbc that i believed in was strong enough to withstand accountability if it is to endure

01:55:14.580 as a public broadcaster worthy of canadians trust and over 1.4 billion dollars of their money

01:55:21.700 it must be strong enough to withstand it again accountability is not destruction

01:55:26.740 it is survival thank you for your time

01:55:31.460 thank you and next we go to angelica carrera

01:55:35.220 I don't know if I said your name correctly but you have five minutes starting now thank you

01:55:51.220 madam chair members of the committee thank you for giving me the opportunity to share

01:55:56.900 some observations as part of the study on journalism and the media in Canada and Quebec

01:56:02.500 I would also like to commend the work of the committee, which made accurate and relevant

01:56:07.800 recommendations in its third report.

01:56:10.880 As the Executive Director of the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters of Quebec,

01:56:14.740 I have the privilege of observing the work accomplished by these stations.

01:56:19.060 We have 37 radio stations spread across the province, from Montreal to Matagami and the

01:56:25.840 Île de la Madeleine, for example.

01:56:28.520 are francophone but some are bilingual or anglophone such as the station in blanc sablon

01:56:35.240 they therefore cover a huge geographical area sometimes with only meager revenues per year

01:56:42.280 the work they do is creative tireless and sometimes miraculous there are also media outlets

01:56:49.080 that have been around for many years which have stood the test of time despite the difficulties

01:56:55.000 the vast majority of stations employ at least one journalist sometimes two or three or four

01:57:03.080 for a total of about 50 journalists who work to provide local news coverage rooted in the reality

01:57:11.800 of their respective communities community radio stations have always enjoyed the public's trust

01:57:18.520 and this was confirmed by a study conducted by our association in 2024.

01:57:24.120 Furthermore, it is not enough to simply say that you are doing local journalism,

01:57:28.840 you have to actually do it. The physical presence of journalists in community stations is to be

01:57:35.080 distinguished from cases where news is generated by means other than humans or where broadcasts

01:57:40.600 merely relay information from the largest nearby urban center. But in addition to the physical

01:57:47.080 presence of journalists and all their volunteers because there are many volunteers it is their

01:57:51.720 mission and raison d'etre that make them excellent ambassadors for the local community

01:57:58.520 their mission is to serve the community in which they are rooted in fact it is the community that

01:58:03.000 creates and manages the radio station that has the community's interests at heart it is important to

01:58:08.760 remember that these are non-profit media outlets and they play an essential role in protecting

01:58:16.600 freedom of the press and defending the public's right to quality information their content is

01:58:23.400 diverse non-partisan comprehensive and reliable we therefore provide the kind of local journalism

01:58:30.840 that the committee refers to in its second recommendation and it is true to say that it

01:58:36.200 needs support a lot of support indeed as i said at the beginning community radio stations operate

01:58:42.120 on meager revenues that are dwindling year after year and when people seem to say they are heavily

01:58:47.800 subsidized that is very unfortunate because the only provincial subsidy they receive for

01:58:53.400 their operations does not even cover the normal salary of one of the company's employees or barely

01:58:59.960 these subsidies are difficult to renew even after many years for the federal government we have the

01:59:04.520 local journalism initiative which we really appreciate and a little project funding is

01:59:09.160 offered for those who managed to qualify but it is not enough fortunately we are stepping up our

01:59:14.440 efforts to promote the community radio initiative which could be managed by the community radio fund

01:59:21.880 of canada in an attempt to increase the funds available to all community radio stations in the

01:59:27.720 country we are asking the government for annual operating funding of approximately 30 million

01:59:33.240 dollars to provide around eighty five thousand dollars per station which is still very modest

01:59:38.520 compared to the funding provided or needed by other broadcasters this assistance would help

01:59:46.120 ensure basic financial visit viability otherwise radio stations must rely on advertising revenue

01:59:53.640 to try to make up for this shortfall but as several experts have already pointed out this

01:59:58.200 advertising revenue has clearly shifted to foreign platforms which are gobbling up almost everything

02:00:03.240 this is not new canadian government money being used to grow the financial assets of large

02:00:08.520 american companies multinationals this goes against the bi-local policy promoted by this

02:00:15.400 same government i would also like to highlight the work we are doing along with our two sister

02:00:20.600 associations the ncra the national campus and community radio association and the alliance of

02:00:28.040 community radio broadcasters of canada to try to issue a clear directive on local advertising

02:00:35.400 a specific portion would be systematically allocated to community advertising together

02:00:42.360 our three associations represent independent non-profit community radio stations across canada

02:00:50.920 we believe that this directive would encourage governments to allocate more of the funds that

02:00:55.880 are already there but used elsewhere to local media it is a reallocation of existing funds it's

02:01:02.680 not a new request but above all we believe that advertising broadcast in this way would have a

02:01:09.320 much greater and more lasting impact on canadians as the government of canada continues to invest

02:01:16.760 in public communications to raise awareness of its programs and services it is increasingly

02:01:22.520 important to ensure that these messages are delivered through channels that truly reach

02:01:28.040 the intended audiences rather than through digital giants that have no roots or support in canada

02:01:34.680 advertising that does not take into account geographic linguistic or digital barriers

02:01:39.880 risks leaving some communities confused and misinformed in short the general idea is to

02:01:45.400 help the government fulfill its mission of informing the country's entire population

02:01:51.000 and having a more significant impact on it thank you very much thank you hello and mario bartell

02:01:59.640 from freshnet news collectively you have five minutes i'm not sure how you want to share that

02:02:06.200 thank you for the opportunity to speak at this committee my name is mariel bartell

02:02:10.040 and my name is janice clue and along with teresa mcmanus and cornelia nailer we are the co-founders

02:02:16.040 of fresh at news the first non-profit news cooperative in western canada that's union

02:02:20.840 supported we are veteran community news reporters editors paginators with more than 100 years of

02:02:27.240 combined experience covering new westminster burnaby and the tri-cities in british columbia

02:02:32.760 approximately 600 000 people outside of the city of vancouver last april glacier media now called

02:02:39.640 low star media closed our three online publications the new westminster record

02:02:44.760 burnaby now and tri-city news in the middle of the federal election it meant we couldn't cover

02:02:50.120 the all candidates meetings our candidates couldn't get their messaging out and our

02:02:54.360 readers were lost about who to vote for this is dangerous to democracy

02:03:00.520 when i originally landed at the tri-city news in 1991 virtually every community in

02:03:05.640 the lower mainland was served by at least two local papers consolidation and closures

02:03:11.560 winnowed that down to one in most communities by 2015 then in august 2023 the same month our meta

02:03:18.520 social medias shut down glacier media stopped printing our newspapers altogether the company

02:03:24.120 said online was the only way forward it wasn't less than two years later five rapidly growing

02:03:31.080 cities and two villages immediately east of vancouver were left with little or no local news

02:03:36.120 source that meant decisions made at city halls and school boards got no independent coverage

02:03:42.280 there were no stories about young athletes and emerging artists no coverage of local events

02:03:47.640 festivals parades what may have been no longer economically viable to glacier media was

02:03:54.120 untenable to the journalists who have dedicated their careers to sharing those stories after all

02:03:59.240 we live in those communities too so the four of us got together with the co-op developer

02:04:04.120 and with the support of our union unifor local 2000 we put together a plan to keep our communities

02:04:09.880 informed we spent the summer and early fall of 2025 learning about co-op structures and

02:04:16.280 governance fundraising and doing community outreach people told us they didn't know what

02:04:21.640 was happening in their hometowns anymore on october 15th we launched fresh news online

02:04:29.000 a single title covering all our communities it's named for the annual spring runoff from the

02:04:33.800 northern snows that washed down the fraser river past our cities it symbolizes renewal a fresh

02:04:40.040 start two months later we revived a print edition we're monthly for now but we plan to increase to

02:04:47.080 twice a month in april with our ultimate goal to return to weekly publication we're four journalists

02:04:53.000 who never had to give much thought to the business side of our craft the ads that ran between our

02:04:57.720 stories and the distribution network that got those stories to readers the learning curve has been

02:05:03.000 steep but our journalism skill set has made us adept to changing gears when needed the communities

02:05:09.480 are responding our website traffic grows every week as do subscriptions to our weekly email

02:05:14.920 newsletter advertisers are eager to get into our newspaper and readers are scooping up the

02:05:19.960 newspapers 20 000 of them from our distribution points at city halls community and cultural

02:05:26.200 recreation hubs grocery stores coffee shops and barber shops senior residences we even

02:05:32.760 get calls to replenish we truly we truly feel our model of non-profit locally rooted journalism

02:05:39.880 that's accountable to the communities we serve is a way forward as corporate media gives up

02:05:45.320 but what we're doing is not new in fact across the united states as corporate media abandons

02:05:50.360 communities due to lack of profits reporter-led news organizations and collectives are filling

02:05:55.240 the gap still supports are lacking for journalism startups in canada we've come this far mostly on

02:06:01.960 a volunteer basis as we continue looking for jobs our severance and ei benefits have dried up our

02:06:08.120 fundraising at community events and through online through an online crowdfunding platform

02:06:13.800 has comprised mostly small individual donations 10 25 100 at a time we don't have charitable

02:06:21.080 status so we can't issue tax receipts that might shake loose transformative big money support

02:06:27.160 foundation funding frequently looks for a proven history something that's difficult for a startup

02:06:31.880 to provide grant opportunities are often like fitting a square peg into a round hole and the

02:06:37.400 few that are journalism specific like the local journalism initiative are already over subscribed

02:06:42.840 and don't provide funding for critical supports like hiring ad reps who can bring in ad revenue

02:06:48.200 or covering costs like software subscriptions insurance printing and distribution make no

02:06:55.160 mistake many of the media's industry's wounds are self-inflicted too much growth too quickly back

02:07:01.240 when times were flush too much consolidation too many resources expended chasing bad ideas

02:07:07.640 too many owners that are investors rather than people who believe in the mission of news

02:07:12.760 those owners would have would have us believe the news business is dead but our from our experience

02:07:18.680 in the past few months since we started fresh at news has been quite the opposite people want to

02:07:23.640 be connected to each other and their communities free from algorithms businesses want to share

02:07:28.840 their stories with local customers and journalists want to be able to write and keep sharing the

02:07:33.960 stories putting community back into community news is the way forward thank you thank you

02:07:41.240 it's a very effective use of sharing your time and as a former community reporter i really

02:07:46.360 appreciate your efforts thank you for all you're doing next we have the friends of canadian media

02:07:52.760 rash shown and randy kit i expect an equally engaging back and forth between the two of you

02:07:59.080 yeah the floor for five minutes thank you madam chair members of the committee friends is a

02:08:04.600 non-partisan public interest organization dedicated to ensuring that canadians have access to strong

02:08:10.120 independent canadian journalism and storytelling we advocate for citizens not for corporations

02:08:15.720 because a healthy media system is essential to a healthy democracy let me begin plainly the state

02:08:21.640 of journalism in canada is poor and in most communities is deteriorating further over the

02:08:27.080 the past decade and a half, hundreds of local news outlets have closed across the country.

02:08:31.720 Millions of Canadians now live in communities with little or no local news coverage. Newsrooms

02:08:37.320 have shrunk. Journalists have been laid off. Entire beats have disappeared. This is not simply an

02:08:43.320 industry transition. It's a democratic deficit. Local journalism scrutinizes municipal councils.

02:08:49.960 It covers courts. It informs citizens about public health, education, and emergencies.

02:08:56.040 when journalism disappears civic participation declines polarization increases and misinformation

02:09:02.600 fills the vacuum governments have taken important steps including the journalism labor tax credit

02:09:08.520 the local journalism initiative the online news act the online streaming act and support for cbc

02:09:14.760 these measures matter they demonstrate recognition that journalism is not just another sector

02:09:20.520 its democratic infrastructure but the structural disruption facing canadian journalism

02:09:26.200 remains profound the economic model that sustained local news has been destabilized

02:09:31.560 by global digital platforms that capture advertising revenue while investing

02:09:36.040 minimally in canadian news production that brings me to five areas where federal leadership is

02:09:41.960 essential first the online news act and the online streaming act are critical to creating a

02:09:47.320 sustainable funding framework for local news these laws must not be weakened traded away

02:09:53.400 or hollowed out through exemptions or side deals regulatory certainty and enforcement

02:09:58.360 are essential second eligibility for the journalism labor tax credit should be expanded to include

02:10:04.200 broadcasters broadcast newsrooms particularly local television radio face financial pressures

02:10:10.520 similar to print the they too are pillars of local accountability third parliament should

02:10:16.360 close the loophole in section 19 of the income tax act that allows full deductibility of

02:10:21.400 advertising on foreign digital platforms canadian advertising dollars should not receive preferential

02:10:27.160 tax treatment when they're directed to foreign platforms rather than canadian outlets fourth

02:10:33.160 the federal government should commit to directing at least 25 of its advertising budget to trusted

02:10:38.840 domestic news organizations both publishers and broadcasters big and small this would strengthen

02:10:45.400 local journalism while ensuring canadians receive critical public information through reliable

02:10:50.520 channels fifth canadian news creators must be protected from having their content used by

02:10:55.800 artificial intelligence companies without permission or compensation copyright protections

02:11:01.400 licensing frameworks and transparency requirements must ensure journalism is not harvested without

02:11:07.240 value flowing back to those who produce it finally a vibrant cbc is part of a strong ecosystem alongside

02:11:14.920 successful private and independent media as the national public broadcaster it plays a foundational

02:11:20.520 role in connecting regions serving official language minority communities and maintaining

02:11:25.400 news capacity where commercial models are under strain i will now turn to my colleague randy kit

02:11:31.080 thank you raj chair members of the committee uniform represents approximately 9 000 media

02:11:36.520 workers across canada in the last several years alone hundreds of journalists and media employees

02:11:41.480 have lost their jobs when newsrooms shrink the consequences are immediate fewer reporters at

02:11:47.400 city hall fewer investigative projects fewer rural correspondence and more reliance on centralized

02:11:53.640 news content and yet the demand for reliable information has never been greater as fresh

02:11:59.480 at news can tell you we are living through a period of geopolitical instability rising information

02:12:06.280 and increased public cynicism journalism is one of the few professions capable of grounding public

02:12:11.960 debate in verified fact failing to stabilize canadian journalism means surrendering not just

02:12:18.360 jobs but our sovereignty losing our local accountability shared facts and democratic

02:12:24.840 resilience that safeguard our nation's independence journalism is essential to a functioning

02:12:30.280 democracy and the canadian government should treat it like a national park something that

02:12:35.240 must be nurtured protected and properly funded for future generations a strong journalism sector is

02:12:42.680 not a luxury it's infrastructure for democracy and it's imperative that we sustain it we thank

02:12:48.680 the committee for undertaking the study and stand ready to assist

02:12:53.880 thank you very much uh we'll now turn to honest reporting canada i have mike fegelman in the

02:12:59.640 the room. Do you have colleagues online? I don't. Oh, they are. Here we go. Are you all joining in

02:13:05.240 the five minute opening? Joining in the Q&A component. Okay. Very good. Very good. You have

02:13:10.440 the floor now for five minutes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. My name is Mike Fagelman,

02:13:13.960 and I'm the executive director of Honest Reporting Canada. We're a nonprofit organization that

02:13:18.220 ensures fair and accurate Canadian media coverage of Israel. We started more than 20 years ago,

02:13:23.820 but the overt media bias that we have experienced and seen over the last two and a half years

02:13:28.100 has made that era look quaint by comparison.

02:13:31.460 Just hours after thousands of Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel on October 7th,

02:13:36.000 carrying out an orgy of murder, rape, torture, and kidnappings,

02:13:39.780 our taxpayer-funded broadcaster leapt into action.

02:13:42.820 In a letter to editorial staff, George Ahe,

02:13:45.160 CBC's former director of journalistic standards and practices,

02:13:48.640 warned journalists not to use the word terrorist when referring to Hamas,

02:13:52.100 not to admit that 2005 was the end of Israel's permanent presence in Gaza,

02:13:57.440 which it was, and even when Canadian officials refer to Hamas as terrorists.

02:14:02.400 Ehi wrote that reporters, quote, should add context to ensure that audiences understand this is opinion, not fact, end quote.

02:14:09.920 Hamas is, of course, a listed terrorist organization.

02:14:12.960 It soon became clear for the CBC and for wide swaths of the Canadian media landscape,

02:14:18.980 their role was not to report the facts to Canadians,

02:14:21.620 but to use their immense influence in society to promote a narrow ideological agenda.

02:14:27.440 Present day, news outlets parrot talking points from pro-Palestinian activists, and overwhelmingly feature guests with a predictable anti-Israel worldview, presenting them as credible, while choosing not to include opposing voices.

02:14:40.260 When anti-Israel groups sneeze, it achieves wall-to-wall news coverage.

02:14:44.780 When Amnesty International accuses Israel of committing a genocide, going so far as to make up a new definition in order to do so, or when a discredited group of non-experts make such claims, they get widespread coverage.

02:14:56.740 Yet when scholars documented Hamas's fabricated death toll or penned a comprehensive report demonstrating that no genocide took place, they were ignored by our media.

02:15:07.300 The unfounded claims of genocide and starvation were promoted ad nauseum by our media.

02:15:12.000 And as it soon became clear that those allegations were false, reporters didn't apologize.

02:15:17.040 They simply moved on.

02:15:18.160 Now, like a cat chasing a laser dot on the wall, the worst offenders in anti-Israel media bias in Canada, whether the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, or others, take their cues not from what's newsworthy, but rather what complaints are being made by pro-Palestinian activists.

02:15:35.800 When reporters document the worrying rise of Islamic radicalism in Canada, the presence of Iranian regime officials in our nation, or the impact of Qatari dark money in Canadian universities, they are treated as persona non grata.

02:15:49.860 When a Canadian mosque recently honoured Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and glorified him as a martyr, our journalists ignored this brazen support for terrorism.

02:15:59.960 Our journalists have a solemn duty to hold the powerful to account, to not act as their water carriers.

02:16:06.580 But that's what they've done, promoting hardline anti-Israel disinformation and acting as unpaid publicists for immense web of extremist actors in Canada.

02:16:17.180 This media coverage directly contributes to a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes.

02:16:22.340 When Israel is painted as a genocidal and pariah state, and opponents are widely silenced,

02:16:28.540 a target is drawn on the back of Canadian Jews.

02:16:31.260 The incessant demonization of Israel, and by extension Jews, has led to an unprecedented

02:16:36.200 attack on the Jewish community, with terrorist rallies now a regular occurrence on Canadian

02:16:41.680 streets, and Jewish schools and synagogues, as we saw this past week, shot at. While far too many

02:16:47.940 elected leaders and law enforcement ignore this cancer that is in our midst. Over the past two

02:16:53.680 years, our media promoted ideology over facts, and in the case of the CBC, did so at the taxpayer's

02:17:00.480 expense. I'm happy to recount numerous examples of Canadian media bias that we have confronted.

02:17:05.520 When our media act as stenographers for a regressive and hateful worldview, it's not reporting the news, it is creating it.

02:17:13.720 And when our leaders stay silent, they let it happen.

02:17:17.340 Our elected leaders must take the lead to remedy the situation.

02:17:21.340 In my written testimony and submission to this committee, I've offered three concrete courses of action that you can take directly to counter these critical issues, and I would be happy to elucidate them today for anyone interested.

02:17:33.360 As well, I've brought with me here today two colleagues, Dr. Haran Shani-Narkas, CEO of InnoHives, and Amanda Eskenazi, Director of Education at HR Canada Charitable Organization.

02:17:45.600 They conducted a comprehensive review of the CBC's coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and have provided real scientific evidence of asymmetric coverage.

02:17:54.880 It isn't an opinion that the CBC is one-sided.

02:17:58.140 We now have scientific, irrefutable proof.

02:18:01.520 Canadian taxpayers fund public broadcasters to provide accurate, impartial, and reliable information.

02:18:08.040 When media outlets choose ideology over facts, they fail in this fundamental duty,

02:18:13.060 leaving Canadians misinformed on issues of national security, on issues of terrorism and international conflict.

02:18:19.400 This is not merely a concern for one community.

02:18:23.180 It affects every Canadian's right to understand the world as it truly is. 0.69

02:18:27.240 restoring trust in our media is not a partisan issue but a national imperative

02:18:34.040 parliament must act now to ensure that our media serve canadians with facts

02:18:37.800 with fairness and with integrity because an informed public depends on it and our democracy

02:18:43.080 requires it thank you thank you and finally we have paul deegan with news media canada

02:18:51.000 welcome sir you have five minutes starting now bonjour media can media d'info canada

02:18:56.840 represents media canada represents about 550 news titles across canada from independent weekly

02:19:06.360 community newspapers to large urban and national dailies the advertising market in canada continues

02:19:12.520 to remain very challenging simply put too many ad dollars are being scooped up by google last year

02:19:19.080 a u.s federal court judge ruled that google which operates in all three areas of the market

02:19:24.040 the buying the selling and the ad exchange itself illegally monopolize the ad tech market through

02:19:30.600 anti-competitive conduct news publishers fully embrace and support the responsible

02:19:36.840 and ethical use of artificial intelligence at the same time despite deploying bot blockers we are

02:19:43.480 seeing the theft of our intellectual property on an industrial scale companies like google

02:19:49.480 microsoft open ai which is familiar to all of you in terms of the role their employees didn't play

02:19:55.640 in alerting authorities to the tumblr ridge incident perplexity and even canada's cohere

02:20:01.640 are ingesting repackaging and distributing copyright protected content directly from

02:20:07.320 published news articles these companies aren't just providing snippets that one would find through a

02:20:13.160 traditional search. They're providing very detailed summaries and passing it off as their

02:20:17.880 own creation. They're depriving news publishers of audience, subscriptions, and advertising,

02:20:23.960 capturing the value journalism depends on for its survival. Moreover, Google, which is dominant in

02:20:30.840 search, has embedded AI-generated summaries directly into their search interface without

02:20:36.760 providing publishers with an effective opt-out mechanism. If publishers want to block Google's

02:20:42.040 ai crawler they find themselves de-indexed or unable to attract traffic to their sites

02:20:48.360 news is an essential input to the knowledge economy it helps people businesses and investors

02:20:53.960 make better more informed real-time decisions it's also a necessary input for the output of

02:21:00.360 the ai companies but the value transfer cannot be asymmetric the user needs to pay the creator

02:21:06.760 the content theft by a com ai companies must stop and government can help first public services and

02:21:14.480 procurement canada and treasury board can work together to ensure that those on the government's

02:21:19.440 list of artificial intelligence suppliers there's a hundred and some odd companies on that list

02:21:23.860 sign a supplier agreement that states that they will use a our material ethically with a commitment

02:21:30.420 to the principles of transparency consent and attribution with respect to all copyright protected

02:21:36.260 source content second the industry minister can ask the comp bureau to look into the state of

02:21:41.780 competition with respect to search and ai google bot should be split into two crawlers one for ai

02:21:49.380 and one for search that would help level the playing field between publishers in google

02:21:54.420 and between other ai companies in google those companies have no incentive to sign commercial

02:21:59.700 agreements with publishers when google's ai services are getting the content for free

02:22:05.140 Third, the Copyright Act should not be amended to include a text and data mining exception

02:22:10.980 or be weakened in any way. Rights holders must be protected, no exceptions. On the positive side,

02:22:17.620 the Online News Act, well imperfect, is working for Canadian news publishers. Prior to the Act,

02:22:23.780 and in an effort to thwart it, Google and Meta did content licensing deals with a number of

02:22:28.500 news publishers. Most of our members, however, were left out in the cold, without assent.

02:22:33.380 Today, whether you're a large publisher or a smaller independent, you're getting about $16,400 per year per full-time journalist.

02:22:41.700 For example, The World Spectator from Moosem in Saskatchewan received almost $80,000 last year.

02:22:49.160 Prior to the Online News Act, most of our members never saw a dime in content licensing from these American big tech firms.

02:22:56.600 Between the Online News Act and the Canadian Journalism Labor Tax Credit, which rewards those who maintain and grow journalism jobs,

02:23:03.380 there's finally a level of predictability for business planning which is

02:23:07.040 translating into a level of stability and many newsrooms where we are seeing

02:23:11.120 investment after years of cost cutting both these measures should be maintained

02:23:15.440 let me turn briefly to government advertising despite the government

02:23:19.560 stated by Canadian policy changing its agency of record and spending tens of

02:23:24.280 millions of dollars each year news publishers are not seeing any

02:23:27.720 meaningful federal government ad dollars yet when a bank a retailer or a

02:23:32.600 car company runs a national or regional campaign news publishers do okay that's because their chief

02:23:38.760 marketing officers know we are a great way to reach and engage canadians so why are we only

02:23:43.480 seeing micro pennies on the dollar when it comes to the federal campaigns it's simple the government's

02:23:48.840 agency of record is doing what is easiest and most profitable for them and that's programmatic

02:23:54.120 advertising through american big tech firms we hope the committee will recommend an advertising

02:23:59.080 set aside that you heard about earlier an ad set aside done right with with on the publishing side

02:24:05.320 we for example reach 86 percent of canadians who engage with reach newspaper content each week

02:24:11.720 it's time for the government to think more like a marketer who cares about reach

02:24:15.480 and efficacy we can help you reach engaged audiences better than anyone for advertisers

02:24:21.400 whether governments or the private sector credible journalism strengthens trust while

02:24:26.040 delivering better business results in a brand safe environment there's absolutely no reason

02:24:31.160 the federal government shouldn't use canadian news brands to inform canadians in an age of

02:24:42.600 misinformation and disinformation amplified by algorithms facts are essential quality information

02:24:51.080 created by real people who have fact-gathering, fact-checking, editorial and legal review and

02:24:59.460 being accountable costs real money. Thank you. Thank you. Questions from members starting with

02:25:07.020 Mrs. Thomas for six minutes. You have the floor. Awesome, thank you so much. Thank you to each of

02:25:12.260 you for being here today. My first set of questions is going to go to Mr. Danrash. Mr. Danrash, I'm

02:25:17.760 just curious there was a document that you talked about in your opening remarks

02:25:21.660 called parameters for political guests would you be willing to table that with

02:25:24.640 the committee I would perfect thank you very much appreciated um now I just want

02:25:30.180 to get to the bottom of this can you talk a little bit about any pressure

02:25:33.880 that you experienced at the CBC to shape stories in a particular fashion sure I

02:25:40.380 can but I do want to spend part of my time because I am here speaking and this

02:25:46.140 is my story but over the past several days and even when this story initially came out

02:25:50.860 there have been other cbc employees current and former that have come forward to me that are

02:25:57.420 afraid to speak out publicly and they have sent me some statements so i'd like to if i can read

02:26:02.140 into the record some of what i have been getting from current and former employees uh this is a

02:26:08.140 current employee at the cbc i've been with cbc for 10 years and i have witnessed and experienced

02:26:13.020 multiple incidents of the misuse of taxpayer dollars racism favoritism nepotism sexual

02:26:18.860 harassment and verbal abuse and then she goes on to outline specific examples this uh next

02:26:25.580 individual was someone that you would all know if i said their name they left the cbc after a 10-year

02:26:32.060 career uh the end of their statement says without exaggeration i experienced toxicity every single

02:26:39.180 day and it was almost always from the same people it was not subtle it was not hidden it was part

02:26:44.940 of the daily reality of working there she goes on to say that uh she was set to interview uh

02:26:51.580 catherine tate on air i introduced myself to her in the makeup room as the host in front of others

02:26:56.940 she responded i didn't know i'd be interviewed by somebody who looks like she is 14. that moment

02:27:02.780 stayed with me it was dismissive inappropriate and reflected a broader culture in which respect

02:27:08.060 was not always equally extended to everyone uh on on mr cochran this is one of his former

02:27:15.020 producers his toxic behavior extended beyond editorial matters and was more often than not

02:27:19.740 deeply hypocritical while he publicly presented himself as a supporter of diversity he actively

02:27:25.260 undermined the contributions of colleagues who were minorities this is somebody who left the 0.72

02:27:31.660 industry and had to go to another country. After about a year of working there as an anchor, this

02:27:39.500 is in Vancouver, I was suddenly removed from the anchor desk. I was told the decision was related

02:27:45.180 to the color of my skin, that as a white person I did not fit the diversity targets they were

02:27:50.380 trying to meet. No concerns about my performance had ever been raised. My concern was the system

02:27:57.180 and the reasoning behind the decision. My frustration was never directed at the individual

02:28:02.040 who stepped into the role. She was also said that she was forced to check a box if somebody of a

02:28:08.820 diverse background appeared on the air, and she said that that was concerning to her. I believe

02:28:13.340 it's important to include a broad range of voices and perspectives, but reducing interview subjects

02:28:17.940 to a checkbox felt like an overly simplistic way of approaching something that deserves much more

02:28:24.320 care and thought and i can go on there are a number of these stories and it is shocking these

02:28:29.640 people have been traumatized they are scared to come out they are scared of the professional

02:28:35.400 repercussions and management like laundry lao like chris carter they are concerned about

02:28:42.420 protecting the reputation of the organization as opposed to dealing with these issues when it comes

02:28:50.260 to employees. So, Mr. Danraj, during your time there, which, sorry, can you just outline what

02:28:55.920 years were you there? I was there. I finished at Global, I think, in 2020, 2021. It's in the bio

02:29:04.060 that I provided. And then I came to Ottawa. I was a parliamentary reporter. I flew around with the

02:29:09.700 Prime Minister. I covered Parliament Hill. You know, I was, then I went back to Toronto. I was

02:29:16.120 on marketplace i covered the queen's funeral and then i got my own show which i thought you know

02:29:21.160 i'd have some say in terms of how that show went and on the the intersection panel uh you know this

02:29:27.080 is a this is a picture here of all the folks that we had on the panel you know we've got here one

02:29:32.200 with raheem mohammed and rachel gilmore i don't know if you can get two people very uh far apart

02:29:38.040 on the ideological spectrum is that sheila copps brian lily and faye johnston right we were having

02:29:44.120 the canadian conversation and this panel was cancelled and you also have issues of pay equity

02:29:50.760 when it comes to all these folks so so okay so obviously your point here was to create a panel

02:29:56.040 that was full of diversity not just in skin color or ethnicity or religious background perhaps but

02:30:01.800 you wanted diversity of thought correct were you given the journalistic freedom then

02:30:06.600 to move forward and do that

02:30:09.080 for the sake of the Canadian public?

02:30:11.120 No, I mean, the issue became with the panelists,

02:30:16.720 we had a list of 43 people or 45 people

02:30:20.820 that Power and Politics gave us

02:30:23.100 that said, do not go near these people, right?

02:30:27.020 And some of these folks were like reporters,

02:30:29.000 like Robert Benzie.

02:30:30.020 There's a story breaking at Queen's Park

02:30:32.180 and we're on at seven o'clock.

02:30:34.020 We should be able to call, you know,

02:30:35.960 somebody who covers queen's park and talk to them but there were these continued hurdles and road

02:30:41.880 blocks that were set up to really have a certain group of folks in ottawa in control of who was

02:30:50.680 allowed on on programs particularly mine was a concern and there were repeated episodes of

02:30:57.080 conservatives being blocked i mean i have the the g chats right here i i said uh you know in terms of

02:31:05.960 getting folks on that we we need to have balance this is not about just having a show with

02:31:10.840 conservatives or just with liberals but if power and politics is going to have liberals talking

02:31:16.660 points on all the time we should have balance as a network and i said we are in contravention of

02:31:22.240 section 11 of i told brodie finland this and also andre lau repeatedly we are in contravention of

02:31:29.180 the broadcasting act if we are not providing equitable time for all perspectives so i don't

02:31:34.640 to flood the show with conservatives but i do want to have balance and there are you know there and

02:31:40.240 this is all i can talk to my legal team because some of this is before the human rights commission

02:31:45.440 in terms of how this happened but there were repeated attempts over and over and over again

02:31:50.960 at one point i heard okay well maybe you can have ndp folks on but conservatives are a no

02:31:58.160 it i mean it should blow the canadian public's mind that this was the stuff that was going on

02:32:04.640 Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you all for those opening remarks.

02:32:13.000 My first question is for Ms. Klu and Mr. Bartel.

02:32:15.920 Firstly, it's a pleasure to meet you both.

02:32:17.840 Ms. Royer speaks very fondly of you.

02:32:19.760 I'd like to focus on a highlight of your opening remarks.

02:32:22.540 You noted a lack of support.

02:32:24.540 I quoted this because I thought it was interesting and well said.

02:32:27.400 Grant opportunities are like fitting a square peg into a round hole.

02:32:30.880 From your experience in building a new outlet, what are the biggest barriers facing independent

02:32:34.620 journalism startups in Canada and what do you believe would best help address those barriers

02:32:42.700 well I you know we we're journalists and and you know we we've become we've run head-on and into

02:32:49.660 into some of the challenges of of creating a viable business and and some of the costs of that

02:32:54.380 um you know the the local journalism initiative has stepped up with some funding for us so that

02:32:59.980 helps cover uh some wage for for for our crew uh but you know that doesn't deal with we need to

02:33:07.580 hire someone who can sell ads we don't know how to do that we shouldn't be doing that we're

02:33:10.940 journalists um so we need to have we want to maintain that that separation between between

02:33:16.620 the ad side and the journalism side uh so luckily we have found some people who are willing to help

02:33:21.900 us and off the side of their desks and get us going and uh but you know to go forward to to

02:33:27.900 ramp up we have to become professional at every level of this and and so you know some of that

02:33:33.260 infrastructure support is is critical to this you know we ran in headlong into just how expensive

02:33:38.540 some of these things are software uh licenses to to get uh to allow us to produce a newspaper

02:33:44.860 uh web web hosting fees uh insurance all these things that we were completely oblivious to in

02:33:51.420 our role in the newsroom have have uh have come home to roost and and you know luckily our crowd

02:33:56.860 funding gave us a good foundation to to start tackling some of these things but again as we

02:34:01.180 move forward uh becoming a viable business will will mean backfilling a lot of those things with

02:34:06.780 with support fantastic over the past few years certainly we've seen a significant number of

02:34:13.740 community newspapers close or reduce their reporting capacity you highlighted this in

02:34:17.660 your opening remarks from your perspective as a long-time local journalist reporter

02:34:22.060 could you speak to what happens to community accountability and civic engagement when local

02:34:25.660 news coverage disappears i believe you highlighted that it was dangerous to local democracy but

02:34:30.460 i'm keen to see you expand on that if possible we became a news desert we have news deserts and news

02:34:38.380 news poor jurisdictions and uh glacier media closing us in the middle of the federal election

02:34:43.740 was was quite bad so we've had people pretending to be reporters sit at the media desk in council

02:34:52.380 meetings and uh they're reporting when we're not so that's dangerous

02:35:04.380 perfect thank you your association has represents 37 different radio stations as you know many

02:35:13.500 community radio stations depend on volunteers and limited funding what are the biggest

02:35:18.860 operational challenges that community radio is facing today i'm thinking of lower advertising

02:35:25.180 revenue digital disruptions with foreign platforms well you stated it well

02:35:34.220 there are all the operations done by volunteers which isn't ideal because even though those

02:35:41.820 volunteers give their time dedicate themselves make these radio stations work any operation that

02:35:50.060 is based on that model is hard to keep up over the years but it's the case they they manage

02:35:57.900 but funding for operations that's the basic need that's what they need and it's what they don't

02:36:05.180 have and then advertising revenue as i said and others have said advertising revenue aren't there

02:36:13.580 anymore it's gone to foreign platforms so it would be very good to have a clear government directive

02:36:22.620 and then radio stations could contribute to getting the government's message through

02:36:28.060 And then you mentioned the digital transition. That's another element that's a major challenge.

02:36:36.900 Radio stations are cornerstones for their community. They're on the FM station, but also

02:36:46.960 on the web. They can be listened to. There are podcasts, news. So these are really

02:36:53.380 complete media outlets, but we need to help them with the digital transition.

02:36:58.080 It can be harder depending on the station.

02:37:02.380 Parfait.

02:37:03.460 Mr. Schultz, Canada's broadcasting and media regulatory framework was designed at a time when traditional television and radio dominated the landscape.

02:37:10.920 Given the rapid rise of global streaming platforms and digital media companies,

02:37:15.340 do you believe Canada's existing regulatory tools are still adequate for protecting Canadian journalism and cultural sovereignty in the digital age?

02:37:23.380 um i believe the tools are there i think perhaps the crtc has been a little bit slow in terms of

02:37:28.420 taking action the crtc has done some some good things and certainly the government canada has

02:37:33.140 done some good things the online streaming act the online news act has been enormously helpful

02:37:38.180 the tax credit has been helpful the local journalism initiative the crtc made a very

02:37:42.500 important decision last year to ask streamers to contribute a base contribution of 1.5 of its

02:37:49.060 annual revenue to support local news um that's being challenged in court right now but we feel

02:37:53.780 confident it will go the the crtc's way um those are all important steps but more needs to be done

02:38:00.580 especially given the the canadian center for policy alternatives uh um uh conclusion that

02:38:08.900 um a significant portion of the canadian population i believe it's 2.5 percent have access to no local

02:38:14.340 news or only one local news outlet so that's really a problem that needs to be corrected

02:38:18.180 the tools are there and the regulator needs to be encouraged to use them

02:38:28.260 now we go to mr shampoo for six minutes thank you madam chair i'd like to thank

02:38:35.620 our witnesses today we have a great panel who represent the importance of the topic

02:38:41.460 we are covering with the study madam chair before speaking to the witnesses i'd like to table a

02:38:45.620 motion i've discussed it with a few members around the table it's a motion that i will read

02:38:52.820 and i'd like us to keep a little time at the end of the meeting to debate it i will read it

02:38:58.340 and then we can discuss it a little later to not interrupt questions to witnesses

02:39:04.500 it is a motion being tabled in relation to radio canada's decision to offer its programming

02:39:12.660 its news on the prime video platform owned by amazon we find that this is a decision

02:39:19.380 that needs to be explained and questioned so the motion is that pursuant to standing order

02:39:26.180 108-2 the committee invite the ceo of cbc radio canada marie philippe bouchard to appear before

02:39:33.380 the committee for a minimum of two hours to explain the decision to make ec abdee's programming

02:39:40.580 available on the prime video platform owned by the american multinational amazon even before it is

02:39:46.100 made available to quebecers and francophones in canada on two point tv or on a canadian-owned

02:39:51.700 platform madam chair i've prepared this in french and english it's available to committee members

02:40:02.020 if i may i'd like to ask us to reserve time at the end of the meeting today to discuss this motion

02:40:07.860 so we can explain the spirit of this request from the Bloc Cubicua.

02:40:14.500 I think everyone agrees.

02:40:17.960 Thank you.

02:40:19.500 Thank you, Madam Chair.

02:40:21.460 Once again, thank you to all of the witnesses for joining us today.

02:40:25.820 I think this is an extremely important study.

02:40:28.960 It's a very concerning topic.

02:40:31.000 and the variety of media perspectives here are a testament to that.

02:40:38.560 I'll start with Ms. Carrero because we've heard a lot about community media

02:40:45.480 and we know that times are tough.

02:40:49.660 Support isn't what is needed.

02:40:54.880 I also want to ask a question to Mr. Deegan who represents written media

02:40:59.600 But you talked about the local journalism initiative. Have you noticed a decrease in support through that program for your members? Is the support still what your members need it to be? Because I know it's essential for local coverage in Quebec and elsewhere.

02:41:23.520 So what is the state on the ground for your members with the Local Journalism Initiative?

02:41:29.860 Yes, the LJI is something we appreciate.

02:41:32.560 It's funding that's there for stations.

02:41:36.080 We haven't noticed a specific decrease as such.

02:41:40.780 Stations request it and they hope to obtain it.

02:41:44.460 However, we always hope it will be renewed in time for budget 2026.

02:41:52.120 that's what we are hoping for and sometimes even if a station has that LJI

02:42:02.360 it needs to be possible to hire someone it's not just getting the subsidy but

02:42:08.260 being able to use it but that's another kettle of fish but I just wanted to

02:42:12.700 mention it the LJI is something we really appreciate and we really hope to

02:42:17.860 to see it renewed in budget 2026 i'd like to ask a question to paul deegan as well i know your members

02:42:25.940 often

02:42:29.060 use that very important program the local journalism initiative for written media it's

02:42:33.460 very important andrean laroche the member for shefford received from the val west newspaper

02:42:41.220 in her area she was told that the funding had decreased by 30 this year which has a huge impact

02:42:50.020 on small written media in the regions and community outlets is this a concern you've seen

02:42:58.100 at news media canada we uh pull uh yes for newspapers it's about 37 000 per journalist this

02:43:09.380 year but we have about 200 journalists under this program it's very important for weeklies

02:43:23.380 and other independent community media have you heard from your members that the program was less

02:43:29.300 generous with them this year yes yes so there's still the expectation that this program would be

02:43:36.420 increased which is necessary to address media deserts media deserts news deserts are everywhere

02:43:43.540 thank you very much back to you miss carrito we heard earlier about artificial intelligence

02:43:50.100 and this will be coming up often in the study surely as community media i imagine you don't use

02:43:58.100 ai to prepare the news and broadcast it but some media are using that technology

02:44:03.860 for due to economic reality but often they use programs that you don't have

02:44:11.240 access to so what is your perspective on that distortion and the equity of the

02:44:15.840 rules I imagine it wouldn't be a cause for celebration correct I think you are

02:44:26.740 correct community radio is based on principles that they try to keep up and if there are people

02:44:40.180 who could use ai it would be community radio stations because they don't have staff they

02:44:45.940 don't have the necessary funds but it doesn't it's not consistent when we see that others can

02:44:53.860 benefit from subsidies so this is a real issue we need to maintain our mission those tools are

02:45:01.300 there we can't deny it but we would like to have assistance in that regard a question to everyone

02:45:10.420 for advertising from the federal government

02:45:15.620 the transfer of advertising from traditional media towards digital media since 2019 i've

02:45:22.900 been in this role since 2019 the same thing has been asked that the government spend less on

02:45:29.060 foreign digital media and more on traditional media the friends of canadian media have been

02:45:35.940 talking about that for years i'm sorry mr shampoo but we your time is up there's no time for an

02:45:42.260 answer you can answer a little later thank you the next time perhaps do you now have the floor for

02:45:49.220 five minutes thank you madam chair uh mr dunraj i uh found your testimony quite uh fascinating

02:45:57.860 i was a journalist for myself for 30 years i was also a national director of the canadian

02:46:04.580 association of journalists journalism has indeed changed you noted that you used to sit down and

02:46:10.180 watch um norton nash as the voice of you know a trusted voice i i also remember lloyd robertson

02:46:20.020 as a kid watching him peter kent stanley burke ironically peter kent stepped down in 1978

02:46:29.460 after criticizing um political interference from the liberal prime minister so um the the cbc

02:46:38.900 does talk about being diverse inclusive uh fair and balanced yet one of the cbc's premier

02:46:46.660 segments is something called at issue which features toronto star journalist chantal hibert

02:46:54.100 athila raj and globe and mail journalist uh andrew coin in what universe is this diverse

02:47:03.380 fair or balanced as a news panel well i i mean the the national uh makes their own decisions

02:47:12.900 i suppose in terms of uh who who they put on that that panel uh you know and it's rosie's panel so

02:47:20.100 uh miss barton's panel so i i guess you know you can have to you know you can have to talk to her

02:47:25.380 about the editorial decisions but you know what i was attempting to do on this program was have

02:47:30.340 that diversity of opinion and you know when they cancelled the panel i sent in a note to panelists

02:47:36.500 asking for feedback um and i was disciplined for that and i just want to talk about this

02:47:42.820 nda that i got because it's important uh because i was raising concerns about editorial and and i

02:47:50.980 was slapped with and this nda here which is a practice that the cbc uh is using frequently

02:47:58.020 which was raised by dave seglins and you guys all have the paper dan rash has considered whether he

02:48:04.100 has a human rights complaint with respect to the issues in dispute and by his signature below

02:48:09.700 confirms that he does not further he confirms that he seeks no right or remedy under the canadian

02:48:16.180 human rights act as amended with respect to the issues in dispute and any such claim is barred

02:48:21.620 by this agreement that should be shocking to every member on this committee and i and i hope

02:48:28.900 that other members on the committee take an interest in terms of the the issues that i'm

02:48:34.020 outlining here because it is very important we should not have a public institution silencing

02:48:40.020 their own employees and having them waive their rights under the canadian human rights act that

02:48:45.780 should be shocking um getting back to the the bigger issue of the fairness and and balance in

02:48:54.340 news um you mentioned at one point that uh cbc management actually prevented you from interviewing

02:49:02.420 conservative conservative leader pierre paulia on your show can you describe what happened there

02:49:08.020 yeah well we i i mean i basically wasn't allowed to pick up the phone and and talk to uh conservatives

02:49:15.780 I have some G-chats here, which I just want to, you know, read you part of this.

02:49:20.640 I'm talking to my senior producer.

02:49:22.540 I'm saying, okay, you know, this is an editorial discussion.

02:49:26.540 Can we get a conservative perspective on this is essentially what I'm saying.

02:49:30.300 It is a no to the conservatives, I'm told.

02:49:32.900 We can't chase anyone from the entire party.

02:49:35.880 The chase is with PNP.

02:49:37.120 so if power and politics is not able to secure a conservative uh or you know somebody that

02:49:44.520 presents an alternate perspective then we are not allowed to i'm told at one point we're sure that

02:49:50.520 there's a myriad of other types of interesting guests that you can chase outside of the

02:49:54.120 conservatives uh can i be included on conversations with power and politics that's not how we work

02:50:00.360 I say to management, by playing petty office politics, we feed into conservative narratives that we have a bias against them.

02:50:10.740 Canada Tonight is a melting pot of news of the day, and politics and decisions from it largely impact Canadians.

02:50:18.220 So we need flexibility to respond to emerging stories.

02:50:22.780 So yes, I wasn't even allowed to pick up the phone and call to request Pierre Polyev.

02:50:28.920 look at what happened when i had melissa lanceman on my show right i was threatened to be pulled

02:50:33.880 off the air which cbc then said in a news statement they didn't threaten to do that there are recordings

02:50:38.520 of them trying to do this why do you think they were doing that i mean there there's an effort

02:50:45.240 to essentially uh protect those in ottawa uh in in terms of their perspectives on these things uh

02:50:55.560 in terms of who they want on the show it should be about you know we did an interview with karen 0.85

02:51:00.040 johnson uh my co-host on the new podcast i'm doing it is out right now she's another former cbc

02:51:06.840 employee that is talking about the toxic culture she said that she alleges that she was called a

02:51:12.440 brown barbie a bimbo but she says that it's it's a very high school culture and these are things

02:51:19.560 that that this is fine if you if you have hosts doing that it's not fine but it okay but management

02:51:27.000 you are responsible for dealing with it and so if management is not going to do anything if the

02:51:34.760 president of the CBC is going to come here and expect a tongue lashing and then be able to go 0.59

02:51:40.200 back to the CBC and continue to get funding without accountability these practices will continue

02:51:47.640 so shame is clearly not enough to get the cbc to a place where they will hold themselves accountable

02:51:55.800 so it's incumbent upon this committee to do that ms roy you have the floor now for five minutes

02:52:02.440 go ahead merci madame chair i'd like to begin by welcoming witnesses from

02:52:08.920 my community janice clue and mario bartell of freshet news thank you both for your decades of

02:52:16.520 service when glacier meteors media's tri-city news closed last year it was a devastating loss for our

02:52:24.280 riding of port moody coquitlam and i'm extremely grateful that veteran reporters like yourselves

02:52:30.600 step forward i'm sorry ms royer your audio is a little low for the interpreters i'm hearing that

02:52:37.320 they are having trouble hearing you can you try moving your boom closer to your mouth and see if

02:52:42.680 that's any better. Is that better? Madam Chair is that better? Yeah I think it's better. A little

02:52:56.680 bit better? Okay. Just keep that boom close to your mouth. It just sounded that you were a bit

02:53:01.480 far away. I'll keep it close and is that um are we going to start the clock from the day? No you

02:53:10.280 can have your time back okay great thank you thank you thank you okay merci madam chair i'd like to

02:53:15.320 begin by welcoming witnesses from my community janice clue and mario bartel a fresh no i'm sorry

02:53:22.840 ms roy the audio is not getting it oh no okay

02:53:31.320 let me just check the connection i'm going to suspend for a minute while we try and work this

02:53:38.520 Okay. Merci.

02:53:58.040 All right, if you're just tuning in, you are watching

02:54:03.080 Travis appear before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa. This is the heritage committee. He

02:54:06.920 started with opening statements um and as promised he did name names in terms of uh the people who

02:54:15.000 were roadblocks to um what he perceived as fair coverage and uh and fair treatment

02:54:23.240 during his time at the cbc he is being asked questions at this point now he's part of a panel

02:54:29.400 of a number of people so um everyone had their opportunity to make opening statements and now

02:54:34.760 members of the committee which are uh made up of all three three of the parties um all different

02:54:40.680 parties rather i should say not just three um they will have their chance to ask panelists

02:54:45.560 some questions and you can see that the majority of the questions being directed

02:54:50.360 at least by the conservative side are to travis about his experience in his time at the cbc so

02:54:56.040 we're on a brief pause right now inside of the hearing because uh one of the panelists is having

02:55:02.920 some audio difficulty but i want to cover a few things that travis talked about one of them was

02:55:11.080 he has two binders with him and they've got cbc's logo on them and it says the receipts

02:55:18.120 and he's reading from those some correspondence that he had kept audio recordings

02:55:25.960 um emails that went back and forth between himself his editorial leadership um between

02:55:33.480 different people within the newsroom uh either you know about rules about protocols about discipline

02:55:41.320 and so those are the sorts of pieces of evidence that he's presenting in front of parliament right

02:55:46.680 now he's not doing it all he's not dropping everything because there is a case being made

02:55:52.280 for the human rights commission uh which we spoke to katherine marshall who's his lawyer about a

02:55:57.240 little bit earlier and some of that evidence is being well all of that evidence is being submitted

02:56:02.360 to the human rights commission and so some of that is being um is being held but he has disclosed a

02:56:10.920 lot uh for example he has this email that he's submitting into committee it's called the parameters

02:56:15.960 for political guests so travis has talked about how he was prohibited from contacting certain

02:56:22.600 people um he was uh not allowed to have conservative voices not even allowed to pick up the phone

02:56:30.200 and to call them to ask them to be on a show and so there were guidelines procedures protocols

02:56:37.160 that cbc put out for that and travis has submitted what that is to committee

02:56:41.320 we're going to head back inside live to parliament uh mr tumba the floor goes to mr tumba

02:56:49.880 for five minutes starting now

02:56:55.480 thank you very much madam chair

02:57:00.440 excuse me

02:57:03.320 it won't be long

02:57:04.040 I'll start with Ms. Carrero. Thank you for your presentation. I think my colleague Therese

02:57:21.880 raised the point earlier. I'd like to hear you tell us

02:57:25.400 about well community media outlets ask for advertising how much can that help radio

02:57:35.320 stations can survive well in fact as i was saying earlier there's a subsidy that's received but it

02:57:46.200 doesn't cover this the salary or barely of one employee for a radio station

02:57:51.880 so community radio stations have to be creative and find other ways and advertising revenue are

02:57:59.820 one of those ways to make up for that shortfall there are also other ways of proceeding community

02:58:08.420 radio stations have bingos for example that helps with funding as well so these are ways

02:58:16.460 to address a need that isn't covered by subsidies so it's something very

02:58:23.600 important and has always served the model of these media outlets that's how

02:58:30.200 they operated for a long time it's nothing new so it's a loss from recent

02:58:37.280 years and that's why we're really calling for a return of that advertising

02:58:41.420 revenue. Thank you, Ms. Carrero. Mr. Bartel, Ms. Cleo, what you experienced last year,

02:58:52.460 I don't know how to describe it, but you are a model of resilience in the face of challenges,

02:59:00.620 because despite what you went through, you came back, and we can tell you love media,

02:59:07.820 love your work my question is when you talk about having bigger donations do you have like a number

02:59:16.940 in mind in terms of funding well we did we did launch a founders club that allowed people to

02:59:26.780 donate a thousand dollars a minimum thousand dollars um and we recognize them in in ads in

02:59:32.860 our newspaper house ads in our newspaper and and uh we're we that the campaign didn't really get

02:59:39.020 going as well strongly as we wanted to because we kept running into roadblocks with trying to issue

02:59:43.820 tax receipts we're not a charity um and a few efforts we did try would have run afoul of cra

02:59:49.420 and we didn't want to do that we didn't want to run run do anything illegal or or that would come

02:59:53.900 back and bite us um so we don't know i mean we you know we we we got some support from from our union

02:59:59.740 and and uh some other groups that did step up selflessly and say you know that we we believe

03:00:05.020 in this too this is this is important this is important for our community um but you know we

03:00:09.900 don't know what kind of potential is out there if if we don't have some of these tools available to

03:00:15.820 us like being able to issue tax receipts and that and uh you know we spend a lot of time trying to

03:00:20.460 investigate things my colleague here janice has spent a lot of time writing grant applications and

03:00:25.580 and as we said it's it's often fitting a square peg into a round hole where we're trying to get

03:00:30.140 grants as as cultural or as uh institutions things like that that that we kind of fit into

03:00:36.860 but it all depends on how you look at it uh so it's it's it's a lot of a lot of effort to to

03:00:43.340 find money wherever we can to try and to try and give us that foundation that we can build upon

03:00:48.140 you want canadian media you want the government of canada to consider them do you think some media

03:01:06.780 outlets are not taken into account by the government of canada what would be your proposal to move

03:01:11.260 forward last year i think the government spent about okay we want to just um pause for a second

03:01:26.540 because i have tony clement with us and i want to make sure tony gets some time on here and um

03:01:31.180 tony i will interrupt if travis comes back on so we can listen in uh but thank you for joining us

03:01:36.060 of course people will know tony clement he's been both the federal provincial cabinet minister after

03:01:40.620 leaving politics. You do all sorts of things, including independent media. So thank you for

03:01:46.780 spending some of your time with us this afternoon. I'll just say to you, I want to ask you a bit

03:01:51.260 about this because it seems like most governments, with the exception of the Trudeau Liberal government,

03:01:58.700 were at a constant state of warfare with the CBC, right? Like when you were part of the

03:02:03.580 Hartford government, it certainly wasn't a very friendly environment. Do you think,

03:02:08.140 When the Conservatives talk about the CBC, the money that they're giving to the CBC, the government, is it ideological? Is it accountability? What is behind that?

03:02:17.100 I think it's a combination of a number of things, and particularly because the CBC, by virtue of its structure and mandate, has a leg up on private sector media.

03:02:33.600 They get government funding. They are still allowed to get private sector funding through sponsorships and commercials. And then they continually were expanding their mandate to, you know, podcasts or, you know, news blogs, all of these things that the independent media were doing, and it was all being state subsidized.

03:02:59.360 So I think from a fairness perspective, that was a big problem.

03:03:06.060 And, of course, overlaid on that is a general perception by conservatives that there's not a lot of conservative voices in the CBC.

03:03:16.740 For an institution, a state-backed institution that claims to represent Canada, there wasn't a lot of representation of a particular point of view.

03:03:26.820 Let's put it that way.

03:03:27.620 Yeah. You know, and you kind of started your own independent podcast platform. You talk to you speak to audience just like we do directly. Do you think that's kind of the direction that we're heading to with journalism? Like, where do you kind of see things going here?

03:03:44.320 I'm actually very optimistic about journalism. I think that this whole move to continually state-subsidize journalism is bound to failure.

03:03:57.260 People are judging the old media as found wanting and are gravitating towards new media and independent media, whether it's podcasts or independent broadcasting, you name it, YouTube videos.

03:04:19.160 There's not a diminution of people acquiring and consuming news.

03:04:27.260 i believe canadians consume a lot of news they're just not getting it in the same place that their

03:04:33.420 parents or their grandparents did so i think that that is actually a good trend i think that that

03:04:39.100 means that there is still competition and different viewpoints and even more varied viewpoints than

03:04:46.540 had been available before so uh i'm not one of these people that is doing a requiem for old

03:04:54.220 media i just think things are transforming to new versions of consumption of media yeah and while

03:05:01.660 that audience gets redirected elsewhere the government still continues to fund the cbc at

03:05:07.020 you know over a billion dollars um and do you think that that sort of funding should continue

03:05:13.900 like should they be uh should they be a place that still survives because there is you know a need

03:05:19.420 for local news and no one's doing that like what are your thoughts on like kind of the viability

03:05:23.340 of the CBC and where that goes? Yeah, I think it's, you have to sort of split up the CBC into

03:05:28.340 different segments. I think CBC radio performs a function in rural communities and other

03:05:34.720 remote communities that cannot be replicated. I think that with some reform, Radio Canada

03:05:42.120 in Quebec can perform a useful function. Then you've got CBC television, English television,

03:05:48.940 And I just think that what it's providing has already been replicated. There's no need for state funding of that. And so I think there has to be a new model for that, quite frankly.

03:06:03.120 I think sticking with a model that's been around for almost 100 years isn't good statecraft, it isn't new thinking, and just because it's the way it was done since 1935 doesn't make it the way it should be done for the rest of the 21st century.

03:06:22.860 Okay, Tony, thank you. I'm going to have to leave you here and go back to Travis. Thanks so much, Tony.

03:06:26.860 professional reprisal but i also know that this was raised repeatedly and whether or not there

03:06:34.300 was influence from the former prime minister's office in terms of editorial decisions that were

03:06:40.540 being made on power and politics or not even the allegation of that on its face needs to be

03:06:47.100 investigated and from my understanding and cbc can put out a statement correcting uh me if i'm wrong

03:06:54.780 on this, I don't think that there was ever an investigation. That is a serious concern,

03:07:02.120 right? I mean, if there are repeated, you know, allegations made about perhaps there's too much

03:07:10.060 influence here. Now, let me just say this as well. I was a reporter in Ottawa. I've been at

03:07:15.140 Queen's Park. I was the Queen's Park Bureau Chief for Global. Reporters have sources.

03:07:18.900 we all know that but there's there's a line where that leads into editorial decision making

03:07:27.720 and you have to make sure that that is clear and if there's even an allegation that that

03:07:33.340 may have been crossed you have to look deeper I guess to that end then we we know that public

03:07:41.780 trust toward the media in general is on the decline we know that that is true with the

03:07:46.540 CBC. There's no exception there. In your mind, then, you know, is that lack of trust justified?

03:07:53.480 I think that right now, the CBC, by continuing to put out statements and to come to these

03:08:00.620 committees and say, yeah, you know, we might have a little bit of a problem. But, you know,

03:08:05.620 overall, we're not biased. That's gaslighting Canadians. Canadians can see that this is an 1.00

03:08:11.940 issue right and and this is you know folks have accused me of coming here being a cheerleader

03:08:19.060 for the conservatives i am not a cheerleader for the conservatives i'm sorry i'm not a cheerleader

03:08:25.220 for the liberals either i was trying to do my job as a journalist and part of that is being

03:08:30.260 balanced and so when you have i you know when i was pulled into these disciplinary meetings

03:08:35.620 i was told that it was editorializing because i put that katherine kate wouldn't come on the program

03:08:39.700 and it's unfortunate this is unfortunate was editorializing right and was perceived bias

03:08:46.980 there's a lot of perceived bias going on that i don't see any uh discipline around so i think cbc

03:08:55.380 needs to have a you know a wake-up call here in terms of accountability uh and really that's

03:09:02.660 incumbent upon this committee i have made recommendations there are 11 recommendations

03:09:07.460 in terms of how to uh you know move some of this forward when it came to mr cochran you know this

03:09:13.780 is during the convoy for example we were talking about tamara litch who was an individual who was

03:09:20.420 involved in the convoy having that we were doing a story around that uh and you know off the hand

03:09:25.140 marks remarks can be made at times uh and i said i think that she has a couple of different last

03:09:31.380 names people who live in trailers usually do you know okay off color remark but if this is a pattern

03:09:40.820 right you have to if your staff on your own show are raising this if people are leaving the program

03:09:49.540 you have to look a little bit deeper into it as opposed to pulling me off the air for saying

03:09:54.500 it's unfortunate the president didn't come on the show so the canadian public is paying for this to

03:10:00.340 the tune of about 1.4 billion dollars and then of course the government also increased that by an

03:10:04.820 additional 150 million dollars at the end of the day then the public is the shareholder and also

03:10:10.660 the ones that are supposed to be benefiting from this news coverage in your estimation

03:10:14.420 what changes are needed to actually restore that trust i i think that there needs to be

03:10:18.580 an overhaul when it comes to management i've you know you have my specific recommendations but i

03:10:23.140 will also say this i am not here as somebody who does not believe in public broadcasting

03:10:28.100 I was on Jonovision. I started as an audience coordinator when I was 19 years old at the CBC.

03:10:34.120 I worked on the Air Force. I worked on the Red Green show. I then left. I came back. I worked

03:10:39.240 at CBC Edmonton. I worked at CBC Toronto. Left. Came back again. I took a pay cut to come back

03:10:45.660 to the CBC. I used to walk around the CBC broadcast center when I was 19 years old and sneak into the

03:10:51.660 newsroom. And I thought, this is this. I want to be at this place at some point. This is the heart

03:10:56.780 of this building the news organization and and it has gotten so far away from what it was

03:11:04.560 the cbc should not be a polarizing force it needs to bring canadians together and it has the

03:11:12.080 infrastructure to be able to do that but until there's a recognition of the problem from

03:11:18.600 management nothing will happen and they fail to recognize this i i am willing i would be willing

03:11:25.260 to sit down tomorrow with the new president to talk about some of this stuff right but good

03:11:30.980 people are leaving they're being forced out and and their concerns are being dismissed because

03:11:36.980 it's about protecting reputation well here's you know some news i don't have to be wanting to

03:11:44.100 destroy the cbc because management and executives are doing a great job of that on their own

03:11:48.920 thank you uh we're gonna try one more time with ms roy to see if we have sound now that you have a

03:11:56.440 new headset you have the floor for five minutes fingers crossed okay excellent excellent so i'd

03:12:02.040 like to begin by welcoming witnesses from my community and that is janice clue and mario

03:12:07.240 bartell of freshet news and i want to thank you both for your decades of service and of course

03:12:14.120 when glacier media's tri-city news closed last year it was a devastating loss for our riding

03:12:20.200 of port moody coquitlam and why is this because democracy only works when citizens can see the

03:12:28.600 truth clearly and that requires strong independent journalism so that voters can make informed choices

03:12:34.600 and hold leaders accountable janice in your own words you actually said that this is dangerous

03:12:40.200 so this brings me to the matter of journalistic integrity and the journalist code of ethics and

03:12:45.800 i'd like to really drill down if i could with uh with you and mario so with the advent of

03:12:51.000 podcasts and online news there's a great deal of misinformation how refreshing journalists trained

03:12:56.840 and is that the norm i was trained in britain under a program called the nctj

03:13:05.800 national council training of journalists there's a standardized curriculum in colleges and

03:13:11.560 universities in britain you do a year program and take legal courses municipal government courses

03:13:21.400 shorthand you then go out in the field for 18 months and then we all write a national exam in

03:13:26.360 the end we don't have this in canada we need this in canada it's similar to a trade like red seal

03:13:33.160 and it would help with municipalities that are struggling with reporters who call themselves

03:13:39.800 reporters and they're not professionally trained. It would help the municipalities figure out

03:13:46.040 who should be at the table, who should be at the media table.

03:13:50.680 Okay, got it. Can we drill down a little bit further and speak to the core principles? So

03:13:57.160 what really are the core principles of the code of ethics for journalists what are the what are the

03:14:02.920 pillars well you try to be balanced you try to give both sides of an issue you you try to

03:14:11.640 give a fair representation of you know when we cover city council you you try to give a fair

03:14:16.280 representation of the concerns that were raised and and and how they were raised so that when

03:14:21.320 readers read how a decision came to be they they have some knowledge as to what what uh what some

03:14:28.680 of the downfalls might be what some of the advantages might be and you just sort of you

03:14:33.800 report you don't interpret you report i'm i'm actually understanding that um yeah just just

03:14:41.880 what you said mario that accuracy and verification are absolutely key multiple sources um that there

03:14:50.360 needs to be um journalists themselves need to be free from conflicts of interest and there can't

03:14:56.200 be any exchange of gifts or favors um there is a a high level of accountability and transparency

03:15:04.040 can you speak to uh some of these these principles and how you report um and and also avoiding bias

03:15:12.360 how you bring that into Fresh It News.

03:15:17.880 Well, I think we do as we've always done. We stand apart. We don't try and cultivate

03:15:25.480 friendships or favor with anybody. We go in there and we go in with a fresh mind as to

03:15:32.440 what is being discussed, what the issues are. And you give a fair ear to all sides and report

03:15:41.000 accordingly i know that there was a gap between the closure of tri-city news glacier media and

03:15:50.840 freshet opening and of course the closure happened just ahead of the election what do you feel the

03:15:57.400 impact was on the electorate in making decisions in in the lead up to the election what what

03:16:04.040 actually happened it said in the opening as we had said in the opening um we couldn't cover

03:16:11.720 um candidates and the readers were lost they didn't know who to vote for they didn't know

03:16:17.800 where to go and again it was very dangerous to democracy so having um corporate media pull out

03:16:27.080 uh in the middle of the federal election was devastating to our readers and to the advertisers

03:16:31.960 and to the candidates well in a normal news cycle too we would be there covering all candidates

03:16:37.720 meetings and and uh bringing you know bringing readers who you know we're there we're kind of

03:16:42.200 the proxy for people who don't go but still may be interested but they may not be interested in

03:16:46.680 sitting around for two hours and at a meeting or they just weren't able to go so we're the proxy

03:16:50.520 that's how we see ourselves same city council anything we cover we're kind of the proxy for

03:16:54.840 the public so when you uh are able to give a flavor for for a candidate and and what they

03:17:00.840 said and the the issues that were raised by by people at all candidates meetings that's that's

03:17:05.320 bringing information to to the larger public as well and and uh hopefully that then informs

03:17:11.160 everybody a little bit better about when it when it comes to marking their ballot which

03:17:15.000 which way they're going to go we also cover a very large we also cover when i noticed that there was

03:17:20.760 a prevalence of other um sort of freelancers journalists that we've never heard of before

03:17:26.440 that were sort of taking up the space in the news desert and i think people were then tuning into

03:17:31.800 that because they were hungry i think the electorate is particularly hungry for um this is all the time

03:17:37.480 we have for this question i'm sorry but i really appreciate that you make the point that journalists

03:17:44.120 have to be in the room at the school board meetings and at the city halls and in the courtrooms and

03:17:49.960 when people say ai can take over the job of journalism i think they don't understand what

03:17:55.080 journalism has done because ai can't be in those rooms um mrs thomas you now have the floor for

03:18:01.080 five minutes. Awesome. I'm going to ask one quick question and pass it off to my colleague. My

03:18:05.560 question is for Mike, Mr. Coleman, or your colleagues. And my question is this. You made

03:18:12.680 a statement with regards to linking the safety and security of the Jewish community here in Canada

03:18:17.080 to biased coverage from the news media. And I would like you to take a moment and just expand

03:18:22.440 on that in terms of the consequences that are there. Sorry, you cut out there for a second.

03:18:26.680 I'll speak to a bit of a portion that I'm going to hand off to my colleagues on Zoom as well.

03:18:31.640 The first thing is what's reported today becomes domestic and foreign policy tomorrow.

03:18:36.200 And I echo Mr. Danraj's comments about a very, let's call it a jaundiced marketplace of ideas.

03:18:43.840 What we have seen in the past couple of years, most certainly as it relates to the CBC, is the elevation of radical voices, giving them a platform, giving them undue legitimacy,

03:18:54.620 which we feel really does serve to elevate the fringe and marginal voices who are traditionally

03:19:03.120 you know again on the fringe trying to work their way into the mainstream and then it serves

03:19:07.760 fundamentally to fan the flames of hatred against Israel and the Jewish community. More specifically

03:19:12.980 HR Canada Charitable Organization and InnoHives did a long-term two-year study on the Hamas-Israel

03:19:20.780 War, which found that there was this asymmetry in the CBC's coverage, most specifically that it

03:19:27.560 elevated radical voices like Independent Jewish Voices, which is a radical anti-Zionist hate

03:19:33.620 group, and giving them this platform, again, it bestows this kind of credibility, which they

03:19:39.160 don't deserve, but I'll allow Dr. Haran Shani-Narkis and Amanda Eskenazi to speak in more detail about

03:19:46.620 their work um so i'll just say briefly first of all thank you and thank you mike can you hear me

03:19:58.060 right hopefully okay um so i'm here as a scientist um and if there are any questions about the

03:20:06.700 research we conducted i'm happy to answer i'll just say that taking into account the asymmetry

03:20:13.100 that's already inherited in the israeli gaza war um we found some very troubling evidence showing

03:20:19.660 for example how the cbc is using headlines in order to promote one side of the story um

03:20:27.740 such that even when you compare that to the actual reporting by the cbc

03:20:35.580 madam chair there's an issue with the audio the interpreters are struggling to interpret

03:20:39.180 okay I'm sorry we don't have good sound for your intervention there is that

03:20:46.540 better right now or if not maybe Amanda can take that is it I'm sorry no okay

03:21:09.180 all right if you are just joining us uh the committee is on a bit of a pause because they've

03:21:16.140 got audio issues too um they are uh gonna wrap pretty soon i think right now they're getting

03:21:24.700 through a a bunch of panelists uh on the health of mainstream media in canada um and a lot of

03:21:33.660 the focus today though is on cbc's funding their mandate um on travis's testimony of editorial bias

03:21:43.020 of um discrimination and tokenism and i just want to remind folks to stay tuned uh after the this

03:21:51.660 committee wraps up travis and i will speak we'll go over some of his testimony um and we'll we'll

03:21:58.220 recap all that for you in case you missed any of it uh but i want to thank you for for tuning in

03:22:03.260 so far and we'll join the broadcast once again real honest news about what's going on in the

03:22:11.900 world and they are beating a very one-sided drum a very one-sided narrative and that's what's being

03:22:18.380 offered to canadians of course canadians are going to be angry they're going to be upset

03:22:24.140 because what they're being told the reality is is upsetting and angering and when you only present

03:22:31.420 one side of what is going on you end up with a very ideologically um you end up with an ideology

03:22:41.180 you don't end up with reality and with um the facts and so i think when you are feeding

03:22:49.260 canadians um the cbc is not is not telling canadians um how to think about an issue

03:22:57.740 they're they're showing Canadians what to think about the issue and that should not be the role 0.61

03:23:03.340 of our public broadcaster and as you know the to just return it to your question Mrs Thomas that

03:23:10.620 if you have consistently one-sided narratives like this of course you are going to have people who

03:23:16.780 feel that they need to do something about it and when we have one-sided narratives that demonize

03:23:22.220 an entire group of people because that's what's happening then of course you are going to have

03:23:26.620 people who are angry about that and feel that they need to do something about that and that

03:23:30.940 unfortunately is what we're seeing on the streets in canada right now and what we saw this weekend

03:23:36.140 in toronto thank you mr miles do you now have the floor for five minutes great thank you very much

03:23:46.220 and thank you to everybody for being here today and getting this study started off in a very lively

03:23:52.140 way um i want to talk i think we're all very interested in making sure that there's a diversity

03:23:57.100 of voices in journalism that's what makes great journalism one thing i'm curious about is the

03:24:02.300 right balance between you know well how we can create an ecosystem where the private broadcasters

03:24:07.500 and and journalists thrive as well as a public broadcaster like what the balance looks like

03:24:13.020 especially in rural communities i find that one thing and i think it speaks to what's been

03:24:17.420 mentioned is that often rural voices are not actually particularly as more and more newspapers

03:24:23.660 in small towns close more and more radio stations in small towns close how do we make sure that

03:24:30.700 things aren't centralized just in the cities of canada but the voices of of rural canadians

03:24:35.580 are also part of all the conversations we're having maybe i'll start with paul to speak about

03:24:41.500 that if you get some thoughts so much i i think one of the programs that's that's important for

03:24:47.980 rural voices is the local journalism initiative um you know many of our members um would be

03:24:54.620 a couple let's say perhaps in their mid-70s they own the local community newspaper their kids have

03:25:01.100 moved to the city or or doing something else and the lji is a way of getting a reporter 0.99

03:25:07.900 into that community invested in that community you know covering cops courts city hall that kind

03:25:14.860 of stuff so i i think the lji in terms of the uh rural coverage is absolutely uh critical one thing

03:25:22.300 i will say about the cbc and this is an issue in particular in rural communities cbc has been

03:25:29.100 poaching journalists from community newspapers and this is a problem there's a terrific uh

03:25:35.260 column uh written by tim schultz of the saint albert gazette and i think you should all read

03:25:40.460 it it's in his own paper and it's also in the national post but take a take a look at that i

03:25:45.260 mean we're losing journalists to the cbc they're getting more money better benefits and listen we

03:25:52.300 don't begrudge the cbc but i'll give you just one example jeff lg who's an entrepreneur who owns

03:25:57.740 village media jeff trained a journalist the journalist was hired by the cbc went to toronto

03:26:03.900 jeff sort of felt okay about that the journalist is in toronto for a while then they move that same

03:26:09.660 journalist back to the sioux competing with him and he trained that journalist and that's a real

03:26:15.180 issue it's an issue you know in franco manitoban communities for example this is this is an issue

03:26:21.020 that you know we're very concerned about is is the poaching of talent and again you know it's

03:26:25.580 a free labor market but to actually go after and pick off people from community newspapers

03:26:31.500 in communities like banff it's just not fair i think that's it's uh you know part of what i'm

03:26:38.380 looking to get at too is some of those those places of like that you know conflict or whatever

03:26:43.820 between the two sectors and how we can actually uh seek to support both in the ideal world and

03:26:49.020 to make sure that those voices are not particularly in the rural communities not uh dismissed um are

03:26:55.740 are there others

03:26:58.700 i mean i i think you know one of the challenges that we've got

03:27:02.220 is uh canada post um and and just in terms of sort of you know distribution so

03:27:07.420 a lot of our members there these are a printed product

03:27:10.860 a community newspaper canada post has made a decision

03:27:15.100 that if you have a canadian tire flyer in your newspaper

03:27:20.540 it falls under something called the consumer's choice program so if

03:27:23.820 a community says for example i don't want junk mail essentially then you're not able to deliver

03:27:29.580 that you know newspaper to the community with a canadian tire flyer and the canadian tire flyer

03:27:35.500 you know that might be for that particular publisher 75 000 a year in revenue that's two

03:27:40.780 reporters so i think there's lots that the federal government can do to ensure that um that you know

03:27:47.900 rural community news outlets uh thrive and you know the cbc is one avenue canada post is another

03:27:55.900 um are you encouraged at all by the idea of cbc moving into rural communities and broadening the

03:28:01.420 base of of some of their stations look our our view is cbc should be complementary not competitive

03:28:07.260 and and if they move into communities they're already well served you know that's an issue

03:28:13.020 they should move to areas that aren't served and when you look at the list that the cbc put forward

03:28:19.340 in the editor's blog uh they've done it twice in the last sort of year or so many of these

03:28:25.580 communities are are already well served by you know community newspapers community radio stations

03:28:32.060 and so i think that's something we have to look at they shouldn't be sort of predatory in the

03:28:36.460 marketplace if you will very very good um i had just one quick question on ad if i have a couple

03:28:41.980 a little bit of time just uh just speaking with the ad thing when you're saying i'm curious to

03:28:46.860 know when you say private enterprises actually kind of bought into local advertising even more

03:28:52.460 than the government what motivates that because we're a great way of reaching canada right

03:28:57.420 six percent of canadians read newspaper content each week uh you know when you advertise in a

03:29:02.620 community newspaper you know it's in a brand safe environment some of these digital ads you do you

03:29:07.820 you have no idea where your ad is going to wind up on you know some porn site or something or other

03:29:11.980 right so it's we're a great way to reach canadians we're cost effective and um you know we would

03:29:19.900 if we're getting ads from you know the banks the airlines the telcos etc how come we're not getting

03:29:25.580 ads from our own government all of the federally regulated industries the grocery stores they all

03:29:30.380 advertise with newspapers and yet we don't really see a dime from the federal government that's

03:29:35.500 that's a problem sector thank you thank you I gave you a bit of leeway there but

03:29:44.180 there's a there's a limit I will give you the floor for two and a half minutes

03:29:51.640 thank you madam chair mr. Fegelman you surprised me earlier when you talked

03:29:58.840 about radical comments that distort media coverage you have an

03:30:04.780 organization honest reporting that looks at the accuracy of reporting with the conflict

03:30:14.220 in israel against hamas and now the conflict with iran and i think that's quite fine to have 0.61

03:30:21.340 groups that look at the quality of journalistic coverage with a conflict situation it's even more

03:30:26.540 delicate i think that's good i think it's important but your methods are unacceptable

03:30:33.180 mr fegelman you have a website where you directly attack journalists who have coverage work that

03:30:42.220 does not please you and that to me i don't understand how you call yourself someone who

03:30:49.420 looks at the quality of coverage when you use methods that look like harassment laura julie

03:30:55.100 pero magdalene butras are targeted on your website rather than calling out the coverage that you find

03:31:02.300 not good enough you attack the work of the journalists and you encourage your supporters

03:31:07.340 to write directly to them and you give them a template to write directly to them thousands

03:31:13.340 of emails have been sent to those journalists and maybe to others do you think that harassment

03:31:20.060 method of journalists is a constructive way to ensure that coverage of these very important and

03:31:28.300 sensitive issues do you think that harassment method of journalists is the right one do you

03:31:32.460 stand by that for your question mr shampoo if i may answer your question with a question to you

03:31:39.500 when your constituents contact you with concerns and complaints would you characterize that as

03:31:44.780 harassment not at all my constituents expect that i do the work and they elected me and they have

03:31:54.300 the right to contact me directly you could contact the media that hires these people

03:31:59.980 you could be in touch with the cbc ombudsman that's how it works you don't directly contact

03:32:06.300 the journalist it becomes personal it becomes an attack on the work and often the integrity

03:32:12.220 of the person because you are going after someone who shouldn't be receiving thousands of nonsense

03:32:19.980 emails as politicians we expect this it's part of the job journalists shouldn't be undergoing this

03:32:26.300 so go after elected officials those who manage cbc radio canada but let journalists do

03:32:35.500 their work and have comments from their bosses don't you think that would be the right way to

03:32:40.700 proceed ourselves as an added layer of editorial oversight um in a world where we're hearing

03:32:47.500 of massive cutbacks in the Canadian journalism landscape where there's less verification,

03:32:55.100 we found that actually most journalists value the work that we do because we're, that may

03:33:00.860 surprise you because we're pointing out the unfairness.

03:33:03.660 In that case, because I have very little time, I'm sorry, are you able, because I have

03:33:12.060 very little time left, are you able to provide the names of journalists who support your

03:33:15.740 work journalists and media not commentators credible ones which journalists support the style

03:33:24.860 of approach you have with journalists regarding the quality of their work we could have this

03:33:28.700 conversation for a long time i think the chair will interrupt me soon but if you want to respond

03:33:33.020 to what i've just said i would be pleased to read your comments you could write to the committee

03:33:37.740 send all of the documents you wish and we can even pick up this conversation you and i afterwards

03:33:44.140 because i think this is a very important issue it's about the credibility of your comments which

03:33:48.140 could be very good in this debate perhaps they can provide that information to the committee

03:33:54.620 if you can come back with those names that mr shampoo has asked for that would be later that

03:34:02.540 we would accept that information because we're out of time quest to go two minutes for each

03:34:08.220 party before we finish this conversation before we get to mr shampoo is that okay everybody okay

03:34:12.860 with that? Okay. Mrs. Thomas you have two minutes. I'll be taking this two minutes. Yeah Mr. Fegelman

03:34:24.860 it was very interesting when you said that you indicated that the CDC executive said that the

03:34:31.260 network shouldn't refer to Hamas as a terrorist group even though the government of Canada has

03:34:38.060 recognized them as a terrorist group since 2002 why should the public be alarmed at this well

03:34:47.420 in the canada gazette it is publicly listed that they are a terrorist group their day job is to

03:34:52.540 strap a suicide vest on themselves and with the intent of maiming and murdering innocence when

03:34:59.980 our media sanitized language it effectively legitimizes the actions or at least it distorts

03:35:06.620 people aren't fully aware that what these people do what their intentions are is to wipe israel

03:35:12.940 and jews off the map so it is it is really misrepresenting the facts on the ground language 0.63

03:35:19.980 matters diction matters now your organization did do a deep dive into the coverage that

03:35:28.300 uh happened um throughout cbc since october the 7th can you just uh reiterate some of that coverage

03:35:37.420 and and you you allege it was uh highly biased well i'd like to recount a couple of examples of

03:35:43.180 cbc bias that we've come across the first on on february 16th cbc radio canada's correspondent

03:35:49.020 elisa serrett who was later suspended uttered an anti-semitic trope on air when claiming that and

03:35:55.420 and I quote the Israelis. In fact, the Jews finance a lot of American politics and control 0.99

03:36:01.120 a big machine. It's a clear-cut anti-Semitic trope. CBC continues to use reporters who've

03:36:09.180 expressed radical anti-Israel views. They have a journalist named Sarah Jabakanji, who in 2021

03:36:15.100 signed an open letter boldly proclaiming that there should be more pro-Palestinian coverage.

03:36:20.540 uh that's just at the CBC um I I would refer you to my colleague Amanda Eskenazi who can talk in

03:36:28.400 specifics about uh some of the results of the study that they did about about the CBC's bias

03:36:35.000 thank you um I'm sorry we just have two minutes for everybody it's a really quick it's like we

03:36:42.140 call it the lightning round kind of like a game show uh Mr. Miles you have two minutes

03:36:46.340 sure you know i i think i'll just go right back to paul because we get a little interrupted i'm

03:36:51.440 sorry to keep on going back at you but i just because i am curious about this advertising piece

03:36:55.980 because it i i hear you i hear what you're saying as an opportunity obviously to to support uh these

03:37:01.880 you know journalists and the work of these papers and broadcasters um but at the same time there has

03:37:08.580 been uh a decline in private advertising in newspapers certainly like that that's a fact

03:37:15.180 as well, right? Absolutely. So just for ballpark numbers, so advertising in Canadian newspapers

03:37:21.720 a dozen years ago would have been about three and a half billion dollars. Today, it's probably

03:37:26.480 900 million or so. Okay. So the private sector has also abandoned that route. I wouldn't say

03:37:34.180 abandoned. I'd say they've changed in terms of their spend, but we're still doing okay in terms

03:37:43.800 of a lot of community newspapers i mean if you pick up a community newspaper you're going to see

03:37:48.360 the ad from the chevy dealer you're going to see you know the ad from the remax agent like we we

03:37:53.160 still do okay it's but disproportionately we don't do well with government uh and in particular with

03:38:00.760 the federal government it's interesting and is it because they believe that this is where the

03:38:04.120 eyeballs are they should go where the eyeballs are is that not so the government has an agency

03:38:07.640 of record right and i think this dates back to the sponsorship era so or the sponsorship scandal

03:38:12.520 from years ago so the government has an agency of record that makes the decision it used to be

03:38:17.160 cosette it's now wpp i think that the those firms have done what is easiest and most profitable for

03:38:24.200 them which is programmatic advertising those ads that just sort of pop up everywhere you know you

03:38:29.800 you've developed much more of an impression if you take out a a full page ad uh in the killiel

03:38:35.720 de saintia sinth um bell example you're going to make much more of an impact than a little

03:38:40.440 programmatic advertising that pops up okay thank you appreciate you i know there's lots of individual

03:38:48.680 mps advertising in our local media but that's a different budget and i won't get into it uh uh

03:38:57.320 you have the floor mr shampoo two minutes thank you madam chair i didn't know i'd have this

03:39:01.480 additional two minutes i'd feel bad if i didn't give mr begelman the opportunity to respond to

03:39:06.600 my comments i thought we would continue our conversation

03:39:11.960 by email or otherwise but mr figelman i'll give you a minute to respond to

03:39:15.320 what i said earlier if you wish if you want to pick up

03:39:19.480 and hear your question when you first asked if you don't mind asking the

03:39:22.680 question forgive me the audio is terrible for me

03:39:26.920 yeah the question i just asked well i'm giving you the opportunity to respond to

03:39:31.240 what i said earlier we ran out of time for you to respond

03:39:36.600 Est-ce que la traduction, est-ce que vous avez la traduction en anglais?

03:39:39.960 Are you having the interpretation into English? Do you hear the interpretation?

03:39:43.720 Testing on the English channel. We want to make sure that our system is working properly.

03:39:50.120 Is it that you can't hear or that there's no translation? Translation.

03:39:55.160 English channel, if I speak, can you hear, can you hear the English? Is the English interpretation

03:40:00.920 coming through is there a problem testing on the english channel one two three testing one two three

03:40:09.400 can you hear me interpretation into english is this working for you can you hear okay

03:40:17.960 ah okay i didn't have my microphone on is it working now is it working better

03:40:23.800 okay go ahead mr shampoo my question wasn't really a question mr fegelman i was giving

03:40:34.680 you the opportunity to respond to what i said earlier we were interrupted we ran out of time

03:40:41.960 so i am proposing that you respond to my comments for a minute

03:40:46.600 rather than having this conversation later i was just giving you the floor to respond

03:40:53.800 I'll give you an example of some of the dialogue we had in recent days. We filed a complaint with

03:41:00.280 the Globe and Mail to their standards editor because they had published a column that had said

03:41:05.560 that Israel takes Palestinians hostage, which it does not do, which is a violation of international

03:41:10.520 law. We filed a complaint, they received it, they appreciated it, and they took corrective measures

03:41:16.440 to issue a correction. That's the kind of what we consider to be constructive dialogue that is

03:41:22.040 important and i would also say um with your comment about alleged harassment if any of our

03:41:28.280 subscribers we have about 80 000 subscribers from coast to coast if anyone engaged with a member

03:41:33.800 of the media in a way that we felt was unprofessional strident knee-jerk reactionary

03:41:40.520 we would be the very first to either try to sensitize them to our concerns uh and if they

03:41:47.640 weren't listening and were uncooperative we would take them off our list we don't think that that

03:41:51.640 is helpful we think it's actually quite counter-productive so if journalists told you

03:42:00.680 they were embarrassed they were bothered there's little time but if journalists told you we don't

03:42:11.080 agree with the way you're operating we'd prefer for comments criticism discussion of that nature

03:42:17.080 be done with the editors or the bosses of newsrooms rather than journalists directly you would be open

03:42:25.400 to that you would be open to that dialogue we're certainly open to any kind of dialogue with any

03:42:30.520 different leverage point in the canadian media landscape our challenge though is what we

03:42:35.640 oftentimes encounter is window dressing of accountability and evasive efforts on in terms

03:42:44.040 of implementation of journalistic standards meaning we could bring a grievance to a journalist

03:42:49.400 editor and they may not reply and are totally evasive and we think that that's quite problematic

03:42:55.800 so i think there is a necessity for an oversight mechanism i i think broadly speaking our goal

03:43:03.480 should be that look a very canadian response with civic engagement because i think that's

03:43:08.040 fundamentally constructive that's where we don't agree mr fegelman i think at a certain point

03:43:14.040 have to accept the processes in place it's not up to journalists or workers who didn't ask to have

03:43:19.720 that relationship to have that harassment directed at them i think there needs to be a line drawn

03:43:25.480 somewhere and i think the way you proceed with your call to contact journalists directly by email

03:43:31.320 i think you're crossing that line that's my opinion i think on that we can end and we can

03:43:37.000 talk about the motion yes exactly if you wish to begin mr shampoo you can introduce

03:43:46.440 no let's go ahead well we can continue five minutes oh if you'd like we're going to discuss

03:43:53.240 the motion that mr shampoo uh rose earlier today you don't have to leave you can stay at the end

03:43:59.400 but we have finished with our questioning of you i hope it was not too onerous we truly appreciate

03:44:05.880 all of your participation and keep in mind that you're welcome to send in any further information

03:44:12.120 or documentation i know mr dan raj you've been asked to supply certain documents to this committee

03:44:17.480 but we can take all of that or if there's something you forgot to say for example don't

03:44:21.800 hesitate to reach out to the committee and we can include all of that in our consideration

03:44:26.040 of our report thank you again mr shampoo thank you madam chair i read the motion earlier so

03:44:33.800 that it would be on the record i just want to give a little bit of context in quebec last week we

03:44:40.120 learned all right we are just coming out of heritage committee that's happening in ottawa

03:44:50.200 today that's where travis was testifying and telling uh folks there about his experience

03:44:55.080 inside of the cbc he has presented evidence um two binders he's calling the receipts um

03:45:01.960 and in the meantime we've been doing this show so i want everyone just to to to stay locked in

03:45:06.280 to stay tuned in because travis will be joining us as soon as he can get out of that room um in

03:45:12.840 the meantime someone's been helping me produce this show uh and i don't want him to be um

03:45:21.480 to be damaged by travis or my reputation because he is a solid journalist he's unlike travis and

03:45:27.080 myself this is wyatt sharp i want to introduce everyone to uh why it's been producing this

03:45:31.480 special with us and why it also has his own show it's called the white sharp show um wyatt i i

03:45:37.640 don't think i have to i don't think it embarrasses you to tell people to tell people that you're

03:45:43.000 young you are uh 17 years old right still in high school um but very politically engaged um you are

03:45:50.280 you consider yourself a journalist you interview newsmakers and um you have your own show and uh

03:45:56.600 You've been following along with this story. So you want to give me some of your initial thoughts

03:46:01.820 out of Travis's testimony? Yeah, I mean, just quickly, I know we have Travis who's getting

03:46:06.260 set up so we can go to him in a moment. I just like, as you point out, I try and remain as kind

03:46:10.560 of nonpartisan as possible. And I think the thing about this story is it is a very nonpartisan

03:46:14.520 story. There have been disruptions that people have raised on both sides of the aisle. We had

03:46:19.260 Sarbjit Karan earlier in the show who was talking about some of those issues as well. And this is

03:46:23.960 not, I mean, I think Travis was talking about this as well, but there is a case to be made for a

03:46:27.200 strong CBC and no one, at least Travis or otherwise, is saying that we need to, you know, completely

03:46:32.260 defund the CBC. And I think from my perspective as a young journalist, there are few people who

03:46:38.020 were willing to kind of step out and support me when I was 11, 12, 13 years old in the same way

03:46:42.640 that Travis was. I mean, when you're 12 years old in an industry that is otherwise occupied by people

03:46:47.480 40, 50 years old and even older, it can feel isolating at times. And I'll just give one

03:46:52.640 particular story i remember being out kind of in ottawa when president joe biden came to canada and

03:46:59.280 travis was there going to like the secure bus and the secure locations to get on everywhere and

03:47:04.240 travis was one of the few people who would actually kind of you know show me around kind of mentor me

03:47:09.300 and stuff so not to make it out as if he's a saint i'm sure he has his flaws but just he's kind of

03:47:13.320 i just yeah i just want to kind of make it out to people as if you know the case is that um he he is

03:47:20.220 someone who is a very nice person, has a great heart.

03:47:22.520 And I think he is not doing this from a position of, you know, partisanship so much as he just wants journalism to be good.

03:47:29.220 He wants journalism to be strong, as it should be, especially coming from the public broadcaster.

03:47:34.300 That's enough from me. We have someone much more exciting.

03:47:38.000 We want to bring in Travis. And Wyatt did not say all that just because you're coming on, Travis.

03:47:43.060 um okay yeah how'd it go i can fact check Wyatt on one thing yeah i well i'm definitely not a saint

03:47:50.980 so he said i'm not a saint but uh oh i already said that's okay yeah well you're well aware of

03:47:55.620 that listen i mean listen uh i i don't know you tell me but i think yeah i was disappointed that

03:48:04.660 the only one party asked about some of these really concerning uh issues right um i i think i

03:48:11.780 tried to highlight as much as I could in the short time that I had, but I do think that

03:48:18.280 this is one hearing. It's a committee hearing, right? I'm one voice. There are all these other

03:48:23.720 voices. This is a much larger conversation that we need to have as a country. This is bigger than

03:48:30.940 just one person. It's about staff members across regions, across time zones, across newsrooms in

03:48:38.860 this country that have similar concerns so if the cdc wants to put out a statement today

03:48:43.180 which i chuck thompson i'll help you write your statement right now uh you know we we we are

03:48:49.520 shocked by these false allegations that mr dan rej once again uh you know put forward today

03:48:56.460 at parliament this is an attack on our leaders and news okay whatever chuck just write it

03:49:01.980 storm put it out it it's not it's not these are these are these are stories that are real these

03:49:09.440 are real people's lives people should not be tokenized people should not have their voices

03:49:14.460 diminished right and so i i hope that this is able to start a conversation in terms of what

03:49:22.440 accountability looks like because the cbc left to their own devices we have seen this time and

03:49:27.080 again, do nothing because they are just funded. And there's really no oversight. Sure. Will the

03:49:33.360 president come here? Will it get heated a bit? Yeah. What happens after that? So what I really

03:49:39.820 want to see out of all of this, and as I said in the committee, Carmen, I'm willing to sit down

03:49:44.180 with them and have a discussion about some of the systemic issues at play here. I have a feeling

03:49:50.080 they're not going to take you up on that. I don't think Stevie's is going to take me up on that

03:49:53.120 either which is a shame though right because like you know this can be a midlife crisis for the cbc

03:49:59.500 or it could be an end of life crisis i mean executives can decide and as i said i i don't

03:50:05.800 need to destroy the cbc they're doing a great job of that uh at 250 front street and across the

03:50:11.640 street here on queen street in ottawa for themselves do you have a few if you have a few

03:50:16.720 minutes let's just go through some of this but tell me if you have to run and we'll wrap it up

03:50:20.500 I do. I'm being loud in the hallway, so I probably am going to have to go outside and reconnect with you.

03:50:25.800 But sure, yeah, I can ask someone a question.

03:50:28.060 Well, I just I actually want to get into it a bit.

03:50:30.620 But if you want to relocate and then we'll talk about it, that's fine.

03:50:34.140 But I wanted to talk about your actual testimony, the binders, some of the stuff that you brought forward as evidence and some of the new things that you talked about.

03:50:42.720 So do you want us to hold for that while you while you move yourself or you want to get into it now?

03:50:47.640 yeah let me let me go outside i want to have a dart which my mother is probably gonna 1.00

03:50:53.640 right now we need you on this live coverage no smoking and then i will and then i'll uh

03:50:58.920 and then i'll join you back uh well hurry up okay let me have five minutes okay okay everyone see

03:51:04.280 i'm so sorry he needs to go have a smoke and go outside but in the meantime uh maybe young

03:51:10.360 wyatt wants to join me once again uh white sharp is the host of the white sharp 0.56

03:51:14.920 a show um and a young person and someone who's been helping us behind the scenes produce

03:51:20.200 this special that you see um today and you know why we've had a lot of conversations leading up to

03:51:26.040 um to the testimony today with people who have talked about the future of journalism where does

03:51:33.080 this go um where are audiences like even you you are not i mean you do do network you do do

03:51:39.880 mainstream media but your show is broadcast on an independent channel you do a lot of podcasts you

03:51:45.400 do a lot of other things so um you know the bigger picture here really is where do audiences go and

03:51:52.360 are we seeing the slower decline the slow decline of traditional media yeah i mean i think so and

03:51:58.120 i don't want this to come from you know people assuming that i'm partisan and i'll even just say

03:52:01.960 in the committee and in the testimony from some of the other speakers one thing i really

03:52:05.400 appreciated with some of the people talking about the importance of local news. Because I do think

03:52:10.020 that while there is a strong case to be made for independent media and for what you and Travis are

03:52:14.540 doing, what I'm doing in a number of respects as well, it is still true, and you and Travis will

03:52:18.600 say this yourselves, that you're no longer journalists. You're contributing to kind of

03:52:21.760 the opinion ecosphere and the commentary ecosphere, which also fills kind of an important gap. But I

03:52:26.680 think there is still a need for that kind of journalism piece. And so I think what the kind

03:52:31.360 Committee and some of the testimony was talking about was prioritizing real factual and unbiased

03:52:36.140 journalism, which a number of local newsrooms do. So I think it's unfortunate in the US even

03:52:40.460 where we see layoffs happening at the Washington Post and elsewhere. And I think the question

03:52:45.620 starts to become, you can't make a meaningful case for upholding local news when there are,

03:52:51.040 you know, questions and skepticism surrounding how kind of factual the news and the reporting

03:52:56.260 coming from some of these so-called unbiased entities is actually being. And again, going back

03:53:00.360 to what I said before. I think there's a strong case to be made for, you know, a CBC. And I think

03:53:04.880 a lot of it is changing the medium as to how it is produced. I can talk to, you know, the perspective

03:53:10.000 of people who are my age and in my generation, because I think a lot of them, they're certainly

03:53:13.980 not sitting down watching the national or watching the six o'clock news on any station. And that's

03:53:17.840 not even just about CBC. That's just about an accessibility thing about the fact that young

03:53:21.820 people don't really want to kind of put the time in to do that. They want to get their news

03:53:25.840 in quicker ways. So I think in terms of the medium and, you know, how people consume their

03:53:30.200 news changing, a lot of that does come down to the fact that people are tuning into these platforms

03:53:34.800 like yours, like Travis's, and other kind of podcasting platforms out there, because it allows

03:53:39.380 them to get the news, but it also allows them to hear kind of a contrast of opinions. And like

03:53:44.800 Travis said, I think it's unfortunate that there are certain kind of facets within the media

03:53:49.500 landscape who are making it where we can't have multiple perspectives included. And I think having

03:53:54.440 multiple perspectives included can reduce the level of polarization that we're seeing in Canada

03:53:59.340 and the United States. Polarization that has gotten so intense at times that it feels as if

03:54:03.920 you can't even have a conversation with other people without it becoming just a shouting match

03:54:08.740 or, you know, a super intense kind of back and forth. I think also something like that I'm seeing

03:54:14.100 in the comments that I'm seeing as a reflection of what Travis is saying is a general distrust

03:54:21.360 in institution of journalism of media of mainstream media and the idea that um you know

03:54:30.680 there's a bias there that no one speaks about and so i think you know there is a role for journalism

03:54:37.660 there is a role for objectively reporting things but then you know we hear from people like brian

03:54:43.980 Lily or Travis where there there is sometimes a bias that isn't necessarily acknowledged and that

03:54:52.460 leads people to distrust the media to distrust those institutions and not believe them and

03:54:58.140 turning to other sources um and you know that's not always a good thing I think it's a I think

03:55:04.540 it's a good thing that we have like a diversity of of places where people can go but more often than

03:55:09.500 not when people go to those places they're hearing what they want to hear right they're hearing

03:55:13.820 the same things that you know uh the same it's group thing right it's like it's like you're

03:55:20.220 you're speaking in the echo chamber um but at the same time i think there are people out there

03:55:27.100 doing good work like you um who don't you know have that bias but i think what travis has presented

03:55:33.660 today about the cbc raises a lot of questions given that they take so much government money

03:55:40.060 right they are they are they are funded by taxpayer dollars almost 1.5 billion dollars

03:55:45.260 and therefore there needs to be a lot of accountability there and um the the issues

03:55:50.300 that travis has raised the issues we've heard from other people who work inside the cbc

03:55:54.700 those are legitimate ones that should be addressed and um so far we haven't seen

03:55:59.820 sort of a reckoning with that yeah and i mean to your point i mean the amount of money that cbc

03:56:05.260 receives i think a lot of people their criticisms about it is that it's wasteful no one's

03:56:09.740 not many people anyways, are disputing the fact that some government money towards a public

03:56:14.260 broadcaster can be a good thing. You see it in the United States with NPR, with PBS. And

03:56:18.600 these are outlets that have done a relatively good job in the US, at least at kind of maintaining

03:56:22.920 that level of neutrality. People from both sides of the aisle are willing to go on some of these

03:56:27.400 platforms. But when we look at it, and kind of what's happening in Canada, and what Travis

03:56:30.940 testified about today, it speaks to, I think, a broader problem. And that is when you're investing

03:56:35.600 so much money in a platform, that's one thing. But when you're investing that much money,

03:56:39.620 and as a result, it's become so polarized and so partisan that now half of the country feels as if

03:56:44.820 they can't tune into that platform and as if the platform doesn't represent their political

03:56:49.000 viewpoints, that's a problem. And I think, you know, we should be encouraging more dialogue,

03:56:52.800 we should be encouraging more conversation from people on all sides of the spectrum who have

03:56:57.500 differences of opinion, and bringing them together. And, you know, Brian Lilly was talking

03:57:01.140 about this when you were interviewing him earlier about how when he was on Travis's panel, the

03:57:05.420 intersection on Canada Tonight. He was brought on with Rachel Gilmore. He was brought on with

03:57:09.520 Sheila Copps. He was brought on with people who are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum,

03:57:13.340 and he felt as if being in kind of a more controlled environment with some of these

03:57:17.480 people who have political disagreements allowed for that conversation to kind of flow naturally.

03:57:21.840 He said he was on with Gertan Singh, a former NDP, MPP, and the Ontario legislature on Canada

03:57:26.920 Tonight with Travis, and he said that show and that appearance with Travis was kind of a medium

03:57:31.260 that then allowed him to maintain a friendship with Gertan Singh.

03:57:34.580 And so I think having the conversations with people from across the aisle,

03:57:38.220 it fosters a sense of dialogue that can reduce partisanship and reduce polarization.

03:57:42.480 And it's also just very much needed right now.

03:57:44.920 And I think people want to see respectful conversations.

03:57:47.980 You know, they want to see more solutions-focused thinking.

03:57:50.300 They want to see more practical thinking.

03:57:51.800 And they don't want to see those shouting matches and kind of the slogan-based politics

03:57:55.900 that so much of the political and media ecospheres have kind of, you know, come down to now.

03:58:01.260 Yeah. And, you know, I have heard, obviously, I know Travis's story. Well, I know some of the things that he went through. And I wonder, like some of the stuff that he presented today in committee, I don't think you've heard before. So I wanted to, you know, get your reaction as someone who's hearing that for the first time, like what you thought about some of the things that he brought forward.

03:58:24.580 Yeah. And I mean, in total transparency, like many of the people that he was talking about,

03:58:28.380 I don't know. They could be nice people. They might not be nice. I have no idea. I just am

03:58:32.440 hearing about it from Travis. And I don't have a lot of the people he was speaking about were

03:58:36.040 management. They were people behind the scenes. So, you know, kind of trusting what he's saying

03:58:39.760 on that in the sense that he knew them, I didn't. But I mean, I do think there are people who work

03:58:43.960 at the CBC who do great work. And I think there's people who work at the CBC who do very much care

03:58:48.420 about their jobs. And I don't want to take away from some of the good reporters who are working

03:58:52.220 there. But again, I think when you have a host who came from another network, this was not,

03:58:57.140 you know, a lot of people are trying to say that Travis was kind of inserted into this just to

03:59:01.760 make a political argument. He had a 20 plus career. He was at Bell Media. You guys worked

03:59:05.860 together at CP24. He was at Global. He was at all of these different platforms. And then he got this

03:59:10.380 opportunity to come to CBC. And I think when he went to CBC, it was his own show. He was expecting

03:59:15.800 that he could have some of these multiple perspectives included on his show. And then

03:59:19.820 when he was told that he couldn't do that, I think was the part that me as like a young journalist

03:59:24.040 who very much cares about, again, bringing all perspectives together was taken aback by a little

03:59:28.140 bit because I thought if it's the public broadcaster, if it's the, you know, seven or

03:59:32.320 eight o'clock primetime show every night, why wouldn't you want to have multiple perspectives

03:59:36.400 included? And that's something that I think regardless of partisanship, you know, you should

03:59:39.840 be able to at least identify multiple perspectives is a good thing. But we have Travis again. So

03:59:44.420 yeah okay white appreciate you thank you um travis you're back with us i i don't even want

03:59:51.380 to you shouldn't have told your mom you're gonna have a cigarette she's you're gonna get yelled at

03:59:55.540 um but oh i don't think we have audio on you you gotta unmute yourself there you go yeah

04:00:03.780 there we go yeah okay yeah sorry sorry i i i sorry i was be right i was being uh told that

04:00:09.460 i needed to come on right away so i came back to you as quickly as i could okay listen we're

04:00:13.540 gonna try to like let's let's let's do all this let's wrap it up let's give people like what they

04:00:17.940 want here um i want to address some of the comments we've been getting about you in cahoots with the

04:00:23.460 conservatives that you are you know you're doing their bidding so let's just get that out of the

04:00:28.740 way go and i'll tell you because i just i just ran into michelle ferrari in the uh the hallway 0.96

04:00:35.220 there and i ran to a couple of mps i thought i needed anand as i was coming out and michelle

04:00:39.540 for I pulled out her phone and we did a little uh a thing as I was walking out that'll be turned

04:00:45.140 into something partisan as well right so I mean listen I can't I can't dissuade some people

04:00:52.020 whatever I say some people will think that I am only doing this for partisan reasons

04:00:58.980 on the left and on the right I mean that is that is the conversation out there but I mean like

04:01:05.300 we have to look at the facts of the matter right that's what we have to do that's how we have to

04:01:09.060 judge things what happened inside what you know the what was said that case is before the canadian

04:01:17.700 human rights commission am i the only person saying this no there's a lot of people saying

04:01:23.460 this now there are more people coming out perhaps there will be more in the weeks to come and is

04:01:29.460 that what was in the binders travis like part of what was the evidence that you you submitted to

04:01:33.940 the committee today was some of that testimony um not testimony sorry some of the accounts

04:01:39.540 firsthand accounts from people who work at the cbc or had worked at the cbc and you know there's

04:01:45.060 their experiences that were not dissimilar to yours that was part of the evidence that you submitted

04:01:49.940 well i know so i have i have the letters that the folks have sent me we're submitting those to the

04:01:56.180 canadian human rights commission cbc knows who those people are the union knows who those people

04:02:01.700 are because there have been complaints right um but i i called actually the the committee to make

04:02:08.340 sure that i can get assurances in terms of confidentiality because i understand the real

04:02:13.300 concern that a lot of these folks have for professional repercussions and retaliation

04:02:17.940 for you know reputations being harmed i mean what what do you think is happening to me right now in

04:02:22.900 terms of this right so uh so there weren't those protections there so that's why it wasn't handed

04:02:29.220 over to them okay but but it will be handed over to the commission and i think you know

04:02:33.940 what is important here is that there are these ndas that are being used so if these okay ndas

04:02:42.740 are non-disclosure agreements and in your particular have been coming forward to me

04:02:49.140 and it's a growing list and these folks are not under these gag orders how many people are under

04:02:56.980 these non-disclosure agreements that can't speak out how much money has the cbc spent taxpayer

04:03:03.220 money on fighting cases like mine on grievances on systemic issues on hr consultants to come in

04:03:13.220 like we got to look at the fundamental problem here right we can put window dressing up all we

04:03:19.780 want we can paint the walls but if the foundation is crumbling we got an issue yeah okay so the

04:03:28.340 nda that they tried to make you sign was after what happened and what did it want you what did

04:03:35.540 it what did it say well i mean i i i said basically what it said in the in the committee room right

04:03:44.180 um that i was basically expected to to not speak at all that's problematic on on these issues

04:03:53.540 there's not a uh an issue related to somebody's human rights why is that a necessary clause to

04:03:59.940 put into an agreement right so i mean just on its face some of these things were very concerning and

04:04:06.980 And I mean, I don't know in what world I would sign a document like that.

04:04:12.940 Clearly, they felt emboldened to put that in front of me.

04:04:19.120 No, no, but people do because it's like you were up against a major corporation

04:04:26.400 with a ton of money, a ton of lawyers, and sometimes that feels a little helpless.

04:04:31.680 So people signed it because they have no choice.

04:04:33.500 They feel helpless about it.

04:04:34.700 and I get it like but yeah um anyway I do want to um I want to throw to this yeah

04:04:40.820 yeah I was just gonna say that this this this has been and I think that's important point that you

04:04:47.240 made Carmen it's it's been an isolating experience I mean now I'm able to to speak more and I you

04:04:53.860 know there I am thankful to all of the folks that have been uh supportive um and even the folks that

04:05:00.420 aren't that are just listening right uh but but when this was all going on at the cbc it was very

04:05:07.780 isolating i didn't have a lot of folks to talk to i mean i talked to you about things going on

04:05:13.680 throughout i remember you know my mother came to the set one day um she's from calgary you know my

04:05:19.480 folks are living calgary from turnidad but they live in calgary they've lived there since the 70s

04:05:23.920 and she came to toronto she doesn't come that often and i took her to the set and she thought

04:05:29.160 to herself wow you know she said to me all these folks here this is your show and all this stuff

04:05:35.720 had been happening i never really told them i said yeah yeah it's my show bold voice in journalism

04:05:41.960 that's that's what the job description said that's what the tagline of the show is bold

04:05:47.800 voice in journalism i was ashamed to tell my mother that essentially you know my voice was

04:05:54.360 diminished it was not equal to others so anyway yeah you know to that point you um talked about

04:06:02.600 how good people like yourself were forced out of the cdc and you talked about that in your

04:06:07.240 testimony and we want to play back some of that uh some of that so the canadian public is paying

04:06:15.720 for this to the tune of about 1.4 billion dollars and then of course the government also increased

04:06:20.520 set by an additional 150 million dollars at the end of the day then the public is the shareholder

04:06:26.440 and also the ones that are supposed to be benefiting from this news coverage in your

04:06:29.560 estimation what changes are needed to actually restore that trust i think that there needs to be

04:06:34.760 an overhaul when it comes to management i've you know you have my specific recommendations but i

04:06:39.320 will also say this i am not here as somebody who does not believe in public broadcasting

04:06:45.080 i was on jonavision i started as an audience coordinator when i was 19 years old at the cbc

04:06:50.360 I worked on the Air Force.

04:06:51.520 I worked on the Red Green show.

04:06:52.920 I then left.

04:06:54.120 I came back.

04:06:55.140 I worked at CBC Edmonton.

04:06:56.560 I worked at CBC Toronto.

04:06:58.440 Left.

04:06:58.940 Came back again.

04:06:59.960 I took a pay cut to come back to the CBC.

04:07:03.060 I used to walk around the CBC Broadcast Centre when I was 19 years old and sneak into the

04:07:07.800 newsroom, and I thought, I want to be at this place at some point.

04:07:11.660 This is the heart of this building, the news organization.

04:07:15.280 and and it has gotten so far away from what it was the cbc should not be a polarizing force

04:07:24.740 it needs to bring canadians together and it has the infrastructure to be able to do that

04:07:30.500 but until there's a recognition of the problem from management nothing will happen and they

04:07:37.400 fail to recognize this i i am willing i would be willing to sit down tomorrow with the new president

04:07:43.300 to talk about some of this stuff right but good people are leaving they're being forced out

04:07:49.460 and and their concerns are being dismissed because it's about protecting reputation well

04:07:55.120 here's you know some news i don't have to be wanting to destroy the cbc because

04:08:01.680 management and executives are doing a great job of that on their own

04:08:05.080 okay so uh that was you just a short time ago um

04:08:11.000 i yeah they're still gonna get they're still gonna get fun though right

04:08:15.780 i mean that's that's the thing about the whole thing like whoa i mean it's frustrating and i

04:08:22.020 understand why it's frustrating for so many canadians because it's like if these issues

04:08:26.700 are brought up and there's no accountability we're just discussing things it's like we're

04:08:30.760 on this endless merry-go-round and the gaslighting of Canadians saying nothing to see here you know

04:08:40.280 maybe there's a little tweak here or there that we need to do it I mean I get why people get

04:08:47.560 frustrated and I feel like you know I messaged you afterwards and I was like was I too hot

04:08:52.520 was I too passionate I'm passionate about this because like I believe that if we want this place

04:08:59.080 to survive and listen i know that there's a lot of folks that say goodbye but we're a big country

04:09:03.960 as i said right if we want if if there is a hope in hell of this place surviving

04:09:11.160 they got to start fixing some things they really really do and that starts with their staff and

04:09:17.160 the treatment of their staff where this committee hearing was about fairness in media there's not

04:09:23.080 fairness in terms of staff let's start with that that's the starting point okay i um

04:09:33.240 how much more do you got for me because i gotta run soon okay well what let's you tell me what

04:09:37.800 what else where are you going well i got i gotta fly back we're flying back i'm fine we have a we

04:09:44.520 have a thing tomorrow morning right okay great um yeah how i would just say like this is my

04:09:51.560 reflection on because i've heard you talk about this the last you tell me why don't you tell me

04:09:55.880 how you think about i just think like you've been sitting on this stuff for a long time

04:10:01.640 and sometimes stuff too there's a ton more stuff right there's a ton that um you know has to

04:10:09.720 yeah that has to um that has to wait sometimes for your legal your legal actions or you're

04:10:15.400 we didn't even get to this binder look look at the binder so i wonder if it's like

04:10:23.880 almost a huge relief to be able to say some of it now and um you know get out there because i

04:10:31.240 think you've mainly except outside of doing our podcast you haven't really given interviews you

04:10:35.480 haven't really talked about this with anyone um and today you got to talk about it a bit more

04:10:41.160 openly than you have before and uh how did how did that feel it felt okay but you know uh and

04:10:49.080 i'm gonna be doing more interviews i'm gonna start doing interviews now i thought you know to myself

04:10:53.640 i'll just say this and then move on um you know when we did the podcast but i think i have a

04:10:58.680 responsibility to keep sounding the alarm but it's it's like is anyone i know that there are people

04:11:06.040 listening but is anybody listening that will take some action here in terms of that at the at the

04:11:13.000 cbc which is one street over from where i'm standing right now i know that they're all

04:11:17.560 watching this but is there anybody in that building in terms of the management that wants

04:11:23.080 to take accountability and say okay maybe this kid's got a point right well i mean since you've

04:11:30.200 spoken out it's not just you right we've gotten just me so many people that have written in

04:11:35.160 written to you written to the show yeah and i've read some of those first-hand accounts um today

04:11:41.240 for the first time yep go ahead can i just say on that like like the portion where i was talking

04:11:48.040 about these other individuals i was able to read like a like a sentence or two because of time

04:11:55.320 these are detailed accounts right we got receipts i wonder how you how you and maybe like

04:12:03.960 when people like you talk about stuff like this how do you respond to criticism that

04:12:08.360 it's disgruntled employee it's um some of these people are current current employees

04:12:14.680 right it's just it's it's like this is this this is workplace stuff it's not

04:12:19.560 listen you you heard you heard the story of karen johnson is that is that you know yeah

04:12:25.560 wouldn't you be a bit disgruntled as well if you know those allegations are true right so anyway

04:12:33.080 um yeah i mean that that's thrown around so easily oh this person's bitter

04:12:37.640 i mean were the concerns legitimate right were they were they addressed what were the steps taken

04:12:46.520 like all of these are relevant questions before you just toss somebody's story aside and say

04:12:52.040 they're angry they're better they're this they're that no yeah no anyway i gotta i gotta run okay

04:12:59.160 travis thank you so much by the way folks if uh you know you're watching this carmen has been

04:13:04.840 doing this for several hours yeah because you made me well i mean listen it's like back to your

04:13:12.360 no listen it's my pleasure it's my pleasure and uh you know we started can't be censored because

04:13:17.080 we needed a platform to are you smoking again no no no there's a minister coming out of the

04:13:22.840 right here all right listen i'm gonna let you go uh and in the meantime i want to thank everyone

04:13:27.640 who has tuned in uh to this live broadcast of travis testifying um in ottawa i want to thank

04:13:34.280 wyatt who's been behind the scenes helping us to produce the show um and this is you know

04:13:39.640 it's not it's not the end it's to be continued so we'll see you soon

Western Standard - March 10, 2026

Travis Dhanraj breaks silence

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