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15 August 2006
Commentary
One year after the CBC lockout:
lessons learned and
lessons ignored
Canadian
Media Guild | TNG Canada
Local 30213
By LISE LAREAU
Today marks the one-year anniversary
of the lockout that forced more than 5,500 CBC employees
onto the street. It’s hard to know whether to
celebrate, mourn, mark or ignore it.
We could concentrate on the triumph:
the way Canadian citizens and CBC employees worked
together to end the dispute. We learned a lot of lessons
about moving people to take action, and creating a
climate of camaraderie where creativity and ingenuity
help win the day. Together, we showed that the fight
for real careers, as opposed to a series of temporary
jobs, is one that's universal, important – and
winnable. It is important to remember that some collective
good came from it all. But, a year later, other events
have overwhelmed us, and it’s hard to know how
to take stock.
Look at the way things are shaping up. First, the
minority Conservative government is getting away with
being silent about what it wants to do with the CBC.
Heritage Minister Bev Oda called off her review of
the CBC mandate in June, after championing it both
during the lockout and the federal election campaign.
Why? Probably so that her government can keep this
issue under wraps until after the next election and
a possible majority government.
At the same time, the major
private broadcaster, CTV, with its purchase of CHUM,
is on the verge of becoming a media behemoth capable
of squashing everything else on TV and, to a lesser
degree, radio. Through this acquisition, which has
yet to be approved, CTV now has immense buying power.
Witness the network’s
reported plan to bid $1.4 billion for the rights to
the NHL for 10 years. CTV is now the multi-platform
juggernaut that the CRTC and federal policy makers
used to worry the CBC would become as they denied application
after application by the CBC for more cable channels
and “platforms.”
What’s worse is that on top of a lack of direction
from the government and major shifts in the media environment,
the CBC is also weakened by its very structure. While
this stuff isn’t sexy and no one really enjoys
talking about it, my view is that the lockout was a
mess that could have been avoided had this Crown Corporation’s
financial and Board structures been fixed.
As we know now, the CBC continued
to get its full government operating grant during
the lockout, enabling it to save about $40 million
in salaries. There was no immediate financial incentive
to end the dispute, even as Canadians were denied
service and the seeds of a disastrous ratings season
were sown. When the Guild called for an interruption
to federal funding at the time, Treasury Board and
other bureaucrats apparently had no way of responding.
It’ll take legislation
to change that.
And what about the way the
Corp is overseen by Canadians? At the moment, the
CBC Board happens to include a small group of knowledgeable
people and a larger group that was appointed even
though they don’t have any
background in this industry. Carole Taylor quit as
chair of the CBC Board just months before the lockout,
partly out of frustration with the way the government
chose to fill eight vacant seats at the time. She and
a board committee had established criteria, hired a
head-hunter and set about looking for the best candidates.
She then sent the list to the Prime Minister’s
Office, and no one from the list was chosen for a seat
on the Board.
Worse, the CBC Board cannot
hire – or fire – the
CBC President and CEO, who is accountable to the Prime
Minister’s Office, not the Board. But that accountability
is actually quite narrow. The top boss serves on “good
behaviour” according to the Broadcasting Act,
which means he or she can be terminated only for cause,
and not because of, say, a gross error in judgment.
While this may be good for the arm’s length relationship
between the CBC and the government, it means that,
in most circumstances, the CBC boss is not directly
accountable to any public institution.
Even a former CBC president
has added his voice to the chorus calling for governance
reform. Tony Manera, who served in the mid-1990s,
says the President and CEO must be hired and evaluated
by the Board to properly distance the public broadcaster
from the government of the day. He also supports
the idea of two employee representatives on the Board.
It’s an idea that
the Guild has proposed several times, most recently
to the Heritage Committee’s major study of broadcasting
three years ago.
Why are governance reform and accountability so important?
Because bad decisions, such as the lockout, will be
made again unless there are consequences for the people
making them.
A year later, there is some improvement. There is
a significant effort now under way to repair the relationship
between management and the Guild. Senior people on
both sides have taken time to evaluate the damage and
consider specific ways to fix things.
But the truth is that the long-term
health of the CBC depends, more than ever, on Canadians’ commitment
to public broadcasting. That means an end to government
neglect of the CBC. It means real steps to fix the
broadcaster’s structural problems. Because the
CBC cannot afford any more bad decisions in this climate
of uncertainty.
In the end, it probably makes
the most sense to mark this anniversary with hope:
the experiences and experiments that frontline CBC
employees and their bereft audiences made together
last year should stand as a model for reinvigorating
public broadcasting. That’s something
no private-sector behemoth can replace.
(This article first appeared on the Canadian
Media Guild website.)
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