MONTREAL – Coming just three days after a protest just outside the building, the Annual Public Meeting of CBC/Radio-Canada held Wednesday at its Montreal HQ was expected to be difficult.
Though there were hecklers and tough questions for president and CEO Hubert Lacroix — one member of the crowd even handed him a pre-written resignation letter and asked him to sign it — the event did not degenerate into complete chaos.
In his speech, Lacroix took pains to explain that he wasn’t a secret agent of the Conservative Party put in place to dismantle the public broadcaster, which has been a conspiracy theory put forward by his critics with a straight face.
Yes, almost 400 employees got pink slips this week, part of a wave of cuts announced in June. But “no matter what people might think, I find these announcements difficult,” Lacroix said.
“As you know, I have two young daughters, 6 and 3. I took this job because I want to make sure the public broadcaster is part of their lives, and they can grow up informed, enlightened and entertained by quality programming that only a public broadcaster like ours is able to offer,” he said, in what seemed to be attempt to humanize himself, but which promoted some eye rolls from a few in the crowd.
“The decisions that we have made haven’t always been easy. They haven’t always been obvious. They surely haven't been all popular.” – Hubert Lacroix, CBC
“The decisions that we have made haven’t always been easy. They haven’t always been obvious. They surely haven't been all popular, but, they have always been made in the long-term interest of CBC/Radio-Canada.”
Whether that’s true or not, Lacroix’s prepared speech – a dispassionate presentation, some at the meeting thought – about changing technology, failed to persuade the audience. The assembled panel of CBC personalities did not get very riled up, either.
The exception was Charles Tisseyre (pictured above), host of Radio-Canada’s weekly Découverte science show. In a speech that was quickly posted and shared on YouTube, Tisseyre decried the fact that in his 40 years as a Radio-Canada employee, he has seen nothing but wave after wave of cuts to the CBC, from both Liberal and Conservative governments.
His show started this season three weeks late, he said in French, and even in each of its new episodes, one of the four stories is a repeat.
“Those who would be the engine behind this transformation, the youth, we’re throwing them out the door!” – Charles Tisseyre, CBC
Tisseyre said he’s in favour of a digital transformation, pointing to his own show’s online reports. “We’re making this transformation, but we’re doing it with fewer resources,” he said. “And what’s more, those who would be the engine behind this transformation, the youth, we’re throwing them out the door!”
Though the wild applause from the crowd might have made it seem that they were on the same side, Tisseyre didn’t blame CBC management. He told Cartt.ca after the event that it would be pointless for Lacroix or the board of directors to resign.
“It’s not a question of CBC management,” he said. “If the people who were there resigned, they would be replaced by others, who would be faced with the same cuts. I think the problem is much deeper. The problem is the power — it’s not just the Conservatives, before that the Liberals cut hundreds of millions from Radio-Canada — it’s that the federal government has cut the CBC budget progressively since I’ve been here. It’s been 40 years, I’ve seen nothing but cycles of cutbacks. What I’m saying now is that this has to stop. We’ve cut to the bone and now we’re cutting into the bone.”
Lacroix’s lack of overt anger about this situation prompted one member of the audience to ask why the CEO hasn’t gone on a tirade to get the federal government to act. Lacroix said that wouldn’t change their minds (the decades have proven that no amount of drumbeating by any CBC president has changed the mind of any federal 
government set to cut budgets), and he has been trying to get additional funding through more creative means, such as requesting a new fund from the CRTC, which he did during the Let's Talk TV hearing.
But here Tisseyre disagreed with his bosses about their response to a “no” for a larger parliamentary appropriation.
“What I’m saying is that I don’t accept that ‘no’,” he said. “We need to go and get a yes. We have to convince the people in place to refinance Radio-Canada. Whether it’s this government or another, we have to do it, we the artists, we the public, we the citizens.”
Photos by Steve Faguy
