Interview with the President
CBC President Hubert Lacroix sat down with Allison Saunders this morning to discuss the impact of the layoffs. Below is a transcript of the interview.
Saunders: It’s been a tough couple of weeks, can you give me a sense of where we’re at?
Lacroix: It’s been really tough at CBC/Radio Canada. We all realize that, me the first.
First off, let’s talk about the redundancy notices. They have been given out… the famous pink slips. I was listening George Stroumboulopoulos who was interviewing our minister on his show a couple weeks ago, and I think he was interviewing him on the day where notices went out. Interesting coincidence.
So 250 notices went out. About 170 in English and 60 in the French network and about 20 across the other corporate components. That’s going to start the bumping process under the collective agreements. We figure it’ll take the whole summer to go through the bumping process and by the end of September we’ll have seen all the departures.
Saunders: In March there was talk about doing everything we could to reduce the number of involuntary departures. What have we managed to accomplish on that front?
Lacroix: Well, we were happy, in some ways, if you could say we were happy about introducing voluntary retirement incentive programs, but we did that. And through the leadership of Katya Laviolette and her team and people in culture there was about 300 people or so that we were able to see the requests met.
Add to that our year-end numbers, March 31 2009, which were a bit better than expected by a couple million bucks. That allowed us to reduce some of the cuts that we had planned, particularly in the regions, so we saved a few jobs there.
We continue to work with the unions, and with the work that we’re doing in reducing our expenses, because I really believe that every job counts, and as I’ve told the world since I walked in here, my first “p” of my three priorities is people, and we are trying to look at every single job and keep it inside our company instead of trying to eliminate it.
Saunders: Obviously it’s been an emotional time for all of our employees. Can you give me sense of how you are feeling about all of this?
Lacroix: I’ve been tough, I know that. You were saying a few seconds ago that this weekend you had to say goodbye to five or six people that you had been working with for 10 years at CBC-Radio canada. A lot of that. A lot of that is happening on each one floors that I walk around on.
So yes, it is difficult. It’s difficult for the people that leave, because I think it’s a great place to work at CBC/Radio Canada. We are a great institution.
It’s difficult for the people that stay on, because they see their friends leave and they also are concerned about the kind of work and stuff they have to do to compensate for these departures.
But that’s where we are right now. The people that stay here, we have all sorts of support that we’ll put in place for them. Whether it’s career counselling or programs of that kind.
I’m looking forward to stop being a number number-cruncher and spreadsheet person because I’ve been doing this non-stop for six months now. So I’m looking to September or maybe end of summer to start visiting the centres again.
I look forward to sitting down with our people, and listening to how they’re dealing with this and wether they have some things to say to me. But in the meantime, as I’ve been finishing my notes with, we have to hang tough. We will survive this and you’ll see CBC Radio Canada will be very strong when we finish this exercise.
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Not a word about how this is going to impact the people of Canada. CBC Radio has been a vital link that held this huge country together, reinforced our identity, our sense of community, even though we were thousands of miles apart, and even though we have two languages. CBC Radio has been a beacon of friendliness especially to Canadians in remote areas. Who does the gutting of CBC benefit? It benefits those at the very top of the pyramid, who want closer identification with the USA, which means increased militarization, and “free trade”, which means more power to the huge corporations, and de-regulation of laws concerning pollution, workplace safety, and liveable wages. We’re becoming more tolerant, as a country, to the concept of torture, which the USA engages in, as seen in the photos from Guantanamo prison. This month there is an account in the Vancouver Sun Newspaper about prisoners in Matsqui prison being punished by having to spend 23 hours a day in cells which in some cases have a temperature of 40′ C. Prisoners are having to wait hours to get to a toilet, and have taken to throwing their excrement out of the window. I am not happy with the direction that Stephen Harper is taking this country. I think he is evil. With untold thousands of Canadians now homeless, what does he turn his mind to? Taking away the faint hope clause to prisoners. His instinct seems always to turn to cruelty and harshness, and this does not reflect the nature of Canadians, who are known the world over, and admired for their mildness and kindness.
What are we supposed to make of the previous post? I mean what relevence does the second half of that post have to do with the CBC/SRC?
Gutting the CBC, reducing it, watering it down, laying off long time employees – this is not the mandate of the Canadian people, so why is the Federal Government doing it? That is what I am getting at. Why do they have so many American celebrities on the Hour, when Canadian talent goes unrecognized? These are questions that I, as a Canadian, want to know the answer to.
I am concerned about the gutting of the CBC, and the increasing merger of Canada with the USA, particularly militarily. I urge Canadians, in the interest of free speech, to log onto Paul Manly’s website and learn about his film You, Me, and the SPP, Exchanging Democracy for Corporate Rule. Paul Manly is based in Nanaimo, and is the son of former United Church Minister and MLA Jim Manly.
Then direct your questions to the management of the CBC, not the fed govt. Most of these issues are related to horrible mismanagement, and others (American guests on The Hour? WTH does that have to do with Harper) are programming choices made by the CBC.
Get a clue.
At least Lacroix used the terms “redundacy notices” and “pink slips”. As opposed to the iO! approved “workforce adjustment”
Just in from the iO! word lab. Vomiting will now be refereed to as “upward nutritional mobility” in all CBC documentation.
What I am saying is is that the Stephen Harper Conservative Government is instrumental in cutting funding to the CBC. That government wants closer ties to the USA, and more American content on CBC is fine with them. They want to become more American, and less Canadian, even to condoning torture in the Military. The “Get a clue” statement probably comes from one of these mean, cruel philistines who stand with Stephen Harper.
That is the ongoing fear, isn’t it?
And the prorogation isn’t helping matters at all.