Source : Globe & Mail

When Liberal backbencher Sarmite Bulte rose during Question Period one afternoon last week with a question for Treasury Board President Marcel Massé about C-44, the Administrative Tribunals (Remedial and Disciplinary Measures) Act, it was a signal that the government was about to change course.

Most questions from government MPs to a cabinet minister are put-up deals, an arrangement that permits the minister to make an announcement under the guise of answering a question, and the answer frequently includes some recognition of the role played by the questioner in the matter.

In this case, Mr. Massé announced that the government was dropping Section 36, the provision that would have allowed the cabinet to fire the president of the CBC "at pleasure." Stripped of the legal nuances, this represented a major victory for the people, both within the Liberal caucus and in public interest groups such as the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, who have been lobbying hard against it ever since the bill was introduced in June.

Although the government denied having had any intention to interfere with the day-to-day news or programming decisions of the CBC, the change from appointing the corporation's president for a fixed five-year term "on good behaviour" to appointing him or her to serve at the "pleasure" of the cabinet would have given the government a large stick. Even if it were never used, the mere fact that the chief executive officer could be fired on a whim could have a chilling effect and seriously diminish the national broadcaster's independence.

Moreover, when some Liberal backbenchers began to question the move, the official explanation they were given was that Section 36 "gives the government the flexibility it needs to appoint a new administrator, if necessary."

For "flexibility" read "club." Behind the blah-blah about better accountability concerning the use of taxpayers' dollars was a political thrust from Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and some of his ministers, who were upset with the CBC, especially the coverage on the French networks of the 1995 sovereignty referendum.

In fact, the government expected that the opposition would be coming from the Parti Québécois rather than from within its own ranks, and Heritage Minister Sheila Copps was ready to counter that the separatist Quebec government had the power to fire the head of Radio-Québec in the same fashion. (Indeed, that is exactly what former premier Jacques Parizeau did to Françoise Bertrand, now chairwoman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, when she was president of Radio-Québec.)

But the government doesn't seem to have expected the political uproar. Former CBC president Pierre Juneau weighed in about the likely impact of the change on the corporation's independence. The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting organized a letter to the Prime Minister signed by 21 prominent authors, academics and journalists, ranging from Pierre Berton to former Radio-Canada anchor Bernard Derome. Even the current CBC president, Perrin Beatty, got off the fence and criticized the measure, at least by implication.

But it was the pressure within the Liberal caucus that persuaded Mr. Massé to cave. Ms. Bulte, a lawyer who is one of the ringleaders on the issue, prepared an extensive legal brief that explained how the proposed change would contradict the section of the Broadcasting Act guaranteeing the CBC's "freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence."

Although nobody formally acknowledges the linkage, the timing of the decision to back off on C-44 was significant: It came at the time Mr. Chrétien's communication director, Peter Donolo, was pursuing the CBC over coverage of the inquiry into the RCMP's handling of Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation demonstrators last year. The combination of the bill and the Donolo complaints gave the appearance of a pincer movement on the public broadcaster.

As Friends of Canadian Broadcasting spokesman Ian Morrison put it, "the backbenchers were listening to their constituents, who were opposed to the bill [the Friends had organized a major letter-writing campaign], and nobody out there was defending it, so the government decided it just wasn't worth it."

© Globe Information Services

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See also:

The Copps Contradiction