Hubert Lacroix President and CEO of the CBC misled Parliament when he said CBC does not tolerate discrimination, sexual or otherwise.
PRLog – At the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women while the CBC president was minimizing complaints of CBC’s human rights abuse, CBC was paying over $60,000 in human rights legal fees. CBC wants to kill a three-year-long battle to keep a disabled journalist out of the PEI Legislature.
As Lacroix was testifying, CBC lawyers were fighting a Human Rights complaint on Prince Edward Island. His unconditional statement to Parliament was not true, in the common English a lie.
In trying to defend the CBC’s record, President Lacroix went overboard, made sweeping statements before Parliament that seem to exonerate CBC of any human rights abuse.
“Let me start with a quote, if I can” said Lacroix, “CBC/Radio-Canada considers all forms of discrimination, including discriminatory and sexual harassment, to be unacceptable; will not tolerate its occurrence; and will make every reasonable effort to ensure that no employee is subjected to it.”
Hubert Lacroix, President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada (Photo THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)
Lacroix said CBC makes “every reasonable effort” to make sure discrimination does not occur and if it does to quickly investigate and settle the matter. Human rights committees within the CBC are located in every region, was Lacroix’s testimony, to speed up the investigation and settlement of human rights discrimination.
“That’s not true,” said Stephen Pate who is the disabled journalist in the Compliant. “In 2012, Daniel Henry CBC’s Senior Legal Counsel, sent me an email acknowledging ‘we did receive a complaint from you by fax on October 22, 2009,'”
“Henry sent me two emails where he admitted the complaint and said they were letting the matter take it’s course.”
Lacroix knew, as he made those statements, that 4 of his PEI employees were involved in a case of human rights discrimination and that CBC had paid more than $60,000 in legal fees since 2010 to keep the matter out of the PEI Human Rights Commission.
When the PEI Human Rights Commission decided to convene a human rights panel to hear the issue, CBC jumped the gun and filed a motion in PEI Supreme Court to kill it. CBC Blocks Human Rights Hearing and Who’s a journalist? P.E.I. human rights case may have some answers – j-source
CBC President Lacroix was responding, in his March 5, 2013 testimony, to media criticism that CBC was a hotbed of human rights abuse and discrimination. The allegations were leveled, supposedly by Sun Media and their CEO Pierre-Karl Peladeau, although NJN Network can’t find them anywhere.
What particularly irritated Hubert Lacroix were the Sun Media journalists Access to Information and Privacy about the rumors of human rights abuses and sexual abuse by CBC employees.
“After CBC filed their Application for Judicial Review,” said Pate, “I filed a CBC Access to Information and Privacy request for any legal bills CBC had paid to fight human rights issues.”
“CBC sent me redacted copies of 11 invoices marked “Stephen Pate, Human Rights Complaint” from Alan Parish, a high-priced and “one of the most prominent litigation lawyers in Atlantic Canada,” said Pate. “They spanned from 2010 to 2013 and were the largest invoices for a single human rights complaint paid by the CBC during the time.”
Access to Information and Privacy Request
The request called CBC A-2013-00047 was
“External legal fees and invoices paid during 2011, 2012 and up to June 30, 2013 for any and all human rights claims including alleged discriminatory, abusive or harassing behavior on the part of CBC employees and management. Provide an estimate or accrual of legal fees in the above matters not billed as of June 30, 2013 if possible.”
The report is linked here CBC Final Release A-2013-00047
JP Belisle
I respectfully submit that Hubert T. Lacroix LIED to the Parliament. This is not a question of assumption, it is a fact.
The cold hard fact of a sexual harassment grievance filed on June 13, 2012, by Ms. Z, announcer-producer at the Chinese Section of Radio-Canada International.
Ms. Z grievance relates to several allegations of harassment in the workplace by Mr. M, a fellow union member and a shop steward:
“Grievance / Exposé du grief From the fall of 2009 to May 14, 2012, I was the victim of multiple instances of harassment, sexual harassment and discriminatory harassment by [Mr. M]…who also performed the function of union representative, right up to his dismissal on May 28, 2012.
Claim / Réclamation That [Mr. M], the union and the employer be ordered individually or jointly to pay me monetary, moral and punitive damages; that the union be required to reimburse me for the fees of counsel of my own choosing to represent me in any proceeding under the collective agreement relating to this grievance or any grievance filed by [Mr. M].”
The present statement is supported by the testimony given under oath by Ms. Z to the Canada Industrial Relations Board on January 14 and 15, 2014, in Montreal, Quebec
The said grievance, which is still pending, was never publicly accounted for, if not hidden to the Parliament, by CBC Senior Management.
Ms. Z also filed a criminal harassment charge under section 264 of the Canadian Criminal Code against her Union Representative Gordon MacDougall (Mr. M), who recently pleaded guilty to the criminal charge.
Copy of a TVA news video (in French): interview of the victim, Ms. Z on the consequences of the criminal act on her health:
If still available on TVA News site:
But Ms. Z nightmare is far from being over: using the inexhaustible deep pockets of the Union dues, the Union’s Big Boys Club is now dragging Ms. Z. into the Federal Court of Appeal, so to break the CIRB decision and keep the control over Ms. Z grievance.
The joint Union-Management strategy is the financial exhaustion of Ms. Z so to cover-up the gross inaction of CBC/Radio-Canada.
As Ms. Z husband was personally told by a Radio-Canada HR manager during the CIRB hearing: ‘We are a big enterprise : we will ruin you” (“Nous sommes une grosse boîte, nous allons vous ruiner”)
JP Belisle
Standing Committee on the Status of Women
House of Commons
Ottawa
EVIDENCE
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Hubert T. Lacroix
CEO CBC/Radio-Canada
“Today, across the entire corporation, WE DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE OUTSTANDING COMPLAINT OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT. I am proud of our continuing efforts to ensure that people who work at CBC/Radio-Canada can thrive in an environment that is free from harassment of any kind.
Given our record, you might wonder why you have been seeing stories in Quebecor newspapers, the Sun and Le Journal de Montréal, and also on the television network Sun TV, suggesting that CBC/Radio-Canada is a hotbed of sexual harassment.
(…)
Now, I don’t expect Sun Media’s agenda to change. But I believe it is important to call them out when they are deliberately misleading Canadians, when they’re taking a serious issue like sexual harassment and turning it into a weapon for their own interests.
(…)
But let me point out a few differences between CBC/Radio-Canada and Québecor Médias. CBC/Radio-Canada has journalistic standards. Our guide, Journalistic Standards and Practices, sets out how our journalists are to do their jobs. In fact, the guide is used as a model for journalistic organizations around the world. We also have two ombudsmen who investigate complaints of unfair coverage and issue a public report.”