Did CBC President Mislead Parliament?

CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island - Oct. 15, 2013 - PRLog -- 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 (http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=6023987&Language=E&Mode=1#Int-7916872) 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.”

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 (http://njnnetwork.com/2013/06/cbc-blocks-human-rights-hea...) and Who’s a journalist? P.E.I. human rights case may have some answers – j-source (http://j-source.ca/article/who%E2%80%99s-journalist-pei-h...)

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 (http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/06/cbc-president-att...) 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 (http://burchells.ca/lawyer/alan-v-parish-qc/), 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.”