Maybe the saddest thing is that none of this was a surprise. Not to any of us
who've made it past the security desk at CBC Mother Corp in the past several
years, anyway.
Former Q producer and brave soul Kathryn Borel told the world about the
explicit sexual harassment she experienced while working at CBC in her
explosive essay published with The Guardian. Anne Kingston wrote an
impressively comprehensive feature on the toxic CBC Radio work culture and
the stream of what seem to be contradictory untruths from Chris Boyce and
company. We continue to read about the complaints from Q staff
carefully nestled in a
document code named Red Sky.
A top-secret project with a code name and exposés published in major global news
outlets.
This is what's necessary to describe the work environment at the public
broadcaster -- the one that receives our taxes, the one where I was employed for
many years, the one I love and hope for, even though the bumbling, crumbling
reality of it continues to break my heart.
We all know that the reason the Ghomeshi cover up happened is because CBC was
terrified of losing what little wisps of cultural capital and funding it still
had, and he was one of their best bets at doing so, right? I won't go further on
this point as I hope it's painfully obvious to all. It certainly was for Borel.
Yes, the stories about his behaviour towards women both outside and inside the
workplace are the stuff of nightmares.
But the culture of desperate, corrupt, clumsy butt-covering now making
international news headlines was and is -- for far too many producers --
actually baked into the daily machinations of the CBC. It is all part of a day's
work. And for many people in my old shoes, I do mean a day's work.
I was employed by the CBC from 2007 to 2010 in a patchwork of contracts that
somehow Frankensteinishly hewed into a continuous full-time job. Many times, the
"contract" lasted as little as one day. Eventually, at the point where I was
producing, directing and tech'ing (i.e. pressing the buttons behind the sound
board) for a live national radio show -- in other words, creating almost the
entire thing -- that's when my work and hard skills finally resulted in a
blissful four-month contract.
This was not just my life. This was, and is, the situation for many of the
producers making the award-winning content you hear, see and read from CBC.
Cutbacks and layoffs in the thousands have resulted in a pandemic of contract
work for the public broadcaster -- it's what the budget will allow.
As a contract worker, you take the scraps you're given and learn to be grateful.
You cower. You defer. And you're afraid and hopeful to finally earn a job some
someday and desperate to please -- especially if, like me, you believe in and
want to make public radio from some deeply embedded part of your being.
It's this kind of environment where master manipulators like Ghomeshi are
enabled to run wild. They prey on the many disenfranchised underlings around
them -- the interns, the young contract producers, the roiling sea of eager and
insecure.
For goodness sake, Borel said even she was terrified to lose her job at Q
because it was her first big break. And if someone with an actual semblance of
job security still felt uneasy enough to endure years of harassment, what about
those who had even less to stake on their next rent cheque, not to mention their
self-esteem?
It was Jian but it wasn't just Jian. I would describe behaviour from several
managers at CBC as emotionally abusive. The other day I got a call from a former
colleague saying one of them harassed her and other coworkers I'd worked with.
She wanted to know if I had anything to share. I was not harassed or assaulted,
but this is what I have to share.
Throughout the years of my CBC contract work, I thought the clenched fists of
anxiety and stomach fiery with acid reflux were my own fault for not being
sufficiently confident or skilled enough to have secured a real job, real
respect or acknowledgement.
And now I read about these cover ups and lies. I can see, for the first time,
the exploitation of power was all real. A psychologist told me the way I talk
about work at CBC sounds like I'm describing an abusive relationship. And I
wasn't even one of the apparently several who were harassed.
As if that should be the only bar to which coworkers and management at the
public broadcaster should be held accountable. Well, at least they didn't
explicitly sexually harass me! Except that, oh wait, that did happen to my
Q teammate. And look at the response.
I worked at Q, among several other national shows. I didn't work there
long.
They brought me on for a three-week stretch in 2008. As an arts and music-loving
person, I thought it would be the promised land. I couldn't quite put my finger
on it but something was seriously wrong.
Every other show I'd worked at until then had been a positive experience --
short-lived but decent. Senior producers said they liked working with me, I
crafted usable content but there just wasn't a job open and if there had been an
opening, it would go to a laid-off or "bumped" employee. New positions couldn't
be created due to cutbacks. But if I kept trying, made my self indispensable,
maybe someday... I began to tune out as they'd launch into "the
speech."
But at Q something was different. I was offered a few weeks' extension
and I said "no." It's not like I had another full time job to go to, the gig was
just too painful to carry on.
I came to the office one morning and found a producer crying over something that
happened with the host. I watched Ghomeshi completely lose it over a discrepancy
in prep notes as the amazingly patient director shuddered with an attempt at
calm literally 30 seconds before the live broadcast. But then, up came the intro
music, and in melted the smooth-talking personality you all knew and loved.
Well, hi there.
None of the stories I pitched were making it to air. I asked the executive
producer for help, so I could learn to do better. He suggested I work more
closely with Jian to see what stories interested him. I didn't do it. Being
around him made me uneasy. In story meetings, those times that Jian did show up,
producers would wince and brace for his reaction, emotions extreme and volatile.
I was just only there for three weeks, how could I approach the great and
powerful JG? Now I'm very glad I didn't.
So all this is a problem because of the horrific and multiplying accounts of
Ghomeshi's non-consensual sexual violence and the resulting criminal trial,
because of reports of workplace sexual harassment and more. All of this is a
problem because the management at the public broadcaster -- a publicly-funded
institution providing a public service -- is even outing its own for covering up
certain details.
But all of this is also a problem because Jian's is not the only story of
maniacal power thriving at the cost of producers' rights and freedoms. And a
public institution is teaching its young workers to expect little, to be afraid,
and that no one is going to bat for them.
Not even the union to which they're paying dues.
I fled a toxic work environment at CBC when my boyfriend took a job based in the
Caribbean and I took up a career as an international freelancer (on the beach).
I was lucky enough to literally fly away to a tropical island where the daily
reinforcement of my disposability was a memory left in the snow banks back home.
And my cohort of contract producers who finally said "Enough!" -- the ones I
think of as "the exiles of CBC" -- fled as far and wide as Korea, Ghana,
Australia and beyond. We were lucky. We got out.
Later, when I moved to Nigeria, CBC broadcast my radio reports about terrorist
violence claiming hundreds of lives around me. And yet life in that context was
still preferable to the climate at CBC.
Sure, freelancing in the Caribbean I got a tan and snorkeled daily from my
freelance HQ. In Nigeria, I gained a very different but valuable and eye-opening
life experience.
It was great, but to be honest, I wish I didn't have to leave CBC. I love
public radio. It's embarrassing how much I love it and believe it's important
and full of potential. Even after leaving Mother Corp, I've continued to
freelance for them and write about public radio policy. I can't let go.
So I see this news about Ghomeshi and I am sad and upset and horrified and
angry, and yet among all those other emotions, I also somehow feel happy. I'm
happy because I'm hopeful. Because maybe this catastrophe is what the CBC
needed.
For so long its upper ranks were filled with brass now being publicly shamed for
enabling and then covering up the reality of a workplace wracked with
harassment, fear and exploitation. One that destroyed the confidence and dreams
of a whole cohort of producers. One that was not structured to serve the public
needs.
Now, hopefully everyone sees it. Now, hopefully everyone is not surprised.
And unlike with privately owned contract-driven workplaces -- an economy common
across struggling industries at this point -- we actually have the power to
change the CBC. It's a public institution. It is our national voice and that
voice has been telling us lies.
It's not expensive or complicated to make ethical, useful, great radio. Get a
few microphones, some broadcast towers, spark a pithy conversation and you're
off to the airwaves. Great public radio's cost is almost entirely human
resources. Human resources built on human respect.
And so maybe this unfortunate Ghomeshi saga will be the spark that finally burns
CBC to the ground. Meaning, of course, that it would finally be freed to rise up
again into something new.
The Ottawa Police have their own "Restorative Justice" program. They simply Fabricate Evidence NOT to charge Violent Dentistry Students and to engage in malicious prosecutions of Male Victims of domestic Violence.
A classic example is that of Ottawa Police Detective Peter Van Der Zander who fabricated Evidence NOT to charge a Dentistry Student for attempting to strangle to death the father of their children.
The attending officers and a witness noted that the father was bleeding around the neck with scratch marks around his neck, consistent with an attempt to strangle. His bruises were rather a spectacular colour of blue and purple with circles indicating finger pressure. The Father described that after years of habitual unprovoked violence towards the children and father, that he was forced to call police because she had forced his head on to a couch by pulling his hair, and had placed a strangle hold around his neck that prevented him from breathing.
Detective Van Der Zander also listened to a stereo audio recording of the entire event that was stopped after the police arrived and taken by the police so it could not have been "edited".
Van Der Zander Fabricated an Occurrence report that the Female Dentistry Student "denied pulling his hair and attempting to choke him" He expressed a concern that IF he let her go without charges that "next time" she might kill him with a knife" so he released her so she could "call police" next time.
He sent her home with a "victim support" person, a free taxi reserved by the Ottawa Police for women who attempt to strangle the full time fathers of their children.
The Video Recording of Van Der Zander's Interview showed that Van Der Zander never asked her if she "pulled his hair and attempted to choke him". His occurrence report
claimed her assaults were"a reflex action" however not one of the several claimed expressions that Van Der Zander Claimed he "heard" on the recording did in fact exist. His report was obviously Fabricated to justify his Obstruct Justice and Fabrication of Evidence.
He then kept the father incarcerated for a further 16 hours and AFTER he released the mother, he finally interviewed the father, failed to photograph any of his injuries and interrogated him accusing him of being a pedophile without any such allegation or evidence to justify that terrorism.
Several months later she assaulted her new male partner with a Strangle Hold to the neck, "with her hands around his neck and her thumbs intertwined around his neck" saying " My Father was KBG, I know what I am doing". When that male reported the assault to Ottawa Police they did absolutely nothing. When she learned of his statement, she threatened him with false allegations which was in turn reported to the Ottawa Police who did absolutely nothing.
Ottawa Mens Centre