Seventeen days ago the Federal Court ruled that CBC must hand over information, requested under the Access to Information Act, about the travel and entertainment expenses of Louise Lantagne, one of it’s television directors. The CBC, who had redacted 110 pages of Latagne’s expense reports, is appealing the ruling, on the grounds that “Lantagne’s activities and related expenses are most of the time deeply intertwined with our programming activities.”
Seriously, that’s not a joke: the CBC grants itself this seemingly all-encompassing exemption in its own Policies & Guidelines:
In addition to other relevant exemptions and exclusions, you should be aware that Section 68.1 of the (Access to Information Act) provides CBC/Radio-Canada with a specific exclusion for any information that is under the control of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that relates to its journalistic, creative, or programming activities.
That pretty much covers everything, doesn’t it?
It’s not hard to figure out why the CBC, a Crown Corporation that receives over a billion dollars a year from Canadian taxpayers, refuses to comply to the Federal Court’s ruling, or to respond to so many Access to information Requests: in recent years CBC execs have expensed – among other things – $800 per night hotel rooms (with their own personal butlers in some cases), $450 theatre tickets, and $1,400 in booze over two days.
In addition to refusing to release the 110 redacted pages from Louise Lantagne’s expense claims report, the CBC has also been steadfastly refusing to comply with numerous other Access to Information requests, including a simple, straightforward request to find out what Peter Mansbridge – one of the most prominent and almost certainly well-paid employees of this taxpayer-funded crown corporation – earns annually in salary and benefits.
The hypocrisy is sickening. In recent months the CBC’s reporters stood self-rightously on camera, for weeks on end — and we’re talking top-of-the-hour coverage, coast-to-coast — to relentlessly demand, in the name of the Access to Information Act, the release of classified military documents which, for all the CBC knows, may contain the names of Afghan informants whose lives could be at risk if the unredacted documents were released, yet the Mother Corp has the chutzpah to thumb its nose at straightforward Access to Information requests about its own wining and dining habits, on the grounds that the requested information pertains to the CBC’s “journalistic, creative, or programming activities.”
