Historical hypocrisies at CBC

Is the CBC guilty of censorship? If not, why did it run a government-funded series that provided a rosy view of Canada's history while punishing one of its own reporters for writing a darker account?

Many in Quebec are hailing Radio-Canada reporter Normand Lester as the new martyr, a victim of the CBC's federalist agenda; his latest book, a strident pamphlet that paints English Canada as a ferociously xenophobic colonial power, became an instant bestseller. The first printing of 5,000 copies was sold out in less than three days.

Mr. Lester, a veteran investigative reporter for Radio-Canada TV news who specialized in security matters (over the past 30 years, he collected countless scoops on CSIS and the RCMP), was suspended last week with pay for having published Le livre noir du Canada anglais (The Black Book of English Canada). In it, Mr. Lester accuses English Canada's chattering classes of propagating a biased view of Quebec nationalism, while hypocritically ignoring English Canada's own sins.

In an unabashedly one-sided, yet well-researched book, Mr. Lester recalls shameful episodes, from the deportation of the Acadians to the hanging of Louis Riel to the pre-war waves of anti-Semitism in Ontario. He recollects former prime minister Mackenzie King's sick fascination with Adolf Hitler. He points out that Adrien Arcand, Quebec's smalltime Nazi leader, was financed by officials from the federal Conservative Party.

Even though Mr. Lester's book reads in part like a manifesto right out of the 1960s, it should be translated into English and read outside Quebec. It would provide a much-needed antidote for those holier-than-thou members of the anglophone elite who like to think that Quebec is the home of xenophobia in Canada.

The CBC says that Mr. Lester breached its code of ethics, which prevents its employees from expressing their views on controversial subjects. This rule makes sense, especially for reporters.

The problem here is that the CBC seems to have a double standard. For 10 years, it ran Robert-Guy Scully's Heritage Minutes, a series on the great moments of Canada's history. Last year, Mr. Lester revealed that Heritage Minutes had received $7.2-million from federal sources, including the Heritage Department. Contrary to the CBC's time-honoured practice, this was not mentioned in the program's credits.

The CBC defended itself by saying that Mr. Scully, as an independent producer, was not subject to its guidelines. Shortly after, Mr. Lester was sidelined to a weekend job.

Last week, La Presse columnist Nathalie Petrowski raised a more troubling question. "Why did the CBC allow its former president, Patrick Watson, to sit on the board of the Bronfman Foundation [which sponsors Heritage Minutes] and to co-produce the series with the help of the federal government, at the same time he was managing the CBC? Don't the Corporation's guidelines apply to the president as well as to the employees?"