On May 1, 2013, the director of Radio Canada International (RCI) Hélène Parent and her boss Hubert Lacroix, the president of Canada’s national radio and television public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada were before a Canadian senate committee to explain the 80% budget cut to RCI.
Lacroix made the opening statement before the Senate Standing Committee [...]
“It pains me to hear that RCI will be leaving SW in June. Over the years I’ve counted on RCI to keep me connected with home, be it during my travels in Europe, Asia, and even the depths of the Amazon. Most of those areas have no access to [...]
In 2002 the Association of North American Radio Clubs (ANARC) awarded the RCI Action Committee with a Certificate of Recognition for our work in defending Radio Canada International. Here’s the text of the certificate:
Certificate of Recognition for the RCI Action Committee
The Association of North American Radio Clubs proudly presents a group Certificate of Recognition to [...]
From the CBC Archives:
Broadcast Date: Feb. 25, 1945
The Second World War is winding down in Europe, but Canada’s new international shortwave radio service is just getting started. From its studios in Montreal and a web of shortwave transmission towers in Sackville, N.B., the service targets both Canadian and [...]
February 2008 – Action Committee spokesperson suspended!
Radio Canada International tries to “muzzle” communications union which represents RCI employees
The Syndicat des communications de Radio-Canada (FNC-CSN) is outraged by and condemns the three day suspension without pay of one of its union stewards, Wojtek Gwiazda. For years he has defended the international mandate of Canada’s Voice to [...]
On March 26, 1982 RCI inaugurated its Ottawa bureau. RCI Director Betty Zimmerman (fourth from left) with staff: three English and three French journalists. At the time, they were all kept very busy covering the nation’s capital. In 2010, one of the two (!) journalists of our reduced Ottawa bureau was [...]
Study says RCI should not be integrated into the domestic service, the CBC/Radio-Canada
In October 1996, the Canadian component of KPMG, a accounting, tax and professional firm, released a report on RCI commissioned by the domestic radio and television service, CBC. The report came out at a time when RCI’s financial [...]
An overview of the issues involved in RCI’s international mandate.
November/December, 2007 – Questions about the international mandate of Radio Canada International (RCI) were once again raised at a parliamentary committee as it prepares to issue a report on Canada’s public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada. The public broadcaster is responsible for RCI. And [...]
Ottawa, 11 June 2003 – In a massive report on broadcasting in Canada called “Our Cultural Sovereignty”, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage described RCI as “an essential international service.”
Among its 97 recommendations the Committee called on the “appropriate department [to] review [...]
Below is what our Committee submitted to the Canadian Heritage Committee in 2001 in an attempt to protect the international mandate of Radio Canada International. (You can see the Standing Committee’s response here.)
Radio Canada International and the Broadcasting Act:
The Need to Protect RCI’s International Mandate and its Operational Autonomy
A submission to [...]
The administrators of RCI and our domestic service CBC/Radio-Canada make the decisions, but they are also responsible to Canadians through Parliament and the ruling Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
We need for these administrators, politicians and the media in Canada and in [...]
It’s hard to believe it’s so long: March 22, 1991 when our reality at RCI changed so radically. In December of 1990, our parent company the public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada announced that the international service would be eliminated unless the federal government paid for it (CBC actually had up until then budgeted [...]
On February 2, 2004 we had another “briefing meeting” about what was about to happen at RCI. Here’s a portion of what I wrote back then on the RCI Action Committee web site:
The briefing meeting is over. We’ve been told about the “repositioning”, feels more like shuffling the chairs on the Titanic. A [...]
From the beginning of June till mid October 2001, the RCI newsroom was empty on weekends…….no journalist and no announcer producer was permitted to work at keeping the world up to date on Canadian news on the weekend. All RCI produced newscasts, and all live programming were cut as part [...]
On May 25, 2007, the union representing most of RCI’s employees (Syndicat des communications de Radio-Canada) called on parliament’s Canadian Heritage committee to protect RCI’s mandate saying “there will be nothing preventing the CBC from changing its international service” unless “the Broadcasting Act has been amended to protect RCI’s Mandate.” [...]
En français ici
On December 3, 2020, Canada’s national public radio and television broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada announced “a major transformation” of Radio Canada International (RCI) titled “Modernizing Radio Canada International for the 21st century”. And if you didn’t know anything about the toxic relationship between the two, you would really think this was great news.
After all the [...]
MONTREAL, le 3 déc. 2020 /CNW Telbec/ – Le syndicat des travailleuses et des travailleurs de Radio-Canada (STTRC) dénonce la suppression de 13 postes permanents et 3 postes contractuels à Radio Canada International (RCI). La Société Radio-Canada (SRC) invoque une restructuration nécessaire pour assurer la pérennité [...]
Full Story »
Five years ago, Radio Canada International stopped being a radio station, and only an on-line web service.
On the last day of radio programming on June 24, 2012, some of the newsreaders and host/producers ended their last broadcasts and then shared their reflections on Radio Canada International in this series [...]
That’s right, four years ago today on June 24, 2012, Radio Canada International (RCI) Canada’s Voice to the World broadcast it’s last radio programme. Live from our studios in Montreal, it was the Latin American section that said goodbye. Here’s a photo of the team during that last broadcast.
And here’s a link to a video [...]
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The flood of wonderful memories, fueled by the old and not so old photos of Radio Canada International’s 70 years, is now, as I write this, suddenly mixed with regret, lost opportunities, and missing colleagues.
In a way I dreaded this anniversary, not knowing how to deal with this important milestone.
RCI has survived all these years [...]
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Sixty-nine years ago today Canada’s Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King spoke the first words on Canada’s Voice to the World. There was so much hope about how our international broadcaster would serve our country.
As the service evolved and became a dependable, innovative source of Canadian news and culture, its worldwide audience grew.
In 2012, our [...]
If you’ve forgotten, or just need an extra boost to remember, how amazing radio can be, do not miss out on this wonderful radio documentary by Garth Mullins that was broadcast on February 13, 2014, World Radio Day, by Canada’s national public radio broadcaster, CBC.
In 54 very radiophonic minutes Mullins takes us on an ride [...]
February 13, 2014 is the UNESCO World Radio Day – a good day to remind ourselves how important radio and all kinds of communications around the world are. Turn on a radio – remind yourself what a neat wireless device it is. For more info on World Radio Day go here.
(P.S. – Yes, I know [...]
Wednesday (May 15, 2013) Radio Canada International launched a mobile version of its website, after RCI director Helene Parent convened staff to a late morning meeting to showcase the new version, and to bring employees up-to-date on RCI news.
The presentation was almost cancelled, since the RCI website was off-line after the server hosting it (the [...]
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