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 on Transport […]
“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 the internet. I vividly recall during […]
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 […]
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 foreign listeners. In this inaugural […]
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 […]
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 sent to the city […]
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 future was unsure. The […]
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 according to Canada’s Broadcasting […]
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 the mandate of Radio Canada International, with a view […]
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 […]
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 your country to know that the cuts to RCI programming are […]
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 about $20 million for […]
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 number […]
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 of the “Redeployment Plan that […]
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.” See testimony parliamentary committee here.
reprinted with permission The Hill Times By WOJTEK GWIAZDA MARCH 29, 2021 The CBC never understood that the uniqueness of RCI is that we explain Canada to the rest of the world. And at a time when Canada needs to be understood, Radio Canada International should be expanded and be ready for the challenges of the […]
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On February 16, a day after an open letter by 32 prominent Canadians was sent to the Prime Minister defending the international mandate of Radio Canada International (RCI), a senior advisor in the Government Relations department of CBC sent an email about RCI saying “no one is using it.” In the email sent to at […]
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En una carta abierta publicada el 18 de marzo de 2021, 45 exembajadores canadienses calificaron de error los cambios previstos en el mandato internacional de Radio Canadá Internacional (RCI). “En tanto que diplomáticos que han servido a Canadá en todo el mundo, conocemos los beneficios que supone para nuestro país que el público extranjero conozca […]
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In an open letter released March 18, 2021, 45 former Canadian ambassadors called planned changes to the international mandate of Radio Canada International (RCI) a mistake. “As diplomats who have served Canada all over the globe, we know the benefits to our country of foreign audiences knowing about Canada.” The former ambassadors called for a […]
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Dans une lettre ouverte publiée le 18 mars 2021, 45 anciens ambassadeurs canadiens ont qualifié les modifications prévues au mandat international de Radio Canada International (RCI) d’erreur. «En tant que diplomates qui ont servi le Canada partout dans le monde, nous savons qu’il est avantageux pour notre pays que des auditoires étrangers connaissent le Canada.» […]
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Two days after our open letter to the Prime Minister and three of his ministers (see here), Shaun Poulter, the Executive Director of Strategy, Public Affairs, and Government Relations for our public broadcaster and RCI’s administrator, CBC/Radio-Canada, wrote an email to some of the signatories of the open letter. It appears that signatories whose email […]
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There’s a remarkable document from 1994 which highlights some astute observations and pragmatic possible solutions to the problems facing Radio Canada International in 2021. The dry title “Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications on the Mandate and Funding of Radio Canada International” barely hints at the incisive analysis and conclusions in […]
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On January 25, 2021, the Committee sent a request for explanations from Canada’s broadcasting regulatory body the CRTC concerning the lack of questions by CRTC commissioners when two separate witnesses testified that RCI’s administrator, CBC/Radio-Canada, had violated Article 46 (2) of the Broadcasting Act. The Committee request for answers also highlighted the CRTC’s decision not […]
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On December 29, 2020, the RCI Action Committee sent a request to Canada’s broadcasting regulatory body the CRTC. It requested that we be able to testify at the licence hearings of CBC/Radio-Canada (which administers RCI) about the public broadcaster’s violation of Article 46 (2) of the Broadcasting Act. The request was refused for deadline reasons. […]
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La siguiente carta abierta fue enviada, el 15 de febrero de 2021, al Primer Ministro Justin Trudeau, a la Viceprimera Ministra Chrystia Freeland, al Ministro de Asuntos Exteriores Marc Garneau y al Ministro del Patrimonio Canadiense Steven Guilbeault, pidiéndoles que mantengan la integridad de la Voz de Canadá para el Mundo, Radio Canadá Internacional (RCI). […]
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