Where do I begin?
I don't want to be negative about the people serving in the positions. With that in mind, I would say the lockout was probably the best example, the most black and white example. To this day, it was never clear who was going to end that lockout. Was it Canadians? Was it the PMO directing the president?
The PMO at the time told us, “You know what, we can't direct the president. He serves at pleasure and we don't want to interfere in the CBC's business.” So the government doesn't want to interfere in the CBC's business, but the government appoints the president. You get where I'm going here: nobody could end that lockout.
I'm not going to do the history lesson, but it ended in a combination of political will on the part of the government of the day and of Canadians being tough and saying, “End this thing.” But there was no one person who ended this thing. That was a good example.
There are others, in key policy decisions, where the board has not been sufficiently informed, primarily because many of them are appointments. They're not necessarily there because of their broadcasting experience. We've heard and we know the deliberations of how often some very key policy decisions do not get debated at length.
I would say the people inside would treasure a governance change. With the fact that the president now again is the chair—because there has been no chair—don't forget, that was the very situation we were in just before the lockout. The president and the chair were the same person, because Carole Taylor had just stepped down. When that happens, there is a convergence of interests. The chair of the board must keep the public interests in mind. When that chair is the same guy who heads the management team, we have a convergence of powers and interests in one person, and that's highly negative.
I'd be pleased to talk about it elsewhere. There are many more examples. I don't want to dwell on the individuals either. It's not an individual problem. The president of the day could be the best person known to mankind and these problems would still persist.