No, they are not. They have to go through the proper channels, and the proper channels within a crown corporation are through the government relations group. If members of Parliament wish to get information about a crown corporation or about issues around the crown corporation, they are to go to the government relations group. They can't just pick up the phone, pick any employee out of the directory, and demand that this employee answer their questions. That is a violation of the rules, a violation of policy, and that employee would be reprimanded.
That's the thing we have to realize here. To suggest that it's our right individually as members of Parliament to contact any government employee, any crown corporation employee, to talk to them and demand any information we want from them is not the case. The case is if you want information from a department, if you want information from a crown corporation, you have to go through the proper channels, even if you're a member of Parliament. The same thing, I might add, goes for cabinet ministers. If you're a minister of the cabinet, and even if it's your direct department, you can't just go into the department and demand answers to this and that and everything else. You go through your deputy minister. Ministers of the crown won't pick up the phone and call some level below EX and say “I want this information now”. No, they go through the proper channel. They go through their deputy minister.
It is no different for members of Parliament. If members of Parliament have a question, they go through the proper channel, and the proper channel in the case of the CBC is the government relations group or the office of the president. It's not to pick up the phone and call any employee on the staff directory and demand answers from them. That's not the way the corporation works, and to suggest otherwise is a complete misunderstanding of the rules and the way the corporation functions.