Evidence of meeting #32 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cbc.
A video is available from Parliament.
October 25th, 2016 / 12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Could you comment on diversity, Heather?
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, and give just a quick answer, because we're running out of the time. I'm asking about more diversity because the face of Canada has changed remarkably, and there are diverse LGBTQ stories that you might want to tell.
12:55 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, English Services, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
I am a lesbian, so I'm always a supporter of more LGBQ and transgender stories, and we're not shying away from that.
I think increasingly we want to see shows in which the transgender aspect is not the most important thing about the character. It's just a part of everybody's daily life, the same way that we want to see diversity reflected. We look and say, “Is there a reason that everybody on this show has to be able-bodied? Is there a reason that every character on this show is white?” If there's no rationale for it, we say to producers, “Go and find a diverse representation.”
We're also trying to do it on our services. It you look at our last hires, for the last six to 12 months in radio, we have Rosanna Deerchild, Piya Chattopadhyay, Duncan McCue running Cross Country Checkup, Candy Palmater, and Raina on Radio Two, who has replaced Tom Power in the mornings. Their backgrounds are diverse, so it's something we are seized with. It's something we care deeply about.
Frankly, one of our biggest priorities is also to reflect it internally in our staffing, because that's how it becomes part of the fabric, and when you've been cutting people, it's very very difficult to do that. You have to be in a hiring mode to be able to do that.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much. I think we have another meeting coming up, so I'm going to have to ask for this meeting to be adjourned.
Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.