Canadian Heritage Committee on March 10th, 2026

[Travis Dhanraj]

Yes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

In your mind, then, is that lack of trust justified?

[Travis Dhanraj]

Right now, the CBC continues to put out statements and come to these committees saying, “We might have a bit of a problem, but overall we're not biased.” That's gaslighting Canadians. Canadians can see that this is an issue.

Folks have accused me of coming here as a cheerleader for the Conservatives. I am not a cheerleader for the Conservatives. I'm sorry. I'm not a cheerleader for the Liberals, either. I was trying to do my job as a journalist, and part of that was being balanced. When I was pulled into disciplinary meetings, I was told that I was editorializing because I put out that Catherine Tait wouldn't come on the program and that this was unfortunate. “This is unfortunate” was editorializing and perceived bias.

There's a lot of perceived bias going on that I don't see any discipline around. I think CBC needs a wake-up call in terms of accountability. Really, that's incumbent upon this committee. I have made recommendations. There are 11 recommendations on how to move some of this forward.

When it comes to Mr. Cochrane, during the convoy, for example, we were talking about Tamara Lich, an individual involved in the convoy. We were doing a story around that. Offhand remarks can be made at times, and I said that I thought she had a couple of last names. “People who live in trailers usually do.” That's an off-colour remark.

If this is a pattern, if the staff on your own show are raising it and if people are leaving the program, you have to look a bit deeper into it, as opposed to pulling me off the air for saying that it's unfortunate the president didn't come on the show.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

The Canadian public is paying for this to the tune of about $1.4 billion.

[Travis Dhanraj]

Yes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Of course, the government increased that by an additional $150 million. At the end of the day, the public is the shareholder and the ones who are supposed to be benefiting from this news coverage.

In your estimation, what changes are needed to restore trust?

[Travis Dhanraj]

There needs to be an overhaul when it comes to management. You have my specific recommendations.

I will also say this. I am not here as somebody who does not believe in public broadcasting. I was on Jonovision. I started as an audience coordinator at the CBC when I was 19 years old. I worked on Royal Canadian Air Farce. I worked on The Red Green Show. I then left. I came back. I worked at CBC Edmonton. I worked at CBC Toronto. I left and came back again. I took a pay cut to come back to the CBC. I used to walk around the CBC Broadcasting Centre when I was 19 years old and sneak into the newsroom. I thought, “I want to be in this place at some point. This is the heart of the news organization.”

It has gotten so far away from what it was. The CBC should not be a polarizing force. It needs to bring Canadians together. It has the infrastructure to do that. Until there's a recognition of the problem among management, nothing will happen. They fail to recognize this. I would be willing to sit down tomorrow with the new president to talk about some of this stuff. Good people are leaving. They're being forced out, and their concerns are being dismissed because it's about protecting reputation.

Well, here's some news: I don't have to want to destroy the CBC, because management and executives are doing a great job of that on their own.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

We're going to try one more time with Ms. Royer and see if we have sound now that she has a new headset.

You have the floor for five minutes. My fingers are crossed.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I'd like to begin by welcoming witnesses from my community: Janis Cleugh and Mario Bartel of Freshet News. I want to thank them both for their decades of service.

Of course, when Glacier Media's Tri-City News closed last year, it was a devastating loss for our riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam. Why is this? It's because democracy only works when citizens can see the truth clearly, and that requires strong, independent journalism so that voters can make informed choices and hold leaders accountable.

Janis, you said, “This is dangerous”. This brings me to the matter of journalistic integrity and the journalist code of ethics. I would really like to drill down on this, if I could, with you and Mario.

With the advent of podcasts and online news, there's a great deal of misinformation. How are Freshet journalists trained, and is that the norm?

[Janis Cleugh]

I was trained in Britain under a program called the NCTJ, the National Council for the Training of Journalists. There's a standardized curriculum in colleges and universities in Britain. You do a one-year program. You take legal courses, municipal government courses and shorthand. You then go out in the field for 18 months. Everyone writes a national exam in the end.

We don't have this in Canada. We need this in Canada. It's similar to a Red Seal trade. It would help municipalities that are struggling with reporters who call themselves reporters and are not professionally trained. It would help municipalities figure out who should be at the media table.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Okay, I got it.

Can we drill down a bit further and speak to the core principles? What really are the core principles of the code of ethics for journalists? What are the pillars?

[Mario Bartel]

Well, you try to be balanced. You try to give both sides of an issue. When you cover city council, you try to give a fair representation of the concerns that were raised and how they were raised so that when readers read how a decision came to be, they have some knowledge as to what some of the downfalls might be and what some of the advantages might be. You report. You don't interpret. You report.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

What I'm understanding, Mario, from what you just said, is that accuracy and verification are absolutely key, as are multiple sources. Journalists themselves need to be free from conflicts of interest. There can't be any exchange of gifts or favours. There is a high level of accountability and transparency.

Can you speak to some of these principles in how you report and avoid bias? How do you bring that into Freshet News?

[Mario Bartel]

I think we do as we've always done: We stand apart. We don't try to cultivate friendships or favour with anybody. We go in there with a fresh mind as to what is being discussed and what the issues are. You give a fair ear to all sides and report accordingly.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I know there was a gap between the closure of Glacier Media's Tri-City News and the opening of Freshet. Of course, the closure happened just ahead of the election. What do you feel the impact was on the electorate in making decisions in the lead-up to the election? What actually happened?

[Janis Cleugh]

As we said in the opening, we couldn't cover candidates, and the readers were lost. They didn't know who to vote for. They didn't know where to go.

Again, it was very dangerous to democracy. Having corporate media pull out in the middle of the federal election was devastating to our readers, the advertisers and the candidates.

[Mario Bartel]

In a normal news cycle, too, we would be there covering all-candidates meetings for readers as kind of the proxy for people who don't go but who still may be interested. They may not be interested in sitting around for two hours at a meeting, or they just weren't able to go. We're the proxy. That's how we see ourselves. It's the same thing for city council or anything we cover. We're kind of the proxy for the public.

When you are able to give the flavour of a candidate and what they said and give the issues raised by people at all-candidates meetings, that's bringing information to the larger public as well. Hopefully, that then informs everybody a bit better when it comes to marking their ballot on which way they're going to go.

[Janis Cleugh]

We also cover a very large—

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I noticed that there was a prevalence of other freelancers and journalists who we'd never heard of before taking up the space in the news desert. People were then tuning into that, because they were hungry. I think the electorate is particularly hungry for—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

I'm sorry, Ms. Royer. That's all the time we have for the question. I really appreciate that you made the point that journalists have to be in the room at school board meetings, at city halls and in courtrooms. When people say that AI can take over the job of journalism, I think they don't understand what journalism is. AI can't be in those rooms.

Ms. Thomas, you now have the floor for five minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Awesome. I'm going to ask one quick question and pass it off to my colleague.

My question is for Mr. Fegelman, or your colleagues.

You made a statement with regard to linking the safety and security of the Jewish community here in Canada to biased coverage from news media. I would like you to take a moment to expand on that in terms of the consequences there.

[Mike Fegelman]

I'll speak to a portion of that, and then I'm going to hand it off to my colleagues on Zoom.

The first thing is that what's reported today becomes domestic and foreign policy tomorrow. I echo Mr. Dhanraj's comments about a very, let's call it, jaundiced marketplace of ideas.

What we have seen in the past couple of years, most certainly as it relates to the CBC, is the elevation of radical voices—giving them a platform and giving them undue legitimacy, which we feel really serves to elevate fringe and marginal voices that are traditionally on the fringe and are trying to work their way into the mainstream. It then serves fundamentally to fan the flames of hatred against Israel and the Jewish community.

HR Canada Charitable Organization and Innohives did a long-term, two-year study on the Hamas-Israel war that found there was an asymmetry in the CBC's coverage. Most specifically, they found it elevated radical voices like Independent Jewish Voices Canada, which is a radical, anti-Zionist hate group. Giving them this platform bestows a kind of credibility, which they don't deserve.

I'll allow Dr. Haran Shani-Narkiss and Amanda Eskenasi to speak in more detail about their work.

[Haran Shani-Narkiss, Chief Executive Officer, Innohives, HonestReporting Canada]

First of all, thank you, Mike.

I'm here as a scientist, and if there are any questions about the research we've conducted, I'm happy to answer them.

Taking into account the asymmetry that's already inherent in the Israeli-Gaza war, we found some very troubling evidence showing, for example, how the CBC is using headlines in order to promote one side of the story such that even when you compare it to the actual reporting by the CBC—

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Chair, there's a sound issue again. The interpreters are having trouble doing their job.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

I'm sorry, but we don't have good sound for your intervention.