The CBC and its supervisor, the CRTC, are certainly public institutions, and they are headed by administrators of almost no public profile. Why should it be otherwise? One is a national broadcaster, the other regulates a rich and occasionally cultural broadcast industry at which the CBC is theoretically the centre. These are important bodies, but the supervisors appointed by the government ought not to have any more public standing than the chair of the Great Lakes Commission or any egg marketing board. What would be the point?
There did seem to be one, once. Public figures—academics such as Davidson Dunton, opposition politicians such as Stephen Lewis, writers such as Roch Carrier—were appointed to the leadership of important public cultural posts, where they were in a position to make trouble, and sometimes did.
Sometimes these appointments are still confusing years later. Connoisseurs will be chewing over Lewis at the United Nations and John Crispo at...
Bill Cameron is a Toronto journalist, essayist and novelist. He is the senior interviewer at the national public affairs network iChannel and teaches communications ethics and interviewing at Ryerson University.
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