Regulatory, Telecom & Media News – CBC/Radio-Canada appointment yet to be finalized

Canadian Heritage says a decision has yet to be finalized on who will succeed CBC/Radio-Canada President Catherine Tait. Several Quebec media outlets, including Radio-Canada, reported this week that TV5 Québec Canada CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard will replace Tait in January, citing unnamed sources. In an email to Broadcast Dialogue, the office of Min. Pascale St-Onge said a candidate has yet to be confirmed for the position. The department said formal steps that must take place before a candidate is selected, have not yet been completed. Read more here.

Robina Aryubwal, a women’s rights activist, and Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) have jointly won PEN Canada’s 2024 Marie-Ange Garrigue Prize. The prize recognizes a Canadian individual or organization that has provided significant help to a writer or journalist outside Canada who has faced threats, violence, harassment, or imprisonment for reporting or commenting on issues of public interest. When the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, JHR launched an emergency evacuation effort. Within seven days, JHR had $600,000 in its emergency evacuation fund, which eventually grew to over $2 million. Aryubwal was recruited by JHR to help with evacuation, resettlement and integration efforts. Since 2021, JHR and its partner organizations have relocated, referred, and resettled more than 500 at-risk journalists, human rights defenders, fixers, interpreters, educators and their families from Afghanistan, many of them to Canada.

Shree Paradkar has won PEN Canada’s 2024 Ken Filkow Prize, recognizing her for advancing freedom of expression in Canada. A race and social justice columnist at the Toronto Star – where she also served as the first internal ombud in a newsroom in Canada – Paradkar has worked as a journalist in Toronto, Singapore, Bangalore and Mumbai, and received two Amnesty Awards for human rights reporting as well as an Atkinson Fellowship, during which she travelled the world and reported on success stories of education systems tackling oppression. Paradkar is one of Massey College’s William Southam Journalism Fellows for the 2024-25 cohort.