CBC official quits by Krista Foss and Heather Scoffield

by Krista Foss and Heather Scoffield

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation quietly lost a passionate defender yesterday, as the head of its board of directors stepped down amid the furor of federal election-day coverage.

Guylaine Saucier – accountant, entrepreneur and member of the Order of Canada – has resigned her post as chairwoman of the CBC's board of directors, four months before her official term was to have officially ended.

For some insiders, the strangely timed resignation signals that Ms. Saucier lost a power struggle with Robert Rabinovitch, who became CBC president and CEO last year.

Others believe that Ms. Saucier was simply ready to move on.

'She is passionate about what she does. She is a workaholic and deeply committed,' Jane Heffelfinger, a Victoria arts activist and CBC board member said yesterday. She acknowledged that the timing of the announcement was 'kind of strange,' since board members had known about the resignation since last week.

Yesterday, a brief letter from Mr. Rabinovitch to CBC employees stated that Ms. Saucier had informed Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of her decision last Friday.

The letter said that Ms. Saucier decided to leave the CBC because of 'significantly increased duties' as a result of a position she accepted with the Joint Committee on Corporate Governance last July.

Her resignation is effective as of Dec. 8, and if the Prime Minister's Office does not appoint another chair before then, Mr. Rabinovitch will take on the duties himself until the position is filled, a spokesman said yesterday.

Ms. Saucier, who first joined the CBC board in 1995, was known not to see eye to eye with Mr. Rabinovitch. A year ago, as newly appointed president, he launched a plan to cut all regional and local programming from English television. Backed by the CBC's unions, a public outcry and Liberal MPs, Ms. Saucier fought the plan, and forced Mr. Rabinovitch to back down. He agreed to only slash about half the regional programming.

A spokesman for the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting said Ms. Saucier had called last spring for the federal government to restore funding to the Crown corporation. Ian Morrison said Ms. Saucier had failed in her attempt to get more money for the CBC but he hoped her resignation did not mean that restored of funding was a lost cause.

© Globe Information Services