Leaked Audio: CBC Executive Questions Former Host Dhanraj Over Critical Post on Broadcaster’s President Declining Interview

A leaked audio recording captures a CBC executive confronting former host Travis Dhanraj over a post criticizing the network president’s rejection of an interview on funding and priorities.

The recording, published by the National Post, comes as Dhanraj announced his decision to resign from the network on July 7, alleging editorial bias in the network. His lawyer later said CBC hasn’t accepted his resignation at this point. CBC says that there has been no wrongdoing on its part, and that Dhanraj is still a unionized employee. 

The office of Dhanraj’s lawyer Kathryn Marshall confirmed to The Epoch Times that the leaked audio recording of the April 2024 meeting is authentic. 

The meeting took place in the immediate wake of a post Dhanraj made April 19 on X inviting CBC’s then-President Catherine Tait to come on his show Canada Tonight to discuss the network’s executive bonus system. Tait did not appear on his show. 

Dhanraj took a leave of absence in July before returning briefly in December and taking another leave of absence after several weeks, after which he has not appeared on air for CBC. 

The publicized audio recording from the April meeting between CBC’s senior director of digital publishing and streaming Andree Lau and Dhanraj and a union representative, runs just over four minutes in length, though the actual meeting appears to have run for a longer period of time. The audio clip has Dhanraj justifying his post on X to Lau, who questions whether the post meets CBC’s “standards of integrity” given it referred to a matter of funding, which could affect Dhanraj’s own interest. 

In the recording, Dhanraj says he does not understand the conflict of interest concerns being raised and says the information in his post had been “widely reported on” and was not confidential or sensitive. He adds that he finds it “problematic” that Lau seems to be putting the interests of the CBC ahead of journalistic principles. 

CBC Head of Public Affairs Chuck Thompson told The Epoch Times that “Mr. Dhanraj was never formally disciplined for that post.”

He added that “the discussions in April with Mr. Dhanraj were about a range of issues outside the tweet; there was a particular emphasis on CBC News policies about conflicts of interest, violations of journalistic standards and protocols on how we report on ourselves.”

According to Thompson, “Mr. Dhanraj violated these policies and was asked about them by his manager with his union representative present. He also secretly recorded the meeting after agreeing not to.”

According to Marshall’s office, Dhanraj was “strongly discouraged from booking conservative voices” in his capacity as Canada Tonight’s host and was retaliated against after his April post asking Tait onto his show. In his July 7 post on X, Dhanraj said he had “no choice” but to quit CBC because it avoided “hard truths” and allowed important voices to be “sidelined.”

Conservative MPs on the Heritage Committee have asked for hearings to be held looking into CBC and Dhanraj’s case. 

Marshall said Dhanraj plans to file a human rights complaint against the CBC.