CRTC sides with Black Montrealer over use of N-word on Radio-Canada

A Black Montrealer hopes Radio-Canada will do a better job of considering his community's reality after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ordered the public broadcaster to apologize in writing for the use of the N-word on its airwaves.

Ricardo Lamour, a local artist and social worker who filed the complaint, said the ruling represents an opportunity to turn CBC/Radio-Canada into a "more coherent public broadcaster."

"It was about time," Lamour told CBC News when asked to describe his reaction to the ruling. 

"I don't know if it's a historic decision, but it seems to me, an important decision."

The CRTC also ruled that Radio-Canada must report, by no later than Sept. 27, "on internal measures and programming best practices that it will put in place to ensure that it better addresses similar issues in the future." The report and the written apology both have to be made public.

The CRTC has also told Radio-Canada it has until July 29 to come up with ways to mitigate the effects of the use of the N-word in that segment, given that it's still available online. 

For Lamour, the ruling represents the end of an ordeal that began nearly two years ago, when radio host Annie Desrochers and columnist Simon Jodoin uttered the N-word several times during a segment on the 15-18 afternoon program.

It happened during a discussion on Aug. 17, 2020 about a petition that demanded the firing of a Concordia University professor who had quoted the title of a famous book from Pierre Vallières that features the N-word.

"During the discussion, the host and the commentator used the 'N-word' four times, three times in French and one time in English, in a segment of six minutes 27 seconds," the CRTC ruling states.

Lamour was in the CBC/Radio-Canada building in Montreal, listening to the 15-18 show with headphones when the word was used. Just moments later, it was his turn to be interviewed on the program on a completely different topic.

Lamour said he was invited as a guest on the show to talk about his work as a youth mentor. After hearing the word, Lamour said he had a hard time getting through his interview.

"I lost focus," he said. "I was irritated."

He said he noticed that the show did not warn the audience that the N-word would be used. He also said that members of the show should have been more aware of how the use of the word would be perceived, given that it was less than three months after the murder of George Floyd had sparked global protests about racial injustice.

The CRTC agreed with Lamour.