CBC president Robert Rabinovitch defended his lockout of the pubcaster’s 5,500 employees before a parliamentary committee late last month, insisting the eight-week work stoppage was necessary to prevent a strike later in the year, during the rollout of the new TV season and the lucrative hockey season.

He blamed the union for provoking the lockout, and went on to suggest that Ottawa had laid the groundwork for the disruption by cutting CBC’s budget through the 1990s.

Rabinovitch was flanked by network VPs Richard Stursberg, Sylvain Lafrance, Jane Chalmers and George Smith through the three-hour hearing before the all-party Heritage committee in Ottawa.

MPs questioned the execs about the buildup to the lockout and whether management had bargained in good faith with the Canadian Media Guild, noting that Rabinovitch had warned the CBC board of a lockout months beforehand. It has been suggested by critics and the CMG that the network initiated the late-summer lockout in order to save money in unpaid salaries, perhaps as much as $50 million according to one union estimate.

Stursberg denied this, and told the room that extra costs related to the lockout had burned up any savings. ‘There is, at the end of the day, nothing left,’ he said.

But the MPs were not easily convinced, and several seemed to doubt management’s side of the story.

Liberal Denis Coderre noted that this was the third labor shutdown during Rabinovitch’s five-year term, quipping, ‘It seems to be the Rabinovitch way to impose lockouts.’

Carole Lavallée of the Bloc Québécois came down harder, telling the Ceeb president, ‘There is no confidence in you around the table. These MPs have no compliments to pay you.’

Arnold Amber, president of the union’s branch at the CBC, later refuted Rabinovitch’s claim that the union was planning to strike later in the TV season. The CMG strike mandate, he noted in a statement, would have expired by Sept. 6.

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