Radio-Canada’s most recent New Year’s Eve special was ‘abusive,’ ‘degrading’ and inappropriate for younger audiences, according to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which has weighed in on the controversial Bye Bye 2008.

The council also said the special crossed a line with respect to on-screen violence, but had no problem with its treatment of former child star Nathalie Simard and other public figures.

The verdict follows the uproar that greeted the SRC special, denounced by Quebecers as racist and crude because of sketches that made light of, among other things, domestic violence and the prospect of Barack Obama’s assassination.

CBSC’s Quebec panel found ‘nothing redeeming in the allegedly comedic notion that an American President should be shot, still less that this would be easier to achieve because of the colour of the President’s skin,’ says the report. ‘It was a disturbing, wounding, abusive racial comment.’

A sketch that depicted the son of hockey star Patrick Roy beating up his mother also ‘went too far,’ according to the panel, and violated the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’Violence Code.

However, the panel ruled that Bye Bye‘s treatment of public figures such as Céline Dion, Chantal Lacroix and Simard did not breach CAB’s ethical code because the sketches ‘poked fun but did not bludgeon’ the subjects. Some viewers complained that the show made light of Simard because Bye Bye co-host and coproducer Véronique Cloutier is the daughter of Guy Cloutier — Simard’s former agent who went to prison for sexually abusing her as a child.

The panel concluded that because the skit in question focused on other aspects of Simard’s life, not the abuse, it did not find it ‘problematic.’

Because the sketches contained sexual innuendo and coarse language, the panel also noted that it was inappropriate to rerun Bye Bye at 8 p.m. on Jan. 1 without the usual advisories for parents of young viewers.

SRC initially stood by the show, though Cloutier and co-creator Louis Morissette later apologized. The CBSC examined all 210 complaints about Bye Bye 2008 on request from the CRTC, marking the first time the council has reviewed the programming of a public broadcaster.

The CRTC is expected to file its own judgment, informed by the CBSC’s view, sometime this summer.