Radio-Canada’s 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 it 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.’

SRC initially stood by the show, though co-host and coproducer Véronique 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.