MONTREAL — Some of the biggest players in the Quebec film and TV industry are denouncing the appointment of Guy Fournier to the new Canada Media Fund board because he’s on the payroll of cable magnate Pierre Karl Péladeau.

‘How can Fournier possibly be independent when he works for the Journal de Montreal?’ said Claire Samson, the president of Quebec’s producers association, the APFTQ, speaking to Playback Daily. Fournier, a former TV writer and CBC chair, pens a TV column in Montreal’s most popular tabloid, which is part of Péladeau’s massive Quebecor media empire. ‘This is an insult to our intelligence. It’s very obvious he’s going to be taking his instructions from Quebecor.’

In an unprecedented show of solidarity, four other industry groups representing directors, actors, writers and technicians joined forces with the APFTQ to publicly express their displeasure with the appointment of Fournier, who was one of five nominated by the cable and direct-to-home satellite companies: the Association des réalisateurs et réalisatrices du Québec, the Union des artistes, the Association québécoise des techniciens de l’image et du son and the Société professionnelle des auteurs et des compositeurs du Québec.

‘The government has failed its first test. They said the board would be independent and it’s not. Now we are very worried. What does this appointment say about what the consultation process will be like?’ said Samson, referring to the upcoming consultations on CMF’s guidelines.

Fournier is a controversial figure. He is respected for his more than a half-century of experience in this province’s television industry, yet he often gets himself in hot water for his outrageous views. After writing a column about bestiality in a Quebec entertainment magazine and comparing a bowel movement to good sex on a community radio program, Fournier drew much criticism and in 2006 resigned from the CBC board.

Despite his outlandish views, Fournier knows a great deal about the TV industry. Now in his late seventies, Fournier founded the l’Institut québécois du cinéma in 1970 and in the ’08s, helped launch the TQS network. He also wrote the much-loved Quebec teleroman, Jamais deux sans toi, and in 2003 wrote a comprehensive report for the CRTC on the state of Quebec French-language TV.

But he also has long-standing ties with the Péladeau family. In 2007, he told a Quebec journalist he was working on a feature film about his friend and founder of the Quebecor empire, the late Pierre Péladeau.

Samson says there is nothing the film and TV community can do except make its concerns known. ‘There is nothing we can do legally. But we feel that if the government really thinks Fournier is independent, they are blind,’ she says.