Catherine Tait has left her mark in Canadian broadcast history as the first woman to lead CBC/Radio-Canada, but she says she wasn’t interested in the job for the sake of legacy.

“You do it because of service and love for public broadcasting,” she tells Playback in an interview in her office at the pubcaster’s Toronto headquarters, ahead of the end of her tenure on Jan. 2, 2025.

Joining on July 3, 2018, Tait soon expanded her reach globally, becoming chair of the Global Task Force for public media in 2019. She says it was “a privilege to be able to take CBC/Radio-Canada to the world stage.”

She also oversaw an “an enormous culture change” after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 to ensure CBC/Radio-Canada reflected all Canadians, which she says is reflected in shows like Sort Of (Sphere Media) and Paid in Full: The Battle for Black Music (Supercollider, GreenDoor Pictures, Pink Towel) and its hiring efforts. In its 2023-24 annual report, the public broadcaster reported that 62% of external hires were from Indigenous and/or racialized communities or persons with a disability, exceeding its target of 41%.

It hasn’t all been rosy. Tait has faced criticism from the public and government officials alike, appearing multiple times to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage over CBC/Radio-Canada’s planned cuts for 2024-25 to make up for a projected $125-million deficit. Not to mention the Conservative Party’s ongoing campaign to defund CBC. But, despite it all, she says she’s optimistic, looking toward working with her successor – TV5 president and CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard – on the transition.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Playback: You’ve been such a global figure when it comes to advocacy for public media. What do you think are some of your biggest achievements?

Catherine Tait: Early on in my tenure I realized the huge challenge that we all face in public media is the issue of the globalization of the media business in general.

Whether it’s entertainment or news and information, social media, all of it is global now, and we as domestic players are really David facing Goliath. That led me to this idea of, ‘We have to collaborate with other like-minded organizations and public broadcasters around the world.’

Whether it was the BBC or ABC in Australia or France Télévisions in Paris, the more I talked to people, the better I understood that we were all facing the same issues: financial pressures, often hostile political environments and coping with how consumers and our audiences have changed their consumption patterns.

We were able to form some important partnerships. Stuff the British Stole (Cream Productions, Wooden Horse WildBear Entertainment), for example, that show came out of a podcast. Paid in Full (pictured right), the BBC/CBC coproduction, came out of this history of collaboration that we’ve had with the organization.

You mentioned hostile political environments. How do you feel the average politician, across all parties, understands the value and the need for CBC/Radio-Canada?

I actually think that the conversation around CBC/Radio-Canada is getting better. The more it became an emotional issue, the more people started thinking, ‘Wait a minute, I care about CBC, I care about Radio-Canada,’ and we’ve seen that in the narrative over the last year.

I’m heartened by how many people over these past six years of my tenure are deeply attached to CBC and the legacy of CBC and of Radio-Canada in their communities. Whether it’s loving a show or loving one of our hosts, or the very fact that they turn to CBC or Radio-Canada in times of need. That connection is what ultimately will win the day for CBC/Radio-Canada. So, despite hostility, I’m very optimistic.

According to recent data from CBC, about 79% of Canadians want to see CBC/Radio-Canada in the future and 73% consider it a trusted news source.

That, by the way, is the average, so there are pockets of people who do not feel that way and we need to pay attention to that. We can’t ignore 25% of the population. That’s a point of urgency, in my opinion.

You’ve previously said that one of the things you’d wished you had done was push that sense of urgency. Do you see your successor, Marie-Philippe Bouchard, taking on that responsibility?

Absolutely. The good news is this is a person who has 28 years of experience working at Radio-Canada. She comes in with an enormous advantage of knowing the place in the way that I certainly didn’t [when I started] because I was a producer and I only saw it from the outside looking in. She is going to be very well-positioned to continue the conversations and to defend the value of public broadcasting across the country.

Some of the cuts announced last year included $25 million for travel and sponsorships and $40 million in programming costs. After the government provided $42 million to help stabilize the budget, how much of those planned cuts came to fruition?

At the end of the day we cut 130 people and we eliminated about 200 vacant positions. It was very hard, but it was nowhere near the 800 that we thought we were going to have to do.

I started in this job in 2018 and I’ve been talking about the structural deficit at CBC/Radio-Canada. This was the first time that we actually had to face a cut because we were able to fill the gaps with one-time funds we received. We were in the pandemic, so we were able to quite drastically reduce costs. Nobody was travelling, people were working from home and weren’t going to conferences or having workshops. Everything kind of shrunk. Coming out of the pandemic, like all businesses, we got hit with huge inflation and rising production costs. That’s when we realized we were going to hit the wall.

In terms of the direct impact to independent producers, did you see a reduction in the volume of commissions or production budgets?

We had to put a hold on a lot of programming decisions, not just at CBC, but also at Radio-Canada. One of the great things about CBC, having had a background as a comedy producer, is that CBC could give more time to shows to find their legs because you don’t necessarily hit it out of the park in the first season. For those producers who started watching Schitt’s Creek (pictured left) at the beginning and right the way through, you see the evolution of a show and how magic happens over time.

So we did have to cancel some shows and we had to pull back from our big specials, and that’s going to have an impact at the end of the day. I’m very hopeful in the next budget, and coming out of the [Heritage] Minister’s mandate review, that there will be some willingness to address the longer-term financial stability of CBC/Radio-Canada. But that’s out of my hands.

When the end of your term was announced, were there any goals or priorities that you set for yourself before finishing out your tenure? And did you achieve them?

The biggest for me was delivering the National Indigenous Strategy in February and the creation of an Indigenous Office that is funded and reaffirming the central role that the public broadcaster has to play in our journey to truth and reconciliation.

We’re already seeing some of the great initiatives coming out of that. For example, we held the Public Broadcasters International Conference in Ottawa in October. For the first time ever, we dedicated a day to how public media serve Indigenous audiences around the world, not just in Canada. We had the Sámi there, the Māori, the Aboriginal people of Australia talking about language, archives and the right to control your intellectual property as an Indigenous creator.

It was fantastic to have that conversation on a global scale rather than just trying to solve all the problems by ourselves. The Māori have done amazing work in language preservation, as an example.

You’ve had a front seat to the rollercoaster that has been the evolution of the broadcasting sector since 2018. Where do you see things going in 2025?

Well, 2025 is probably more of the same. I would say the real question is in 2035. Think about it, 10 or 15 years ago there was no Facebook, no TikTok, no Instagram, and look how those platforms define our days. So, in the next 10 years, I have to assume that the nerds are going to continue doing what they do creatively, coming up with new platforms and new ways for us to connect.

For CBC/Radio-Canada, there’s a gravitational pull to the legacy assets. [CNN Worldwide chairman and CEO] Mark Thompson has said, ‘How do you invent the future if you’re spending 90% of your time worrying and managing the past?’

It’s not to say television and radio aren’t critical, they still are, but even from 2018 to today, the percentage of people who are watching linear television in the English market has switched over with the number of people that used to be digital-only. That’s a trend that isn’t going to stop. The reality is if you want to be relevant in the future, you have to pay attention to that younger, more diverse group that is more interested in content brands than in delivery brands. Like, does it matter that Schitt’s Creek came from CBC or Netflix? That’s challenging for the future of our industry.

What’s next for you?

A good, long holiday. [laughs]

People always ask, ‘Will you go back into producing?’ For the right story, sure thing. But I think the thing that I have learned here that was really a gift was that we don’t have to accept that social media and the internet are evil and are hostile to women, toxic, racist and antisemitic. We don’t have to accept that.

I’d like to play a role in advocating for a safer, better online experience. It comes out of the work we did in online harms. We know women and women of colour, doesn’t matter if you’re a public figure or if you’re a journalist, are disproportionately targeted. I feel like I need to look that one in the face a little bit and try to see if I can’t help.

Any final words?

I would just say for the independent producers who read Playback: These feel like dark days. The industry is in crisis, there is no doubt about it. More than ever it matters to have stories originated from Canada owned by Canadian creators, controlled by Canadian producers.

I’ve spent my entire career in this business and I think maybe I lived the golden years and I feel very, very concerned about this next generation of producers who may not have the same advantages. It’s really important that Canadians get a Canadian point of view on what’s going on in the world and what’s going on here at home. We can’t give that away to global companies.

This story originally appeared in Playback’s 2024 Winter issue