A former Ottawa mandarin, outgoing CBC president and CEO Robert Rabinovitch found himself over the last eight years thrust into the public eye to battle regulators and union bosses.

And as he prepares to step down on Dec. 31 to make way for Montreal lawyer Hubert T. Lacroix, Rabinovitch tells Playback he’s far more comfortable working the corridors of power than taking political center stage.

‘I’m not one for the grand speeches and grand theories. I’m a public person, but a shy public person. My job was to manage the CBC,’ he says.

Though he hired more colorful deputies, including Richard Stursberg, EVP of English services, to do his public bidding, a reluctant Rabinovitch found himself stepping into the breach to defend himself against the charge that seeking efficiencies and ratings for the CBC betrayed the public broadcaster’s mandate.

After only weeks on the job in early 2000 (he began in November 1999), Rabinovitch brawled publicly with then-CRTC chair Françoise Bertrand after being told to wean the CBC off Hollywood movies and professional sports programs.

Earlier in his career, Rabinovitch had held various posts in the federal government, and, when asked by a reporter whether he might defy the CRTC, he borrowed a phrase from former boss Pierre Trudeau, infamously replying ‘Just watch me.’

He regrets his words in that instance, but not his actions.

‘That was a silly thing for me to say. But I knew I was standing on good ground,’ Rabinovitch explains today.

He remains similarly unbowed by the CBC’s 2005 lockout of 5,500 employees – another public fight that his critics insist proved to be his undoing.

‘The most memorable act that Rabinovitch and his sidekick Stursberg did was locking out CBC employees for eight weeks in a dispute they lost,’ argues Stephen Waddell, national executive director of ACTRA.

Rabinovitch insists otherwise.

‘I could show you chapter and verse how we won hands down,’ he says, pointing to the fact that the CBC secured the right to hire a fixed percentage of contract workers.

‘I’d rather not have done it. It was very painful. But this place needed tough management, and that’s why I was sent here,’ he adds.

During a memorable grilling by the standing committee on Canadian Heritage in October 2005, when Rabinovitch was accused of unilaterally locking out CBC employees and disrupting TV viewers, he deflected blame onto the union.

He does the same today: ‘It takes two to tango. The union didn’t want negotiations.’

The Canadian Media Guild’s CBC branch president Arnold Amber insists Rabinovitch is rewriting history when he talks of wins from the 2005 labor dispute.

‘On the weekend of the lockout, [CBC management] said they wanted to be able to convert 2,300 more jobs into contract jobs,’ Amber recalls.

Eight weeks later, a final settlement forced on the CBC with the arrival of the NHL hockey season included the stipulation that CBC could hire one contract employee for every 10 people on staff. The CBC says it employs around 10,000 workers.

‘If you wanted 2,300 [contract] workers, and only got 10-1, you figure out who won,’ Amber concludes.

Still painting himself as a bulwark of effective organization, Rabinovitch says he’s leaving Lacroix a public broadcaster better able to survive and sustain itself in the 21st century. Recent accomplishments include re-signing with the NHL for six years beyond 2007/08 for a reported $100 million per season – prior CRTC warnings be damned – as well as the integration of CBC’s radio, TV and online services, and expanding its reach on emerging platforms, including podcasts, cell phones and live online streaming.

‘We are now a different organization and we will survive the Internet,’ Rabinovitch says.

Rabinovitch has also urged the federal government to help finance the CBC’s rollout of HD television and extend radio coverage to 15 underserved markets countrywide.

But, above all else, Rabinovitch insists the CBC has earned the right at the end of his reign to ask Ottawa for more operating capital, something it could not do when he started.

But he admits dark clouds still hang over the pubcaster, which has had its share of ratings struggles. But while critics accuse the broadcaster of dumbing down its programming in search of ratings, Rabinovitch notes progress and sees the ongoing need to experiment.

‘We’re stable, but we need to grow, and we need to be able to fail,’ he says. ‘We can do a Little Mosque on the Prairie, but a few programs failed.’

But despite the frustrations, all the sweeping industry changes and the controversies he has had to endure, Rabinovitch looks back on his time at the helm of the CBC with pride.

‘I think I did a few good things,’ he says. ‘I stabilized [the CBC]. I helped it grow.’