CBC News Editors' Blog

Posted by Susan Marjetti, Regional Director of CBC Radio, Toronto 99.1

It's Citizenship week in Canada. Here in the Toronto Broadcasting Centre, the atrium is being prepared for 500 new Canadians and their families to be sworn in as this country’s newest citizens on Friday, October 19th. There are many of these ceremonies taking place across Canada. But it's appropriate that one of them is being held here; here in the heart of the public broadcaster’s network centre, Toronto.

CBC is just one of many organizations changing the way we do business in order to ensure that those new voices and stories are heard on our airwaves. We're also working to ensure that our workforce reflects the country.
And that's different, and modified, depending on where you live.

But perhaps no where more so than in Toronto.

In 1961, Toronto was only three per cent diverse. Today it's (according to some statistics) as high as 60 per cent. According to the United Nations —Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world. Over 100 countries are represented here. It's just one example of a complicated and complex society where, as journalists, programmers, and music and performance producers, we encounter not only a range of languages and cultures, but a variety of opinions, beliefs, histories and backgrounds.

We've known for years that people need to see and hear themselves reflected in order to feel connected and to be Canadian. The alternative is to be marginalized.

Covering a city like Toronto, a city that embodies the very definition of a cultural mosaic, is critical if the public broadcaster is to remain relevant and valued by more Canadians.

And that's our mission.

We are the "public" broadcaster. In making the decision to ensure we are reflecting a range of voices, stories, music and performance we have to ask ourselves whose public? Which public? And then we have to begin to put actions and measures in place to ensure that our stations "sound and look," like our communities sound and look.

It starts on the ground at a community level, recognizing the demographic make up and watching how it is
being heard and seen on our programs and newscasts. Whether it's the local morning radio show in Toronto, Metro Morning, which has doubled its audience, and catapulted to number 1 in the most competitive media market in Canada, or our local morning radio programs in Vancouver and Calgary which have also positioned themselves at the very top of their respective markets, they have done it by improved reflection of their communities. Looking at the Canadian experience through a diverse lens is vital. And this lens extends to our expanded Regional supper hour news on TV, and the international success of CBC television’s Little Mosque on the Prairie. In fact it informs the choices we are making through all our programming.

At its core, it's an ideas business. Who is at the table brings a range of ideas and perspectives to our story meetings. And that's why hiring is critical. We are asking all of our leaders, at a local and network level, to set hiring goals and ensure ultimately that their workforce looks like the community in which they broadcast.
And we need and want that to permeate our airwaves. We aim to exude the essence of Canada today in all its richness and diversity.

To be frank, we are way past what is roti, Ramadan and the Year of the Rat?
Increasingly our programming and storytelling is more sophisticated. It may be set in a community or told through that community’s lens, but it transcends that community to speak to the universal, and the needs of the broader and wider community-at-large. An example was a recent Townhall called: Growing up without Men. It was based on research showing that two out of three Jamaican families are single mother-led. However the role of the father, the role men play in the family, speaks beyond a situation in one community to generate compelling discussion that touches all of us — across all groups and communities.

And so it is the universal, told through a first person lens, that allows storytelling to remain a powerful force and perhaps a driver of unity.

Many stories. Many voices. Many journeys. One goal , to be part of Canada.

It is immigrants who, as Adrienne Clarkson has said, form the very heart of this country and what it means to be Canadian.

Do you feel your voice is heard on our airwaves, in your community? Do you believe that your views are reflected on our services and platforms nation-wide? Please let us know.

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