Guy Fournier has resigned as chairman of the CBC after controversial comments made last week in a newspaper column.

Fournier "has increasingly lost the confidence of Canada's new government," Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda said in announcing the resignation in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

Guy Fournier sparked a public furor over a column he wrote in gossip magazine 7 Jours mocking the sexual habits of Lebanese.
(Tom Hanson/ Canadian Press)

A public furor arose last week over a column he wrote in gossip magazine 7 Jours mocking the sexual habits of Lebanese.

The column read, in part: "In Lebanon, the law makes it possible for men to have sexual intercourse with animals as long as they are females. To do the same thing with male animals could lead to the death penalty."

It sparked an uproar in the Lebanese Canadian community.

He created further controversy after telling La Presse he didn't understand what the fuss was about.

Fournier apologized on Sunday on the program Tout le monde en parle, and said he would cease writing the column and concentrate on his duties as CBC chairman.

However, his comments were a national scandal by Monday.

Last May, he was accused of offending standards of decency after telling a Toronto French-language community radio station CHOQ-FM  that at his age it gave him more pleasure to defecate than to make love.

More serious were comments he made about the French-language public broadcaster, questioning the objectivity of its news service.

An author, producer and journalist, Fournier, 75, was appointed by the previous Liberal government to the board of directors of CBC/Radio-Canada in February 2005 for a four-year term. He became chairman the following September.

CBC president Robert Rabinovich will be acting chairman until Prime Minister Stephen Harper appoints a replacement for Fournier.