The challenge by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (SRC) to the decision rendered this summer by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regarding the use of the “word beginning with an N” on its airwaves will be heard by the Federal Court of Appeal.
Posted at 10:29 p.m.
“In accordance with usual practice, the Court did not issue reasons” for its decision to hear the CBC’s motion, reads the brief notice posted on the federal court’s website on Monday. The hearing date is not specified at this time.
Recall that the SRC had to apologize on July 13 after being blamed by the CRTC for the use of the “word beginning with an N” during a radio program in the summer of 2020.
This was then used four times during the segment “News with Simon Jodoin: Are certain ideas becoming taboo? », presented on August 17, 2020 during the show 15-18 on ICI Radio-Canada Première.
Columnist Simon Jodoin and host Annie Desrochers discussed a controversy surrounding Pierre Vallières’ book white niggers of america.
“A racist and hurtful insult”
While acknowledging that the “word [commençant par un] N” is a “hurtful racist slur, in both French and English”, and that “it must be put into context in order to try to minimize the harm that its use could cause”, the CBC had indicated that it intended appeal the CRTC’s decision.
“He had neither the authority nor the jurisdiction to make this decision and, in exercising his discretionary power, ignored the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Broadcasting Act,” we pleaded last July.
In a rare interview given to French-language media, the artist behind the complaint that led to the CRTC’s decision, Ricardo Lamour, called on the public broadcaster to be more careful about the use of this term. .
“It is not an attack on freedom of expression, this decision [du CRTC] or this action that I did, it is a call to the responsibility of expression, a call to the depth of the subjects that are maintained by Caucasian people with words that have been used as a weapon for centuries and for which there is a pedagogical deficit to inform the dominant society”, he pleaded at the microphone of journalist Jean Numa Goudou, of the monthly In Text.