(Ottawa) MPs have invited several senior executives from BCE and Bell Canada to testify later this month about the company’s decision to cut about 9% of its workforce this year.
The House of Commons heritage committee has agreed to invite BCE President and CEO Mirko Bibic to address the cuts, which include impacting newsrooms across the country.
The committee also agreed to invite Bell Media President Sean Cohan and the parent company’s CFO, Curtis Millen, as well as a handful of others.
The Liberal motion to invite the leaders on February 29 was supported by the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois, with the committee’s Conservatives abstaining from voting.
BCE Inc., the parent company of Bell Media, announced last week that it would reduce its workforce by 4,800 positions, terminate several television newscasts and sell 45 of its 103 radio stations.
The company blamed the federal government and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for the cuts, saying Ottawa was too slow to provide aid to struggling media companies.