Catherine Tait

Prior to joining CBC/Radio-Canada, Catherine Tait had worked in film and television production in Canada and the U.S. for more than three decades.

She served as Manager of Policy and Planning at Telefilm Canada in the 1980s, before going on to become Director and Cultural Attaché with the Canadian Cultural Centre in France from 1989 to 1991.[4]

In Canada, Tait was President and COO of Salter Street Films from 1997 to 2001, producing such shows as the long-running CBC comedy This Hour Has 22 Minutes.[1]

In 2002, she and film producer Liz Manne co-founded New York–based Duopoly Inc., an independent film, television and digital content company.[1] Tait served as President until 2018. She also co-founded digital content provider iThentic in 2006 and the Canadian broadcaster Hollywood Suite in 2010.[4]

Catherine Tait presented her vision for the public broadcaster in May 2019, with the unveiling of the Corporation’s new strategic plan, Your Stories, Taken to Heart.[5] The plan covers five priorities: global reach, digital, kids content, regions and diversity.[6]

In a speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, Tait described how taking Canada to the world was the “spearhead”[7] of CBC/Radio-Canada’s strategic plan, in order to counter the competitive threat of the digital giants. Since being appointed Chair of the Global Task Force for Public Media in September 2019,[3] Tait has signed collaboration agreements (co-development and content sharing) between CBC/Radio-Canada and other public broadcasters around the world, such as the ABC,[8] the BBC,[9] France Télévisions,[10] ZDF[11] and RTBF.[12]

As part of the public broadcaster’s ongoing digital transformation, in September 2018, Tait announced a new streaming service, CBC Gem, at Content Canada, an industry event in collaboration with the Toronto International Film Festival. The service launched in December 2018.[13] Under her leadership, two new audio apps were developed – CBC Listen[14] and Radio-Canada OHdio[15] – providing a one-stop destination for all the public broadcaster’s audio content (music, podcasts and radio shows). Both apps were launched in fall 2019.

At the international Kidscreen Summit in February 2019, Tait committed to expanding the public broadcaster’s kids content offering, especially on CBC Gem.[16] During her tenure, the Corporation also launched two news services for kids 13 and under: CBC Kids News[17] in 2018 and MAJ[18] (Mon actualité du jour) in 2019.

At the Banff World Media Festival in June 2019, Tait announced that she would ask the production companies with whom she does business to ensure that at least one key creative position – producer, director, writer, showrunner and lead performer – is held by members of visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities and members of the LGBTQ2+ community.[8]

In an interview with CBC/Radio-Canada reporters in Saskatchewan, Tait said she wanted to move more production to regional centres, particularly for radio and digital.[19] This strategic priority has resulted in CBC stepping up its pop-up bureau approach at locations such as Stanley Mission, Saskatchewan;[20] Winkler and Morden, Manitoba;[21] northeast Calgary; and the Tsuut’ina First Nation in Alberta.[22] CBC has also increased production outside Toronto, with the national radio show Cost of Living[23] and the podcast West of Centre[24] both being produced out of Calgary. The public broadcaster’s French-language network, Radio-Canada, has added new videojournalists in Yellowknife and Iqaluit to cover the North, as well as a more mobile workforce at its Abitibi-Témiscamingue station.[25]

Tait came under fire for the unparalleled comparison of Netflix to colonial imperialism in India and parts of Africa. She said "I was thinking about the British Empire and how, if you were there and you were the viceroy of India, you would feel that you were doing only good for the people of India. Or similar, if you were in French Africa, you would think, I’m educating them, I’m bringing their resources to the world, and I’m helping them. There was a time when cultural imperialism was absolutely accepted. Fast forward to what happens after imperialism and the damage that can do to local communities. So all I would say is, let us be mindful of how it is we as Canadians respond to global companies coming into our country."[26]

TV critic, John Doyle, who is known for critiquing Canadian TV wrote about Tait's statements saying "CBC's problem is complacency not imperialism."[27]

Tait's comments made American headlines with J.J. McCullough of The Washington Post writing a piece about the incident. McCullough pointed out an important fact about Canada's heavily government-regulated TV industry "Given the sensitivities of our time, one might assume the recent comments of Catherine Tait, president of the state-sponsored Canadian Broadcasting Corp., would provoke calls for her resignation. It is not every day, after all, that one spouts analogies as historically callous as hers." He continued saying, "The guardians of Canada’s domestic entertainment industry cannot handle this reality, however, which is why Tait’s use of an appallingly ignorant slur like “imperialism” to describe Canadians’ love of Disney, Netflix and HBO has caused barely a ripple. As the Globe and Mail report on the Tait comments noted, basically all of Canada's modern cultural-telecommunication regulatory regime “was built in part as a bulwark against American influence," and one presumably does not build bulwarks against the benign. Since bureaucrats like Tait cannot demagogue against the tastes of a public whose interests they imagine themselves to be serving, the phantom menace of an imperial America conspiring to conquer Canada must be created instead."[28]