Insider claims former CRTC president knew of corruption

A former Canadian broadcasting insider has claimed he has documents
proving that CBC executive VP Richard Stursberg knew about a long-time
case of corruption at the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), otherwise known as Mediascam.

Keith Mahar, formerly a manager at CHUM, posted the allegations on his blog Mentalympian. He writes:

“What do Noam Chomsky, John Honderich and Stephen Harper all have in common? As of this morning, these three individuals are all in possession of the same documents related to a long-term case of government corruption at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission; an unprecedented example of systemic corruption which has denied citizens their rights and unjustly enriched Canadian media tycoons (Mediascam).”

There are 11 documents, Mahar says, including five that were “shredded by an unidentified CRTC official”, one of which is a document signed by Richard Stursberg while he was president and CEO of the CRTC, that shows he had “significant insider knowledge of Mediascam.”

He continues:

“While I lost faith in Canadian media in 1995 during my original campaign against Mediascam, there were some highlights. On 9 July 1995, the Toronto Star‘s lead story was an article by Antonia Zerbisias about my related legal case, Mahar v Rogers Cablesystems Ltd., (Cable TV firms get $300m windfall).

“Fortunately for the Canadian media tycoons profiteering from Mediascam, other Canadian media companies did not match the Toronto Star’s interest in covering this case.  In fact, Toronto’s alternative magazine NOW listed Mahar v Rogers Cablesystems Ltd. as one of the top under-reported stories of 1995 (Scott Anderson, Where the press went wrong in 95: Media Miss List, 28 December 1995).

“Go figure.

“In any event, Honderich was Publisher of the Toronto Star in 1995.  There is no way that my legal case was made top story that day without Honderich’s support. Consequently, it is only fair that he be given the right of first refusal for an exclusive for the Toronto Star to address Mediascam and its links to the current Conservative government.

“Consequently, I am going to wait for a period of time before posting all of these documents on website keithmahar.com in order to give the Toronto Star a reasonable opportunity to cover the story.”