Ontario's public broadcaster has laid off 16 unionized employees, including the journalists on its online print news desk.
Several current and former employees said the layoffs occurred, at least in part, due to a decision by unionized employees to insist on enforcing part of their collective agreement that required that new positions be made permanent after two years of work on a contract basis, which was a focal point of last year's strike.
In the past, employees had agreed to a waiver to allow workers to be employed on contract for more than two years but collectively decided to end that practice.
"The members in that unit decided that they didn't want to offer that waiver anymore. And subsequently, the employer makes the decisions that they feel they have to make," said Annick Forest, Canadian Media Guild president.
TVO indicated to the union that it made that decision because of its "financial situation," Forest said.
The TVO sources told The Trillium, and one former TVO journalist said publicly, that the provincial government has capped the headcount at the public broadcaster, contributing to the decision to lay off journalists. However, in a statement, the TVO media team denied that this is accurate.
Both the union and TVO sources who spoke with The Trillium said TVO has been shrinking the headcount on the journalistic side of its operation, while the side that produces educational content for the province has grown — the latter at the government's request.
"This is not good news for the media ecosystem out there," said Forest. "If (the Ontario government) decides they want to do the education, that's fine, it's their purview. But I think that any time that there's less news being produced in Canada by Canadian media workers for Canadians, it's a sad state of affairs."
TVO will continue to produce podcasts and broadcast journalism, and while TVO journalists Steve Paikin and John Michael McGrath will continue writing columns, written news will otherwise be limited, TVO sources said.
In a statement posted to X, John Ferri, TVO's vice president of programming and content, denied that TVO was "moving away from journalism" in response to social media posts by freelancer Matt Gurney, whose regular column was cancelled along with the layoffs.
"What we have done is make a strategic choice to focus our website more on documentaries, video and podcasts than on text alone," Ferri said. "We will still have columns by our in-house journalists."'
Graeme Bayliss, who was laid off as TVO Today's editor-in-chief, said he was disappointed by the "move almost entirely away from written journalism."
"Ontarians need more sources of trustworthy information and analysis right now, not fewer. Having said that, I’m proud of what my former colleagues were able to accomplish over the past few years," he said. "We told the stories that mattered, and we held our political leaders to account. That’s what journalism is about, and I look forward to doing more of it — without fear or favour — wherever I end up next."
Three TVO sources spoke with The Trillium about concerns that the organization's board has overstepped its role and become involved in the operations of TVO over the past year. Some pointed to the board's decision to pull the documentary "Russians at War,” which was set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival before concerns from the Ukrainian community caused an uproar, as a public example of that.
The TVO media team also denied that the board has overstepped. "Aside from one matter of principle, where the board made a decision and proactively disclosed that decision, our board’s involvement focuses on strategy and governance oversight as it always has," it said.
Of the nine members of TVO's board, eight worked as staffers in the Ontario PC government or federal Conservative government. Among them, four work in the field of lobbying and public affairs.
This story has been updated to correct the spelling of John Ferri's name. The Trillium regrets the error.
