Maria Cholakov

CUTV members raise concerns with ongoing MOU between the station and The Breach. Graphic Maria Cholakova

Geneviève Sylvestre,
Local Journalism Initiative

The station has been partly funding the independent media outlet The Breach since 2021

The latest Community University Television Concordia (CUTV) annual general meeting (AGM) saw some members raise issues with the station’s incubation of the independent media outlet The Breach. 

The arrangement was set out in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between CUTV and The Breach which was approved by CUTV’s board of directors on April 7, 2021.  

Funding and additional services 

As laid out in the MOU, CUTV’s incubation of The Breach was meant as a “mutually beneficial arrangement” between both parties, with the aim of The Breach becoming fully independent in the long term. The document outlined five payments to be made by CUTV to The Breach between Feb. 1, 2021 and Feb. 1, 2025, totalling $360,000.  

In a letter sent to CUTV’s interim board president, Mackenzie Smedmor explained their decision to not seek re-election as a director of CUTV. In it, Smedmor, who had been in the position since 2022, outlined their belief  “that the directors of CUTV should consider undertaking a candid assessment of the relationship between CUTV and The Breach.” 

According to Smedmor, between 2021 and 2024, The Breach received between 13.3 per cent and 25.9 per cent of CUTV’s total funding, with the total funds sent to The Breach equating to 31.6 per cent of the station’s total Concordia University undergraduate fee levy in that period.

“There’s always been two mandates of the station, and it kind of represents two purposes and visions, and sometimes two factions [regarding] what the station is about,” said Marcus Peters, former president of CUTV’s board of directors who held the position when the MOU came into effect, and a former board member of The Breach.

According to CUTV’s website, the station has two mandates: To “provide facilities, training and equipment for the Concordia community & Montrealers” and to “support production of alternative programming for those underserved by the corporate media.”

Peters said The Breach was conceived in relation to the second part of the mandate as a media organization that aligned with student values, especially as the equipment depot was closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

He clarified that the decision was made to fund a media outlet separate from CUTV, as it would allow their coverage to have national reach and to shape “Canadian media discourse.” He argues that this would not have been possible if The Breach was a student media organization. 

CUTV’s current undergraduate fee levy sits at $0.34 per student, per credit, totalling over $200,000 every year according to Smedmor’s letter and CUTV’s 2023-2024 budget. 

For CUTV’s board secretary Allison O’Reilly, despite her personal “leftist” beliefs aligning with The Breach’s editorial line, she is skeptical of the decision to use student money to fund the organization. 

“I think that The Breach’s coverage can be fantastic sometimes, and I support them as an organization,” O’Reilly said. “I just feel like the justification for using student fee levy money in order for their existence is weak.”

For Peters, fee levy groups have a role to play beyond students and they can, and should, serve the “community as a whole.”

In addition to funding, The Breach has received support in the form of sharing health insurance, financial audits, banking fees, government fees and payroll processing with CUTV, according to Smedmor’s letter. Both organizations also shared a bank account until a closeout agreement was discussed in a CUTV finance committee meeting on July 10, 2023. 

According to CUTV’s former financial administrator Olivia Champagne, The Breach had a separate checking account under CUTV’s business account, as The Breach was not yet incorporated and, as such, “could not open an independent bank account.”

Potential conflict of interest 

In their letter, Smedmor outlined potential conflicts of interest between both organizations. Namely, they point out that, in addition to being CUTV’s executive director, Dru Oja Jay is also the publisher of The Breach. 

According to Moshe Lander, a senior economics lecturer at Concordia, transparency is primordial when it comes to two joined organizations.

“Whenever you’re going to have two organizations that are joined at the hip, whether you’re calling one an incubator and the incubated or whether they’re just a joint venture, […] transparency is critical,” Lander said, “and transparency seems to be lacking here.” 

Peters believes the overlap was necessary since The Breach is incubated by CUTV.

“You want to have overlap for various reasons. Not only because of the necessary resource sharing to maximize the potential [of] the project that’s being incubated, but also to protect the investment,” Peters said. “You want to have those overlaps, so that you have increased accountability, increased transparency.”

Smedmor’s letter detailed how, in 2022, CUTV’s station manager shared their concerns that Jay was often absent from the station as he split his time between both CUTV and The Breach.

According to Clare Chasse, who sat on CUTV’s board of directors in 2022, Jay was wearing himself thin in both positions. 

“I think that [Jay] especially was completely at his working capacity [and] was not able to oversee his job as the executive director in a way that was beneficial,” Chasse said, adding that there was a lack of oversight from the executive director role held by Jay.  

According to Peters, Jay was not failing to meet his job requirements and was “accomplishing his job […] in an exemplary fashion.” 

Chasse claimed she never received proper training for her position on the board, stating that the majority of board members with seniority were mostly tied to and concerned with The Breach. She said that CUTV’s continued close relationship with The Breach is why she left the board.

“Myself and another board member that I know both had ended up leaving the board early because we felt like […] we weren’t going to be able to contribute properly because of the precedent that The Breach took on a lot of everyday things,” Chasse said. 

The Link contacted Jay for comment and he refused the request. 

The letter also outlined other potential conflicts of interest. In addition to being the former financial administrator of CUTV, Champagne is also the general coordinator of Solidarity Economy Incubation for Zero Emissions (SEIZE) and the co-founder and director of Populus Solidarity Cooperative. Populus offers bookkeeping, accounting, and consulting and training services. 

Champagne was one of four co-founders of Populus, serving as a user member representative for SEIZE alongside representatives for CUTV, the Hive Café Solidarity Co-op and the Concordia Food Coalition. Members of Populus include CUTV, The Breach and SEIZE as well as others. 

Champagne served as CUTV’s financial administrator from October 2020 to January 2022 and said her position had no decision-making authority. 

At the time of publication, The Breach’s website lists Champagne as a member of the board.

Champagne claims that some government accounts were lost after The Breach was incorporated in June 2022. Following The Breach’s application to become a member of Populus, she was appointed to help recover access to the accounts in an administrative capacity she classified as “officers who are not members of the board of directors.” 

Lander believes that CUTV and The Breach should use different bookkeepers nonetheless to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, as the overlap can create “the whiff that something is wrong, whether it’s actually true or not.”

According to Champagne, both CUTV and Populus demand that individuals disclose potential conflicts of interest in relation to certain agenda items at the start of every meeting and step out of that portion of the meeting if conflict is identified. 

Transparency with members 

At the latest CUTV AGM held on Nov. 4, some members raised concerns regarding the station’s continued financing of The Breach. 

According to the minutes, CUTV ended the fiscal year with a $92,000 deficit, largely due to payouts made to The Breach, with financial recommendations including cutting costs and keeping a closer eye on financial transactions. 

At the AGM, member Cameron McIntyre proposed a motion for the board to opt out of the MOU with The Breach, pending legal consultation. The motion was seconded and, following a discussion period, it was called to a vote. 

Prior to the vote, two CUTV members left the room, including Peters, who called to recount quorum—the minimum members needed for a meeting to be valid. As quorum was no longer present despite the two members’ departures, the meeting was adjourned. 

Members present at the meeting, including McIntyre and Smedmor, deemed this undemocratic.  O’Reilly shared similar concerns. 

“The AGM showed […] that the members decided that they don’t feel [The Breach] is a priority for CUTV anymore,” O’Reilly said. “The pushback by other members and some staff members, I find, is disrespectful because they should be listening to what the membership wants.”

Peters disagrees.“I would say it’s not undemocratic for a member to choose how and when they engage with a general meeting, but what is undemocratic is […] 14 to 16 people making a decision on a station that represents hundreds of members for the rest of the year,” Peters said, adding that he does not believe the opinions presented at the AGM represent those of the whole membership.

According to O’Reilly, the motion presented at the AGM was not planned beforehand. 

“I think that certain people at CUTV assumed that this was a planned attack, but it wasn’t, it was just independent people seeing the facts and then reacting to those facts,” O’Reilly said.

This isn’t the first controversial CUTV AGM. In February 2020, following a sudden increase in membership in the two weeks preceding the AGM, CUTV members accused board members of stacking the vote with friends and family to ensure their election to the board.

Peters says that this increase in membership was, rather, a form of campaigning for the new board’s plan to incubate a new media organization. 

“We mobilized dozens of students to come [to] the general meeting where I was elected,” Peters said. “It wasn’t one that barely met quorum. It was like 60 or 70 people that came out, because we knew that it was like a super serious undertaking.”

According to the station’s by-laws, members need to sign up at least 14 days in advance to be eligible to vote. Following the 2020 AGM, a removal vote was held at a special general meeting (SGM) in August where members voted to not remove their board of directors by a margin of 10 votes. 

According to a document The Link obtained, in the days following the AGM, 20 new CUTV community members have signed up.

A SGM will be held in the coming weeks for the membership to vote on CUTV’s involvement with The Breach. 

A previous version of this article stated that quorum was no longer present at the CUTV AGM following the two member’s departure. This is incorrect, quorum would not have been present regardless. The Link regrets this error.