Canoe.ca All In French?

It is (though you can ask for a translation)!

It defaults to "http://fr.canoe.ca/";" http://eng.canoe.ca/" dead ends.  Has Quebecor abandoned English Canada after the sale of their ROC properties?

Quebecor Sacks More Staff

From the bottom of a very long memo from the beloved PKP:

Unfortunately there are people impacted by the implementation of the new model. We very much appreciate their service and thank them for their contributions. We wish them all well.

Victims apparently include Julia Kamula, Gord Norrie , and Ottawa Sun Publisher Rick Gibbons.  An interesting feature of the new "model": the publisher no longer has any say in the editorial content of the paper he publishes.

Rumour: Quebecor To Cut Management Staff

I heard yesterday there was finally going to be some trimming at the management level due to creation of one sales force. Less advertising managers was the story going around.

Just a rumour, but from what's left of the Toronto Sun Family blog, where rumours re the fate of Quebecor often graduate into news.

Quebecor Layoffs

Latest updates seem to be available here, with some names and dets. From the comments:

Toronto Sun's imaging department gone in late January. It is being outsourced to India.

And Quebecor won't comment? Probably couldn't find a reporter left around to write a press release.

Life Under Quebecornation

An ex-staffer reminices about working for Pierre Karl Peladeau:

Under the abysmal direction of Quebecor, all who have been encapsulated have felt the brute force of economic centralism that regards query as malfeasance. Think Qaddafi.

[...]

This is not Afghanistan. But it could be.

[...]

Mandy Martin
Former Editorial Director
Northumberland Today

What's Up With CBC And Quebecor?

A few days after Quebecor's legal threat against it, all links to CBC's "Get The Facts" page, where they previously discussed the Quebec media company's penchant for sucking up government funds, among other topics... time out.  Try 'em yourself. I have for about an hour.

Did The Mothership cave?

Quebecor To CBC: Yeah We're Corporate Welfare Bums, But...

Quebecor lashes back against CBC's various allegations.  Here they defend the various subsidies they receive for their various magazines and other print publications:

CBC/Radio-Canada mentions subsidies received by various magazines of Publications TVA, a Quebecor Media subsidiary. Quebecor Media wishes to make it clear that it had nothing to do with the creation of these magazine subsidy programs. However, as a publicly-traded company accountable to its stockholders, Quebecor Media cannot let its competitors such as Rogers or Transcontinental be the sole beneficiaries of these programs, as doing so would place it at an untenable competitive disadvantage.

Yeah.  Heart on the right, wallet on the left.  And even Sun TV superstar Ezra Levant has been know to solicit government money-- $63,366 worth of postal subsidies back in 2005, in a desperate and finally failed attempt to keep The Western Standard going.

Would you Like Pommes De Frites With That, Monsieur?

Pierre Peladeau, owner of Quebecor, the T.O. Sun, and Sun TV...that is, most of what is evil about the Canadian MSM...lost 9.1% of his value last year.  He's not even a billionaire anymore!  Booyah!

Sun Media Empire Contracts

...closing down Kanata call center and snuffing 100 jobs so Quebecor can consolidate its call centre operations in Sarnia.  Because it just doesn't take that many people to sell subscriptions to Sun newspapers anymore.

Mind you, these are the last folks within the media chain that deserve to be sacked.  And its a pity that Quebecor seems to be cannibalizing its print resources to keep feeding cash to the money-sucking disaster that is Sun TV News.  Good people go jobless to keep Ezra in beanys and grease-paint.