Travis Dhanraj, the host of Canada Tonight with Travis Dhanraj, says he was sidelined for attempts to have internal conversations about ‘systemic issues’ and ‘editorial imbalance.’CBC
A prominent CBC television anchor denounced the public broadcaster as plagued by “dysfunction at the highest level” in a fiery all-staff message announcing his departure to colleagues on Monday.
Travis Dhanraj, most recently host of Canada Tonight with Travis Dhanraj on CBC News Network, wrote that he had been “forced to resign” from CBC News.
“It comes after trying to navigate a workplace culture defined by retaliation, exclusion, and psychological harm,” he wrote.
“A place where asking hard questions – about tokenism masquerading as diversity, problematic political coverage protocols, and the erosion of editorial independence – became a career-ending move.”
In the e-mail, Dhanraj alleged that his attempts to have internal conversations about what he described as “systemic issues” and “editorial imbalance” at the CBC led to him being sidelined.
Dhanraj has been off the air since early December, 2024. Hanomansing Tonight, hosted by Ian Hanomansing, replaced Canada Tonight in its time slot in February 2025.
CBC strongly denied Dhanraj’s allegations Monday afternoon.
“While we are limited in what we can say due to privacy and confidentiality considerations, CBC categorically rejects this framing of what happened with Travis Dhanraj and his accusations, including that he was ‘forced to resign’,” Kerry Kelly from CBC Public Affairs wrote in a statement.
“We are saddened to see this public attack on the integrity of CBC News.”
Reached by phone in Calgary, Dhanraj confirmed that he had written the e-mail which was making the rounds in a screenshot on social media – and declined to outline specific examples of editorial imbalance at this time, referring further questions to his legal counsel Kathryn Marshall.
“There are specifics in terms of everything that I’ve said, but we just want to make sure that this is done in the right forum,” he told The Globe and Mail. (On X, Dhanraj posted a link to a Google Doc where he was soliciting e-mail addresses from followers, promising, “When the time is right, I’ll pull the curtain back, I’ll share everything.”)
Marshall said that Dhanraj’s friction within CBC began shortly after he started hosting Canada Tonight in January 2024. He lodged internal complaints, she said, about “bad treatment for his attempts to bring on a diversity of views and guests on his show.”
In April, 2024, Dhanraj posted on X that it was “unfortunate” that Catherine Tait, who was then the president of CBC, had declined a request for an interview on Canada Tonight to talk about recent political scrutiny of the public broadcaster.
In response to the social media post, according to Marshall, CBC temporarily removed Dhanraj from the air.
The lawyer claimed CBC then wanted him to sign a detailed non-disclosure agreement – “They call it an NDA and I’ve seen a lot of NDAs and this one was Stalinist,” she said – and agree on a statement about him leaving Canada Tonight before reassigning him.
Dhanraj went on a leave of absence in July, 2024. He returned to anchor Canada Tonight in early December.
“Within the first week of his return, he was immediately retaliated against for refusing to sign that NDA,” Marshall said. “At that point he was permanently removed as the host of Canada Tonight, his compensation was slashed. It was clear at that point his career at CBC was over.”
Dhanraj had been on leave since then.
Sent these further allegations, Kerry at the CBC replied: “Because of the aforementioned limitations in what we can say in response due to privacy and confidentiality considerations, I would just restate that CBC categorically rejects the accusations made about CBC News, our staff and management.”
Marshall said that Dhanraj is currently considering filing a complaint against the CBC for discrimination and retaliation, adding that he never signed an NDA.
Born in Calgary, Dhanraj has a twenty-year career in broadcast journalism that started at CBC. He worked at CP24 and CTV News and was Queen’s Park bureau chief for Global News before returning to CBC in 2021.
In his latest stint at CBC, Dhanraj served as a senior parliamentary reporter and co-hosted Marketplace before taking over Canada Tonight in January, 2024.
That daily CBC News Network show was launched in January of 2021 and described by the broadcaster as “a unique opportunity to have a conversation about the news.” It was originally hosted by Ginella Massa, who decided not to return to the public broadcaster after her maternity leave in 2023.
The future of CBC/Radio-Canada was a ballot question in the recent federal election – with the Liberals promising to introduce legislation to establish statutory funding for the national public broadcaster along with an initial $150-million funding increase.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, pledged to “defund” the CBC and make it “self-sufficient” while maintaining French-language Radio-Canada services.
In his e-mail Monday, Dhanraj alluded to concerns about the CBC in terms of trust and a viewership he described as being in “free fall.”
“The erosion of trust in the CBC didn’t happen overnight,” he wrote. “It’s the result of years of dysfunction at the highest levels – where a small group of insiders on air and in management wields outsized influence and prioritizes spin over substance.”
