Crisis communications firm Navigator and PR agency rock-it promotions both announced they had dropped Jian Ghomeshi as a client on Thursday afternoon.

Navigator said “the circumstances of our engagement have changed and we are no longer able to continue.”

The CBC announced earlier Thursday it is hiring a third-party company to conduct an investigation in the wake of allegations against the former Q radio host.

A memo from the CBC's Heather Conway says the move follows “accounts of impropriety towards (CBC) employees.”

CBC also says it is making counsellors available to employees.

In a Facebook post Thursday, Ghomeshi said he will not be speaking with the press about allegations of sexually abusive behaviour with women over several years. The brief statement said he intends to meet the allegations against him head-on.

“I want to thank you for your support and assure you that I intend to meet these allegations directly,” Ghomeshi wrote Thursday.

“I don’t intend to discuss this matter any further with the media.”

8 women accuse former CBC host of violence, sexual abuse or harassment

Jian Ghomeshi lawsuit says CBC made ‘moral judgment’ about his sex life

In Beijing, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said she is stunned by the allegations.

“The whole thing is shocking, the whole thing is shocking,” Wynne told reporters Thursday at the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

Despite being on a week-long mission to boost Ontario’s trade with China, Wynne and her staff have been watching the Ghomeshi affair unfold since the 47-year-old was fired Sunday from his job as host of the popular daily CBC Radio show Q.

“I’ve actually known him for a long time,” she said, recalling that they met during the crusade against former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris’s forced merger of the former city of Toronto with five other old Metro municipalities in the 1990s.

“He was part of Moxy Fruvous and if you’ll remember during the Citizens For Local Democracy (movement), Moxy Fruvous used to come and play at those anti-amalgamation meetings,” said Wynne, referring to Ghomeshi’s novelty pop group.

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“I’m not going to comment on specifics but to the extent that anywhere there is assault it’s absolutely unacceptable,” she said.

Ghomeshi has insisted he has done nothing wrong. In a $55-million defamation and breach of trust suit he filed on Monday, the broadcaster alleged that CBC made a “moral judgment” that his penchant for bondage and rough sex was wrong. He has said the activities have always been consensual.

With files from Jacques Gallant Robert Benzie and Riley Sparks

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