Canadian Heritage Committee on April 17th, 2007

[Richard Hardacre]

Thank you. I don't speak French very often.

It's not as good as my English anyway.

I can only give a personal opinion on that. Is a billion dollars adequate? I'm an actor. I don't know what a million dollars is—and I don't mean to make a joke of it.

I have to wonder about management choices at the CBC, but is it adequate? I don't believe it's adequate when decisions such as the one made a year and a half ago during a national crisis, the National Hockey League lockout—I joke—are made. The CBC could not broadcast that very popular, highly rated program on Saturday evenings, Hockey Night in Canada, and they were going to lose a great deal of revenue. I spoke to two of the senior managers of the CBC about this, and they were so desperate that they said they had no choice but to import Hollywood films to fill that time slot so that they could satisfy the advertisers. They absolutely needed that advertising revenue to keep the network going, and they couldn't get by.

I quarrel with their choice. There are fabulous Canadian films. Some of the actors present here today have been in some fabulous Canadian films. They could have been shown and the CBC could have probably gained a great deal of advertising, but management insisted that the funding of the CBC was insufficient without the advertising revenue generated during hockey games.

If that slight change could sink the ship without advertising revenue that was equivalent, then clearly there's something wrong with one of two things: whether there is enough money, and how that money is managed. I can't venture an opinion as to how the money is managed. I manage my bank account and that of my family.

I don't mean to skirt the question, but I do believe it is not enough. You heard from my colleague Mr. Bhaneja that in real dollars, the amount of money available to the CBC has declined over the last significant period of time.

I wonder if Mr. Thompson has a comment on it.

[Ken Thompson, Director, Public Policy and Communications, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists]

Thank you, Richard.

I'd just like to draw your attention to paragraph 32, in which we reference that “in spite of the $60 million in extra funding that the CBC received each year over the past four years, the funding levels are $415 million less than in 1990 (in 2004 dollars).” That's why we've recommended that an annual $60 million be made a permanent part of the appropriation.

Just as a matter of interest, in the latest CFTPA profile, which the producers put out each January and February during their conference, they've noted that actual budgets for programming have declined in the past ten years.

So is there enough in the CBC's coffers to actually do what they propose to do? If you look back into our brief, we've quoted—

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I'm sorry, sir, but I asked you a question and I don't want us to stray too far.

I asked you if you thought that the money the CBC receives presently is adequately managed. Then, I'll ask my second question.

[Ken Thompson]

As Mr. Hardacre said, it's very difficult for us to say whether it's appropriately managed or not. There have been some programming decisions that have not been very well made, in our union's opinion.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Excuse me again, sir. I ask this question because at paragraph 24 of your presentation, you say:

CBC president Robert Rabinovich and CBC executive vice-president Richard Stursberg have each raised the drama crisis publicly as a pressing issue. The CBC used this issue to explain to this committee [...] the need to augment funding [...]

I would like to know first if you agree with that. Then—and it will be my last question because I don't have much time—you ask for a permanent long-term, adequate funding. Do you think there should be more transparent, more detailed accountability?

This is why I asked my questions.

[Richard Hardacre]

On the two points, Madame Bourgeois, we certainly agree with the comment that the drama crisis is a situation of inadequate funding. And to your second question, yes, we certainly agree with having greater accountability of CBC's management and how the public broadcaster is managed into the future. We definitely agree with that.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Very well, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

We're very glad you came here today to give us your opinion. We had an excellent meeting with ACTRA in Winnipeg, I have to say.

In all fairness to our committee, we're probably the last people on the planet to decide how to make exciting television and to restore audience share. Our job is to ensure there's accountability, to ensure that a funding mechanism works. In all honesty again, I don't think we've seen one road; we'll probably do what all politicians do and take a mixed bag of options. As is always said, a camel is a horse created by a committee, and maybe that's what our new CBC will look like.

So with that preamble, I just want to put forward some of the scenarios that are coming out for funding, because that is what our job is: how to best fund it. One of the scenarios would be for us to take the CTF funding, say the 63% of it now going into the private broadcasters, and to give it to CBC. So we would give the whole lump of whatever CTF is as a fund to CBC to do drama, and then we would cut all the domestic content obligations on the private broadcasters and let them do what they do well, which is to capture U.S. signals and stick Canadian commercials into the middle of them.

Do you think that would address, number one, the crisis at CBC, and number two, provide a mandate for use of our public airwaves?

[Richard Hardacre]

No, I do not.

I believe that if one expects CBC English language to be the only broadcaster of Canadian stories and Canadian programming, sure there would be a lot of production. There would perhaps be a couple of new hours of programming.

We don't believe the CBC should be the lone voice in this country. We have a number of private broadcasters whose signals are the property of the people of Canada. They operate on a licence fee, and we believe these private broadcasters are also obligated to create Canadian drama. They're doing a despicably poor job of it at present. We've been alarmed about that for the last eight years. In prime time hours there is just an abysmal lack of Canadian drama. You can't point to one program in the English language called Corner Gas and say there's the success of our culture in the English language. That is only one-half hour in a week. It's inadequate, but I've diverged here.

Mr. Angus, I really believe that throwing money at the CBC and saying, “You do all the English language programming for drama” would ghettoize all Canadian production into the CBC. That's probably a good word to use: it would “ghettoize” it. And if there were a government in the future, or presently, that made an unfortunate choice of saying, well, CBC should have no more government allocations, then Canadian work would be dead—completely dead.

So, no, I don't believe.... And I'd actually firmly argue that all the work we hope to see—which is not just work for actors and our members—is for the cultural richness of the country. So we do not believe it should all be dedicated to CBC production only.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

One of the other problems with the funding models we're looking at is there does seem to be some consensus, or at least a general direction, that CBC would be better served if we weren't just chasing advertising dollars. The argument being made is that we're making extremely safe television when extremely safe television is extremely boring television. So even though we're trying to get advertising ratings, we're not winning that war anyway, and we're not doing what people want, which is interesting television and television from the regions, etc.

We haven't heard anybody yet talk about how we would replace advertising if we did that. It seems to me that one of the suggestions is that we give hockey to the private broadcasters. We'll give them all the advertising revenues and then we'll somehow make up the difference.

Do you have any thoughts about how we would come forward with a funding model if we weren't based on advertising revenues and hockey?

[Richard Hardacre]

If I may follow up on that, do you specifically mean funding models for the CBC?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

We'd certainly have to put a dollar figure on it, because if the CBC weren't chasing the advertising bottom line right now and if we didn't have hockey, we would have a huge hole in our budget. How would we fill drama content if we didn't have hockey and we didn't have corn flakes commercials?

[Richard Hardacre]

That's true enough.

We have one idea, and there may be others here. ACTRA has been arguing since 1993, when a government in office at the time made a drastic cut to the government's portion of the Canadian Television Fund, for increased funding to the CTF, funding that comes not only from the big cable companies but also from the federal budget. There was a $25 million cut then, which was partly restored, we think thanks to the demonstration ACTRA did in the spring of 2003.

The CTF has part of its funds dedicated to production that the CBC can buy. The CBC buys production since they don't have in-house casting and in-house production anymore and have laid off their technicians because of budget constraints; they do license, or commission, independent productions. We believe that if the CTF were more adequately funded--if the CTF pool were a bigger fund of money--then the CBC's portion of it would certainly add some millions to it.

It hasn't been ACTRA's aim to come up with funding models, but certainly we've had discussion among our colleagues and with our coalition partners on this question.

Ken, can you think of anything else?

[Ken Thompson]

I can only say that advertising from hockey, from what I understand from the CBC financials, as basic as they are on their website, is about $400 million a year, so it would require at least an infusion of that much to restore the CBC to its present levels, which in our opinion are not adequate to carry out its mandate.

The fact that they've renewed the NHL franchise for another two years is a positive step forward, and maybe hockey will never go without advertising. Can anybody imagine the CBC without hockey, though? That's the question you might want to ask yourselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much for that.

Mr. Warkentin is next.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you very much.

I appreciate your coming this morning to give us your sense of the CBC. Obviously you play an important role, or have an important relationship, with CBC.

Further to the whole issue of financing the CBC, a lot of people are talking about the non-commercialization of the CBC and whether we should go down that road. I understand that you are part of the consensus that CBC television should move the same way CBC radio has gone.

I was just looking at the numbers here. The CBC receives $315 million every year from advertising. In the discussions you had with Mr. Angus you were still unsure as to where that additional funding might come from. I'm wondering if you have any ideas in terms of that.

I would like to push it a little bit further. Certainly we wouldn't criticize you, because I know this suggestion is coming from many, but if the suggestion comes, it's our obligation to ask the question. What directions are we willing to go in terms of raising funding for CBC? I would push it back a little bit to you and ask that question again: where might we find funding?

The other question would be on where you're not willing to get funding from.

[Richard Hardacre]

I wouldn't venture to say where we're not willing to get funding from.

I have to return to what has happened historically in successive governments in this country. The cuts have been slowly bleeding...not to death, but bleeding the CBC. If the levels that had existed prior to those were restored...goodness, I mean, our studies show that just $100 million of government spending takes up about 45 minutes of the national budget across the country. I'm sorry, the $25 million cut to the CTF was about 45 minutes of federal spending at that time in 1993. I'm sorry, I'm getting my facts.... In 2003, the $25 million cut to the CTF represented 45 minutes of spending in the budget at that time.

If $100 million could be restored to the CBC, it would not be a great shock to this country's budget.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Okay, but if you're talking about $100 million, that's just to--

[Richard Hardacre]

For example.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

--top up the funding. I see that since 1997, there have been some severe cuts. But obviously funding has gone up for some years following that. Even topping up $100 million, to bring up our funding for CBC, that's in addition to having to come up with another $315 million to replace the advertising dollars. So it's not just $100 million we're talking about here today; we're talking about something like $400 million to $500 million in terms of your total submission--or even in addition.

I know we don't like to talk numbers, because like you, I manage my household's finances, and I don't want to claim to be an expert, or understand what $100 million looks like. But certainly the taxpayer does know what $100 million looks like. And we don't necessarily want to end today with a long list of suggestions without an idea as to where this funding may come from.

[Richard Hardacre]

I appreciate that comment very much. We understand there's a struggle going on. This committee has a very difficult task to make funding recommendations and how the CBC's mandate should be preserved. It's clearly a big challenge.

I don't believe we think advertising should be cut instantly. That flow of revenue to an organization as complex as CBC broadcasting, if that is going to be done over a period of time, even that itself would be a tremendous shock to the system in how it's managed. If the CBC were not totally dependent on advertising revenue, with the goal being eventual independence from advertising revenue, we see that as a solution--and in the short term, in a stable manner.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I guess we have many more questions to answer on that front, but we'll continue.

You made a suggestion earlier, and I certainly hope it wasn't an intentional contribution. The sense I got from you was, if there weren't Canadian content rules, and if CBC didn't receive funding, Canadian production would be dead. I guess maybe my utopian idea is that Canadian production some day will stand on its own and will be the most competitive production. Certainly that would be my hope.

I hope it isn't the union's belief that without some additional protection, Canadian production cannot move forward. So let's believe that the union believes that Canadian production can be a wonderful contribution and can be an export contribution to other groups as well.

How do we get there? How can we ensure that Canadian production can succeed, even against foreign competitors?

[Richard Hardacre]

It's a very fair question, and we have a very good model of it in radio in this country; we had content requirements for radio broadcasting of musicians. We would not have Shania Twain, perhaps; we would not have Bryan Adams--

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Well, that's the interesting thing. Some of those artists had to go south of the border before they were exported back into Canada, so that might not be the best example of the success. But certainly, I'd ask how we can ensure that productions that could go forward here are productions that are successful.