Canadian Heritage Committee on May 23rd, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

But you've had 10.

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

That shows you how difficult it is for a woman to get recognized on a panel composed of men. It seems that women's issues are still not important.

I want to say that we are here to examine the mandate of the CBC. With the mandate goes funding. Obviously, the Government of Canada is currently giving this public institution $1.3 billion. Everywhere we have gone, we have heard the same story you tell: the story of remoteness, of scarce services, of the failure to develop this culture you call Canadian. This is of enormous concern to me.

First, there is the whole Canadian culture which I think, for you, should be preserved. At present, there is a flood of American programming coming in, and I have the impression that if we do not soon help our Canadian and Quebec producers and artists — you are interdependent — you are going to lose this Canadian culture you hold so dear. Quebec culture is perhaps less endangered, since we have already enacted legislation there. It is still endangered, of course, but still we have a province that is more francophone. We have more ways of protecting ourselves. So Canadian culture is in serious danger.

Second, the producers, including you, and the private broadcasters in competition with you, and deregulation is taking place. This is of enormous concern to me. The people who create dramatic programming, or who create what are supposed to be local productions, this is of enormous concern to me.

So, and given that the Government of Canada is putting $1.3 billion into this institution, out of your and my taxes, do you not think that we should expand the partnership as much as possible, so that the CBC becomes a force for development of the arts, of culture, and thus of employment in Canada?

I see you nodding your head: you agree with me. Except that as a legislator and a member of this committee, I do not have everything I need in order to talk about this. I am not familiar with your industries. I have an general picture. I am not the one doing business with the CBC.

Could I ask you to send me, and send the Chair, your comments about what a fair, equitable partnership that benefits everyone would be, but in detail, with specifics? That might make some work for our researcher, for Marion, but on the other hand it will help us to understand your experience. You and everyone like you have come here and told us, sometimes clearly and sometimes in veiled terms, that there were little things that were not working. We want to understand them, these little things that are not working. Understandably, you cannot tell us everything, put everything out on public display, but I want to know.

How could a genuine partnership be arranged, so that the CBC was not keeping all the money for itself, and could give you some of the benefit of it? For your part, you would be able to put your talent to work for Canadians and Quebecers who watch television, who watch dramatic programming, and for Canadian arts and culture, so that everyone would be a winner.

Can I ask you to do that? Am I dreaming?

[John Doyle]

It has to be done.

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

It has to be done? I am dreaming on your behalf. I am defending Canadian culture.

[John Doyle]

Let me just address one small part of what Madam Bourgeois brings up. That's in terms of the CBC's involvement as a partner with arts organizations, so in other words, people doing theatre, symphony orchestras, publishers, all those people. There's a win-win possibility here, because recent statistics show that Canadians—in fact, North Americans generally—are increasing their participation in the arts. More people are attending symphony concerts. More people are going to the theatre. More people are reading books in Canada now than before, extraordinarily.

So when the CBC gets involved with the arts, not only are they helping to promote the arts, but they're getting involved in something that Canadians are already interested in. In other words, it's like doing sports broadcasting. If CBC does sports, then they pick up support, they pick up audience, because Canadians like sports. Well, increasingly Canadians are showing that they are interested in the arts and culture in the most general sense.

So it's a very win-win situation for the CBC to partner with arts organizations and to increase its participation that way. I completely agree with you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Angus.

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

Thank you.

I have a two-part question, and it concerns the fees that are paid out and how effective that is in terms of making production.

I've been looking at some numbers that suggest that over, say, the 10-year period leading up to the beginning of this decade, of the broadcast licence fees being paid out, CBC doubled theirs from $9.6 million to about $20.6 million in that period, but conventional broadcasters dropped their broadcast licensing fees by over 24%, and the difference was being picked up in foreign acquisitions.

So part one of the question would be the effect that has, again, on viability of productions and whether or not you see, actually on the ground, that those numbers do make sense, whether there has been a drop, because overall, the broadcast licence fees in Canada are much lower than anywhere else, as far as I've been able to see. So that's the first part of the question.

The second is this, and it's come up a number of times in this study. We have developed, based on a model that probably worked great in the 1970s, a number of funding silos: Telefilm, National Film Board, we have the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, we have now the CTF—there are others as well—and we have a national broadcaster. There seems to be a major disconnect between all the money that we're spending to develop programming and the fact that it's not necessarily tied to being seen on our nation's broadcaster; and also how you see the role between being an independent producer, where you want to actually be able to shop your product, and whether or not there is a need to start bringing some of these together to say, we're creating a phenomenal amount of amazing product, but it's just not being seen, because that link between CBC and those various funding agencies seems to be getting weaker rather than stronger.

[Chris Bonnell]

Yes, I agree.

One of the things we have to do is not just look at the CBC in isolation. It's the whole of television in Canada. We really have to look at the Canadian Television Fund. You have to remember that with the Canadian Television Fund envelope, CBC is allotted 37% of that amount. You're quite right, the broadcast licences, while they've increased statistically, are still quite low. We're finding now that CBC and all broadcasters are looking for...there are lower broadcast licences, but they're looking for a lot more. In addition to the production itself, they're trying to keep all ancillary rights, there's a new mediation that we've talked about--these are huge concerns.

It's happening, I know, but there has to be an overall review about television in Canada, where it's going. It's changing, as I said earlier. The times are changing, the way people are looking at things is changing. So we really have to review it. Our kids are watching it on different formats. So we either jump on this or get lost in the dust.

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

Anyone else?

[Noreen Golfman]

I would echo what Chris has said and endorse your points. I think you're describing well the fragmented nature of our whole telecommunications system—and that's just a quick scan of it, as you've outlined.

Clearly, what's missing is coherence or some cohesiveness. There are many disconnects having to do with accountability, going back, of course, to the mandate and the various interests running counterintuitively or counterproductively. It behooves us to look at the big picture and to see where CBC fits into all of that and what its role is in relation, again, as I said before, to a thriving industry. We have the potential to do that. We have the language. And we seem to have the will, the citizenship who want to do that, but we have not been able to bring that coherence into play and to realize it. It's slipping away from us in this increasingly fragmented world, and I think we all sense that.

There is a sense in which, I think, the average viewer feels helpless about it. That is a big fear we have about the CBC, of course, that its steady erosion and indications of lack of support are undermining it and its mandate, feeding resignation in citizens who say, well, let's just put it out of its misery, or who say the things that are commonly kicked around and circulated in public discourse. I think that would be tragic for all of us and—finally—also against our will.

It is integration at every level that we're really missing in this country. There's opportunity to pull all these threads together—not to mandate a state system, necessarily, that doesn't allow people to breathe or compete, but clearly a more balanced system that allows the public broadcaster to be competitive with the privates, and vice versa.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Scott.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

This is interesting, and I'm glad we had the second round, because it's picked up some stuff.

I think a country as creative as ours on a whole bunch of fronts should be creative enough to seize this complicated, but necessary configuration. We're compelled to do so because of proximity, population, and the size of the country.

I think the government's heritage department, or the government generally, needs to step up. I think to some extent it been too easy for the government—and I say this about governments, as against any particular one—to push off responsibility to the CRTC or to the CBC and say, solve these things. So maybe the government has to step up and then, with that, the CBC will become stronger by association, by being part of something that is more coherent than is the case right now.

The other part of it—and I go back to what I said in my first intervention—is the problem of finding the right balance between having certain expectations for the investment, but not having any capacity to act on those expectations in some ways that are helpful. I know that when the $60 million came up and it wasn't A-based but an annual thing.... And for the record, when I chaired the CBC caucus for my caucus when we were governing, it was in reaction to the announcement of.... I remember quite clearly Mr. Rabinovitch, as a guest at the heritage committee, speaking of the severed limb of the Atlantic Canada. And it was out of that. The reason it wasn't A-based, in my mind—I don't know this, as I wasn't in the room—is that there wasn't any confidence that if it did happen or it was A-based, we would get any difference. To some extent, it's been there now for three or four years, and it hasn't found its way into regional supper hour programming, or supper half-hour programming, or whatever it is now.

I think that's the struggle. Maybe we make a mistake in trying to place responsibility for solving that piece on the CBC itself. Maybe that is for the Government of Canada, of which the CBC is one of the most important instruments, but not the only one. That may be the answer.

The other part is that if we do mandate more investment in the CBC—and I think one of the recommendations is going to go some way in that direction—we may have to look at the mandate in terms of its clarity. Most of the people who have appeared before us seem satisfied that what the CBC needs to do is there. From listening to people talk about how they define the word “regional”, I can tell you that the word “regional” in Atlantic Canada has an entirely different meaning compared to the word “regional” in Toronto.

[Chris Bonnell]

I think it's Hamilton, isn't it, in Toronto?

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I think it's a critically important point. We all look at the mandate, and yes, it seems to work.

We may have to offer significantly more clarity if we want to make a large investment expecting a certain outcome and not wake up the next day shocked that we've made this investment and haven't seen the outcome we thought the investment would buy us.

I'm just looking for nodding heads. They're all nodding, so that seems to.... I just want to get a reaction, and I think I've gotten it.

Thanks.

[Noreen Golfman]

Can I say one quick thing to that? In terms of the last part of what you said, I think that's a provocative way of thinking about changing or focusing on the language of region itself. I would say that even in Atlantic Canada, of course, that word is loaded in all kinds of ways, as you know. Certainly sitting here it is.

To the first part of what you said, I think you're absolutely right in your description of investment in a renewed supper hour that hasn't proven to have gotten back on its legs. But we have to take the big picture. There's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy here. In a way, it looks like a set-up. I don't mean that in some kind of malevolent way, but clearly decisions made by senior management have led to this mistake.

There is a part of me that worries about the argument that we should let others handle CBC or engage in the bigger problem of CBC. In part, I think that's true; everybody has to look at the whole system, or the people who are invested in it have to look at the whole system wisely. But CBC management has to take responsibility for its own mistakes. And that's a very serious part of all of this, as well. So long as the very top brass is appointed and there are patronage appointments--this is now becoming an old story in this country--we're going to have problems with senior management, and we have for quite some time. There's a real disconnect between that management and the regions, however you define them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that.

I have two things.

Hamilton was mentioned. We did have a presentation from Hamilton. They're not in the same region as Toronto. They have a disconnect. They don't have their radio station. Hopefully, this is coming. It's in the plans, or it's happening, to get a Hamilton radio station.

But there are differences in regions, and sometimes regions can be regions within regions. I just wanted to comment on that. And there is a difference. The people are going in a different direction. The streets and highways in Hamilton don't necessarily reflect what's happening in Toronto.

[Chris Bonnell]

Again, just to clarify my point, a lot of times Toronto has determined that some regional production is Hamilton.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I know that too.

The other thing, as Mr. Simms said earlier, is long-term sustainable funding. I've been hearing about long-term sustainable funding ever since I have been sitting on this committee, whether it be from the CBC, whether it be from the CTF, or whether it be from the Canada Council for the Arts. Everyone looks for long-term funding.

So many times it went right up to the eleventh hour before that funding was agreed to for another year. It would be my hope that there could be long-term sustainable funding so it gives the corporation, whether it be the CBC or any of the other organizations, a way to plan forward. If you're only getting funding for another year, again, as I say, at the eleventh hour every year, you don't have much of a long-term plan. Hopefully, some of those things can be done as we go.

I thank you very much for your presentation and for your candid answers. We've totally enjoyed this part of it.

At this particular time, if I could, I will take a survey of the people in the audience. Is there anyone who has questions for our committee or for our witnesses? If you would like to make a comment or anything, we have a microphone. If we have no one jumping up to the microphone....

Sir, could you identify yourself?

[David Benson, Fisheries Observer, As an Individual]

My name is David Benson.

I always have been an avid CBC listener and defender of the CBC against many critics, but at this point you might as well put it all in the back and throw it overboard. It has gone downhill so badly. If you can imagine the concept of reruns in private television, CBC has reruns on the same day. Its news has degenerated to the point where it's propaganda, it's racist, it's inane. It's losing all of its listeners. It's supposedly going after a more immature audience, but my 16-year-old daughter has given up on it.

It almost seems as if there's a crowd of apparatchiks running the place who have no commitment to public broadcasting at all. The only time I hear anything half decently neutral politically in international news is when I hear the overnight broadcasts from England or Australia or somewhere like that.

It's time to either bury the thing and privatize--at least it then might not have such a vicious political agenda--or do something with it. Television is just so stupid and inane that there's no point in listening to it or watching it.

If I wanted the bullshit and the crime hysteria.... I used to work in the media; I know why that's done by the private broadcasters. It's part of their policy, for their own commercial reasons. CBC doesn't have to do that. And if I wanted inane music, there are lots of stations to listen to.

On the technical, actual level of broadcast, I can't get English-language FM. I can get two French-language stations that boom into the house, and that's great because they generally have better music, but for CBC FM I have to chase the radio all around the room all day to pick up anything.

So as for long-term sustainable funding to give us more of what we're getting now, I don't see the point.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that.

Is there anyone else?

Seeing no one else standing at the microphone, I adjourn this meeting.