Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 25th, 2011

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

My second question concerns the francophonie. My colleagues talked about French-speakers outside of Quebec. There are some very good programs like Tout le monde en parle, for instance, but the content is more focused on Montreal and Quebec. Do you have any strategies that would allow French-speakers outside of Quebec to see themselves in these programs? Is there a danger that budget cuts will adversely affect those strategies?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Madam, we are very well aware of the important role the public broadcaster plays in delivering services to French-speakers outside of Quebec or the Ottawa region, even though that is where 90% or 91% of francophones live in Canada. However our commitment to the francophonie goes much further than the simple delivery of services.

In a moment we will talk to you about our daily connection to the regions, which is maintained through what is known as the Regional Panel. This allows us to hear comments and to know how we can better deliver our services. I was in Regina last week where I met with six or seven people who are responsible for the francophonie in the greater Regina area, either in schools or in the arts and culture environments. I heard their comments and afterwards I went to Vancouver where I met with some other people and the same exercise was repeated. I even went to Kelowna and there the three persons who represented francophones were in the room when I talked about CBC/Radio-Canada.

We are always concerned with understanding the needs of francophones in Canada well, and we attempt with the resources we have to give them as much information as possible, and as many services as possible. This is in fact Louis' constant preoccupation as he is responsible for Radio-Canada in the regions.

Louis, did you want to talk about this a little?

[Louis Lalande]

I will complete the picture.

Of course we have a relationship with the stakeholders and all of the regional directorates are in constant communication with all of the organizations and communities of the francophonie. We also entertain an important relationship with all of the large Canadian associations. In fact next week I have a half-day meeting with the FCCF. The purpose of the meeting is to ensure that we are really in touch and are having a dialogue. We do that twice a year to ensure that we really know what is going on in the country.

Now as to your question I would go even further. Tout le monde en parle is a program during which we talk about what happened in the news in current events during the week. When something happens in Canadian current events that everyone is talking about you can be sure that it will turn up on that program. When the Radio Radio group was nominated for the first time at ADISQ they were on Tout le monde en parle. When Xavier Caféine, an Ontario musician and composer, had a great deal of success, he was invited on Tout le monde en parle. Of course, the current events that are discussed tend to be more about Quebec, but when something happens, generally speakingTout le monde en parle hones in on it.

I'd like to complete my answer by mentioning other initiatives we have taken, in particular in Acadia. We banked on a group of comedians, La Revue Acadienne, who were the most popular and the most watched in Acadia. They only performed on stage. Now they have a weekly program that is extremely popular in the Acadian region. For the first time they will be featured on a Bye Bye program [New Year's Eve program], an Acadian one that will be broadcast in Acadia. We are just about certain that we will be able to use a large part of that for a network program a bit later.

These are initiatives that show that we aware of talent and follow it, that we are aware of what is going on. When we feel that we can give people a hand up to reflect our knowledge of talent and so on, we do that.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

The second part of my question was whether cuts could affect that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Merci. Time's up.

We'll move on to Mr. Hillyer.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

I'm actually one of the few people from my riding who really love the CBC and its content. However, I do have a concern, not necessarily about the wrong intent, but the video and this conversation talk about the CBC's role in promoting Canadian values. I'm concerned about who it is that gets to decide what Canadian values are. How do we make sure we're reflecting Canadian values instead of inventing Canadian values that we want Canadians to value?

These are a couple of quick examples. I did a tour of the capital region with the capital region people, and one of the things they said was that we want to instill fitness as a Canadian value. Another example is Vote Compass, which seemed to have some problems with guiding people rather than just revealing to people. Even just in our conversation today you mentioned that you can't show some of these shows between 8 and 10. So while families and individuals can choose what not to watch, because CBC is funded by Canadian tax dollars, even if they decide not to watch it, they are paying for programming they may not value. How do we guard against that?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Thank you for being the only one who's fighting for CBC/Radio-Canada in your riding. I greatly appreciate that. It's very important.

Values, and making sure that we express a diversity of voices, is one of the very important priorities. As the president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada, I actually expressed in my key performance indicators, which are on the web and very public, how I get to be evaluated in the delivery of our services.

We're going to talk about fitness and Vote Compass in a second, because we exactly address this. We're going to talk to you about how we think Canadians are telling us, because we constantly survey what they would like to hear and have delivered. We went to Calgary with the news. We did a panel recently. The Current went and spent two days in Calgary. We are very aware that we need to present different pieces of Canada to the listeners and to the people who watch CBC/Radio-Canada.

Let's talk about Vote Compass for a second, before I turn it over to Christine on fitness. What we did out of B.C., which was a program that turned into a great initiative, was a spectacular way for us to engage Canadians in fitness.

I want to talk about Vote Compass. Vote Compass was not about the instrument. Vote Compass was about only 50-some percent of Canadians going to the polls. For us as a public broadcaster, that's a concern. That number is not high enough. We want people to get engaged in issues. We want people to go out and form opinions. Our job is to ensure that with the diversity of services, diversity of voices we give you, Canadians can actually make up their minds on issues and show up at the polls and tick the box, understanding issues and having conversations, whether it's at home or whether it's in school.

You do not know the number of high school teachers who actually rang us and gave us testimony about this: “For the first time ever, I now have an instrument that I can use to have conversations with kids who are now 17 or 18 years old, first-time voters, who have no clue.” When they have these conversations, they go home and say “Hey, mom, how about this issue”. All of a sudden, the parents are saying “Whoops, where did you do this, and how come you had this conversation?” All of a sudden, this conversation starts another conversation. That was the purpose of Vote Compass--not the tool in itself, but the issue about bringing more information to Canadians so they could be better voters. That was the purpose behind it.

Let's talk about fitness, because that was a great initiative.

[Christine Wilson]

“Live Right Now” was a national spectacle of participation between CBC and non-governmental organizations that actually started because of the release of the StatsCan survey that showed that our kids were not going to live as long as we did because they were overweight and they were sitting on the couch too much. As public broadcasters, we said '“What are we going to do about that? Why don't we get together with some other interested organizations and try to get folks off the couch?” We challenged Canadians to lose a million pounds. We've lost 1.6 million pounds so far, and counting. We go out and do challenges together. People online found friends that they could go out and exercise with, so they weren't doing it alone. We got kids to do runs together. What we were trying to do was facilitate a healthier environment for our kids, largely.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

This started with a television program also, because there was a television program every Sunday evening, Village on a Diet. That was the program. The challenge was there, transformed into a web, a very far-reaching initiative, and a conversation that then went to all the platforms.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Mr. Hillyer, your time is up. It's more than up, actually. I guess I'm being very generous today.

On to Mr. Cash.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank you all for coming. That was an excellent presentation.

I want to resonate with my colleagues. This is the thing that excites me the most, to see all this Canadian content by a public broadcaster in prime time. Although I have been searching desperately for Intelligence and The Border in prime time, I cannot see them anywhere. They were my favourite shows, and it speaks to something I want you to touch on.

In urban areas like Toronto.... Some 50% of those who live in Toronto and the GTA were not born in Canada. I want to know how in the five-year plan you regard this demographic issue and how you speak to all Canadians.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

It's diversity, again, which is one of the values being promoted by this plan. We understand that Toronto and Vancouver are cities that have transformed themselves over the years because of the influx of immigrants who have made this country what it is now. That's why we need to adapt.

Christine will tell you what we did in Toronto, for example, in the local programs on the network and in the local news. There is diversity in the anchors and in the kinds of stories we do in the morning on Matt Galloway's show. We're very conscious of this. It's not only about the faces of the people who are actually on the camera. It's much more about the issues being raised, because we have to resonate.

[Christine Wilson]

You know, it's interesting, because sometimes people think about diversity as a social good kind of issue. For a public broadcaster, for sure it's that. But it's also a really important business issue, because we know that Canadians want to see themselves on TV and hear their stories on TV. If there are entire segments of the population we're ignoring, that would definitely be to our peril.

We are rigorous about making sure that on the screen and behind the screen we have stories being told that will resonate with the widest group of Canadians. We're proud of having Little Mosque on the Prairie, of debuting that six years ago. At the time we were told that no one else in the world would be able to broadcast it. It is now in 152 different countries.

We're proud of the distance we've traveled, and we'll keep going. As Canada changes, we need to change too.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

We monitor this. We have stats. When we talk about adding to our resources, this is something we follow extremely carefully.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

You touched on the fact that a one-dollar input nets a four-dollar output. I think it's very important for Canadians to understand that the public broadcaster is, among other things, an economic driver.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Yes, we believe that, sir. The reason we brought this to the forefront is that we can have a good conversation about Canadian content. We can have a conversation about diversity. We can have a conversation about the broadcaster being the link between Canadians from coast to coast to coast, English and French. But now we can also have a conversation about economic value.

We asked the same people who did a similar study for the BBC in the U.K. to come in with the same robust methodology and to put public inputs—inputs not only from us but from all sorts of sources—into the model they built. That's how they came to the conclusion that for every dollar we get we generate $3.70 of economic value for Canadians. This is a conversation we also need to have. When you affect the broadcaster, you affect, indirectly and directly, a whole bunch of people we work with.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

That's my final question. We are anticipating cuts. We hear the story often that cuts won't really affect anything, but we know that cuts do. We need to understand more clearly what is on the horizon in terms of job losses at the CBC.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

All of that will depend, sir, on the conclusions with respect to the government appropriation. Right now, what we are telling the ministers we meet with and this committee.... And we thank you again for allowing us to show you what CBC does and the value we bring to Canadians. That's what we're doing now. We are clearly showcasing the programs. We're talking to you about the value. We're talking about how important we are in this country and about Canadian stories. We will leave the decisions with respect to the appropriation to the government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Cash.

We'll go to Mr. Williamson.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate your being here today. Thank you for attending.

This is nice, because I've thought in the past that if I had a chance to ask some of the folks at the CBC a few questions about diversity, I'd like to do that. This follows on some of the questions we just heard.

You mentioned diversity, but you restricted it in terms of faces or issues. I'm going to focus on the news, where I think the CBC is failing Canadians in terms of diversity of opinion.

Ms. Wilson, you just mentioned offhand two million viewers a night for The National, when I think the numbers are more like half a million. CTV News is doubling your audience. Your numbers have been crashing over the last number of years, in part, I would argue, because your approach to news tends to be one-sided, and viewers are tuning out because they're looking for a good debate and they're not getting it from CBC's The National.

So in terms of the issue of diversity of opinion, which I think makes a strong news room.... I won't talk about your competitors in Canada, but if you look in the United States, you have people like Charles Krauthammer, with both NPR and National Review; George Will on ABC, a conservative; Bill Bennett on CNN, another conservative; and Ron Williams on Fox News, a liberal. I think CBC news in particular is failing its audience, and that is reflected not in your allocation from the Government of Canada but in terms of the number of viewers. I would submit to you that CBC is becoming a caricature of itself. There was a time I think it was better able to hold governments to account by providing both sides of the debate, but in the last number of years I think it has begun to fail to do that, and you're seeing that result in a rapidly declining television audience share.

If you expand your platform and no one's tuning in, I'm not sure taxpayers are getting value for money just by paying for more content when eyeballs are going elsewhere.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

I'm disappointed that is your opinion about CBC's The National, but I respect your opinion. It's not the first time I've heard that opinion about diversity of voices. That's why it's been, again, at the forefront of my priorities and the priorities of the person responsible for our French network and the person responsible for the English network. It's also in the mandates given to the people who have to deliver news every day.

We constantly follow this. In 2009 or 2010, realizing there was a strong perception of that kind, we did the most important study of ourselves through outsiders. We used five independent people to look at 16,000 pieces of news on CBC television, radio, and the web. They came back and we asked if they saw issues with the way we deliver news. They said we sometimes delivered too much opinion, not enough facts. We came back. We adjusted this. We put the results of this balanced study on our website so everybody would realize that we didn't hide those conclusions. We did the same thing on Radio-Canada.

We are acutely aware of the importance of our delivering news in a balanced way with a diversity of voices so you can be the best possible person. We are going to continue doing this until such time as this perception goes away, because the facts, sir, with all due respect, seemingly don't lead us to believe that we are not delivering it in that way. Anecdotes and, yes, a bunch of them sometimes were not very good, sometimes we miss, but on the whole the idea and the objective of diversity of voices is very important.

Christine is going to add something.

[Christine Wilson]

I just hate being accused of getting a number wrong. The audience for The National of two million is that two million people a night watch CBC The National on some platform, not necessarily that newscast. Over time that's been pretty steady. It's just that people are starting to watch the program in different ways and different places.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

And look at what we've done with--

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

That's not really an industry-accepted number. When you go out now you see CTV and Global in particular with a million-plus viewers, eyeballs on the television, and CBC The National is down to about half a million, and sometimes not even that.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

You're right with those numbers if you only look at those particular numbers on that night, if you don't take into account what we do on the web and the podcast and the rest. Frankly, that's the key. CBC News Network, sir, if you look at those numbers and you compare them to CTV news networks or anybody else, we're so much more relevant, sometimes it's three, four, and five to one.