Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 24th, 2011

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

The Information Commissioner has a philosophy, and her philosophy is generally “when in doubt, disclose”. Would you say the CBC lives up to that philosophy--when in doubt, disclose?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Maryse will tell you the spirit of our guidelines. I will simply remind you that as I said a few minutes ago, we wanted to make sure our guidelines were vetted and reviewed by somebody from outside of the organization, so that we wouldn't be so excited about our guidelines because we wrote them that we would forget what was the spirit of the guidelines. So we went outside, and Professor Trudel—and you have his opinion here—said not only do we respect the law and the spirit of the law, but we actually go way beyond the law and we're actually disclosing more.

So to answer your question, yes, I think we understand what that is and how it works.

Maryse, would you like to add something?

[Maryse Bertrand]

I would just direct you to page 6 of the materials, which is the text of our guidelines. The second paragraph says that when in doubt, the documents will be disclosed.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

How many staff do you have working in the department that deals with information requests?

[Maryse Bertrand]

There are seven people, plus the assistant general counsel, who supervises the application, and me.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I realize that the court decision was just yesterday, but I think it is providing a lot more clarity for everybody, and I think that's been a good thing. As result of that, do you see any general operational changes with respect to requests that come in?

We have two issues here. One is a basic request that comes in to CBC. You're willing to comply. It's no issue. The Information Commissioner doesn't even get involved. She only gets involved when you refuse to provide information and the requester is not satisfied and then goes to the Information Commissioner. So you have two processes.

I would assume that for most of the vast majority of requests that come in, your department deals them, you get the information back to the requester, and life goes on. There are some, obviously, that you refuse, under either section 68.1 or other provisions. You refuse to provide the request, and then obviously the Information Commissioner gets involved if the requester wants further recourse.

Do you feel that your staffing level, your processes now, especially with what we've learned from both the first court case and the second, which I think has provided a lot more clarity, are ramped up so that your compliance rate will be much better than it's been in the past? Will your turnaround time be much better than it's been in the past? And do you believe that you won't use the rubber stamp of section 68.1 on all of these requests in the future, because you have a lot more clarity now?

[Maryse Bertrand]

That's correct. I mean, we've almost doubled the number of people who work in access to information. That's why our record, as you see from our material, shows indisputably that we've improved incredibly, to the point that our deemed refusal rate now is less than five percent, which is technically an A rating from the commissioner. In terms of having the necessary resources, I'm satisfied that we are staffed adequately to deal with the level of complaints we have, including the ones that are now going to be liberated by the clarity the Federal Court of Appeal has given to the process.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Okay. Thank you very much for answering those questions. I'll stand down.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

We'll go to Mr. Angus, for five.

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

Thank you very much.

I'm sure that you are aware, from covering the testimony, that we've had a number of different points of view. One of the interesting presenters was Mr. von Finckenstein, from the CRTC. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go into too much depth with some of Mr. von Finckenstein's testimony.

I've always maintained that if you are looking for a black hole of accountability in terms of transparency, look no further than the CRTC. They regularly deny every single access to information request that has anything to do with broadcast spending--anything to do with whether broadcast entities are meeting the conditions of their licences, questions about their local programming, whether they actually hire, or how many journalists they have. When we asked Mr. von Finckenstein why they just put a big black mark across any of these information requests, he said that he goes to the broadcasters, and if the broadcasters say that they're not giving it out, then that's it; none of it is given out.

It's a concern for me, because Canadians pay millions of dollars a year to help programming on private and public stations. Canadians, through government programs and conditions of licence, have given both the private broadcasters and the public broadcaster a market free from a lot competition by ensuring that we have the local programming improvement fund. We have section 6 and section 19.1 of the tax code. We've created an entire system to allow companies to do extremely well. Yet they can simply say no, they don't want the public to have any information on what they're actually spending and on whether they're meeting the conditions of their licences. We are aware that in some of them, such as in local programming, Quebecor just blanket says no.

What is CBC's response to giving that kind of information through the CRTC?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

We share your interest. And we are on the record--and Konrad, the chair, actually said this to you--that we actually wanted to disclose how we spend the local programming improvement fund money that we have access to or use in the context of that fund.

I think it's important. Rogers also stepped up and said yes, let's disclose it so that people who actually pay for the LPIF money.... As you know, everybody in this room who has a satellite bill or a cable company bill is paying for the LPIF, because there is a line on it. So we might as well tell the world what we're doing with those dollars. We're absolutely fine with this. We encourage you and this committee, and we encourage people who would like to see more LPIF disclosure to go that way.

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

Across our country we have a real mix in terms of servicing local needs. I'm not talking about national programming here. In my region in northern Ontario, CTV does excellent news coverage for the region. We don't have CBC television. For our francophone service we rely on Radio-Canada for television, but in terms of radio, CBC/Radio-Canada plays an essential role. If we lost our service out of Sudbury, our rural francophone communities would be just cast adrift.

I'm concerned, given the last round of cutbacks at CBC—because your attempt to get that bridge financing wasn't approved by the government—that it had a major effect on radio programming and it affected the regions.

What would the effect of a 10% or a 20% cut in the upcoming federal budget do to your ability to service the regions of the country and especially to francophone communities outside of Quebec, that those services will be maintained at the level they have been historically?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

The national public broadcaster realizes the importance of being in the regions. It's the second very important thrust of our 2015 strategy. We understand also the need to respect the minority language communities across the country.

I don't know what the cut is going to be. We have submitted the proposals, as I said, under the deficit reduction action plan in a very engaged way. We explained what we think would be the impact. At one point in time the numbers don't make sense any more and it's no longer about efficiencies, it has to do with programs and services.

So if I can, I'd like to reserve the answer to that question until I see what the numbers are. I don't know what the numbers are right now.

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

You must be making a plan, though.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Oh, yes, we are making plans. Like any smart and reasonable management team and board and strategic community board, we understand what that would mean to us and we're trying to see whether we can improve on the first pass in trying to take the body blow of a substantial cut in our revenues.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you, Mr. Lacroix.

Mr. Mayes, for five minutes.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

I think we're crossing over two different issues. One is transparency and the other is accountability. Transparency means the openness of providing information for public view, and the issue was around the scope of that transparency. But accountability is somewhat different. Just because you're open with your numbers doesn't necessarily mean you're being accountable. I think there is a difference and I think that's the issue at hand when you talk about CBC being attacked.

Of course the private broadcaster is held accountable by its shareholders and by its profit on the bottom line. You're running a public broadcaster at a $1.1-billion deficit, a loss. But you have a different mandate, and I know there is a different landscape you are actually working under. As a former northerner who enjoyed CBC in the north, where other broadcasters were not giving that service, it was great.

The issue is accountability under your leadership and what's going to happen here through this opportunity for the public to see more transparent information regarding the operation of CBC. You're going to have some challenges explaining the accountability.

You're in the business of communication. You have done a great job this morning of explaining to me some of the issues of the accountability in some of the expenses and things CBC does. But there are your shareholders out there, the public, and I don't think CBC has necessarily done a great job in communicating that accountability. The fact is, the application for access to information has brought into view that people want to see that accountability.

That's the question to you, sir. Do you see a program or something you're going to be able to do with the corporation to provide a little better accountability to Canadians and justify your operation?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Madam Chairman, I welcome any question on accountability. Actually, I really enjoy talking about accountability and governance, because we realize the importance of receiving $1.1 billion from taxpayers and making sure they understand the value of the $34 each Canadian gives to CBC, allowing it to deliver the services it does—in two official languages across six time zones, in a country as large as ours.

Here's what we've done to be more accountable and to deal with this. We now, on a quarterly basis, publish financial statements and 102 pages of accompanying explanations, in the same very clear way that the public companies of this world are actually reporting to their shareholders. We have an annual general meeting that we put online. Everybody is invited; you can hear us explain what's going on at CBC/Radio-Canada.

The economic model of the other broadcasters is such that they can't do what we do. I told you about that, and you referred to that exactly: up north, there's only one broadcaster—us. So when we talk about a loss, it shows you that the model is broken, because it's actually an investment by the government to connect Canadians together and tell our stories. It's an investment for the person in St. John's, Newfoundland, to understand what's going on in Red Deer, Alberta, or to find out what happened in Victoria yesterday. That's what the broadcaster does, in an infrastructure that is significantly larger than any other infrastructure in the world. We also just spent some $60-some million trying to go into the digital world.

That's what we do, and that's why, when I hear our friends at Quebecor always saying that this is a loss, actually I think it's a spectacular investment by Canadians into the broadcaster: to allow us to be the glue in this country, connecting stories from Canadian to Canadian.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I'll share my time with Madam Smith.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

You have 20 seconds.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Well, with 20 seconds, I really don't have that much time at all so I'll pass on it.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Are you finished there, Mr. Mayes?

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I think so.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Mr. Scarpaleggia.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

I have nothing to add.