Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 24th, 2011

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I have to be honest that I'm not totally satisfied with your answer. I appreciate that you have a vested interest in coming here and putting the best face you can on this. I'm a little bit frustrated by it, but I sincerely hope....

I'm going to make a small statement here. How much time do I have left, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

You have one minute and 33 seconds.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

That's good.

I sincerely hope for the sake of taxpayers that the CBC, after looking at this ruling and doing an assessment—and that's your legal department and your right to do that—will be looking at this. For the sake of taxpayers, I sincerely hope that this doesn't go any further in terms of appeals.

We've had experts here testifying that the law has been clear, that section 68.1 has been tried, tested, and true, and that there is adequate case law protecting journalist integrity. There's been case law from the Supreme Court protecting journalistic integrity. I'm not so sure what the issue here is.

I have to tell you that what has transpired here just looks so bad for the CBC. The optics and everything surrounding it look so bad that, for policy-makers sitting around this table and for people who spend money on behalf of taxpayers, you're putting us in a difficult situation when trying to defend the public or state broadcasting system. It would really be a black eye, unless there is something you could provide me here that would rationalize going on and pursuing an appeal beyond what's already transpired. It's very frustrating.

My last question is going to be to you, Mr. Lacroix, regarding expense accounts. I appreciate the fact that you've outlined your expense accounts and you've given some very clear examples of your particular expense accounts. What percentage of CBC employees actually have to disclose these kinds of expense accounts? Do any of the people who are employed in the programming or journalistic activities have expense accounts that wouldn't be otherwise opposed to access to information based on journalistic integrity?

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Mr. Calkins has actually used up his time.

Mr. Lacroix, I'll allow you a very brief response.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Madam Chair, there's an important point that's been raised here that I would ask you to give me a couple of seconds to address.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Please do so briefly.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Sir, in section 68.1 it says that the information in the review was excluded. There was an exclusion there. This was the reason why we took this to the court--in the same fashion that the Prime Minister, two ministries, and the RCMP took a case all the way up to the Supreme Court—

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

I'll have to ask you to wrap it up, Mr. Lacroix. Perhaps one of the other witnesses will allow you to clarify this.

I do need to correct some information. Monsieur Lacroix and the CBC did not ask to appear before the committee; the committee asked them to appear as a witness. I just wanted to correct that.

Mr. Dusseault, for five minutes.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank Ms. Bertrand and Mr. Lacroix for coming this morning.

We share with the members opposite the view that since you receive public funding, you must be accountable. Parliament created the Access to Information Act, which provides access to certain documents in the public domain.

In looking at the way your competitors are using the act, do you believe that they truly want to serve public interest, or do you think that they are using it most of the time to serve their corporate interest? Do you think that they are using an act that was put in place to serve public interest for their own purposes?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

My role is not to determine the intention of people using the system.

However, I see some odd requests. A representative from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation who appeared before your committee told you that he had submitted a request to test the system.

I think those were his words.

Mr. Dusseault, he sent in a request to find out the name and address of the president of the CBC. The system sent him an answer. I am not convinced that testing a system that way is making good use of it.

Suppose a competitor sends one of their announcers or feature performers into the hall of our building in Toronto to make a scene, and then goes back home to submit an access to information request to see what was said about the scene. In that case, I am not convinced that the system is being used properly. But that is my personal opinion.

Far be it from me to impute motive to people who want to make a fair and reasonable request under the Access to Information Act. My opinion goes back to your initial remark. As I have repeated many times, we fully agree that the public broadcaster must be subject to the Access to Information Act for all matters dealing with general administration.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

There is also the fact that some people often send in several access to information requests at the same time. You said something somewhat surprising. You said that Mr. Drapeau's office had submitted 72 requests the same day. Is that a common occurrence? Is that one of the reasons why you didn't do as well as you would have hoped to do? Perhaps it is a tactic to try and slow down your system for processing access to information requests.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Once again, I invite committee members to open the document we handed out and to turn to page 3 at Tab 2. You will see what Mr. Drapeau told you about the 971 requests he submitted. He was asked how many he had submitted at one time, and his response was the following:

“Eight, nine. It may be more than that, yes.”

Well, on page three,

you will see that there were more than 8 or 9. At times, there were 72, 44, 20, 26, and 38. During the first six months that the corporation was subject to the Access to Information Act, Mr. Drapeau submitted 491 requests.

We were clearly not prepared for that. However, we acted diligently. We consulted other government departments that were subject to the Access to Information Act. We looked at England to determine the scope of the resources the BBC had devoted to that. We were therefore prepared for a reasonable number of requests, and we were clearly astonished by the number of requests that were made.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

You also said that proactive disclosure would soon be used in several departments. As I read in your document, you appear to be in the forefront on proactive disclosure. So you have taken steps to be more and more open and ready to be accountable to the public.

Do you think that is because you did so before the other departments?

[Maryse Bertrand]

Yes. For a year, we have been posting all of the public interest requests and all of the answers provided for these requests on our website. They are not summaries. The requests and answers are published in their entirety.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Time is essentially up. You've got two seconds.

Mr. Del Mastro, for five minutes.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you very much. I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Dreeshen.

Mr. Lacroix, I made the case in Parliament as recently as Friday that the average family of four in my riding gives the CBC the equivalent of a week's groceries. That's what they contribute to the CBC. I'm kind of astonished with something, and this is where I think Mr. Caulkins was going. Ultimately, you're defining programming, you're defining creative activities, you're defining journalism so broadly that if you went for lunch with somebody in your marketing department or in your programming department, and it went on their credit card, there'd be no transparency for that. Zero. It would depend on whose credit card it goes on, and who gets reimbursed.

That's the truth. And when you say before the committee that how much you're spending on advertising George Stroumboulopoulos on billboards or for a special launch of a season at TIFF will never be made public, well, the public wasn't invited to the special party at TIFF, but the public paid for it, and I think the public deserves to know what the relationship.... I don't understand what the relationship is between George Stroumboulopoulos's show and TIFF, but what I can say is that if there was a significant amount of money spent, I don't understand why that shouldn't be made available to the public to understand how much you've spent on it.

But even more importantly, when you say that you're subject to Auditor General's reviews and audited statements, I did four years of university business education, and I can tell you that an aggregated financial statement does not provide any kind of transparency in the regard I've just spoken to. It simply puts all the numbers together in a big heap that can account for everything. It doesn't provide the kind of transparency somebody in my riding might ask for, someone who is providing you with the equivalent of a week's groceries for their family and is seeking that kind of transparency. It does absolutely nothing to provide that for them.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Monsieur Del Mastro, you have a few points. I'm going to ask Maryse to deal with the definition of programming first, and I would like then to deal with TIFF and the $34 that each Canadian gives us to fund the broadcaster, because that's the number, $34 per Canadian for all the services that we render.

[Maryse Bertrand]

The interpretation of programming is not our interpretation; it's the Supreme Court's interpretation in the case of CKOY, and that has been the law in this country since 1980.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

We're not the ones deciding what programming is and isn't. There are some rules, some criteria. They come from the Supreme Court. So let's park this for a second.

Can I come to TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival, sir?

When I talked about exaggerating, our friends at Quebecor floated the idea that we had spent a million bucks on a party at TIFF. That's the way they put it.

We launch shows every year. George's show is the most important evening, one-on-one interview show in prime time. When I saw that number, I was impressed, because it means a complete disconnect with what a party can cost. And it wasn't a party; it was a launch. We chose that time to give it maximum exposure.

I'll tell you what that cost, sir. It cost the equivalent for us of putting one ad in the Sun Media newspapers in five cities in this country. So if you want to know, without my disclosing how we do corporate events, how we do launches, how we get the sponsorships, who covered some of the out-of-pocket expenses--because if we do this well, we should be applauded for that.... People on this committee should congratulate CBC/Radio-Canada for a smart investment of money by being able to launch a show of that importance, on that platform, hooking it into TIFF, with some of the people who will end up on George's show there to promote it. That was smart, spectacular.

The cost to CBC, out of pocket, was the equivalent of one ad in five Sun Media newspapers.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

For the record, it has been established around $225,000.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

No, sir, $64,000, if you do the ad.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Sixty-four thousand dollars?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Yes, that's the number.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Dreeshen.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

You've got 20 seconds, Mr. Dreeshen.