Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to appear today to talk about the upcoming Vancouver Olympics.
As you know, with me today is Mr. Sylvain Lafrance, Executive Vice-President, French Services, for Radio-Canada.
As you also know, CBC/Radio-Canada has been the official Canadian broadcaster of the Olympic Games for the past seven Olympics. Olympic coverage for us has been the culmination of our ongoing commitment to showcasing Canadian amateur athletes, and we are very proud of the calibre of coverage we have provided to Canadians.
In 2005, we submitted a bid to the International Olympic Committee to try and secure the broadcast rights for the 2010 Vancouver and 2012 London Olympics. That bid proposed a partnership between CBC/Radio-Canada, CanWest Global Communications Corporation, The Score specialty sports channel, La Presse and Telus.
We offered the IOC $93 million US, which was $25 million more than what we had bid for the rights to the Turin and Beijing Olympics. Unfortunately, the IOC rejected our bid and accepted a bid of $153 million US, submitted by what was then known as Bell Globemedia.
We were disappointed, of course, that our bid to broadcast the Olympics was rejected, but we were particularly surprised when, immediately after winning the broadcast rights in Lausanne on February 11, 2005, Bell Globemedia announced that it would solve its problem of providing service to Francophones by having Radio-Canada carry its signal. The fact is, however, that BellGlobemedia had never discussed that with us.
As my predecessor, Robert Rabinovitch, explained at the time, CBC/Radio-Canada has specific obligations to Francophones and Anglophones in Canada under the Broadcasting Act. We simply cannot allow another broadcaster to replace our programming with their own to fix deficiencies in their coverage. That fact has not changed.
We are aware of the Committee's concerns about Olympic coverage reaching Francophones who do not subscribe to cable or satellite. In fact, it was Mr. Lafrance who told the Senate Official Languages Committee, back in December of 2006, that we would be open to being part of the solution, provided that any arrangement met four key conditions.
First of all, that we produce and broadcast our own programming for television, radio and the Internet, or be involved in some co-production and co-broadcasting partnership. Second, we want the specific programming needs of Francophone and Anglophone audiences to be met through two independent program offerings. Third, we would like our broadcast to treat all Francophone audiences in Canada equally. And, fourth, we want to be compensated for the costs associated with becoming an Olympic partner.
In December of 2007, we discussed the situation with RDS, but there was no interest on their part.
Similar conversations also took place in May of 2008, and I repeated at the time that we would be prepared to negotiate a partnership agreement with CTV, provided that the four conditions outlined by Sylvain Lafrance were met. However, CTV was still not interested.
Then earlier this year, the CRTC chairman wrote to me requesting that CBC/Radio-Canada look again into the possibility of offering its assistance to CTV in order to provide greater broadcast coverage of the games. In my February 3 response—which you have in front of you under tab 4—we told CTV that consistent with the chairman's suggestions, we would consider broadcasting the international television signal pool feed of a few key events from the Vancouver Olympics across our network. This is the unedited feed, the signal without commentary that is made available to all international broadcasters.
In this correspondence, we stated that we would not seek compensation from CTV for providing this service, but we would offset our costs of providing this service to Canadians through the sale of commercials on our own broadcast. Again, CTV replied that it had no need for our assistance.
Then, out of the blue, Rick Brace announced to this committee that CTV was now prepared to provide us with the feeds, but they would keep all of the advertising revenue. Frankly, I'm surprised by this announcement, because they didn't even inform us of the offer. I still have not heard directly from CTV.
However, yesterday, we went after the information. So Sylvain Lafrance contacted the head of RDS, and he was told that CTV had several conditions on their offer, some of which were not mentioned to you by Mr. Brace on Tuesday. For example, we must give up our advertising space and carry their advertising as is, we must shut off the broadcast to francophones living in Quebec, no CBC/Radio-Canada personnel are to be allowed on the premises of the Olympics that we are supposed to cover, we cannot shoot any of our own material, and we must pay for all of the costs associated with the broadcast.
Now I'll leave you to decide if you think their offer is indeed generous and to wonder why these conditions were not shared with you on Tuesday.
You know what our current financial situation is. We have had to cut $171 million from our budget this year and eliminate 800 jobs. Also, we have just found out that we will be subject to the government's Strategic Review Initiative, which will target an additional 5% of our appropriation.
I can tell you right now that CBC/Radio-Canada is not prepared to defray any costs to provide a service that CTV undertook to deliver when it paid $163 million to secure the broadcasting rights, as that would be tantamount to allowing CTV to generate a profit for its own shareholders at a time when we are being forced to lay off our employees. That kind of bailout for CTV is completely irresponsible, and we will not be part of it.
In order for CBC/Radio-Canada to be involved in these Olympics, we must be appropriately compensated, either directly by CTV, or by selling advertising on our own airwaves during the Olympics, and CTV must obviously lift its ridiculous conditions.
However, I would ask Committee members to think about all of this for a moment. A private broadcaster secures the broadcast rights to the Olympics by bidding $60 million US more than we did, and when it is unable to provide the level of service it committed to, the public broadcaster is expected to come to its rescue and assume the costs of a bailout. Is this really a wise use of public resources?
For our part, we remain committed to amateur sports and to the Olympics, and will continue bidding for the Canadian broadcast rights to future Olympic Games at the appropriate time.
I hope that commitment will receive the support it deserves from your Committee, but it is important for you to know that we will not do that at any cost—not in the future, not now.
We would now be pleased to take your questions.
