Canadian Heritage Committee on March 1st, 2007

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

Certainly events in public life, like state funerals or the opening of Parliament, tend to draw Canadians. Many people think it's the role of the public broadcaster to contribute to that.

What we have would be anecdotal at best. CBC has the best connection with its viewers, and its strategy could answer that question. From an anecdotal perspective, something like Canada: A People's History is certainly a key example of a strong cross-platform approach where the quality of the traditional content was able to live in other platforms and realities.

But I really think we're a bit far from the programming. You would get the CBC to contribute to that.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

For sure.

As the ministry conducts the review and continues to look into the whole issue of the threat of new media.... I shouldn't say threat; it's a positive thing. Canadians are moving in that direction regardless. I think it's just a threat to conventional types of broadcasting.

How does the department assess what new mediums or media the CBC should take responsibility for? At what point does the department look at possibly setting up another--or is there any possibility? Is the CBC responsible for all media, regardless of what the new technologies will be?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

Back when this committee did the Lincoln report there was some discussion about those new platforms. The committee at the time recommended that the act be amended to make it clear that the new media was part of the mandate.

In a sense, the department doesn't assess that. It's what the act says that allows.... So it's very much in your hands.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I'm just thinking that at one point newspapers and magazines were the previous media, and the CBC isn't responsible for newspapers and magazines.

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

No, it isn't, although strangely enough the BBC does publish magazines related to its shows. The CBC does some merchandising associated with its programming, but it's very much up to the CBC and its board of directors to decide whether they're within or outside of their corporate mandate. We haven't done that sort of analysis independently.

The mandate is linked at its core to radio and television broadcasting, so the issue is how far does it go in other platforms and stop being what it's supposed to be. I think everybody would admit that new media is now seen largely as an extension of traditional media, and they cross-finance and cross-promote each other. It would be quite a different thing if it got into a new business line that was unrelated. I think that's an issue people will raise in your proceedings.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Certainly we're going to be looking at ways to ensure that people of my generation and generations that follow will still be interested in what the CBC has to say. Younger people are turning to other channels, but they're also looking at new media. We want to ensure that we continue to have a strong public broadcaster that will speak to the new generation.

Just out of curiosity, what is the federal contribution to the CBC? Do you know the number offhand, and what the private contribution is as well?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

You mean from advertising as well?

I think in answer to your colleague's question, we'll do a financing, because it gets too detailed, with maybe a year-over-year comparison that we can provide the committee. You'd have to look at it as radio versus television versus specialty, and I'd do short shrift to the numbers.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Ms. Keeper.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to go back to the mandate of the CBC or the Broadcasting Act, and the relationship of the department to the CBC on aboriginal issues in terms of the diversity of that mandate. What is the department's role in that with the CBC? Has there been a shift since the emergence of APTN, and has that changed in terms of the department?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

It's not so much the department that looks at this. As I explained, we're arm's length. Now, arm's length, as the legal counsel and the department keep saying, doesn't meant you can't touch. But there is that arm's-length relationship.

The entity that actually looks at this and that has done so in the past is the CRTC. These sections here, as you may have noticed, do not actually mention aboriginal; they mention multicultural and multiracial. However, they have to be read in the context of section 3 more broadly. I think it's paragraph 3(1)(d), by memory, that actually talks about aboriginal Canadians. The CBC, because it's part of that broader system, also has obligations to men, women, aboriginals, youth.

So you have to see it in the broader context. It's up to the commission, in its renewal process in the current regime, to make sure that CBC is living up to that part of their mandate as well.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

I think I'll split my time with Andy.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Yes. I'd like to continue to explore the idea around the broader opportunity presented by the technologies. I certainly would admit that my support for the CBC causes me to instinctively see other things as threatening to some extent.

I think Mr. Warkentin said it is an opportunity. As we're looking at the role of the CBC in Canada, the decision we have to make is to what extent they should be the instrument that is available to the Government of Canada to seize those opportunities, or whether in fact they would have a more finite responsibility within that universe, which would be carved out. I think that's a legitimate question.

I go back to just being curious about anything that has been done that we should be made aware of by way of.... As you said, it's constant preoccupation. Is there any manifestation of that preoccupation that we should know about?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

As I said earlier--

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I know there are programs and I know the list.

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

When the BBC was renewing its charter, leading the digitalization in Britain was one of the key objectives. So that's an interesting way.

I think we have other institutions, as I mentioned earlier, that could also support that. The Film Board's library is one of the best and it is world-renowned. We have other institutions, the Library and Archives, our national museums, that can also play an important role and have played an important role in this digital strategy I mentioned earlier. I think we'll explain all the components to it a bit better in writing.

As I said, in your study you may want to look at what led the British government to say no, we're going to use our BBC to be the leader to do all kinds of things. And in the BBC context, it's not just to deliver programming, it's also for health and information to citizens.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Are there other models? You've mentioned the BBC a number of times. Are there other models internationally we should be made aware of that we could consider?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

That's the closest model. We tend to look at NHK in Japan because it is the largest public broadcaster. Another similarity is in Australia and of course in France.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

You've talked about the question of governance and so on before. What about speaking specifically to the approach that nations have taken in response to two things: one, that every nation would have some desire, I suspect, to tell its stories to its people...regional and all of the other things that are in the mandate; and two, every nation would be contemplating how to do that with all the new opportunities right now.

What I'm curious about are the responses that exist elsewhere on the question of how to seize the opportunities this technology offers...to do something that I'm sure caused the creation of the CBC in the first instance. It was in response to the new technologies that existed then. What is the contemporary equivalent of that? What would be the entity, and would it be the CBC? How do other countries respond?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

Offhand, we're not able to give you the answer. There are others, I'm sure. We'll do that offline if that's all right with the chair. We'll provide you with those analogies vis-à-vis the digitalization in the collection. I suspect our rate of broadband penetration in Canada probably has put us in the leadership role.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I would think that.

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

So there may not be a lot of other models.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much.

With that, I'm going to bring the questioning to an end. I thank you very much for being here this morning.

We will recess for four minutes.

Mr. Angus.

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

It's almost a point of order, but actually just a suggestion.

Because today's discussion on the new media shows that it's clearly an area we're going to want to explore, could I suggest that we ask Laurier LaPierre, the author of the 2005 government report on culture and the online citizen, to do a brief so that we can learn more about some of the information already brought to the government on opportunities and cultural issues? I think it does pertain to the CBC, as this is what we focused on today.

That's just my suggestion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I will take that forward. I think there's a consensus around the table that we ask for that report.

Thank you.

Let's recess for about four minutes.