My name is Batiste Foisy. I had first planned to present in my language, but I see how hard it is for your organization, so I'll speak in English. However, I would appreciate it if you could acknowledge that this is my second language; I might make some slips.
I am a citizen of the Northwest Territories. I am speaking in my own name tonight. I also work as a news reporter in this town, but tonight I just want to speak from my heart.
First, I'd like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to express myself on a topic that I care about--namely, access to information and to public broadcasting. More precisely, I'd like to talk about francophone citizens' lack of access to such services in the Northwest Territories. And when I say lack of access, I mean that in the NWT and in Nunavut in 2007, there are no services offered by the Société Radio-Canada, the French-language broadcaster.
The mandate of this corporation states, and it's pretty clear, that French-language broadcasting has to be available throughout the country. It is not. I'd like to suggest that committee members visit the public broadcaster's website--at www.radio-canada.ca/radio/frequences.html--to see an image that speaks for itself, a map of Canada that shows Yukon Territory and all of the ten provinces in shades of grey, and the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in plain white. Below the map is an explanation, in French and English, of what the white means: “Aucune fréquence n'est disponible pour cette région”, or “No frequency is available in this area”.
In the communities of Fort Smith, of Hay River, of Inuvik, where both Canadian Heritage and the Government of Northwest Territories acknowledge that there are significant francophone communities, they don't get the signal of La première chaîne--that's the French equivalent of CBC Radio One--nor do they get Espace musique, the French cultural channel.
The citizens of the Northwest Territories outside of the capital, Yellowknife, do not have access to French radio. Here in the capital, it's a little different. We don't have the French cultural channel Espace musique; however, we do get the signal of CBF, La première chaîne from Montreal.
Well, one could think that it is because Radio-Canada acknowledges that we francophones do exist in the Northwest Territories, but that would just be too nice. Indeed, the Association franco-culturelle, the French cultural association, holds the licence for the rebroadcasting of CBF--at their own expense, of course. The French people in Yellowknife are so desperate to get the CBC public service that we're ready to pay twice for it. We pay it with our taxes and then we pay it with our membership in the francophone association. I'm a member of that association, by the way.
I'd like to point out that it's the same for the television signal in the communities and in Yellowknife. But I don't really care about that; I don't have a TV.
I would now like to speak to the point that I'm more interested in raising, and that has to do with the lack of access to information. There is no Radio-Canada reporter in the Northwest Territories. There is no reporter in Nunavut, either. It has never happened that a francophone citizen in the north has heard a local newscast in their language. We had such a newscast at the French community radio, CIVR, but now we don't have the funding to have reporters at the French community radio.
Radio-Canada has correspondents in Paris, they have them in London, they have them in Washington and Tel Aviv, but there is no correspondent in Yellowknife or Iqaluit. If I mention this, it's because in the very rare times when we get news from the NWT on Le Téléjournal, we feel it's presented as though it were foreign news. It's always a reporter based in Montreal who, after a few days spent in, say, Yellowknife--or, more often, relying only on press releases--explains to Canadians how things are going in the Great North, where we live. But their vision is always false, totally wrong.
Today is a special day, actually; we got news from the Northwest Territories in French. It doesn't happen often, but today it did. The people from the pipeline, the Mackenzie gas project, released the new costs and all that, so it made the national news. I read the news, and it says that the construction of the pipeline will only begin in 2014.
Now, I'm a news reporter in the north, and I know that what happened today is that the proponents of the project said the pipeline would only be in production--not construction--by 2014. That's what happens when you make reports without reporters.
I acknowledge that Société Radio-Canada has an obvious lack of interest in the Northwest Territories, which in part has to do with access to the signal—they actually acknowledge that we don't get it--and in telling other Canadians what's going on up here. In that spirit, I would make the suggestion to the standing committee that Radio-Canada create a fund for regional information in French. The money from that fund could serve to help us get daily information of quality here in our community, which in turn could help other communities in our situation get such information where the public broadcaster is incapable of filling its mandate.
Ladies and gentlemen members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, Mr. Chairman, I wish you a pleasant stay in our community.