Canadian Heritage Committee on March 14th, 2007

[Lynda Brown]

Those are some very good questions that have been raised, and I think we both have some comments on that.

With regard to the copyright issue, protecting the rights of producers, especially as they move their IP across multiple platforms, is critical. What we're finding with digital producers, especially in digital film and animation, is that when they go to broadcast sale, the broadcast licence will require that they give up all digital rights to that IP, and that's been quite problematic for them as they try to leverage that into other channels. So it is an important question that I think we need to look at and have further discussion on.

I think the BBC model, switching to funding without advertising, which I believe our industry strongly supports, is a very interesting one. I think digital media, as related to the CBC, also provides some other opportunities for user-pay and value-added services that might bring in additional revenue streams that we might not have considered for CBC, but that could augment that.

I'm going to pass it to Phillip at this point.

[Phillip Djwa]

The current licence per television set in the BBC is £130 per year. If you were to times that by the number of television sets in Canada, you'd probably end up with over $1 billion, which is significant and obviously an opportunity to address some of the chronic underfunding CBC has been dealing with in the last few years.

Certainly you could extend that to looking at Internet provision in this country and ISPs. If there was $1 or $2 per Internet provider per month in the same model, you could also generate a significant opportunity to develop unique Canadian content.

I think what we're seeing in the industry these days is that through sliver castings or snacking, people are looking at very fragmented audiences, looking at very small bits of content. The CBC can really benefit from the huge properties they have currently on radio and television and leverage those online, but there needs to be a way in which they can encourage and develop content in a much broader and more plentiful way.

One of the ways you can do that is to encourage the generation of that content. If content providers have an opportunity--I think there are so many small companies that would be interested in participating in that, as well as internally at CBC--to develop that kind of content and provide it online with some kind of compensation, and that could be simply in its generation, you could have a vibrant and exciting property online.

I think one of the important things to understand as well is that the fragmentation of audiences really benefits the web in the sense that, as we've seen with television programs on CBC television, popular does not necessarily equate with important. It's really an interesting aspect to consider that online we can see that addressing issues...say, for example, the CBC archives online, which provides in-depth and teacher resources in an excellent manner on issues that are of importance to Canadians. This is not being done by many of the other private broadcasters. CBC does have a unique and powerful role to play in this area.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My first question is to Mr. D'Eith. In your presentation, you said that CBC should be recognized for its quality.

How do you define quality?

[Bob D'Eith]

The quality of music?

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Yes.

[Bob D'Eith]

That's a very good question, and a tough one to answer. What quality is, is very subjective. It's hard to put into words what quality is. If we see, for example, some of the BBC programming, I think a lot of it is how attractive it is to the world to see and how relevant it is to the world. If we look inward only and produce Canadian content only, without thinking about how we're going to export this to the world, I think its effect on our sovereignty and our cultural identity is lost.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do Canadian programming about Canadians, I just think it's more strategic thinking. We should be thinking strategically about the quality, in the sense of how we can get this out to the world and be appealing to the world and still have a Canadian identity. I think it's a bit of a flip-flop. Instead of doing programming that gets so many points on a mandate, we have to do this and this and this in terms of regionalism and ethnicity and all these things. I think those things will come naturally if we focus on Canadian producers. They're inherently Canadian, and we produce things with a Canadian world view. It's important for us to grow up as a nation and take pride in who we are and not have to think inward and stereotype ourselves. I think that's one of our problems: we tend to stereotype ourselves and then export that. That's not who Canadians are.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

You also mentioned that the mandate of Radio-Canada or the CBC should be changed so that international type-programming could be produced, so that we would have an excellent product.

I should start by saying that I am a sovereignist from Quebec. So my assumption is that Canadian producers do an excellent job that can be exported throughout the world, whether we are talking about the work of Quebeckers or that of Canadians from Ontario, Manitoba or British Columbia. When it comes to culture, I think that Canada has a good reputation among people elsewhere because they know we do excellent work.

Do you not think that the emphasis on excellent and international-type productions could result in some elitism? For example, the Canadian School Sport Federation will provide funding to elite athletes who will travel throughout the world to show that Canada excels in particular sports. However, by being elitists, we will not be helping our actors, the grassroot people who work for Quebeckers and Canadians.

[Bob D'Eith]

I think I followed most of that. I wonder if the chairman could help me focus that question a bit. Would that be all right?

I apologize. I should have plugged in my translation device.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I can repeat what I said, Mr. Chairman.

[Bob D'Eith]

It was very elegant.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Think about excellence.

[Bob D'Eith]

Sorry, my apologies. I thought I was going to do so well with my French today. Being a true Canadian, I--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I was listening too, but you were so eloquent that I missed the question.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I would point out that I am working for Canada.

I will repeat my question because I think it is extremely important that we not repeat the same error as was made in sport or other types of endeavours outside Canada.

You spoke about moving to excellence. When we value excellence above all else to show the world that we are very good, is there not a danger of elitism and of no longer working for the people who really need help—both English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians?

[Bob D'Eith]

That's what I thought you said, but I wanted to be sure. That's another excellent question.

Yes, of course there's always the potential to be seen as elitist, but I don't think we need to be the opposite, which is provincial and small. Our artists in the music industry are the best in the world. In fact we have more multi-billion-dollar selling artists in the music industry than the U.K.--Céline Dion, Avril Lavigne, Nickelback, and all these wonderful groups.

Nickelback was just another indie band from Vancouver. They used to back up my band in the nineties. I know Chad well. He's worth $50 million now. Great. Fantastic. I think they've been an amazing Canadian success story, but they started as an independent group.

I think I said in my presentation that we should put excellence first and produce quality, but we should be supporting independence. I think you can have quality independent production. It doesn't have to be small, and there doesn't have to be a lack of quality. At the same time, I think you need to balance that. There are certain sectors of the community, especially in the music industry, that need help and support. And that's....

Go ahead and cut me off. I'm sorry about that, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

No, I was responding to more questions from here.

But just to keep things moving, did you folks have something to respond to that? It was primarily a question to Bob, but....

[Phillip Djwa]

Sure. Thank you.

I think one of the interesting things is that we definitely need to work on the capacity of youth and people from different communities—for example, in Quebec—through programs like the First Nations SchoolNet, which develops capacity for aboriginal youth to create video and audio, which is something they can pursue at home in the remote and rural communities of Quebec. But what happens when those kids need an opportunity to intern or to work in an industry? I think the CBC can play a role in that. I know that's something the CBC has been doing, but could do more of, in developing the capacity of youth and providing internship and opportunities in new media. That could be a very successful opportunity for building a grassroots aspect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Great. Thank you.

[Adam Gooch, Program and Communications Manager, New Media BC]

May I add a comment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Yes, one short comment.

[Adam Gooch]

I'll try to be brief.

I agree with Bob's point regarding the CBC mandate and scoring points on having productions meet certain points in order to get air time. I agree that Canadians are inherently Canadian and that if they produce content, it's going to reflect who we are as a nation and, more importantly, as individuals. That's where new media's strengths lie, in creating community out of individuals who come together, whether they're niche or whether they're a larger segment of the population.

I also agree with Bob in addressing the last question. We have the talent, as individuals and as Canadians, that can be globally and internationally recognized.

To go back one more question, I think one of the barriers for content producers that we've had in this, to address the notion of what is quality, is that while we have the talent, while we have the storytellers, while we have those ideas, the funding or the financing to create really high-quality production values is missing.

So we have a lot of these independents who are able to publish now via new media, but they're still recording off their laptops in their basements. If we were able to find support for these people, for these storytellers, to augment the production values of what they have to say, I think on the international stage we would start to be that leader. Already you've seen from our presentation that the industry is becoming a leader. We just need to have the support in-house of showcasing that talent here at home.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Ms. Savoie.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In our efforts to be globally recognized, I think we have to appreciate that even within our country perhaps we don't recognize each other. We have stopped telling each other the stories that would allow us to know each other, from coast to coast and regionally.

I'm concerned that in our search for increased funding that Ms. Fry was referring to earlier, and chronic underfunding of the CBC in the past decade—it certainly hasn't been a priority—in our thirst for extra funding, we begin to compromise Internet neutrality by corporatizing it. I'm just wondering if, in some of the comments you made, charging fees and so on for certain productions could lead to compromising the Internet's neutrality. That's the question.

The other one is that you've both mentioned cbc.ca and the expansion of it. Given the presentation we had earlier, the cost it has, the amount of money that has been expended to that by comparison to the CBC's overall funding, and according to surveys, the disproportionately low use it is receiving by comparison to others, I'm wondering, given the underfunding, which hopefully will change, if that's the best way to go.

We heard this morning, for example, that the CBC has asked to reduce the over-the-air transmission. We heard this morning that there are even some cities that have lost the CBC, the possibility of receiving it. I'm wondering if we're jumping too fast, too soon, without appropriate levels of funding before rectifying the huge problem that is plaguing the CBC and risks making it irrelevant. At some point there will be nothing left to defend if we keep going in that direction.

So I have a number of questions.

[Lynda Brown]

Very serious questions to consider, indeed.

My first thought on this is that when we're talking from a digital media perspective, I think what we're saying is that there are models in the marketplace. And there are emerging models, especially with regard to Web 2.0, that could indeed help the CBC and provide additional avenues of funding without compromising regional access and equality of access to that.

I think we're in this interesting transition with the CBC where it's mostly been a push technology, mostly broadcast, that has been trying to serve an audience without necessarily knowing where that audience is and what it wants. What we're seeing in digital media is much more of a pull, for a push-and-pull relationship where user-generated content is very important to what's happening online and in digital media today. Through the development of a community worldwide in digital media, there have evolved different business models and different ways of funding that community, while still retaining equity of access.

So with regard to some of our comments earlier on, Net neutrality is definitely an important issue, but I don't think it's a linear equation. I don't think, in considering the role of the CBC, we can say that we need to address this first, and then this, and then this, because we'll have lost our opportunity. I think we have to look at both, and at the same time.