Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I will be making my presentation in French.
Thank you for this invitation and for the opportunity to share our thoughts on the role of public broadcasters in the 21st century.
As you know, the Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique is the advocate for the francophone community in BC. Our role is to promote, represent and defend the interests of francophones as well as protect our community's linguistic and cultural heritage.
Our federation includes 37 members, organizations like the Centre culturel francophone de Vancouver. The centre's representative will be addressing the issue of Radio-Canada's cultural expression mandate. We, for our part, will focus on the way in which it reflects the francophone communities' reality in BC.
There are 64,000 francophone community members in BC. We now have new statistics and by next December, we'll know the actual number of francophones, those that qualify as francophones and those that are francophiles. For the time being, we know that the 2006 figures show our community is growing.
It is also important to add that there are many bilingual people in British Columbia, which broadens the francophone environment in the province. There are over 270,000 who can communicate in French, representing 7 % of the population in BC. That amount is not negligible, especially given the fact that these 270,000 people make up Radio-Canada's listenership.
These days, all broadcasters are in a state of flux. That is what we heard this morning: there is this pressure of new technology being brought to bear on them, forcing them to make technological changes and other more fundamental changes.
Consumers like ourselves are left with no other option but to comply or to change our listening habits. Clearly, the questions you are asking us are of great importance for the entire Canadian public, but they are also of specific concern to francophone-minority communities.
French-language options we have are very limited. The decisions made by broadcasters serving us therefore have an even more direct effect on us. Official language communities depend almost exclusively on Radio-Canada and on the way in which the Crown corporation carries out its mandate.
Our communities need their national broadcaster, perhaps even more so than the majority would. Radio-Canada gives us a chance to hear our own voices. It is the medium which allows us to know ourselves and to be known.
When it comes to providing services, I would like to start by answering this seemingly self-evident question. Radio-Canada radio and television must be available everywhere in Canada even in remote regions. By definition, a national broadcaster does not simply justify its existence based on ratings, and its presence throughout the country is a societal decision. Canada is not the only country to have put forward this basic premise. Moreover, I would add that the people who came here this morning told you the same thing.
The same goes for RDI. Access to this channel ought not to be a costly option for viewers which would be offered by cable distributors who don't see the point in it.
CBC/Radio-Canada's mandate is national, and the Crown corporation must make sure it covers all of the Canadian territory, even where our geography makes its broadcasting somewhat costly at times.
Let's now move to the issue of content. To carry out its mandate and to show the government that it is meeting its responsibilities, the Crown corporation is constantly making adjustments to its website, its program schedules, its broadcasting times, its content and the length of its shows, focusing on the importance of partnerships it is developing with its English-language counterpart and on the structure of its administrative or human resources sections. Everything is in constant flux.
It appears to us that federal budgets are too often the engine behind these frequent upheavals. When the federal budget made deep cuts in 1995, production was centralized in Montreal. Regional productions are increasingly rare, thus reducing regional representation.
In reality, communities like ours, which receive the service, receive very little advance notice and are not consulted. Decision makers simply organize an annual tour to inform the community of upcoming changes. But our community turns to Radio-Canada not only for news, entertainment and general culture, but we also consider it as a transmission, growth and development tool.
The Crown Corporation is one of the pillars of Canada's official language policy. It is the instrument which should allow francophones in nine provinces and three territories to speak with Quebeckers and create a greater degree of solidarity within the Canadian francophonie.
That is why the Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique created a media committee in 2002. The committee's mandate was to consult francophones and francophiles in British Columbia to find out what their opinions, perceptions and needs were regarding broadcasting. We also wanted to basically assess how the community was reflected within a larger context.
In 2002, as in 2007, most of the criticism we received was directed at the content of our programs. For instance, francophones don't feel the regional news really addresses their daily lives or concerns. The newscast out of Vancouver swings, with few exceptions, between two very different poles, namely a French version of the CBC newscast with basically the same issues being covered. French regional news looks like a translation of the English news, or sometimes like a diluted version of the national newscast out of Quebec, with too much information about Quebeckers and very little or non at all from other francophone communities.
People have said that the national broadcaster has become “montrealized”. Our communities are not reflected in the programs they watch. They don't relate to the issues because they don't see how national or provincial events affect them, either socially or politically. Things which affect our community are not reported often enough or even identified.
Radio-Canada seemed to have partly understood this when it created shows such as L'Ouest en direct, which allowed us in British Columbia to know when and where to watch TV to find out what was happening in the western francophonie, and not only what was happening in Quebec. Unfortunately, the broadcaster decided to cancel this reliable show. So the program is gone, and our regional news is drowned out by national news. However, some people like this, and the new model lives on. For instance, Ontario does not receive the same regional news as the Outaouais or Ottawa.
I would like to continue this digression with the theme of regionalization. Our communities are never as well served as when they hear their own artists or experts, or local folks speaking about local, national or even international events.
That is why radio programs, especially the three program schedules which are currently broadcast live from Vancouver, are the strands which help weave together our francophone community in British Columbia. These programs allow their hosts to talk about local events or to give a local perspective on national or international events. The programs address issues affecting our community, our school and our community centres. They report on news events which reflect our concerns, and they provide analysis about our reality and its richness. Lastly, they meet the particular needs of our region.
It is obvious that this local programing requires financial resources for every region, for every province or territory that can at times seem excessive.
I come back to our initial assertion, namely that the national broadcaster cannot only be a slave to its ratings. People cannot continue, in the offices of Radio-Canada in Montreal, to repeat that a disproportionate percentage of the Crown corporation's audience lives in Quebec and that therefore we must be realistic. The Crown corporation must reflect the different needs and circumstances of each official language community, including the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities as the Broadcasting Act tells us.
I would like to make a few recommendations. It seems to us that the CBC/Radio-Canada should develop an accountability framework in cooperation with the CRTC that would allow for the definition of both qualitative and quantitative objectives in a better reflection of the regions, whether it concerns the content, the newscasts, drama or variety shows. The appropriations allocated to Radio-Canada by the federal government could be subject to rigorous accountability on the part of the Crown corporation, which would involve the implementation of measures and of producing a better reflection of the regions and of the French linguistic minorities.
In conclusion, I would like to say a few words about technological changes. CBC and Radio-Canada have created an exceptional broadcasting tool for themselves that continues to contribute to the enrichment of the programing and to the broadening of news broadcasting; I am referring here to their website.
On these sites we have unlimited access to what is broadcasted and researched across the country and beyond our borders. It is no longer possible to say that what is said and what happens in Newfoundland is never heard on the West Coast. All one has to do is go find that information.
This tool is of course not used by the entire population for all kinds of reasons, but public broadcasters were quick to see what the benefits would be to the general public, and the investments they make in this would certainly be money well spent, and it contributes to supporting the public broadcaster's mandate.
I thank you for having listened to me and I am ready for your questions, if any.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.