Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm here with assistant commissioners Gérard Finn and Renald Dussault, who will be able to answer some of the more detailed questions that I'm sure you will have.
I am grateful to the committee for allowing me this opportunity to appear before you today, which by a happy coincidence is the International Day of La Francophonie.
I am deeply interested in the subject you are discussing. Being a federal institution fully subject to the Official Languages Act, the CBC has obligations to take positive measures to promote Canada’s linguistic duality and enhance the vitality of English and French linguistic minority communities. Our national broadcaster must also protect our common heritage, strengthen our identity, and reaffirm our values. This is particularly true in an era of globalization marked by increasing diversity and developing tensions that sometimes threaten our linguistic partnership.
Today, I'd like to discuss the universality of access to the CBC’s radio and television stations and the important role the CBC has to undertake to create cross-cultural bridges. The CBC is at the heart of Canada’s broadcasting system. I believe it is vital to reaffirm its importance as an essential instrument for promoting, preserving, and sustaining Canadian culture. We need a CBC that's not only on the technology frontier, but also has a vision about Canada and its future.
The CBC has demonstrated success at providing radio and television programming that tells the story of linguistic realities across the solitudes. It should be celebrated and further encouraged for its distinctive contribution to Canadian programming, especially on new media platforms. The CBC should continue to play a leadership role within the Canadian broadcasting system, especially in an increasingly fragmented media environment. New media services, for example, can and do complement the CBC’s overall programming strategy.
In order to ensure CBC's services to all Canadians in both official languages, it's important not to diminish the full range of obligations that the CBC already carries under the Broadcasting Act to develop regional programming.
The CBC has long been a lifeline for information and cultural connection within regions and across the country. In several regions of the country, the CBC remains the only relevant media channel in the official minority language. This is particularly true for minority francophone communities but also for the English minority in Quebec.
I strongly support the efforts of the CBC to serve these threatened communities, and in particular, the CBC's Quebec Community Network for English radio, the maintenance of a strong French TV and radio journalistic and cultural presence in communities outside Quebec, and French-language TV projects based outside Quebec.
However, there are still significant shortcomings in regional programming as, over the year, production has been centralized in Montreal and Toronto. The CBC itself has expressed serious concerns about this. The plans it developed in 2005 proposed a series of measures to re-establish a strong regional and local CBC presence in the regions. One of those measures was to substantially increase cultural programming for the main networks from new and existing production centres outside Quebec.
The government should support an increased role for the CBC in regional programming. This is already reflected in the Broadcasting Act, but funding has not respected this obligation. If the act is amended, these regional obligations should be maintained and if need be, strengthened.
Over the years, the CBC has developed and produced what one could call cross-linguistic programming. Canada: A People's History and Breaking Point, a program on the Quebec referendum of 1995, are memorable examples. However, paradoxically, at a time when more and more Canadians are becoming bilingual, truly bilingual journalistic and artistic dialogues on television and radio have become more rare. This is regrettable. As Canadians, we need to talk to one another more often and to work together more closely. Fortunately, a few programs, like CBC Radio One's C'est la vie and Newsworld's Au Courant use talented and insightful hosts to provide a glimpse into the current lives of Canadians who speak French.
Nevertheless, cross-linguistic programming has never become a normal part of operations for the CBC and Radio-Canada. I believe this should change. The CBC should have as a priority the development of more cross-linguistic programs, especially on new media platforms, which are more flexible and adaptable. We're not proposing cod liver oil programming, but programs that show us how the lives of people who speak the other official language can inherently be interesting and engaging.
It's also important that the CBC create actual and virtual spaces for media professionals from both language groups within the corporation to exchange and develop ideas and common projects. One example of this cross-linguistic collaboration is the way producers and staff working for Radio Two or for Espace musique frequently collaborate on live music recording and other programming activities.
What's been lacking is not the will and imagination to work creatively together but the absence of a common space for bilingual and bicultural collaboration. It's difficult to understand how the CBC can hope to foster understanding between English- and French-speaking Canadians if it cannot create internally, from the bottom up, the conditions that allow anglophone and francophone artists and artisans to work creatively together.
Subsection 46(4) of the Broadcasting Act sets out:
(4) In planning extensions of broadcasting services, the Corporation shall have regard to the principles and purposes of the Official Languages Act.
There are particular challenges in this regard related to the current transition to digital services. Currently the CBC's hybrid digital HD strategy involves the replacement in major markets of analog transmitters with digital, high-definition, over-the-air transmitters. These transmitters would reach 80% of the Canadian population.
Elsewhere, satellite, cable, or even Internet protocol television would be used. This means that in remote and rural communities, citizens will have little choice but to subscribe to services like ExpressVu and Star Choice. However, there is a problem. These services do not transmit to all local stations. In fact, I met someone in Saskatchewan recently who had switched to a satellite service and had discovered that he could no longer get local programming from Regina. As a result, many members of minority language communities may not have access to the local Radio-Canada services that are fundamental to their development.
Universality of access must remain CBC's fundamental principle. During the transition period, the CBC signal must continue to be available over the air, especially to smaller communities.
As over-the-air transmission becomes less sustainable, obligations will have to be placed on satellite providers to carry the full complement of the CBC's programming. To that end, I want to reiterate the recommendation made by this committee in 2003: the government, by order in council, should direct the CRTC to require Canada's direct-to-home satellite providers to carry the signals of all local television stations of the CBC and Radio-Canada.
That said, I believe that the federal government should ensure that the CBC has the tools and the funding necessary to provide a distinctive and independent national voice in both official languages.
Chronic underfunding has made it more and more difficult for the CBC to continue to reflect the aspirations and achievements of Canadians on a regional and local basis. It is simply not possible for the CBC to continue much longer to strive for excellence on a shoestring budget. Appropriations granted to the CBC by Parliament should be increased at a minimum to their level prior to 1996 and should increase, at a minimum, relative to the overall growth in government expenditures and overall federal cultural spending, based in part on comparisons with spending on other public broadcasters with similar mandate obligations around the world. For example, Switzerland, a nation with more than one official language, funds public broadcasting at 2.5 times the Canadian level. The BBC is funded at the level of $122 per Briton versus about $33 per Canadian for the CBC. Out of 18 countries with public broadcasting systems, Canada ranks 15th in terms of capital funding.
The government must support the CBC's ability to carry out the full range of its obligations through the proper level of financing. I repeat the recommendation made by this committee in 2003: Parliament should provide the CBC/Radio-Canada with increased and stable multi-year funding.
In the past, the CBC has shown that it was willing to rise to the challenge of being an instrument for promoting and sustaining Canadian culture in both English and French and for enhancing the vitality of our minority language communities. I am confident that with the help and guidance of this committee, the CBC can adapt and renew itself as a truly national public broadcaster in this new century.
Thank you very much.
I shall be happy to answer any questions.