Mr. Chair, I promised at the beginning that we would make some very specific recommendations. We don't want to beat around the bush with platitudes. We want to see action.
So here's the very first one. It has to do with governance. Governance is not a very sexy subject, but it's important.
I have served, over my life, on over 25 different boards of directors in the private sector, in the public sector, in Canada, and in the U.S. Not a single one of those boards did not have the authority to hire and fire the president and chief executive officer. How can you hold a board accountable for the effectiveness of their corporation, the CBC, when the board has no say in the hiring, the evaluation, the compensation, and the firing of the CEO? It just doesn't make any sense from a governance point of view. Yet that's the reality. Not only that, if the office of chair of the board is empty, guess who gets to fill it? The president. I did that for nine months when Patrick Watson resigned. I didn't want to do it. I was very uncomfortable doing it. It wasn't my job, yet I had to do it because the legislation says you have to do it.
If you do nothing else on this committee, the one thing you can do is recommend that the government change the legislation, give the board the power to hire, compensate, evaluate, and terminate, if necessary, the CEO, and I think that will go a long way in terms of giving the board the tools it needs to really manage a corporation. Right now, the one most significant tool that a board needs to be effective, it doesn't have.
No one should interpret my remarks as a criticism of the current management or of the current board. They're locked into this model, and it's not their choice necessarily. I don't intend any criticism. I'm simply saying it's a systemic flaw.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing--and I strongly advocate this--is something that, if you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have been dead set against, but now I'm all for it. Why? Because I've learned from experience. Have two employees, elected by their own members, sit on the board. It's not to represent the interests of their members. No, that's the union's job. In fact, it would be illegal for them to try to represent the interests of their members. It's to provide the unique perspective that they have. In any large organization, if you really want to know what's going on, don't always talk to the top people; talk to the people right on the floor who do the work day in and day out. They know what's going on. They have a unique perspective. They understand what's going on. They have a realistic knowledge of what needs to be done. I think the role of the board would be strongly enhanced if it had the benefit of that perspective.
I know this requires a change in legislation, but if this committee supports it, and if the government supports it, it is quite possible to implement some of these ideas gradually without changing the legislation. One way would be through the government's commitment, when the time comes to appoint the next president, to do so from a list submitted by the board of directors. I see that as an interim step towards changing the legislation that could be taken right now.
As far as the employee representatives are concerned, again, ideally that requires a change in legislation, but that may take some time. In the interim--again if there is a consensus on that--the board itself could create the process of election of two employees, who could sit as observers, and allow them to participate but not give them the vote. I think the mere participation and involvement of those employees would add great value, even if they didn't have the vote immediately.
I learned this long ago, because I served on two boards--those of Algonquin College here in Ottawa, on which I was the chairman, and now the Ottawa Hospital. Both of those boards have employee representatives on them. I have to tell you, that's what changed my mind on this topic. If you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have said, “No, that's a bad idea”, but now I say it's a good idea, because I've experienced the tremendous value added by those people.
So this is a very specific recommendation, and we really feel the committee should act.
The second recommendation has to do with pro sports--hockey--and it looks as though we've been overtaken by events on that score. I have argued passionately in the past that pro hockey belongs in the CBC, and I still feel there's nothing wrong. The problem, however, is that it takes up so much of the resources of the corporation. Over 40% of the audience share in English television is from sports, which is a total distortion of what a public broadcaster should be.
Before this hockey deal was signed, we were saying either get out of it or maybe reuse your exposure in collaboration with the private sector so this dependence on pro sports...and not only for the audience share. If 40% of the audience is from sports, it's a distortion of the mandate. It also makes the CBC vulnerable. A couple of years ago when you had the lock-out of the NHL, look what happened. All of a sudden the CBC was left with several hours of programming it had to fill, plus it wasn't getting a lot of revenue. So it put in a lot of American shows, as if we didn't have enough of those already elsewhere. So that's the problem.
Now a deal has been signed. We don't know the details and we're unable to comment. But as a long-term strategy, we think the CBC should still seriously consider reusing its heavy reliance on pro sports. That goes along with Bill's point on the heavy dependence on commercial advertising that steers the corporation in a certain direction.
The other thing Bill talked about is this business about local television news. There's nothing in the act that gives the CBC a mandate to provide local services. It talks about regional service. The private sector in most cases--not all--is doing a reasonably good job of providing local television news, so why should the CBC try to do that? It can do that on radio. A dollar spent on radio goes five times further than a dollar spent on television, because radio is a less costly medium. It is also a better medium for local coverage.
There are savings the CBC could realize by getting out of local television news, with certain exceptions. There are markets in which it should still stay because there is insufficient or inadequate private sector coverage. We recognize that and acknowledge it would be an asymmetrical arrangement. But heck, asymmetry is part of Canada. We're not a symmetrical nation, so we'd better buy into asymmetry, because that's the reality. You can go a lot further in radio and do a much better job . There's a strong audience loyalty to radio. This is a redirection of funds within the corporation, and we think it makes a lot of sense.