Canadian Heritage Committee on April 20th, 2007

[Marc-Philippe Laurin]

Yes, 20 years ago there was a change in government appropriations to the CBC. The budget started getting smaller and smaller, and there was a whole debate about the CBC, co-producers and the CBC, the signing agreements, and the problems that revolved around those issues. But it was 10 years ago that the CTF was created.

In the years leading up to that, there was a constant debate about the CBC's role and its involvement in the production of Canadian drama and comedy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay, thank you.

Ms. Brand.

[Pamela Brand]

I just want to make a comment on the in-house production. The Directors Guild of Canada, and I believe the Writers Guild of Canada and other creators' associations, have for many years—not just for the CBC but for other private broadcasters as well—fought very hard to have independent producers, particularly with respect to dramatic programming, do the work, simply because it's a very key question of creators' rights.

If there is more dramatic programming in-house at the CBC, our directors don't get their rights from the CBC. They are the co-authors, with the screenwriters, of the audiovisual work, and until that issue is settled, we cannot agree for more dramatic programming to be done in-house at the CBC or at other private broadcasters. That is absolutely essential. The CBC has not been helpful there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay, thank you very much.

Because of the time limitation we have, I've asked Mr. Fast, if he has any questions, to get them to you.

We are going to recess right now for a very short time. We'll try to make a quick changeover.

I thank our witnesses here this morning. We will start the questioning next time with Mr. Fast.

We'll recess.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Welcome back to our next session for this morning. I apologize as we start to run a little bit behind today.

We now have presenters from the City of Hamilton, the Centre for Community Study, and the Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation. I would ask Brian McHattie, please, to make your presentation. If we try to keep them as brief as we can, then we can all ask some questions.

Thank you.

[Brian McHattie, City Councillor, City of Hamilton]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

I'll be making the presentation on behalf of Hamilton, and Sonja is here in support, so we'll take the 10 minutes to do that.

Good morning to everyone on the committee. My name is Brian McHattie, and I'm a city councillor from the west part of Hamilton. It's my second term on council, and I'm enjoying it.

Particularly, I want to thank you for allowing me to be here today. We have a raucous council meeting going on around the budget back in Hamilton as we speak, so it's nice to be here in Toronto this morning to avoid it. I guess I'll get back there for the tail end of it this afternoon.

I am here today with Sonja Macdonald from the Centre for Community Study. It's a non-profit community research organization that's been working with the City of Hamilton to expand the level of media diversity for our community, both on the radio side and the TV side.

We'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to comment on the CBC's mandate. As with the other presentations you've heard this morning, the focus of our presentation will be on the crucial importance of the local and regional elements of the national broadcaster's existing mandate.

Our appearance today is in line with the city's ongoing commitment to creating a diverse local media environment in Hamilton. We believe CBC needs to be a central actor in our community to assist in building and reflecting our diverse voices back to us in Hamilton, and of course to the nation right across the country.

What we'll provide you with today, not having benefited from the presentations you had in other cities, is in our case, I would suggest, a case study into the challenges around regional expansion from very much a local perspective—a municipality's perspective, as compared with that of the provincial and national levels that you may perhaps receive more often in the presentations.

Let me begin by providing members with a very short overview of our community. As you may know, Hamilton is the ninth largest census metropolitan area, or CMA, in Canada, with a population of almost 700,000 residents. The CMA is comparable in size to Quebec City and to Winnipeg, and it has always been one of Canada's top 10 cities by population. Hamilton is located approximately 60 kilometres southwest of where we are today in Toronto. We're at the western tip of Lake Ontario.

The Hamilton media environment is quite unique. Despite the size, Hamilton is underserved in local media, with only one local television station and one local news talk radio station. Compare that with Quebec City and Winnipeg. Each of those communities has four local television stations and three local news talk radio stations, so there's a substantial difference there.

One central reason, as you'll guess and as will jump to in your minds, I'm imagining, is that the private sector has not invested in traditional broadcasting in this region because of market barriers related to Hamilton's proximity to Toronto, where we are today. This is fueled by the assumption that local Toronto content serves the needs of the Hamilton audience. However, the facts just don't bear this out. An example of it is that Toronto's top-rated morning radio show, CBC Metro Morning, gains only a 4.7% share of the Hamilton audience. It's just down the way, 60 kilometres down the lake, but there's a very different response in Hamilton.

In spite of these facts, recent CRTC decisions have rejected applications to create additional local TV stations to serve the Niagara and Hamilton region. The result of this circumstance is that over one million Canadians in this region are not adequately served by local programming in television or radio. This demonstrates a particular special need that should be addressed by the CBC in terms of fulfilling their commitment to serving the regions of Canada.

The market barrier in our region has been compounded by two important changes in the Canadian media environment since the last revision of the CBC mandate. These are the increased concentration of media ownership in our country and the CRTC's relaxation of quantitative requirements of local programming for private broadcasters.

As you're well aware, the CBC followed the pattern set by private broadcasters in the late 1990s as they withdrew from local and regional programming. In our case, the local CBC bureau was closed in 1992. This left our community without local links to CBC regional affiliates or to the national network. It has resulted in a reduced relevance of the national broadcaster in the region and a reduction in the representation of our region on the national network.

While we understand that the CBC has been faced with financial restrictions since the mid-1990s in particular, many of the decisions CBC management has made to improve the financial condition of the national broadcaster have come at the expense of the regions in Canada. The regions have lost local service and connection to the national network, despite the continued contribution to the CBC budget by Canadians through their taxes. For Hamiltonians, this means they receive no local service for their $22.5 million contribution to the national broadcaster's annual government allocation.

In his presentation to you in late March, Mr. Rabinovitch acknowledged the geographic gap in CBC coverage, mainly in radio. In the CBC's regional expansion plan that was presented to this committee in February 2005, the broadcaster identified that three million Canadians in communities larger than 50,000 do not receive local CBC service. Hamilton represents one-quarter of that total geographic gap right across the country. Hamilton is also the single largest city identified in this plan without any local CBC service whatsoever.

At this point I need to say that Hamilton certainly does support the additional regional expansion dollars for CBC radio, because it is through radio, perhaps more than television, that a broadcaster's success is tied to its ability to stay local. This is an idea that the management of CBC has acknowledged, but it has yet to take practical action to address its own identified gap. The need to address this gap sooner than later is important, as the CBC may lose its opportunity to access appropriate frequencies in these markets where it does not currently serve Canadians--for example, in southwestern Ontario and the GTA, both very congested markets from a radio frequency perspective. There are few viable frequencies still available at this time, particularly in the Hamilton region. Therefore the intention of CBC to address the geographic gap may be severely stunted if it does not take action now to reserve appropriate frequencies for future development.

While we support new regional expansion dollars for CBC radio, we are concerned that CBC management is spreading its limited resources too thin, rather than providing its essential mandated services to Canadians. It is hard for our community to understand how the management of the national broadcaster can make arbitrary decisions to invest millions of dollars in purchasing American reality TV programming, or investing in satellite radio, which is a subscription service reaching perhaps only 1% of Canadians, while for a fraction of these costs it could provide over one million Canadians in the Hamilton, St. Catherines, and Niagara regions with regional service that we already subsidize through our taxes.

We are here today to express to the committee our real concerns about the priorities and actions of CBC's management in its commitment to local and regional service. Our city has taken a proactive approach to addressing the lack of media diversity in our community. We've made representation at the CRTC and private broadcasters--Sun TV in particular recently--and we have been in discussions with CBC for close to three years. During those discussions we have spent our own money and time to identify opportunities for the CBC to come to our community. We've rallied support from across the region, and we sought and received support from our federal MPs from all national political parties.

Despite our best efforts, we sit before you today frustrated and at a loss. Mr. Rabinovitch has spoken eloquently about his commitment to return to local and regional service. He's also spoken about how he will not duplicate the private sector. Hamilton is a community without a CBC presence. We are the single largest community in CBC's geographical gap, and the private sector will not develop local services in our community because of market barriers. We are really the poster community to demonstrate CBC's commitment to regional service, yet year after year they continually pass by opportunities to invest in the Hamilton region. They have not even opened a bureau that would provide Hamilton with a service commensurate to communities one-sixth our size. Simply put, this is not fair and has to end now.

In our written brief we presented the committee with five recommendations for your consideration during your deliberations.

First, the community needs to broaden the understanding of special needs of regions to include communities like Hamilton, which are underserved in terms of local media.

Second, the CBC must reinvest in Canada's regions as a result of changes to the national media environment.

Third, the committee should establish an evaluation mechanism for CBC management that is based on merit and need that can guide, in an open and transparent manner, the way in which regional investments are made.

Fourth, the CBC must take appropriate and immediate steps to rectify their geographical gap in services. Specifically, they need to establish a local presence in the Hamilton region, the largest unserved community in their gap. I think I've said that about four times now, so it will get through, I guess.

And five, CBC use of new media and new technology should occur only where it supports and facilitates the principles of their mandate.

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has a very important task at hand in the review of the mandate of the public broadcaster in the 21st century. We've tried to present to you the real challenges, the case study we face in Hamilton, and the lack of equity found in the CBC's fulfillment of their mandate.

We hope you incorporate the lessons learned from the Hamilton experience. Certainly there's a need for more dollars for regional expansion. CBC radio is our particular interest, and we feel that's important for the regions right across the country. We feel that our experience in Hamilton with CBC management has not been the best and that changes can be made with the existing system as well, a combination of the two.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Ms. Wilkinson.

[Kealy Wilkinson, Executive Director, Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation]

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Kealy Wilkinson, and I'm the executive director of the Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation. With me today is David Taylor, a member of our board of directors.

We're very grateful, of course, for the opportunity to be here to emphasize the importance of Canada's broadcast heritage and CBC/Radio-Canada's special and very necessary role in that respect.

The physical and programming assets that were built up and acquired over seven decades by the corporation are the result of the investment of public moneys generated in the early years, mainly by licence fees paid by individual set owners, and then from about 1953 onward by parliamentary appropriations, in addition to commercial revenue.

[David Taylor, Director, Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation]

The importance of the artifacts, collections, information, and program archives that the corporation has assembled at its network headquarters and its stations and production centres across the country cannot be overemphasized. They are a public trust. Taken together, they document the story of Canada's development in the last century.

We recognize, of course, that the CBC's core business is not running museums or the development of national collections, but the fact is that as a result of its national broadcasting mandate, it has become both an integral part of the history of Canada and the inadvertent guardian of major collections, everything from resplendent costume collections to amazing photo archives--all irreplaceable. Canadians should be grateful to the CBC for having these in their possession.

All of this must be of interest to members of this committee, because you too share responsibility for telling the story of broadcasting and its pivotal role as the electronic railroad in nation building in the northern half of North America. The CBC's archives and collections are a keystone of the building blocks for that important saga and must be preserved and accessible so that the story can continue to be told.

[Kealy Wilkinson]

For seven decades, Canadians have invested in development of their national public broadcaster, making it possible for the corporation to link Canadians from coast to coast.

First there was radio, with programs like The Happy Gang; Un homme et son péché; Hockey Night in Canada, of course; Radio-Collège; Matthew Halton and Marcel Ouimet reporting on the war in Europe during World War II; and Les Joyeux Troubadours, Just Married, Tante Lucille, and so many other programs that were beloved by Canadians.

Then along came television. We had La Famille Plouffe, Génies en herbe, Mr. Dressup, Les Beaux Dimanches, The Juliette Show, La Soirée du hockey, Hockey Night in Canada--again, of course, this being Canada--Point de mire, This Hour Has Seven Days, Friendly Giant, Appelez-moi Lise, La Boîte à lunch, and The Tommy Hunter Show. All kinds of programs became icons in Canadian households.

Over the years, the CBC has become a treasure trove of assets from these times. Thousands of programs, millions of photographs, interviews, equipment, whether they be creative assets like programming or the costumes, sets, and props used in their creation by the talented people who made the programs, or whether they be in the physical plants--all of these have been developed by CBC/Radio-Canada in order to achieve their mandated programming responsibilities and for the benefit of the people of Canada.

[David Taylor]

The demands of the corporation's mandate are such that despite major public investment, there's never been enough money to do it all. Since 1974, the corporation's budget in constant 2007 dollars has been effectively stagnant, while the costs of programming, distribution, and new technology have been increasing year by year. So priorities have had to be established, and in that process, heritage preservation and the celebration of people and programs have generally had to take second place to the demands of production and other pressing corporate imperatives.

Nevertheless, in the 1990s, Radio Canada, very much to its credit, launched a major heritage project. Construction of state-of-the-art storage vaults began in 1997, followed by digitization of its radio and TV program archives and development of an effective and efficient cataloguing system. About the same time, CBC began work on the development of its own preservation programs, and by 1998, the pressure was on to transfer their radio and television programs from the original recording media to more contemporary formats. For a major program producer like the CBC, with its multiple networks, this indeed is a daunting task involving hundreds of thousands of hours of radio and television programming and including vast stores of news material, such as news magazines, which clearly document many key aspects of Canadian history. They also make up the largest and most significant portion of the corporation's regional collections and will likely be the fastest-growing genre.

[Kealy Wilkinson]

And it will take years to complete, because cleaning, restoration, and transfer of analog to digital media takes on average about 11 hours for each hour of programming--11.3 hours actually, according to L'INA. Given the CBC's current programming inventory, they're looking at 30 years of work by one technician to complete just one component. By the time that's done, of course, the format will be close to four decades old. It will be obsolete, and well past time for starting to transfer it again.

The CBC Museum, which was referenced by you previously this morning, is a very modest facility. It was launched as a broadcast centre in 1994 and eventually given an annual budget that ranged from $50,000 to, last year, $148,000. However, the museum staff, who work only part-time, have both—that's right, there are only two of them—received termination notices effective the end of May of this year. So very shortly there will be no one charged with safeguarding the thousands of artifacts in the museum's care.

Furthermore, as of that date, as you know, the CBC's costumes, props, and set collections will also have been disposed of or dispersed to interested third parties. Working with staff in the costume department at the broadcast centre here in Toronto, the foundation has been able to identify a very limited number of special costumes, related to iconic programs, that represent the work of major designers. For the moment, we'll be taking these into our own collection so that they can be preserved and integrated eventually into a national broadcast collection for Canada.

[David Taylor]

Of course, the closure of the design department and disposal of the costume collection have been major issues. But the larger tasks of safeguarding historic artifacts and building and maintaining the program archives are ongoing. In fact, they are huge and will require considerable strategic thinking if a satisfactory resolution is to be found.

In most of the developed world, responsibility for broadcast heritage is shared between private and public institutions. For the information of the committee, we have deposited with the clerk a summary of the processes used in a number of countries, which you may find to be of interest for your review. We'll just mention a few here.

Last December, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision opened a new building to house its broadcast museum and three extensive program archives to preserve and make accessible some 700,000 hours of its culturally significant programming. This operation is a joint venture of the Dutch government with national broadcasters and private corporations. In 2005-06, Australia's National Film and Sound Archive, a Commonwealth government organization with a budget of $52.1 million annually and hundreds of staff dedicated to preserving Australia's electronic media, in addition to the ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, maintained a program archive for its own use but worked in conjunction with NFSA in building the national collection.

[Kealy Wilkinson]

This year, the 938 staff at L'Institut National de l'Audiovisuel will spend the Canadian equivalent of $170 million, 100% of which is provided by the national government, on the collection and preservation of France's radio, television, cable, and satellite programming--an assignment they've been working on since 1975. France is unique in that it's the only country in the western world in which broadcast heritage is recognized to be a solely public function.

There are, as you can see, a number of models and variants that Canada could adapt for its own use, and there are more that we've tabled with the clerk. In all of them, CBC/Radio-Canada, as our national public broadcaster and a major source of local, regional, and national programming, must be positioned, and resources play a major role.

We believe the importance of this responsibility should be referenced in the corporation's mandate and that funds should be earmarked to deal appropriately with the trove of historical material it currently holds. In order to achieve this, it's going to be necessary for CBC/Radio-Canada to develop strategic precepts that will guide the application of its heritage responsibility on a national basis. In future, this will also enable the corporation to participate actively with institutions with complementary interests like Library and Archives Canada, Office national du film du Canada, private broadcasters, and ourselves, so it can play a suitable role in the development and celebration of Canada's national broadcast collection.

For these reasons, we therefore propose that the legislative mandate of the CBC now contained in the Broadcasting Act, I think of 1991, be slightly amended, particularly with reference to subparagraph (vi), so that it would read in future:

contribute to shared national consciousness and identity through its programming services and by preserving programming and related artifacts that tell the evolving story of the social, economic, cultural, and political history of Canada.

Thank you for your attention. We'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that.

We'll give the first question to Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Since my time is short, I'm going to focus on a question to Councillor McHattie.

I come from the city of Abbotsford, which has just recently joined the ranks of the CMA, although we only represent about 200,000 people rather than your 700,000.

Can you give me an idea of which communities your CMA includes? Does it include St. Catharines, Burlington, and places like that?

[Brian McHattie]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for that question to Mr. Fast.

It includes Burlington. It's Grimsby, Hamilton, and Burlington in the CMA.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

In your comments you made a number of recommendations. One seemed to be almost a throwaway, but I don't think that's what it was intended to be, and that was the last one. I believe what you suggested is that the use of new media should only be applied where it supports CBC's mandates. You didn't go into any explanation of what you meant by that.

New media has been the focus of some attention in our hearings. CBC has been constrained to a certain degree in its ability to expand into new media platforms. There has been a suggestion from some parts that there should be free rein to provide its content on whatever media platforms are available. You're suggesting that's great, but there's a restriction there. Could you comment?

[Brian McHattie]

I'm going to ask Sonja to say a few words.

[Sonja Macdonald, Director, Centre for Community Study]

Thank you.

Because of the presentation time we had today we wanted to limit our comments, but within our written brief we go into a little more detail about what we mean in terms of the use of new media. In particular, we think, for example, that cbc.ca is an excellent tool for a national broadcaster to be able to reach into communities to provide up-to-date information both in news information as well as cultural production and other things in terms of connecting with those communities and then bringing that information back to both the regional and national levels.

They've also made efforts--and satellite is one example of an attempt into new media that we do not see--as a community, as a positive step. Our reason is that we think it was a bit of a pre-emptive strike. It was a $7 million commitment in 2006, and communities like ours don't necessarily see the return on investment. In the longer term, that platform hasn't necessarily been proven to really be serving the core audience of the CBC, which are Canadians. In terms of new media, that's one of the concerns we have.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I think what you're suggesting is that the money that was invested in satellite radio...and also, you did mention in the same breath earlier the whole issue of reality show programming. You don't believe that was value for money, and you believe that in fact local and regional programming would have been a much better investment for Canadians. Am I characterizing that correctly?

[Sonja Macdonald]

Correct, yes.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

That's my question. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Scarpaleggia.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

I have a very brief question before I give my time to Ms. Keeper.

It concerns the museum of broadcasting artifacts. Could you just remind me, is it all located in one spot?