Canadian Heritage Committee on April 20th, 2007

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

It's a structural problem.

[Lise Lareau]

Yes.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

I have a quick question for the Directors Guild.

We have heard from ACTRA and the Writers Guild. Have you seen a significant impact on your members in terms of the loss of dramatic programming at the CBC?

[Pamela Brand]

Absolutely, we have. We've seen our directors who don't work; many of them are unemployed, as are production designers and art directors. The decline in dramatic programming at the CBC, as well as by private broadcasters, has had a huge impact.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Ms. Bourgeois.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My first question is for Ms. Brand.

I believe that there have been a few changes to page 4 in the French version of your brief, which I received a bit before this morning.

[Monique Lafontaine]

Would it be possible for us to receive a copy of that version?

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

The guild recommends that the CBC/Radio-Canada television networks start to reduce their dependency on advertising income. Do you have any other alternatives to propose for how they might increase their funding? Some of the corporation's financial resources do come from that source.

[Pamela Brand]

Yes, we do. We would encourage partnerships with other broadcasters, as a really good example. We really take the BBC model. We think it's probably the best public broadcaster in the world, and that's a model that we would encourage. They have a lot of partnerships with other broadcasters in the U.K. as well as outside of the U.K. If you take, for example, the series, Rome, which has been very popular, it was done between the BBC and HBO. That's the kind of thing we would encourage. We would also, of course, always say that more funding is needed from the government, that there needs to be a larger government appropriation.

We do believe that the commercial imperative, though it's important--CBC does need to attract audiences--doesn't allow the CBC, if it has to be responsible and respond to advertisers, to be really innovative, to be really cutting edge, to really pick up on those kinds of issues, either in dramatic programming or in other areas, to be independent, or to take the risks and the experiments. The BBC is able to do those things because it doesn't have to report to the advertisers. That's the model that we would strongly recommend.

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

Thank you.

My second question is to Ms. Lareau's group. I would like to start by congratulating you, Ms. Lareau, for your courage and frankness this morning. The fact that you have come to tell us about your personal experience is quite remarkable.

Mr. Cantin, you delivered a forceful argument for francophones outside Quebec regarding the importance of Radio-Canada to this group. They in fact have come in to speak to us. While I agree with you, I do have a few reservations. I think that Radio-Canada has helped unite francophones outside Quebec; however, they are not satisfied with the services Radio-Canada is offering at the moment.

If the Corporation's funding were increased, would you agree that it should be required to be more transparent and detailed in its accountability practices?

[Marc-Philippe Laurin]

Would you please repeat the last part of your question?

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

If Radio-Canada's funding were increased, as you request, would you agree that it should be required to be more transparent and detailed in its accountability practices?

[Marc-Philippe Laurin]

I think that as of September 1^st of this year, Radio-Canada will come under the Access to Information Act. So, as of that date, the general public will have access to all this information.

Some decisions have been made, but I cannot speak for Radio-Canada management. Regional and local programming is a subject that has been much discussed internally by employees and management. It is very difficult for us as employees and programming suppliers to feel that the options available to us are limited when it comes to distributing programs and pictures that will allow people throughout the country to see themselves reflected on screen.

The past 10 years have been extremely difficult at Radio-Canada. Some decisions made by the public broadcaster did not please everyone. In that regard, would greater transparency make it possible to broaden the debate? I would be inclined to think it would. I think that is one of the aspects of the review of Radio-Canada's mandate. We hope that the conclusions or recommendations you come up with will answer this question. We are in favour of direct involvement by the Canadian public, rather than a government body that manages the public broadcaster. We think the network belongs to Canadians, and that they must be involved. To do that, there must be even greater transparency.

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

You and the other witnesses have talked about Canadian culture. In my opinion, culture and knowledge are two different things. Culture is someone like Gabrielle Roy, for example, and knowledge is the information provided by the media. However this is part of culture.

Do you not think that the committee must make a choice? Should we be choosing culture or financing over culture?

[Marc-Philippe Laurin]

I say that there is really no choice: both must be chosen. At the moment, the regions are broadcasting a lot of news and information, but there is no talk about culture. There are no programs that talk about the people in the regions and the communities, and that is what is missing.

I do not know whether you find this answer satisfactory, but this is certainly our view.

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

Very well.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I'm going to front-load my question so that I cause less stress to our honourable chair, here.

We were in Winnipeg, and we got a very disturbing picture, from both the francophone community and the English-speaking artists, of the disappearance of regional programming and of the vitality that had been there, even 10 years ago, and how much it's dried up. Some of that, perhaps, is the result of a funding crisis. Some of it seems to be a case of the empire striking back, the empire being Montreal and Toronto. That's the sense in the regions.

I'm looking at the disappearance of capacity in a centre like Winnipeg to do its own programming, and the sense is that we're centring it in Toronto and Montreal. But then I look at the decision to shut down the design team here in Toronto, to get rid of the capacity we have here in the city to do programming.

I want to ask you, first, why you think we're seeing a disappearance of programming in the regions. Second, why do you think the decision was made to get rid of the capacity to do programming here with the design team? And third, it would seem to me that there's quite a vast set of resources being shut down, with the wardrobes and the sets. They must have quite a value. Is that going to be put on eBay, or do you have any idea what's going to happen with that?

[Lise Lareau]

I'll start with this.

When you have your tour at CBC this afternoon, I do hope you ask to see the design area. That is the area where there are costumes and props and where these massive sets are located. It's all shutting down May 31, but until you actually see it with your own eyes, you don't realize what the CBC is about to lose. So please ask for that on your tour.

Why is the design department shutting down? There are three main reasons. One is because of Canadian Television Fund rules. The CBC has made a decision that it is not going to produce its own programming, other than in news and current affairs. It could do it, but it's financially onerous to do it under the current Canadian Television Fund rules. This particular management team really wants to focus on buying outside programming, and they believe it's to deal with the funding crisis. They believe that because of the lack of money, they need to go into very commercial television to attract ads.

Because of the lack of money, Toronto real estate looks pretty good; those areas take a lot of real estate, so they're going to--and they would say it if they were here before you--“monetize” their real estate assets and use the area where design is now located to potentially lease to stores, banks, or whatever. Our broadcast centre, our one-stop shopping broadcast centre, will be a broadcast centre as we know it no longer. It's very, very sad.

We've been trying to get the City of Toronto interested in preserving some of this cultural heritage, but ultimately I don't think it's up to the City of Toronto. I applaud Mayor Miller for being interested, but ultimately this is a Canadian decision.

In Montreal, Radio-Canada's design area is thriving, and management there has decided that it needs to keep it thriving, that it's the centre of the Montreal production industry. The same could be true of our design centre, but they're in a money crunch and they see a way out; they believe it's time to sell off assets, and this is a key asset. It's very, very sad.

That's the design story in five minutes or less. There's a lot more to it. I urge you to try to look at it; it's very sad that we're about to lose it.

[Marc-Philippe Laurin]

I'd like to add one little thing to that. I think it also marks a fundamental shift in the CBC's thinking. I think for years the CBC has always hoped to be able to return at some point in time to in-house original programming that it creates and owns, and that it can then display on all its different platforms, but I think there's now a recognition, from the message that was sent by Parliament maybe some 20 years ago with the installation of the CTF and the moving of money from the CBC to the fund, that they're no longer going to do that and that's not going to happen anymore; it's going to be done in co-productions across the country. You're going to be in alliances.

We understand the importance of independent producers, but we also think there's a role for the CBC in creating its own original programming, which is not bound by any licences or anything it has to sign away to somebody else, to a third party, who's realistically looking to make money. If you're an independent producer, you're looking to provide a project and create something that's going to make some money, and not necessarily just end up on a shelf someplace. Sometimes some of the best stuff we have ends up on a shelf someplace, but everybody keeps referring to that documentary--it didn't make a cent in commercial revenue, but, boy, we all remember that documentary.

That's what's happened here. The CBC has moved away from that, in drama and in comedy especially. They've made a conscious decision to do that.

Therefore, when I was talking about the infrastructure earlier, why keep this? What are we going to do with it? They've made a decision to shut it down, and that's 50-plus years of television--props, costumes, heritage, everything--that is going to be sent out to museums, sold off, archived...we're not sure. We're not sure where it's going. We've asked the question and we haven't had a solid answer on that either.

[Lise Lareau]

You may want to ask that question before your review wraps up, because this has all transpired while you've been doing your review.

Going to your governance question, we had appealed to the board to take one last look at this decision. My understanding is they spent two minutes discussing it at their last meeting. It's another example I think of a decision made by a small group of people against what is in the broad public interest.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I just want a clarification of one thing, and then I'm going to go to Ms. Brand.

For clarification, when were the changes made to the CTF? Was it 20 years ago?

[Pamela Brand]

No, it was 10 years ago.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

But you mentioned 20 years ago.