Evidence of meeting #52 for Canadian Heritage in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cbc.
5:05 p.m.
National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada
And Fox News is even more popular, if we could only get it. Why does the CRTC give us Fox regularly?
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
I do have to leave, and it's not out of disrespect.
5:05 p.m.
A voice
I'm going to be in the trunk.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to start with APTN. You speak very good French; so you'll be able to understand me clearly. I don't have any questions to ask you, except for the following.
I know that all Aboriginal peoples, particularly in the north, have worked very hard to preserve their culture. Very often your battles are similar to those waged by the people of Quebec to secure their Francophone culture and assert the fact that they are a nation. I want to congratulate you for working all alone with few resources and for getting by despite the lack of assistance that has been offered to you. If I understood correctly, you want to become bigger partners of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Is that correct?
5:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network
Yes. I believe that CBC/Radio-Canada has a mandate as a public broadcaster to reflect the Canadian reality, at the regional level, among other things, but also with regard to the various populations of Canada. APTN is the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. However, CBC/Radio-Canada has a role to play with APTN so that Aboriginal peoples are represented to a broader range of Canadians.
In the past, some CBC/Radio-Canada programs were intended in large part for an Aboriginal audience. Unfortunately, those programs no longer exist, and I believe it is CBC/Radio-Canada's responsibility to try to recreate a partnership in order to reflect this component of the Canadian entity. APTN is the ideal partner: we are the Aboriginal peoples.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
In any case, I hope you succeed. We're going to take note of your request.
My second question is for Ms. Landolt. I'd like to know whether you specifically represent women.
5:10 p.m.
National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada
Our voting members are women. It's a women's organization, but because we like men, we have them as associate members as well.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
You represent an association of women that is seeking to have the viewpoint of those women taken into consideration.
5:10 p.m.
National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada
I'm afraid I didn't quite get that correctly from the translator. Could you repeat it, please?
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
You represent a right wing women's group that wants to be heard.
5:10 p.m.
National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada
I would call us conservative middle-of-the-road people. I'm very quick to call people left-wing, but I like to call us conservative middle-of-the-road people.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
You said earlier that you don't like the word “feminist”. In the dictionary, a feminist is defined as someone who defends the rights of women, regardless of which women. You defend women who want to be heard; so, regardless of the level we work at, we are feminists, you and I.
That was merely an aside.
5:10 p.m.
National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada
The dictionary defines feminists as women who want equality legally, politically, and socially, and all women want that, but what we have is something different in Canada. We have the government funding an ideology of a more radical feminist. If I'm a feminist, I want equality, but I surely don't support the ideology that's being funded by the government. I think that's going to end or has ended.
I think we all want equality—I don't know any woman in Canada who doesn't want to be equal--but we're not all feminists in the general understanding of the word.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
You said that Canadian viewers were turning to specialty television. Can you tell me briefly what you mean by specialty television?
5:10 p.m.
National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada
What happened is noted in my brief, if I can just refer you to it. The whole viewing public has changed in Canada, and the conventional CBC, CTV, and Global networks are no longer where people are looking. They're looking to what are called the specialty channels. It could be on books, it could be on discovery, or it could be on nature; it could be on anything. As well, people are going to the cable, which is cable as opposed to the other.
I'm just trying to find the section in my brief in which I deal with that, but people are not viewing conventional television.
5:15 p.m.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
Now I understand. Mr. Landolt, I don't mean to tease you with this question, but there's something that's fascinating me. Women are the ones who convey values. They administer the budget, take care of and bring up children and so on. We pay a very high price for cable, but the cable companies, particularly in the west, are inclined to import U.S. culture to Canada.
I find it quite curious to hear a woman say that perhaps it's better to pay more and to have access to U.S. culture. As women, we should be transmitting Canadian culture and be proud of it, as I am of my Quebec and French culture. We should also be economical, to the point where we say to ourselves that we're going to invest a given amount of money in CBC/Radio-Canada and that it is going to represent what goes on across Canada, which the U.S. cable companies don't do.
I went to Winnipeg and Vancouver with the committee, and, at the hotel, I was unable to find even one station that was concerned with Canadian culture. For the cable companies, Canadian pride is not important. Don't you believe that women must transmit Canadian culture to their children? I'd also like you to address the question of the cost of the cable companies' products.
5:15 p.m.
National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada
The first thing is that Canadian culture, it should be reflected, is not wolves leaping over the landscape. Canadian culture is Canadian-produced and has Canadian actors. It does not mean cultures in the sense that you're thinking of French or English. It's simply a question of keeping the Canadian industry going. That's what it is. That's Canadian culture. It's not merely reflecting Canadian culture.
Now, what is Canadian culture? I don't know what it is, but I do know that if you're concerned about that, why did the CBC bring in Friends? Why did they bring in The Simpsons? Why do they bring in all those American programs? If you're worried about preserving them, why isn't the CBC doing that? They're bringing in the U.K.'s Coronation Street. That's not Canadian culture.
All the question of maintaining Canadian culture means is maintaining the Canadian film and broadcast industry. It doesn't mean promoting what you would say is the French culture, traditional language, or, as I keep saying, wolves leaping across the landscape.
5:15 p.m.
National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada
Yes, the aboriginals, but that is not what they're reflecting at all. They're bringing in American sports. They're bringing in all sorts of other things that are not Canadian.
Canadian culture only means, as I say, maintaining the broadcast industry, the producers and the actors. Why aren't we getting from the CBC—? Our children will see the reflection, and you ask why people are having to pay for cable. The answer is that they want it, so they're paying for it. That's why people are going into cable. It's because they want to watch that program about horses, or about nature, or whatever it's going to be, and people are willing to pay for it because that's what they want to see.
I don't see anything in the CBC that I can say is uniquely Canadian. For example, they did a series on Prime Minister Trudeau and the Trudeau years and they had a maximum of only 500,000 at the very best. Why didn't Canadians want to see that as Canadian culture? I don't know, but that isn't what Canadians want to see, so we have to ask ourselves why the broadcast industry is not reflecting what Canadians want to see and hear, and it's just not. We have $1 billion for what reason?
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
I let that kind of go over because we didn't have too many more people to ask questions, so we've given double time.
Go ahead, Ms. Keeper.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Tina Keeper Liberal Churchill, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Both your presentations were very interesting. What I've heard is there are shortcomings in terms of the CBC and how it has met the needs of Canadians or is a reflection of the diversity of who we are.
I'd like to address both of my questions to Mr. LaRose.
They are on APTN, and I'd like to go back to two things. One is that you talked about the Broadcasting Act on page 6 of your presentation, mentioning that the act stipulates that the programming reflecting aboriginal peoples in Canada should be made available in the broadcasting system only as resources become available for that purpose. I'd like to talk about the CBC mandate in the Broadcasting Act, which doesn't even specifically mention aboriginal people in its mandate. It does say it should “reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada” and “—meet the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities”.
I think what I'm asking you about is APTN's origins. Did APTN come about because there was a perceived shortfall in terms of how CBC was reflecting the aboriginal peoples in Canada? Can you just talk about that in terms of the Broadcasting Act and the CBC mandate?
5:20 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network
Your question has hit the nail on the head, in fact. When Canadian Heritage established the NNBAP program, its initial intention was to have the CBC, as the public broadcaster, pick up some of the programming that was done by the communication societies in the north and broadcast it as part of its national mandate to reflect all peoples. That wasn't happening. The CBC wasn't interested in picking up that programming and airing it. That's how the northern distribution programming came into existence later on; when it became apparent that the societies were creating programming that the CBC was not airing, the department provided funding to establish 96 transmitter sites across the north so that the programming could be distributed over the air to every resident north of 60, basically.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Tina Keeper Liberal Churchill, MB
May I interrupt for a second? Are you talking about regional programming that was being developed by indigenous producers in northern Canada?
April 20th, 2007 / 5:20 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network
Yes, in northern Canada. Some were just below “north of 60”, but most of them were above 60 degrees north. Also, as you mentioned quite rightly, the act does not refer to the CBC as having a mandate for aboriginal peoples. It only refers to aboriginal peoples as having an opportunity to be part of the broadcasting sector if resources are made available.
Now, the resources have never fully been made available for us to be anywhere near something like a CBC. What we now have, in fact, is the creation of a system whereby the CRTC used the Broadcasting Act to establish what is called “9(1)(h) carriage”—mandatory carriage—and a subscriber fee that allowed APTN to be created. If the CRTC had not established that form of carriage, APTN would not exist today, and neither would TVNC, because Canadian Heritage had cut back the funding to the northern societies.
Basically what we have now is the only network that has a mandate to reflect aboriginal peoples. But I'm going beyond that to the extent of proposing to this committee that the CBC as a national public broadcaster has a duty, to a certain point, to be a reflection of aboriginal peoples to a certain extent.
We are part of the public. When you have networks like CTV, CanWest, and others who are willing to partner with APTN and create programming that is reflective of our lives, our realities, our cultures, our communities, then I have to ask that the CBC be willing to partner with APTN—and I'm hopeful that it would be—to become part of that reflection of who we are to all Canadians.
As a committee, I'm sure you're very well aware that there are still many stereotypes, many prejudices against aboriginal peoples in Canada, and many misconceptions. The only way those can be addressed is for Canadians to be exposed to the reality of who we are as aboriginal peoples. I think CBC has a key role to play there, and basically my suggestion to the committee is twofold.
I don't think they've been doing that part well, and they may say it's not part of their mandate, to which I'm suggesting that maybe this committee should make it part of their mandate, to a great extent.
But it needs to be in association with APTN. I don't think anybody but aboriginal peoples should speak for aboriginal peoples. We can speak for ourselves, but we would be willing to work with the CBC to create programming that would reach out to Canadians as well as aboriginal peoples and reflect who we are to everybody.