Thank you, Kirwan.
Thanks to the committee.
My name is Ian Ferrier, and until last year I was president of the Quebec Writers' Federation, which represents English-language writers in Quebec. I also serve on the executive for the English Language Arts Network.
I'd like to interject just for a minute on behalf of CBC radio. It is the medium that has had the most effect on the careers of the poets and the writers and performers I know, in paying them for work to be presented on the air, in promoting the work of the English-language literary community to our minority here in Quebec, and in presenting Quebec English literature to the rest of Canada.
When I go to the Eastern Townships south of here, or into the Gaspésie, CBC radio is the voice and core of the English-language community in Quebec. In places where the numbers of English speakers are low and the culture is threatened, everyone listens, and CBC is how they define what the English community is.
In Montreal, CBC radio is the voice of Quebec English literature, because, with very few exceptions, the commercial stations just don't carry literature. If my writing colleagues and I have any celebrity in this province, it is because of CBC radio. They invite us on the air, talk about our books, present our work to the English audience in Quebec and to the larger Canadian audience, who avidly listen to shows like WireTap and who find out from Canada Reads that Montreal's Heather O'Neill has written one of the hottest books of the season.
It is the station that shows that it pays to be literate, and by doing so it promotes literacy as no other broadcaster does. CBC sponsors contests for writers and presents prizes to writers. They were at the Blue Metropolis literary festival and the Festival Voix d'Amériques and Spoken Word Festival. I can say without exaggerating that without CBC radio, much of Quebec English-language culture would be unavailable, even to the community in which it is created.
In Quebec, the core mandate of CBC radio has been to present the best of English-language culture to the minority English-language community, and to show that community all of the smaller communities of which it is composed. From this core, the mandate extends into giving English speakers more insight into the French majority who surround us and who are among us, and, as more and more regional programming goes national, into showing the range and excitement of Quebec English culture to the rest of the country.
The fact that funding has not increased for CBC radio is an effective cut for each year that this policy remains in place. It means that each year there are fewer producers, fewer shows, more reruns, and less work being heard by Canadians for Canadians. For radio in particular, this is critical, as it is right on the verge of becoming instead of an ephemeral medium an archival medium. Each week the CBC receives calls asking “How do I find copies of WireTap or Ideas” or “ How can I hear that music special that was on Roots Montreal last week?”
The CBC's mandate--and the key to CBC's future--is to be in a position to present content to its listeners when they want it, how they want it, and where they want it. In the future, the key portal for CBC to fulfil this mandate will probably shift to the Internet. This means that the show a producer worked on for months won't disappear after a broadcast or two. In an ideal world, it will be available to any CBC listener who wants to hear it. In the process, an authoritative archive of our culture will be created, which people can download and listen to any time they like.
All of this costs money. I think the best thing you could do would be to fund the CBC such that it is not effectively cut each year, so that it can take on this challenge and extend its range into this new world where the excellent work it does will have continuing relevance to anyone in the world who has access to the Internet.
Thank you.