Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Committee members, thank you for receiving the members of Réalisatrices équitables here this morning. I am here with Lucette Lupien, Marie-Pascale Laurencelle and Isabelle Hayeur, who have come here with with me this morning and who will also be able to answer questions following our presentation.
First of all, I won't dwell at length on the obligation to fund Radio-Canada adequately, as Ms. Simard has so brilliantly shown. In our opinion, that is very important. Radio-Canada must not be forced to follow the same dictates as commercial television broadcasters. It must be different, have its own voice and reflect the values of all Canadians in the world, and not be confined to genres that would be “more popular”, but that would marginalize everything else.
Having said that, we are going to address our main subject, which is the place of women, particularly women directors, in our public broadcaster. Although the description of its mandate is praiseworthy, Radio-Canada, among others in the case of cultural diversity, fails to mention the importance of representing more than half the population, that is to say women. Last year, Statistics Canada announced again that we formed 51% of the population. Since all the citizens of our country are deemed to be equal, someone might respond to me by saying that, in the view of Radio-Canada and the government, women are included in that designation.
However, when I look at the statements in greater detail, I see that in (ii), it says that the corporation must “reflect Canada and its regions”, that, in (iv), it states that it must reflect the needs and circumstances of each official-language community and that, in (viii), it states that it must “reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.” Why was it necessary to name these realities? No doubt because parliamentarians realized that, without specific rules, the major centres tended to be favoured to the detriment of the regions, as was said earlier. They also probably tended to think that the citizens of different cultures might not find their place and that the two official languages might be unfairly represented. They thought it wise to state that specifically in the mandate.
Now we would like the government to concern itself with the unfair amount of space made available to women's imagination on the screen and the unequal presence of women directors on our national television network.
It is my turn to apologize, Mr. Chairman, because we had to change our brief slightly, particularly the tables, which are easy to understand. If you read La Presse, you should be able to find your way through it very easily. These are mainly figures. Table A represents the CBC/Radio-Canada's current situation, in the spring of 2007, and Table B represents other aspects of the system that are unfavourable to women directors from a production standpoint. As you can see, the gaps are quite significant, 63% and 37% for Radio-Canada. These tables are on pages 9 and 10.
Do you have Tables A and B on pages 9 and 10?