Evidence of meeting #66 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 television.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
Are you asking me to compare the model of PBS funding with Canadian funding?
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
I know a good portion of PBS funding is spent in order to beg for money.
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
That's right.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
It interrupts their very excellent programming, from time to time, for them to have phone-ins.
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
They get a substantial amount of funding from government agencies, be it state governments or the federal government in the United States.
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
I believe it is more than we proportionally get here in Canada, but I'd like to get that answer for you and come back.
When we watch the shows where they do their funding on TV, there's the effort and the cost, and the net they get back is very small relative to the amount of money they take in. So it's an extremely expensive way to raise money.
I'd like to give you an idea of per capita costs. CBC costs the Canadian taxpayer $30 a year per person. In the U.K. it's probably about $80 a year per person. So what if you sat down and asked Canadians, “How much do you pay for your Internet connection? How much do you pay for your telephone? How much do you pay if you have Sirius satellite radio? Do you have trouble with the thought of paying $30 for CBC and all it offers?”
I believe it's incumbent upon us as CBC to really tell Canadians what we provide for them. It's not just being able to turn on the radio and drive from A to B listening to CBC radio or to watch Hockey Night in Canada. There is so much in our stable of services that part of the challenge for my board and senior management is to really let Canadians know what we're all about. Then they might be willing to pay $35 or $40 per person instead of $30 per person.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
When you were interviewed—I'm jumping around now—was anybody from Heritage Canada involved in that?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
Let's stay on the mandate of the CBC. I'd like to see the questioning go that way to Mr. Casgrain.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
I understand that the heritage committee is the body responsible for ensuring part of the concern about the role the CBC plays. I'm curious whether there was any connection at all with either the administrative staff or the minister's staff in selecting the position for this board.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Mr. Chair, I would just point out that section 111 of the Standing Orders says that the focus of this review should be the qualifications and competence of the appointee--end of story. I think we need to limit this discussion to that.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
On reaching out to the community, when cable TV first had the right to sell their services they had to make a commitment to provide localized programming. I say that as a former municipal politician. We had very localized programming in which council meetings were covered. There were interviews with local community people. I realize to some degree that's easier when you're dealing with a cable system.
On your commitment here, to what degree do you want to make sure that CBC is relevant? You made the comment that Canadians want a public broadcaster that's more relevant. Is there any effort being made to have more localized broadcasting that reflects the different geographic regions and sub-regions of northern B.C. and the Lower Mainland--the communities within those areas?
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
I can't speak to that with great knowledge, but I can tell you that the—
Liberal
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
All I know is that the big effort right now--and there's a paper that has been tabled by senior management with the Ministry of Heritage--is to consider providing local radio. There are about six million Canadians in this country who don't get their local radio. It comes as a feed from either Toronto or Ottawa. They have tabled a paper to ask Heritage to consider a $25 million investment, which would be annual, to get this programming up and running. That doesn't reach out to places like northern Manitoba or the far north, but I think we're covering off those areas quite well.
If I can digress for one moment, I was talking to Jane Chalmers when I first met her, and she was telling me about one of the announcers in northern Canada when 9/11 took place. He was trying to tell the Inuit what was going on in New York and Washington. He was literally translating what he saw on the television to Inuktitut, or the language he was speaking in. They don't know what terrorism is about, so he was having to come up with words. When you think of us reaching out that way to fellow citizens in the north, who are blessed with no understanding of terror, it must be very difficult. But it was being done as a literal translation. He was seeing something on the screen and then he was trying to broadcast it over the radio in their native language.
The effort is to reach out as far as possible. We broadcast, I believe in eight aboriginal languages. On RCI Viva, which is an Internet radio, we have nine languages for new Canadians coming to this country.
Conservative
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Congratulations, Mr. Casgrain, on your appointment.
Really, I only have one question. It has to do with your business background. I have a business background. Obviously you would have had some challenges and successes in your business career that might be relevant to what you're doing now.
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
From a challenge in business perspective, my background has been involved with lots of what I call “turnaround situations”.
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
That's what I'm trying to get at. I'm interested in hearing some examples of things you might have done in your business career that you may see as things to address as the chair of the CBC.
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
Let me say that my first involvement with CBC was my first board meeting in Vancouver at the beginning of May. This is a very fine group of people who are representing this country and who are giving of their time, at the board level, to provide the direction to senior management. We have representation all across the country right now. I was very pleased to see how everybody worked together. We also had all the senior management team at that meeting.
There's a very open dialogue going on right now within CBC. The senior management is talking very comfortably with each other. As you know, there has been a history of fragmentation within CBC. The effort by senior management is to work as one organization, very cohesively, sharing resources and sharing ideas.
The interface between CBC English language radio with CBC English language TV is very, very exciting. We have a huge source of creativity. Why do we have to limit that expertise to the radio domain when it can trickle over and be available to our people in English language television?
Similarly, you have Radio-Canada, which, as you know, has been integrated under one individual, Mr. Sylvain Lafrance. He has moved Radio-Canada into one integrated organization. But again, they talk very cooperatively with the English language TV service and the English language radio service.
I think a lot of progress has been made. The problem, as I see it, is getting down to the coal face, which are the announcers, the technical people, and making sure that everybody buys into CBC/Radio-Canada as one organization moving in one direction to fulfill the mandate, which is to create this rambunctious democracy and get people to really feel passionate about what's going on in this country.
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
Right, but let's get back to some examples of things that you might have--
Chairperson designate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, As an Individual
As you know, I have no background in broadcasting. Presently, I'm involved in the aviation services group. It's a company called Skyservice, started by my partner, Russell Payson, 21 years ago in Montreal. He's grown it from 11 employees to about 1,500 employees today. My involvement started 10 years ago when I became his partner. My expertise is not aviation. I have a background in finance and the like.
Previous to that I was with the Brookfield Brascan Edper group--all the same group, different names--for 26 years. I joined them, very fortunately, in Montreal in 1976. At that time they owned the Montreal Canadiens and the Montreal Forum. It was the summer of the Summer Olympics in Montreal, so the Forum was hosting a number of activities. I was working there as an accountant to start, and then I moved with them to the West Indies for two years to run a small trading house on the island of Antigua, and then I moved back to Toronto in 1978 to open up the office.
Subsequent to that, I had various operational experiences with companies like Foodex, which owned all the Frank Vetere's and Ponderosas, and a company called National Business Systems, which was unfortunately the subject of a massive fraud in 1988. I was assigned to spend six months there, but I spent seven and a half years there straightening it out. Those are a few examples of my involvement.
I would like to say one thing about my experience. Everywhere I have been in the organizations, particularly troubled organizations--and I don't consider CBC/Radio-Canada troubled in any way. I think it's absolutely on track, moving in the right direction, with wonderful people. But I've always found in organizations that there is an excellence and there is a loyalty, and at the end of the day, it is people who make up the organization. So what has happened in certain cases is that they have not been listened to, and it's important that we get the communications going. It's a big initiative in any organization. In one like CBC, with 9,000-plus employees, it is a huge undertaking. So I am committed to improving the internal communications and the external communications.