Canadian Heritage Committee on March 6th, 2008

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mauril Bélanger]

Thank you.

Mr. Chong.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing here today.

We're studying a bill here today called Bill C-327, whose purpose is to reduce violence on TV. So this obviously touches on the issue of censorship and the like. On the other hand, we also live in a liberal democracy in which a fundamental principle is that citizens are free to act as they so wish and are free to express themselves as they so wish, provided that this expression or those acts do not harm others or harm others in a way that's unacceptable to society at large.

So we have free expression in this country. That being said, this free expression is limited by libel and slander laws, by the potential harm this expression could cause to others, and so on. There is a lot of jurisprudence around this regarding books and film. Over the years, the Supreme Court's interpretation of this area of law has evolved from one of meeting a community standard involving public decency and public morality to one involving harm--the harm test--whereby what is acceptable or not acceptable is decided on the basis of whether the materials cause harm to others. My question concerns this harm test.

Now, we're studying the issue of television in this bill. Television is satellite, cable; it's not the same as books and film. Books and film are in the private domain, and television and cable and satellite are in the public domain, but I think there are parallels between the jurisprudence that has been developed in the Supreme Court's rulings on books and film and what goes on in television.

So my question for the panellists is whether you can point this committee to any empirically based studies that have been undertaken that make definitive links between violence on TV and harm to others in society.

Mr. Chair, through you, could we start with Madam Wing and hear her response on that?

[Cathy Wing]

Well, you will have to check out our media violence section, because we have a very good research section there.

There have not been a lot of longitudinal studies on the impact of media violence on aggression. One of the only ones, which came out of the U.S., didn't look at the context of the violence or at the television the participants were watching. Quite often in the longitudinal studies there is no contextualization of the violence, or it's just television in general. As I said, there are a lot of studies that will show you that there is no causal effect.

One thing that has been shown, and this has been shown with violent cartoons, is that children will act out immediately after viewing a violent cartoon. So they tend to have more aggressive behaviour immediately after viewing. That has been shown in several studies. But as far as longitudinal changes in behaviour go, there's very little out there.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Ms. Israel.

[Dalya Israel]

I was going to say that I find it difficult to determine what causes harm. I think that if you're consistently socializing children and youth in how they're supposed to behave in society, and intrinsically, in our current binary system, men are shown to be aggressive and women are shown to be passive, then what is the true harm? Are we then teaching children to reproduce these stereotypes? And what does that look like in the public and private domains, right?

There are tonnes of studies out there, and I've read several, you know, from ones on R-rated and X-rated movies and how they translate into intimate relationships to ones on violent cartoons. There are tonnes of studies out there, but what you're measuring is really the question. Are you measuring whether people are able to walk in the world and have substantive equality relationships with each gender? Are you measuring whether somebody gets physically assaulted after they watch this? I think that's the bigger question. What are we actually measuring? Are we measuring for a better and just society, or are we measuring for people not being abusive, verbally or sexually, towards one another? I think that's the bigger question for me.

[Irene Tsepnopoulos-Elhaimer]

I would also like to add that on the research with children, and with the statistics that I presented about over a million children witnessing violence in their own homes--and perhaps you have some evidence of this--I don't believe they've ever asked whether or not these children were also in a violent home. So to measure the experience and then the reaction to something on TV that was also supported by their actual experience in real life, in schools, in playgrounds, I don't think those studies have been done. Research is a very important tool and it's very important to research reality in all of it.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mauril Bélanger]

Colleagues, we could do a quick second round of three minutes each, so that would bring us to just about being ready to go to our second panel.

Mr. Scott.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you. It's been very enlightening.

It seems to me that what we're discussing is whether or not the best approach to dealing with something that we all would like to do something about is to be prohibitive or more proactive in the context of education and media awareness and so on. For instance, is anybody here aware of what currently exists on the prohibition side—what the restrictions are, how you would access them? Have you ever filed a complaint? Has anyone here been aware on the limitations side and the restrictive side? I'd like to know if anyone has ever used it. Or do you know anybody who's ever used it?

So there's an awareness feature in terms of what the prohibitions are now. That's what I'm getting. Let the record show there's some head nodding going on that I'm sure is going to be difficult to put in the transcript. You can answer that question verbally in a second.

Secondly, is there a developmental issue here? I hear particularly from WAVAW that there's a broader issue. So I take the point that it's one thing to say whether or not television is causing the kid to go out and do something that's obvious and immediate and physical, perhaps, or verbal, but it's quite another...just generally what they're growing up with. Maybe the better response in terms of a strategy is to deal with the developmental issues, to deal with the socialization issues, and maybe restrictions would even stunt some of the developmental issues. If you said, “No, we don't want anybody to be exposed to that”, and then all of a sudden at some point they are...there's been no discernment, no critical thinking, no one has ever talked about it. I think these are legitimate questions as to how you approach solving this problem.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mauril Bélanger]

There's general head nodding because there's one minute left.

[Cathy Wing]

First question. Were you referring to using the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council?

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Yes.

[Cathy Wing]

No. I do visit the site. I do read the reports. I know that Canadians do use it to lodge complaints.

The health component is really important and the developmental component is really important. It's too bad there aren't health experts here, because they could speak to this with more authority than we can.

There is a generally accepted theory that there are some children who are much more vulnerable to disturbing age-inappropriate media than others. So those would be children who were facing violence in their real life, who are more sensitive. There are definitely children who are at more risk.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mauril Bélanger]

Thank you.

Mr. Malo, it's your turn.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Wing, in your comments, you said that the organization you work for had conducted a number of surveys in recent years. Do those surveys contain figures on the status of violence in the media?

[Cathy Wing]

No, the two main studies we've conducted are on children's Internet use. We conducted the largest study in Canada, funded by the Government of Canada, on children's Internet use. We did it in 2001 and 2005, when we spoke to over 5,000 students, and that's where we found out about their exposure to different types of age-inappropriate, offensive content on the Internet. We've also done market research with parents to find out what their concerns were, and with teachers to find out about their concerns and about media literacy in classrooms in Canada.

But as far as levels of violence are concerned, no; but we did work with the Canadian Teachers' Federation, who did a large-scale study in 2003 called, Kids' Take on Media, which really set out to look at what kind of violent media children were being exposed to. That's a very interesting study, because it showed that children in grades three to six were playing Grand Theft Auto, a mature-rated video game. It did show very high levels of exposure to violent media through video games, television, and movies, and it also showed there was a lack of parental involvement in children's media use.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

If I understand correctly, the organization you work for is more interested in the Internet and video games than television.

[Cathy Wing]

Certainly with the Internet there was not a lot of education happening as the country was being connected. There was a connectivity agenda to get all of our schools and libraries connected—which are two of our large stakeholder groups, so we did in fact end up doing a lot of research and a lot of work in this area, yes. And we were a partner in the study of the Canadian Teachers' Federation, which is probably the largest-scale study of exposure to media violence in Canada right now.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mauril Bélanger]

Thank you.

Mr. Fast, it's your turn.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you to the witnesses for attending today.

I'd like to address a question to Ms. Wing. You focus on the fact that your organization actually focuses on media literacy and education, on educating the public on media issues. Is that correct?

[Cathy Wing]

Yes.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Now, I did also notice that you refer to two other parties that have a responsibility: the parents—whom I applaud you for acknowledging as having a critical role to play in making sure their children are aware of some of the dangers lurking either on television or the Internet—and the broadcasters. And I agree with you there as well.

The one party you didn't mention, which is the focus of this particular bill, is the government. If I might just read to you the actual operative section of the bill, or if you drill down, there's one operative section that says, “The commission shall make regulations respecting the broadcasting of violent scenes....” That's a very, very broad statement. It isn't restricted to viewing hours, but concerns the whole area of broadcasting violent programing.

I'm wondering if you feel the federal government has a larger role to play, as suggested by this bill, in regulating broadcast violence, or do you believe that the voluntary code—which is actually not voluntary but is part of the licensing scheme that the industry has agreed to—is sufficient to play the role the government typically would play?

[Cathy Wing]

I believe it is effective, and I think the fact that Canadians have not been lodging complaints to a huge degree since it's been in place is perhaps evidence of that. It could be evidence, of course, that they're not well educated about the mechanisms. But I think the government should be funding research, I think it should be funding NGOs, I think it should be funding educational organizations such as ours. I think there is a huge role for government to play.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

So you're saying that the current broadcast standards, which are made part of the licensing of the broadcasters, are sufficient and are doing the job they are supposed to do. Is that correct?

[Cathy Wing]

We believe they are.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right. Thank you.

To the other two witnesses, perhaps one of you could answer that too. I didn't actually hear from you whether you supported the legislation or not. I posed a question to Ms. Wing. Perhaps you could answer the same one.

Do you believe that a greater government role in regulating violence on TV is required, or do you believe the current broadcast standards are sufficient?