Evidence of meeting #22 for Canadian Heritage in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was code.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Do you have a sense of how parents' media literacy might be improved, given your experience in the industry?
As an Individual
I think sometimes parents just aren't aware of the effects of particular program elements on their kids. Parents today are very busy. The circumstance in most households is that both parents are working. They're harried, trying to keep up to speed with everything from homework to hockey practice to ballet class. Trying to dump something else on them is a challenge. I know I've been there.
It would be up to the folks at the Media Awareness Network, who are the experts at this. There are all kinds of initiatives I think they would like to pursue that would be beneficial to parents, like maybe a little pamphlet on a milk carton or something like that. All of that takes money, time, and organizational ability. They just don't have the resources to do that.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Do broadcasters have a role to play in increasing media literacy in Canada, in terms of using the airwaves to do that, but also in terms of funding the kind of outreach work and education work that seems to be required right now?
As an Individual
Broadcasters have been very good in their past support of the Media Awareness Network. There have been many instances, in terms of ownership changes and transfers and the benefits that flowed from those transactions, when the Media Awareness Network was listed as a beneficiary. It has been kept alive and kept going because of the support of the broadcasting community. I think more needs to be done.
I was very honoured to be given a special award at the November CAB convention for my work in the field. I used the opportunity to suggest that they could do a little more. They could do more about the rating system on their website, and they could promote the use of the V-chip on their website. We've been in this regime now for a number of years, and that would not be out of line with continuing their service to their community.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
What is V-chip usage like in Canada at the moment? I know you're one of the experts on the V-chip.
As an Individual
We haven't done any surveys in a long time, and I really can't give you a good answer. I would suspect, from the turnover in television sets, that probably between 75% and 80% of the sets today are V-chip equipped.
How many parents are using it? We don't know. That would be research the Media Awareness Network could undertake that would be very valuable to all of us.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
You were talking with Mr. Scarpaleggia about the icons. You mentioned that the icon is there for 15 seconds at the beginning of a program or whatever. Was there ever thought given, for programs that have violence or for adult kinds of programming, to having the icon remain there throughout the whole program?
I know that broadcasters' icons tend to stay on the screen the whole time now so that the network's symbol is there. If parents came into a room, they could tell immediately if their child was watching a program that had an adult rating or a violence guideline associated with it, rather than having to sit and watch programming for a few minutes to figure out what the kids were actually watching.
As an Individual
The icon was never part of the original plan. It was put forward by the industry as an interim step, because there were some real technological difficulties in bringing the V-chip online. It was new technology, and in the national trial we undertook there were a number of bugs in the system that came to the fore.
I think what's even better than keeping the icon up is that on programs that are intended for adult audiences, most broadcasters now repeat viewer advisories when they come out of a commercial break. Every time you come back to a program from a commercial, there is a very clear description of the content of the program, and it provides a cautionary warning. The broadcasters are very good about doing that.
Conservative
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Thank you, Mr. MacKay, for your expert testimony here today.
Again, just by way of information for my colleagues, the topic that I had requested information on from Mr. Cohen was administrative monetary penalties. I have now forwarded that to the clerk. She will be translating it, and it will be coming out in due course.
I would like to question Mr. MacKay about administrative monetary policies.
Are you familiar with them, or with that concept at all?
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
I don't have any expertise either, but I have a wee, tiny description that may help the two of us through this. My understanding of administrative monetary penalties is what we were told by Mr. von Finckenstein when he was here: that he had a scalpel or a great, big club and he didn't have anything in between to penalize or to bring some kind of action into force to enforce these rules.
We in turn, for your information, Mr. MacKay, asked that the CRTC provide his ideas to us. Now, as a result of my request for information from Mr. Cohen for his opinion, we have his perspective. I'd be interested in yours.
In your judgment, if there were some conceivable way, and I don't think it's doable, to repair this bill and use it as a vehicle to get things such as these penalties into effect, is it something we should even be bothering with? Is it something that in your judgment would be desirable? Should the CRTC or any other regulatory or influencing body have additional tools, which perhaps would give them monetary penalties as tools in their tool kit, to handle these issues?
As an Individual
There is I think a monetary penalty that exists now, in the sense that broadcasters are required to adhere to the code as a condition of licence. If they are members of the Broadcast Standards Council, that condition of licence is suspended, but the way the Broadcast Standards Council works, if I remember my operational manual from when I sat on the Ontario regional council, is that if there are a number of infractions by a particular broadcaster—I think it's three—that membership can be revoked. Then all complaints against that broadcaster are not dealt with by the council but are dealt with by the commission, and they go into the station's record, which is dealt with at the time of licence renewal.
Licence renewal for a television or radio station is a major undertaking. It takes a lot of time; you usually have expensive legal help that is helping you put your story together, which you take to the commission. If the commission turns around and tells you that you haven't been much of a good corporate citizen and that they're only going to renew your licence for maybe two years, and then you have to go through the whole process again, that is a monetary penalty that exists now. But it's not in the neighbourhood of a fine, if I'm making myself clear.
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Exactly, but it's the atomic bomb that destroys the station, I suppose.
As an Individual
I don't think it destroys the station, because they still get their licence renewed, but it's for a very short period of time, and they have to go through the whole process again in order to come back after two years, whereas normally a licence is renewed for five or seven years.
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
And in the case of CHOI, they did not and as a consequence lost their licence. Is that correct?
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
I think that's correct. But I guess this is the point. I'm asking for your opinion, and I'm rather getting the impression that you're saying that the way things are right now vis-à-vis television per se, which is what this bill exclusively deals with, although there can always be improvements, the fact of the matter is that this bill really doesn't do anything at all to get at what we all would desire to get at. This bill isn't an instrument to do it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
Thank you.
Mr. Scarpaleggia, please. Just stay to the time limit this time.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
I don't think I need all of it.
What seems to be coming out of our discussions on this bill is that media literacy is important, but it's also a lot about educating adults.
I remember when I was working with some anti-tobacco people during the time of anti-tobacco legislation. They were very skeptical of industry initiatives to discourage tobacco use. They were skeptical of government initiatives to discourage tobacco use, because they found it didn't work. It didn't work for various reasons, because the companies didn't take it seriously and because governments sometimes had good but misguided intentions.
I believe in your good faith and expertise on the subject, but just telling parents to visit the website and educate themselves won't be effective, because parents don't have time. Basically, the industry is telling them to take a course in media literacy. Of course, as parents, they say they know what's good for their kids and they don't need to do anything.
Should the industry be doing a little more outreach? Should they be educating parents by showing more public service announcements at their own expense? I don't mean the kind of amateurish public service announcement that is a signal to go to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. I mean good, powerful public service announcements, paid for by the industry. They could refer to a website somewhere, but they would be dramatic public service announcements about speaking to our kids about violence on TV. Do you think the regulator should be pushing a little harder on this?
As an Individual
In the past, we've done that as an industry. In the 1990s, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters undertook two major campaigns directed at speaking out against violence in our communities. There was a strong reaction to it, a very positive reaction. It was a partnership with Heritage Canada and a number of other government departments. It could be a good time for another one of these initiatives to return.