Thank you, Mr. Scott.
We are very pleased that it was by unanimous motion of the heritage committee that these hearings are taking place, and we're very grateful that you could arrange to have these in Vancouver.
I'm part of the Stand On Guard For CBC coalition and was instrumental in starting the campaign to restore Canada's CBC Radio Orchestra within the revitalized CBC. The mandate of the CBC in the Broadcast Act of 1991 specifies that the programming of the corporation should actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression. It is the only one of the ten principles that is prefaced by the word “actively”.
We believe cultural expression includes classical music. Commercial and CBC radio and TV do a splendid job of presenting popular music, but only CBC Radio 2 contributes in a sustained manner to the creation and dissemination of classical concert music. Canada's composers of serious music are creating a crucial component of our living musical heritage. The Canadian Music Centre library now contains some 18,500 music titles by more than 700 of Canada's professional composers in the concert music field. The collection has grown fivefold in just 30 years.
Productivity of Canada's finest music creators increases while CBC Radio 2 reacts by cutting and cutting. The amount of money CBC is devoting to musicians' fees has been negotiated down from $11 million per year to $5.2 million, and even this budget is being underspent.
Canada's beloved CBC Radio Orchestra is perhaps the purest embodiment of the CBC mandate. The proposed axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra has enraged performers, composers, and listeners from coast to coast to coast and ignited a firestorm of protest. How can this happen? It's not just a matter of saving a radio orchestra that is a national cultural treasure, nor is it merely a question of how to the think about the role and purpose of our public broadcaster. Rather, the proposed closure of the CBC Radio Orchestra goes to the heart of what it means to live in a 21st century democracy that values and supports the full spectrum of creative expression.
It is common knowledge that a ship has a mark on her hull called the Plimsoll line. Unscrupulous shipowners in the 19th century would overload ships so that they and their crew would sink. It did not matter how fine the ship was, how skilled the crew, or how valuable the cargo--it would perish. The shipowners profited largely from the insurance claims. The Plimsoll line is for the safety of ships, their cargo, and crew.
How can a cultural treasure be sunk? One has to be ignorant of its history and to hold it in contempt. The value of its cargo, the skill of its crew, and its significance to the nation cannot dissuade those with a zeal to scuttle. They can do so if they're not held to account.
Canada's Parliament should place something like a Plimsoll line on the CBC Radio Orchestra hull so this magnificent ship with its highly skilled crew may continue transporting cargo of immense value to Canada and the rest of the world.
In answer to a question from Bill Siksay, the NDP member of Parliament for Burnaby—Douglas, Mr. Stursberg said:
I think we have to sometimes just remember what the CBC Radio Orchestra actually was. The CBC Radio Orchestra is not an orchestra like the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, where we have employed musicians, full-time. That's not what it is. It's different kinds of players who get together occasionally to play music, and we pay them to do that.
I submit to you that Mr. Stursberg has embarrassed his own employer by characterizing the orchestra as a pickup band. I further submit the CBC executives were responsible for embarrassing Canada, as the The New York Times reported the axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra:
“Really, it’s a straight-up case of economics,” Jeff Keay, a spokesman for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, said. “We couldn’t afford to maintain the orchestra.”
Allow me to offer a word of praise for the CBC Radio Orchestra for fulfilling the letter and spirit of the CBC mandate. One of Canada's top five orchestras and among the finest radio orchestras in the world, the men and women who play in the Vancouver CBC Radio Orchestra were carefully hand-picked from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the community of freelance musicians. As the orchestra is contracted for each service and all players are paid the same fee, it is remarkably cost effective. That should surely appeal to taxpayers if this is really just a matter of money. The orchestra can record a one-hour broadcast in six hours and a compact disc in nine hours. In a typical season, it produced twelve broadcasts, three or four CDs, three public concerts on its own and three in partnership with other organizations. It did all this for about a half-million dollars per year.
No orchestra in Canada has done more to champion the music of Canada's composers. In the 35 years before the bizarre decision to expel it from its state-of-the-art recording studio, the orchestra had premiered 200 works by 80 different Canadian composers. The CBC Radio Orchestra recorded 200 LPs and 32 CDs and half of these were devoted to Canadian composers. Last year the CBC Radio Orchestra and its brilliant conductor, Alain Trudel, gave seven concerts and commissioned 18 Canadian compositions. Canada's radio orchestra has travelled to communities, large and small, earning a place in the hearts of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Canadians might well ask why CBC TV did not cover its tour to Iqaluit last fall. And now it's axed.
CBC upper management have nothing with which to replace it. The CBC developed a young composers competition and a young performers competition to identify and recognize the finest talent in the nation in an open, public, transparent, and accountable manner, and now that's gone, and there's no system for choosing performers and composers.
So what's the way out of this? I think we should ask that you and your committee and Parliament restore the CBC orchestra with a proper budget, restore the CBC young composers competition and the young performers competition, restore The Arts Report, and find a way to properly fund CBC.
I want to finish with a story about--