Canadian Heritage Committee on May 29th, 2008

[Dr. William Bruneau]

But, really, our problem is that we can't even tell whether it's the board that took the decision. It's possible that Stursberg, Steinmetz, et al, have manipulated the board. How could we ever figure it out? We can't read the minutes. We're not invited to the meetings of the board. It's very difficult to find the exact mailing address of Mr. Lacroix. We're doing our best to keep in touch and to get in touch with board members, but it's remarkable that in an enterprise as large and as important to us as that, we have so little access. It's astounding.

The point about who controls whom is a central one in the governance at CBC, and it must be of interest to your committee too.

Gene Ramsbottom's suggestion about how to get out of this is part of this picture, too, it seems to me. You don't have to fire the whole board, although you might want to, if you wanted to take that as step one and step two in revising the techniques of governance and the bylaws. That's reasonably attractive.

Gene had a suggestion too.

[Gene Ramsbottom]

The Broadcasting Act does allow—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Very quickly, sir.

[Gene Ramsbottom]

—the CBC to create subsidiaries within itself to solve that. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage is extremely influential on this point. If tomorrow, after your debate, you were to request the withdrawal of your report from Parliament, let's see how fast the CBC would react. They won't get their extra funding; they won't get their seven-year memorandum of understanding; and you might say to them, you can have this if we get that from you.

[Robert Sunter]

I was going to say that the only power you have is financial.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that.

We can now move on to Mr. Scott's questions, please.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for being here.

It is somewhat illuminating that the witnesses who are appearing here all believe that they have the opportunity to speak as Canadians to the CBC in whatever damned way they want, I think I heard said. And I accept that, but I also see this as an opportunity or engagement exercise for you to express yourselves to them through us as a parliamentary committee.

Now, we have the capacity as a parliamentary committee.... I'm from Fredericton, New Brunswick, and if go back to when they cut the one-hour news at suppertime, I wasn't a member of this committee, but I came here as a visiting member because I was so upset we would lose our one hour of CBC news, and we got that restored. Now if we can see the opportunity to change a decision about the news broadcast made by the CBC, and get it done—and I can assure you that we did get it done—it strikes me that it was probably more difficult than trying to convince the CBC that they shouldn't disband the orchestra.

In terms of questions about the appropriateness of intervention, I find that we're selling ourselves short in terms of what it is we can do. No, we cannot compel the CBC to do anything, but that isn't to say we cannot influence the outcomes appropriately. I think it is an appropriate position for the committee to take. We're talking about their budgets in our other reports. On major decisions, I think we can appropriately say this, and I think we'll have some reaction as a result. I think we need to work with the government, the minister, and the department to convince them that they can support our intervention that says this is a wrong-headed decision. They're not compelling anybody necessarily to do anything. They're simply saying, look, we have an interest in this as the minister of Canadian Heritage and as the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, and I have an interest as a Frederictonian, New Brunswick Canadian. We have a right to say this in the same way that you do, and we can do this. We sell ourselves short by simply throwing up our hands and saying, it's a done deal, the ship has sailed, let's move on. I think that sells us short.

I'd like your response.

[Bramwell Tovey]

Might I respond first?

I think you have a direct line into the CBC, and they're compelled to listen to what you say. When they're censoring their own blogs and when dialogue is taking place on Facebook and on independent websites because CBC doesn't want criticism, it becomes much harder for us to influence events. I would personally like to see your committee ask CBC why it censors its blog sites. I can't think of an explanation as to why that is good and appropriate practice for a crown corporation in a democracy.

[Bob D'Eith]

We were talking about legislative changes earlier. I think everybody around the table agrees that having the government influence programs directly is not going to work, but surely there could be some sort of legislative change that would encourage transparency, accountability, and public consultation. If they have to put their books on the table, it's going to be much harder for them to make draconian decisions if people see that. That could be a legislative solution without having to go so far as saying the government can censor CBC Radio or something. It's just a thought.

[Gene Ramsbottom]

The Auditor General's report has already gone down that road in criticizing the CBC for a lack of transparency and a lack of communication with the audience, and you get these responses of “Yes, we're working on it”. I think Sheila Fraser and her merry band of accountants are well on top of this topic and are watching, as they watched in various periods before.

I do agree with you, Mr. Scott. I'm also aware from your Tuesday comment that Measha Brueggergosman gave you no choice.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I'm glad you were listening.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you, Mr. Scott.

Please go ahead, Mr. Chong.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CBC changed Radio 2's Classics and Beyond apparently for two reasons. First, they felt the audience share the radio station had was not sufficient and was declining. The second reason was that they felt the focus exclusively on classical music was to the detriment of other genres of music, especially newer genres that have been emerging on the Canadian music scene.

In light of the reasons they've given, does anyone among you know what the audience numbers have been for Radio 2? Were they truly declining over the last number of years? Have the recent changes made to Radio 2 in fact increased the Radio 2 audience? I know the changes haven't been fully implemented--they're supposed to be fully implemented by this coming September--but there have been some changes made to Radio 2.

First, do you have any sense of the audience share of Radio 2 over the years and whether it has significantly declined? Have the changes they've made recently in fact increased the audience share?

Those are my first questions to the people in the room.

[Gene Ramsbottom]

The two radio reports that I have here are the CBC's own summary report, which they've quoted at length in other opportunities, and the fall 2005 survey between Heritage Canada, CRTC, and Statistics Canada. That's the radio project. In that radio project--and these are fall 2005, so I can't answer the recent ones, but that would be a BMI study, and I have that, too, for the last quarter. It shows CBC as dead last. They slipped from third place to fifth place.

We hear time and again that it's the fans who really control the music industry in this era right now, but I'm afraid that come September, when the programming changes happen in full force, fans such as Jane Whiteley and many others may simply press the “off” button, and you'll end up with an organized or unofficial national boycott of CBC. The CBC will no longer be dead last; it will simply not even register on the surveys. The survey periods are well known, and CBC will come back to you arguing yet another cause.

[Bramwell Tovey]

I don't have any official statistics, but I did see the figure of 3.5% of market mentioned in a recent response from one of the vice-presidents of CBC. Including illegal channels or channels I'm not supposed to get, I counted 18 different channels on my FM dial in the car; if you divide 100% by 18, 3.5% isn't actually so bad. One of the problems, of course, has been the underinvestment in the organization, and also the fact that CBC Radio 2 has seen an enormous number of changes at the top in terms of chief executives or vice-presidents, as they're called.

What really needed to happen under the old CBC was a clearer curatorial role, and actually we saw a lot of fudge and a lot of mess. I think there's no doubt at all that although the new CBC, in my professional opinion, is a confused disaster, certainly the CBC as it has been during the last two or three years has been operating without a gifted hand at the rudder.

A decline in audience figures--if there is such a decline, and I don't know that there is--would, in my opinion, be something that should have been tackled earlier, but not in this particular way.

[Jane Whiteley]

I can't speak to numbers. I grew up in a household listening to the CBC, and my children grew up in a household listening to the CBC. I have children in their twenties who, with the iPods and all the other things they listen to, also listen to the CBC, and a daughter in Barbados who catches it online.

CBC--Radio 2 particularly--is a station for grownups, and I think eventually the grownups get there.

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

Continuing--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Could you just make one very short...?

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

Could I just make one statement?

Just for the record, I was reading the Financial Times of London about three weeks ago, and I noted that there was a report on BBC Radio's market share in the United Kingdom. As you're well aware, they have BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, and 4, and a number of other channels. The BBC has over a 50% market share with those channels in the United Kingdom; it's actually approaching a 60% market share for BBC Radio, to the point where it's almost been too successful. The BBC feels it should somehow try to reduce its market share to ensure that the private sector broadcasters actually have some sort of footprint over in the United Kingdom.

I'd just put that on the record, Mr. Chair, as a comparison and contrast with the state of our radio audiences.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Go ahead, sir.

[Robert Sunter]

If they really want to do that, they should hire some of the officials from CBC; they could reduce their audience very quickly.

[Bob D'Eith]

I just want to jump in. I was part of the mandate review, and I did a lot of reading on BBC. One of the things I noticed with their mandate is the BBC's commitment to excellence. Everything in their mandate is about being the best in the world--the best and the most excellent at everything in there.

I had suggested that the CBC should do the same. I think that's what BBC has over CBC--that commitment to excellence. I think they just need to look at the BBC for a model.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

[Bramwell Tovey]

If I might, having worked for the BBC and the CBC, I can tell you that the BBC has five broadcasting orchestras. All of them are actually much, much larger than the CBC Vancouver orchestra. Also, as the member already noted, there are different FM channels devoted to different styles of music; for example, Radio 3, which is the primary classical channel, is split more or less between world music, jazz, and classical music. What we've got with Radio 2 is the BBC equivalent of condensing five channels onto one FM network.

We're a long way from being in that position.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Now we'll move to Mr. Siksay.