Canadian Heritage Committee on June 3rd, 2008

[Peter McGillivray]

I'm sorry, I can understand French, but I can't speak it. I will try to answer the questions as I understood them.

I think what we're all here to decide is what we can empower this committee to do. I believe that goes to the heart of your question. You are perhaps handcuffed a bit from commenting directly on individual programming decisions that are being made at the CBC. As I said before, the CBC takes the recommendations from this committee very seriously as far as funding and things like that go. We would love it if the government as well could see it in their wisdom to take the recommendations of this committee as seriously as the members of the committee take them in that regard.

Also, I didn't get a chance to offer this solution.... And it's not a solution, but I think it's a problem that is under this committee's jurisdiction. I really believe that the CBC is very nobly trying to fill a void in our culture by programming more Canadian folk, jazz, blues, world music, and singer-songwriters. It seems to me that this void is unfortunately a result of government and CRTC inaction in promoting diversity on our publicly owned airwaves. Directing the CRTC to enforce its own rules, not only with regard to the CBC, but also with regard to private radio licences, is an important part of the solution.

How many classic rock and new-country stations programmed by robot computers do we need in this country? They have gone towards this in the United States, where Clear Channel owns something like over 50% of all radio stations, and the playlists are programmed by computers.

Maybe we need to create genre diversity and help encourage it through the private system, as well. How many Kirby reports or reports from the Kent commission must be written and ignored, basically, before we decide to take serious action against the sorts of conformist forces of concentrated radio ownership that I think are responsible for this void in the public airwaves?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

We'll move to Ms. Carleton, please.

[Katherine Carleton]

Thank you, Chair.

I am going to speak in English, because that will allow me to be more precise. I am sorry.

One point I will make is I think this is a fantastically interesting study that this committee has agreed to engage in, in terms of studying how artists make a living in Canada. It's a very complex issue. It touches on tax law, it touches on the Canada Council, the Department of Canadian Heritage, provincial and municipal partners, but it is absolutely timely and a really important discussion.

One of the things we do know about the CBC and the role it has historically played in enabling musicians in all genres to earn a living in Canada is that the most recent negotiation between the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the American Federation of Musicians, informally known as the Musicians' Union, resulted in a contract where, over the course of the three years of the contract, the annual investment by CBC is going from $10.4 million down to $5 million in payments to professional Canadian musicians.

I think that is a significant signalling of a change of role by the CBC in helping make it possible for musicians to earn a living in Canada. I think that's a challenge, and I think it should be a factor you take a look at as you embark on that study.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Was there someone else who wanted to comment on that question? No?

Then we're going to move on to Mr. Siksay, please.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Chair, and I want to thank all the witnesses for your testimony this afternoon. It has been very helpful.

I had a question for Ms. Carleton and possibly Ms. McKay.

Ms. Carleton, you mentioned the study that had been done in the United States that looked at the relationship between orchestras and radio and how important that was in developing audiences and how the increasing availability of classical music on radio was important to the overall classical music community.

Ms. McKay, you talked about the partnership you have with CBC and how important that was.

Could you expand a little on what that means? Are there any parallel Canadian studies?

Maybe our analysts and researchers could get the study for us, because it sounds very interesting and very important.

[Katherine Carleton]

Sure. First of all, I would be more than happy to provide a copy of the Knight Foundation's study to this committee, and it's readily available on the web, so I'd be more than happy to pass that along.

There is not, to my knowledge, an equivalent Canadian study. Through my research, this is the one I came upon that seemed to speak most clearly to the issue at hand.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Ms. McKay, can you talk more about the partnership and how that's important?

[Micheline McKay]

Absolutely. I used a number of examples to illustrate where the CBC has really done a very good job in terms of bringing the story of opera, such asThe Ring or Frobisher, to Canadians. I think what we want to explore more--and I think I've heard this from all the witnesses--is how they can do a better job of that. Those things I spoke of are unique initiatives that were undertaken by the CBC, and we applaud them for that, but yet they are part of the broader cultural musical infrastructure in this country.

What I was really trying to say to this committee to urge you to comment on and to recommend to the CBC is that they consider how their actions or inactions have a huge impact on opera companies. Not every opera company has the resources or has been invited to participate in something such as the Frobisher broadcast that happened in Calgary a year ago. Yet there are all kinds of great works out there that should be.

One of the observations that companies across the country have made--we've certainly consulted with companies--is that we see an awful lot more potential for working together to figure out what this new technology means for bringing opera and classical music to Canadians than has currently happened. Right now, it's just a decision that was taken by the CBC with literally no consultation with the companies. They would go in and say they were doing this.

I think when we say CBC is a partner, it's very much that we don't see them as a competitor; rather, we'd like to work with them. Where it has worked, it has been beautiful, and we've seen great effect.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

You mentioned the issue of consultation. I had a question for all of you, whether any of you had been consulted about the changes at CBC Radio 2. It seems to me some of you see this as a lost opportunity, and others see it as a hopeful possibility for the areas of music you work in, but had any of you been consulted by the CBC and do any of you see a model for how that consultation might have taken place if you weren't consulted?

[Derek Andrews]

As I did in my remarks, I'll start by referencing that there were consultations in Toronto with the festival organizers who were brought together, going back a couple of years, with senior producers at CBC: the Beaches Jazz Festival, Afrofest, and Harbourfront. Many of the summer festivals in Toronto that were going to be impacted by the opening up of and some of the discussions around changes to the CBC were brought together for consultation. As I mentioned in my remarks, some of those relationships went back many years. It was familiar turf, where this potential for change was being put on the table.

When you refer to the analysts and the statistics that are available, the popular music community is relatively new to getting organized, and many of the organizations that are emerging are very new and don't have statistics to offer you, but some organizing is being done. In Ottawa this October, 700 people will come to the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals conference. It's an example of the folk community getting together. Some statistics on how many volunteers, how many CDs are sold at folk festivals, and other things like this that Dominic and I have been party to in just the last few year--I think the committee may be interested in getting more statistics from those kinds of organizations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Dominic.

[Dominic Lloyd]

If I could just follow up on what Derek said, there is a quasi-organization, of which I am a part and a former chairperson, called the Western Roots Artistic Directors, which is comprised of the artistic directors of some 20-odd folk festivals across the four western provinces and the Yukon and Northwest Territories. It's about to enter its tenth year in its loose existence, which tends to be a bunch of people going to a remote location for a weekend and just talking about what makes folk and world music tick. But a few years ago we did start collecting this sort of data. At this point it's still very nascent and it's not altogether scientific, but in terms of audience numbers and record sales and these types of things, it is being tracked by the festival organizations across western Canada and I think it will probably become a much bigger thing at the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals this fall. It's just something that the non-classical community has been slower on the uptake of, I think.

And in terms of answering your questions about consultations, we were consulted in Montreal, and I think this is going back a couple of years. We were at a conference in Montreal and they did bring together a bunch of us from RADD--Recording Artists, Actors and Athletes Against Drunk Driving--and asked us about this. From our point of view as a collective, it's great, because we're presenting to hundreds of thousands of people a year, but with artists who don't get any airplay, so for us this was a great idea. I attended a further consultation in Winnipeg probably two years ago, which was more at a grassroots level, with community cultural organizations being brought in and asked what their feelings were about radio.

So twice is the short answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay.

Please try to keep your answers a little shorter, because we're way over time here. But I'd like to get that answer from each one of you, if you were consulted, please.

[Katherine Carleton]

Speaking in terms of Orchestras Canada, I was spoken to as part of the environmental scan. I was one of the opinion leaders, which felt like a promotion to me.

I will say as well that in June 2006, Mark Steinmetz, the director of radio music, came and made a report on the outcomes of the arts and culture study to a group of orchestra managers. I would say that's a report on the outcomes rather than consultation about what the content was to be, but there was certainly that level of openness.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay.

Mr. McGillivray.

[Peter McGillivray]

I certainly wasn't consulted, but I'm just one individual artist. I can also say that within my peer group of the opera singers I know, most of these changes came as a complete surprise. Maybe there wasn't a lot of consultation with individual artists.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Ms. McKay.

[Micheline McKay]

I participated as an individual in the environmental scan Katherine referred to. We were not consulted.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Mrs. Peters.

[Debbie Peters]

As someone working in the music industry in Canada, no. I don't know what consultation there would have been. There may have been consultations with artists and with presenters, but for people who are working in the industry side of it, I'd have to find out, but I certainly wasn't involved.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay, thank you for that.

We'll move now to Mr. Abbott, please.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

Welcome to our presenters.

If you've read the transcripts of previous meetings, you'll know that I have a standard part here, which is to reiterate what has already been said at the table in the past meetings: that all members here, including those on the government side, fully support and endorse CBC/Radio-Canada's role as a public broadcaster, so we are all in this together.

We recognize that as individuals we have the right, as any Canadian has, to speak out and say CBC is right, CBC is wrong, or whatever the case may be, but I want to deal in a standard way with every witness group individually and ask the following question, because in addition to our being able to speak out individually, there is also a structural issue. That is the relationship of parliamentarians--especially the government and the minister--to the CBC, so if it's possible to answer yes or no, it would be immensely helpful.

Here is my first question: is it your desire to see this committee, the government, or the minister intervene on this issue and direct the CBC in its programming relating to Radio 2 and the orchestra? If it's possible for you to provide a simple yes or no, that would be helpful.

Mr. Andrews, what is your answer?

[Derek Andrews]

No.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Could I have your response, Mr. Lloyd?

[Dominic Lloyd]

I'd say no.