My name is Joan Pierre. I have lived in Toronto for the past 38 years. I have been a producer and event planner for more than 25 years.
I have served as the key consultant for conferences, special events, and festivals, among them Toronto's Caribana, the African Heritage Music Festival in New Orleans, the African Canadian Achievement Awards, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police conference, the Urban Music Association of Canada, and the Olympic Cultural Advisory Committee.
I have also served on boards and committees promoting Canada's arts industry. I have lent my expertise to organizations such as the National Ballet School, Canadian Stage Company, Tropicana Community Services, and Ontario's Ministry of Tourism and Recreation.
I have been an avid CBC listener since the mid-eighties, more a Radio One listener, since its days on AM 740. Both my husband and I listen almost exclusively to CBC radio. All the radios in our home are tuned to CBC stations, and in my car, the first program button is 99.1 FM. Radio 2 is also on one of my pre-programmed buttons. I quite often get home and remain seated in my car, in the driveway or garage, listening to the end of a segment of As It Happens or Ideas. I rise on weekday mornings with Metro Morning and listen to Fresh Air and Sunday Morning on the weekends.
This is all a critical part of making me an informed citizen of this country and an aware human being on planet Earth.
More recently, I have started paying more attention to Radio 2, in particular after a calypso show with David Rudder and company in Toronto during Black History Month.
As a member of Toronto's black and Caribbean community and as an active member of the arts community in the city, I have been conscious of the subtle shift in programming on both stations and the effort to broaden the appeal of the stations to Toronto's various ethnic communities. I support this move entirely. I say this as a person with broad musical tastes. As a child, I studied classical piano until my late teens. I then retained a love of classical music. As a Caribbean woman, I also love the folk and popular music of the Caribbean and of Africa and Latin America. It has been great to see more world music programming on the various stations, balanced with the more traditional classical offerings and North American pop music offerings.
The CBC, in all its forms, is a Canadian treasure. As the baby boom generation ages, if we intend to keep the CBC alive and well, we must find ways of connecting with younger listeners. I would like to see this done without dumbing down the programming. The CBC audience is a very intelligent audience. One has to assume that younger listeners are picking up the habit by osmosis from their parents. As their thinking matures, they will gravitate naturally to the various stations.
I think the current programming changes have managed to strike the right balance so that young people will be attracted to the fresher material but ultimately will be intellectually challenged and stimulated by the broad range of CBC programming.
Thank you to the committee for affording me the opportunity to be part of this important dialogue.