Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 27th, 2007

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Rabinovitch, Mr. Lafrance and Mr. Stursberg for coming to meet with us.

My first question goes to Mr. Lafrance and Mr. Stursberg.

As we discuss Radio-Canada and the CBC, I would like to know if you think that the English and French sections are inherently different, if they should be treated differently, if they have different listening habits. If the issues are not the same, it follows that support would not be the same either.

I have another question for Mr. Rabinovitch on a subject that has been on my mind a lot.

People from Radio-Canada International have been emailing and phoning me. They have told me about comments that have me a little intrigued, not to say concerned. What they seem to be saying is that the mandate of Radio-Canada International has been changing for some time—this is not new, but the trend has become clearer under your leadership—and that the funding and resources allocated to Radio-Canada International are not sufficient. They mention $15 million in 1997. These $15 million, that were once dedicated to Radio-Canada International, are now in the overall corporation budget and do not go to Radio-Canada International in their entirety.

So here is my question. Of that famous $15 million, how much really goes to Radio-Canada International? Why does this committee feel that the mandate has changed and that they no longer seem to be providing news overseas, if we take the example of news bulletins? These people say that there are fewer newscasts, and that there apparently sections, like the Ukrainian service for example, that used to broadcast every day and are now limited to Saturdays and Sundays. They say that programs have been taken off short wave and put onto a cable system. The result is that the programs can now only be heard in Kiev.

That is my question, Mr. Rabinovitch.

[Robert Rabinovitch]

With your permission, I would like Sylvain to start.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Of course.

[Robert Rabinovitch]

The same applies to your second question, since RCI is in his area of responsibility. So if you wish, he will also answer your second question.

[Sylvain Lafrance, Executive Vice-President, French Services, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]

I will answer the question about RCI first and then I will answer the question about the francophone and anglophone markets.

RCI's basic mandate has absolutely not changed. However, you will have noticed that for several years, we have worked hard to integrate our radio, television and web resources with the same logic as almost all the media in the world, that is to try for a multi-platform approach. Radio Canada International is no different. Its services are now much more closely linked to those of Radio-Canada. This allows Radio Canada International to take advantage of, for example, Radio-Canada's communications, finance and buildings services, which I feel is sound management.

So Radio Canada International's budget may seem smaller because some amounts are now in communications, in finances, in facilities or elsewhere. Overall, the amounts spent on Radio Canada have not changed at all.

One thing has changed at Radio Canada International, however—and in my opinion, the change was made to better reflect reality. Radio Canada International now also produces programs intended for new immigrants to Canada. We realized that, with our ability to broadcast in Russian, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish, it was perhaps a great waste of energy to broadcast only overseas, given what we know about immigration rates to Canada. So now we produce programs that welcome immigrants in different languages. This seems to me to be logical for Radio Canada International to do.

I think that this is all good news for Radio Canada International, which today has a much more relevant role than it used to have. It is good news in my opinion.

As to the French and English markets, they are different in many respects. That said, all answers are good, because Richard and I have to deal with the same questions. For example, the increase in platforms and the matter of rights are the same questions.

At times, the answers are not the same because the francophone market is heavily influenced by the Quebec market where Quebeckers have a very strong allegiance to their own television, and then by the importance that we all attribute to francophones outside Quebec. This is a completely different approach to broadcasting, and it does not exist in English.

There are two orientations, there is a business orientation that deals with major questions about administration, financial management, the technology watch. It makes sense to do this together because we are a single corporation with the same issues. But then, we have to adapt our approaches to our different markets because if we do not, the response we get will not be good.

Richard, do you want to add anything?

[Richard Stursberg, Executive Vice-President, English Services, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]

As always, I agree completely with Sylvain. But I would like to add that we have established a $10 million fund that we call the Cross-cultural Fund to look at things that the two markets have in common. Sylvain and I chair that committee, which funds projects so that they can operate at the same time in English or in French, on television or on radio.

What strikes me here is that CBC/Radio-Canada is probably the only institution in the country that can do that kind of thing, that is, explore things happening in French for anglophones and things happening in English for francophones.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Thank you.

I would like to...

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

We have to keep our questions just a little shorter, because a long question sometimes requires a long answer, and you were way over time.

Mr. Siksay.

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

Thank you, Chair. I'll try to do better.

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here, and specifically Mr. Rabinovitch, in appreciation for your service to CBC/Radio-Canada for so many years as you move on to other challenges.

I want to pick up on something that you raised very early in your statement this morning, the whole question of micro-management and particularly the concern about where programming is made and by whom. That's something I think the committee has heard about significantly--regional programming, regional production, and the importance of that to many communities. We've heard it in the context of the phrase “Montrealization” of some productions. We're heard concerns about programs like Little Mosque on the Prairie that represent the prairies being filmed in Hamilton.

I wonder if you could comment a little bit more on that issue from your perspective and the problems you see with that.

[Robert Rabinovitch]

Thank you for that.

I believe that it's an important factor to try to develop programs in different regions. We do try to pursue that, particularly with our news and current affairs programming in English and in French. At the same time, one must recognize that like all countries there tends to be in our case two significant centres of production. I think it was Sylvain who told our board the other day that 95% of the members of Union des artistes live in Montreal.

We try to develop programs in Moncton and other places, but you sometimes have to transport the skill sets from Montreal to Moncton, so we do, for example, a co-production. The problem as well is that as people develop their skills, we can't give them all the work that they have. They have to be available to work with other independent producers, so they therefore tend to migrate to Montreal and Toronto. It's an inevitable pull. We don't say it's good or bad. Our position is that we do want to produce in different centres.

That's why we're rebuilding Vancouver at the present time. It's the second-largest English city in terms of CBC, well, in terms of the country. We are rebuilding our facilities there. We're putting a lot of money in to be able to produce.

What I was saying in the text is that it doesn't serve a purpose, at least as far as we're concerned, to say x percentage must be done in this area, y percentage must be done in that area, this kind of program must be done here, that kind of program must be done there. That is precisely what happened back in 1999 with the decision of the CRTC, which also proved not to be workable.

There is also a concern that we have—we live with it and have to work with it—that you're not eligible for certain grants unless the program is produced 150 kilometres outside of Moncton, outside of Toronto. That doesn't accept the reality of where the program producers live, where they want to work. Our job is to encourage them to move to different places to do it.

In a case like Little Mosque on the Prairie, a lot of the shooting was done in Saskatchewan, as I understand, but you're absolutely right, the core of the program was shot in Toronto or in Hamilton, because in fact that's where these people live and that's where they want to work. So we're always looking at a balance of doing it.

We do a much better job, I must say, and can do a much better job, in local radio. Remember that we see ourselves as a combination of services, a programmer that tries to do different things. The strength of CBC/Radio-Canada radio is its local programming. Everything is driven off local programming. That's why we feel there are eight million Canadians who are deprived of a service. In a city like Hamilton—I'm sorry, I'm going on—their local CBC radio show comes from Toronto. In Toronto, Andy Barrie is number one; in Hamilton, he's number seven. That's logical; he's basically Toronto-centric, but that's his job. We'd love to have a station in Hamilton.

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

Chair, do I have a bit more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

A wee bit of time.

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

Thank you.

[Robert Rabinovitch]

I absorbed all your time.

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

No problem, it was helpful.

I want to ask Mr. Stursberg if he might just expand a little bit on Tim Hortons versus Starbucks. It was an interesting quote, and I wonder if he might fill us in about where he was going with that.

[Richard Stursberg]

It was a metaphor. The purpose of the metaphor was to try to capture what we're trying to do.

The CBC English service faces a very particular set of cultural challenges. I think the biggest cultural challenge facing English Canada is our failure as a country to produce television entertainment programming and feature films that actually connect with Canadian audiences. We don't have a problem with newspapers. English Canadians read English Canadian newspapers. English Canadians prefer English Canadian sports teams. English Canadians read English Canadian books. They listen to English Canadian music, and so on and so forth. But the one great area where we have not succeeded is in entertainment programming on television and feature films. We are the only country in the industrialized world that overwhelmingly prefers programs from a foreign country.

If the CBC is to address what we take to be the number one cultural problem, then we want to address it squarely. How can I put this gently? We don't want to make art-house programming. We don't want to make programming that is marginal in any way. We don't want to make programming for elites. We want to make entertainment programming for the public that pays for the CBC. We think that is the right response to the fundamental cultural challenge, because it is a problem about popular entertainment programming that is distinctively Canadian, that reflects who we are, our sense of humour, and our preoccupations.

To try to capture that a bit--and I think I got somewhat carried away, because one wants some simple way of making the point--we'd like to be a bit more Tim Hortons and a little less Starbucks. We want to capture the notion that Tim Hortons is a quintessentially kind of Canadian icon. It is broader in terms of its public stance than Starbucks, and in a certain kind of way, I think it reflects a broader public appeal than what is captured by the image of Starbucks.

That's why we wanted to put it that way. That's what we think is the right thing culturally, and it is the right thing given that we are financed by the broad public.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

We have to watch it; we're getting over our time a wee bit. I'll try to be fair to everyone.

We're going to go to Mr. Brown.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank our witnesses. I've had the pleasure of hearing from you all a number of times over the last couple of parliaments. I've had the opportunity to learn a lot more about the CBC and how it operates, which has been helpful in seeing us through this mandate review.

An area that I'd like to talk about is funding. Mr. Rabinovitch, in the latest CBC/Radio-Canada report you noted in your introductory message that the corporation is facing serious financial pressures and that if it is not addressed it will limit your ability to offer Canadians the services they want and deserve. Can you tell us a bit more about the sectors in which the corporation is facing the greatest financial pressures?

[Robert Rabinovitch]

Sure.

I would start by reminding members that the A-base, the core base of CBC, has not been increased since 1974. The last time that we had an A-base increase was in 1974. As well, in 1995 we took a $400 million cut as part of our contribution to the government of the day's desire to wrestle the deficit. Everybody took a cut, whether it was post-secondary education or medicine. We took a $400 million cut. Some of those cuts have been, if not rescinded...the moneys have gone back into the organizations over time. Ours has not. There has not been an increase.

I must add that we do get money for salary inflation, so we get whatever the government agrees to basically that is what they're willing to give us. In other words, what they agree with their unions, they'll give us. If we settle higher, that's our problem. I haven't seen the day when we've settled lower.

The result has been, on the capital side, for example, that our capital budget has been reduced by about 30% and has not been increased, so part of the answer that I didn't give before to Mr. Scott is we are going to be faced with terrible problems in terms of going digital, in terms of delivering digital HD programming to Canadians. We just don't have the money. We'll have to do it at an extremely slow rate as assets wear out. We don't have the money. The government gave us a special grant in 1979-80 called the accelerated coverage plan. Those towers are now 35-plus years old and are beginning to collapse. We really do not have the money to replace them. We have some very fundamental problems in terms of our capital budget.

In terms of what's most important to me, programming, what we don't have is the money to take risks. We don't have the money to fail. When you take a risk, sometimes it works and sometimes it fails. Little Mosque on the Prairie was a great risk. It could have been a bomb. And what would we have done at that point? We have had bombs and we've had to play them off because we didn't have anything else to put in their place. Les Bougon was an amazing success story. I'd like to see us doing many more of those, but to the extent that you do these you have to recognize, as a programmer, that some are going to fail. We can't afford to fail.

I'm sorry.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

I know you want to be up there.

I don't want to pre-judge the mandate review. But what do you think is an ideal level of funding, over how many years, and how should it be spread out?

[Robert Rabinovitch]

I find that a very hard question to answer. I think it has been posed to me before at committee--

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

By me.

[Robert Rabinovitch]

I was being polite.

We have come forward to government in terms of certain particular programs, for example, to extend the radio service. We believed that would cost us $25 million in capital and $25 million in operating funds. We did an HD analysis, in terms of if we want to accelerate HD, and it's in the $100 million to $150 million range. I've always said that the $60 million that the government has given us for programming is less than half of what we need. That is now six years old, so the $60 million is really worth about $45 million in terms of what it can buy. I would think that, in terms of programming, the minimum we need to be able to work on our mandate is $150 million to $200 million.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Okay.

I want to get Mr. Stursberg in here. I'm a Tim Hortons guy, and most of my constituents are as well.

Congratulations on your appointment as the new executive VP for English services. Maybe you can tell us a little more about what that change is going to entail and what the strategy behind combining the television, radio, and Internet services is.

[Richard Stursberg]

Sure. This is something we've been working towards for a little while. We've been integrating different kinds of services. We integrated all of the support services, communications, human resources, and finances over the course of the last little while. For a lot of our regional operations we've been moving towards the integration of news. In French, I believe it was two years ago that they integrated fully. It was a logical step in terms of the path we've been coming along.

Concretely, it means a couple of things. First, I don't think the direction of English radio is going to change. I really think the direction of English radio has been very, very successful over the course of the last little while. One of the things I would say to people when I first came to the television side was if we could have a television service in English that was as clever, as successful, and that Canadians loved as much as the one we had in radio, I would be thrilled.

What it will allow us to do is a couple of things. On the point that Bob was making earlier on, the efflorescence of different kinds of platforms of one variety or another, whether Google-type platforms or Internet platforms or mobile platforms or whatever they happen to be, it'll make it easier for us to address all those kinds of platforms in a sensible way.

The other thing it will allow us to do is to in fact develop offers that are designed from the very beginning to run on all the different platforms. We've been experimenting with this for some time now in Vancouver. We asked ourselves: what does the news service of the 21st century look like, particularly local news service?

We said to ourselves that it has at the very least two really important characteristics. One is that it meets Canadians wherever they happen to be, on whatever sort of device they want to consume the news on. So we said it's obviously a multi-platform offer. It runs on radio, television, mobile devices, the Internet, etc., so that we can serve Canadians however they want to consume their news. So we would design it that way around.

The second thing we said to ourselves is--again, to use a metaphor--that we want to think less that what's involved in the news is a conventional broadcast model. It's no longer that I tell you the news; rather, it's a different thing, which is we engage in a conversation with Canadians as to what constitutes the news. It's an issue of stance.

What we would like to be able to do is offer a newscast that is much more networked and interactive, where Canadians can not only express their opinions as to what is important with respect to the news they cover, but they can also comment on the news as we present it and they can discuss among themselves how it is that the news is made. In the most radical form of it, they can actually upload to us content and, indeed, stories that become part and parcel of it, so that, one way to put it, no longer are we sending news in a broadcast model but rather a social network model.

I've been working on that in Vancouver. You can see, obviously, to be able to do it requires that you integrate all of your services, a common set of editorial priorities. As Robert was saying earlier on, journalists go out and collect the news not just for television and radio, but for the Internet and hand-held devices as well.