Good afternoon, Mr. Schellenberger, ladies and gentlemen of the committee.
It has been my privilege to represent the Syndicat des communications de Radio-Canada for the past two years. My name is Alex Levasseur. With me today is the union vice-president, Micheline Provost.
Our organization has been around for 41 years. We represent over 2,000 people, 1,600 of whom work regularly for Radio-Canada in Montreal, in the regions and in Moncton. The members of my union are basically the people you hear on the radio, see on television, and whose articles you read on the Internet. They are also the people behind the scenes who put these programs together and get them on the air. We work on radio news and general interest programs. Because of choices you have made in the past, we are less involved in general-interest television than we used to be.
Styles and trends can be tempting. For example, if I were on-trend, I would probably have green or purple hair, piercings in my ears and my nose, and maybe elsewhere and intentionally ripped jeans. I would be calling you all "dude". But I resisted the temptation.
Many of those who spoke to you before me urged you to do the same thing, to abandon the old public institutions and go the way of the future, the way of private producers and broadcasters. I am urging you to resist that advice.
Quebeckers are deeply attached to CBC/Radio-Canada. The results of a survey conducted last month, which my colleague Chantal Larouche will talk more about, are crystal clear: 67% of Quebeckers believe that Radio-Canada is either very important or extremely important when it comes to distributing cultural programming, and 73% said the same about news programming.
Well-known actor and comedian Rick Mercer had this to say to your committee a few years ago: “We love the CBC and we hate the CBC. Why? Because the CBC is to broadcasting what vegetables are to good nutrition—”. Without the financial support of Canada's Parliament, we will lack the fodder for intellectual development.
On March 25, the CBC/Radio-Canada CEO announced $171 million in budget cuts and 800 job cuts. Last Friday, he told us that the federal government had made further cuts in the amount of $56 million. More jobs will be cut, more programs will be cut. When will it stop?
In 2003, the chair of this very Committee on Canadian Heritage, Clifford Lincoln, recommended increased, stable, multi-year funding. You yourself, Mr. Chair, did the same in February 2008, when you recommended an annual allocation of $40 per Canadian for CBC/Radio-Canada.
What happened? The exact opposite.
Our union held consultations a year and a half ago. We met with our members all over Quebec and in Moncton. They talked to us and told us about their working conditions. They had a lot to say, let me tell you. Everywhere we went, we heard from people who were suffering: not enough resources to do their jobs, nobody to fill in in the news rooms, not enough airtime for their work on the national network. Believe me, the latest round of cuts has crushed them.
Some people are more interested in transmitters, digital cameras and other new technology. What good will any of that do us if the only thing we have left to broadcast is a mere shadow of what we once had, probably programs from the States that have been translated into French and reruns of Les belles histoires des pays d'en haut. We have to focus on what is important here. In this particular television crisis, what we need to worry about is content, not digital HD transmitters.
This morning, in a Montreal daily, well-known talk show host Guy A. Lepage said, and I will close with this:
—it is as though the government had no idea that investing in culture is like investing in roads, the public service or health. Not only is it a collective need, but the economic return is huge—
Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, you are in the best position to make your recommendations heard. What do you plan to do to make that happen? What do you plan to do to make sure that CBC/Radio-Canada has access to increased, stable, multi-year funding? What do you plan to do to ensure that the regions get the same level of public service and to develop content for new platforms resulting from emerging technologies? What do you plan to do to make sure that the French language and culture reach all parts of Canada and Quebec?