Canadian Heritage Committee on May 11th, 2009

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

In order to streamline the proceedings, I ask that you require presentations to not exceed 10 minutes rather than suggesting they be 10 minutes long, so we can have the greatest amount of discussion possible. Therefore, I ask, with all due respect, that you ensure that our witnesses keep their presentations to 10 minutes, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay, and if you can do it in seven minutes, that would be great.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Under Mr. Rodriguez's rigidity, we've now taken a minute out of someone's presentation.

The National Film Board, please.

[Tom Perlmutter, Government Film Commissioner, National Film Board of Canada]

Hello. I am pleased to be here today.

I am the Government Film Commissioner and Chair of the Board. I am accompanied by Claude Joli-Coeur, the Assistant Commissioner.

We're here to discuss the future of television in Canada and the impact of the crisis of the television industry in Canada's local communities. For 70 years—we celebrated our 70th anniversary this year—the National Film Board has played a vital role in Canadian society as a public producer and distributor of audiovisual materials in the public interest. We are recognized for our leadership in the production of documentaries, animation, and digital media.

In the past six years the NFB has earned five Oscar nominations, two Oscars, Emmy nominations, and two best short film awards at Cannes. It has competed at Sundance, the Toronto Film Festival, and other major festivals around the world. This year, Hot Docs honoured the NFB with the kind of programming focus it reserves for national cinemas. In addition, the festival paid tribute to our great aboriginal filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin, with a retrospective of her works and an outstanding achievement award. In October, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honoured the NFB with a tribute in Washington. Last month, Cannes awarded the NFB a gold medal in recognition of our outstanding services to world film and television.

We are, without a doubt, Canada's best known international cinematic brand, and this allows us to serve Canadians in all regions by ensuring a strong Canadian presence in a globalized, digitized universe. Interestingly, this international reputation is built on our commitment and connection to local and regional communities, which touches on the subject today.

Many of the activities we undertake are designed to occur in the realm of what we call market failures—that is, creating public goods with long-term social and economic benefits for local communities and for the Canadian public. It means undertaking activities such as technological innovation, but also developing emerging creators across the country, working with filmmakers from aboriginal, ethnocultural, and official-language minority communities, offering a media service to underserviced communities, and innovating new forms of expression where the market on its own cannot afford to take the risks. We provide a forum for creators to develop new forms of authentic and relevant audiovisual works that communicate diverse Canadian points of view at home and to the rest of the world. These are public goods with long-term social and economic benefits for local communities, for the audiovisual industry, and for the country.

I'd point out also that we play a crucial role in marking the major changes and events taking place in Canadian society and ensuring that they connect to all Canadians. We did so with the celebration of Quebec's 400th anniversary. We distributed, with the help of Heritage Canada, 26,000 box-sets to schools and public libraries across the country. This is phenomenally important in ensuring that regional voices are heard throughout Canada and are part of the fabric of our country. For example, we're currently in partnership with the Vancouver Olympic Committee to use new digital media to engage Canadians across the country, to have their voices heard, and to share with each other what they have to say.

We are not a broadcaster; however, we are part of the wave of the future. Today, in the midst of technological and economic upheaval, the NFB is applying its creative powers to the multi-platform digital environment. By exploring possibilities of new technologies, testing new business models, and ensuring distribution to remote and underserviced communities, we are providing Canadians with a range of possibilities.

The transformation from analog to digital formats is the basic technological change that is profoundly altering the audiovisual sector at all levels. It's affecting audiovisual conception, development, production, distribution, exhibition, and the nature of social engagement through media. The transition to digital formats is creating new exhibition platforms that are reshaping the environment and fragmenting audiences. This transition is having a profound impact on local broadcasting.

But it can be a positive impact, because it allows those local and regional voices to find their places in ways they may not have in the past. Digital technologies offer more flexibility in conception and development. They offer the possibility of fulfilling demands by racial, linguistic, and other minorities for highly specialized and personalized niche programming that responds to regional needs. The Film Board, as a national federal institution, is committed to such communities and to ensuring they talk to each other--that we share. We're committed to the younger generation of filmmakers and the younger audiences.

Many countries in the world today, particularly in Asia and Europe, are pushing ahead in accommodating and promoting digital technology by articulating a digital vision. Canada is starting to lag behind, which is something we need to be concerned about. It's also something the NFB feels we need to take some leadership on. So we are moving ahead in digital creation and distribution to show proof of concept in a range of ways. For example, we pioneered the development of one of Canada first e-cinema networks through a pilot project. Our project in New Brunswick, in L'Acadie, brought together five communities and gave them access to works that they would normally not have access to--a cinematic expression of their communities and the communities across Canada in French. This was a first and was remarkably appreciated. It has been now going for almost a year.

Access to our collection of audiovisual materials is essential for all Canadians, and a priority. In January we launched our national online screening room, which now offers a thousand titles from our 13,000-title collection. It's a treasure trove of local information and stories in both official languages, and with the click of a button viewers can connect to the pulse of Canadian life and creativity across the regions of the entire country.

We are also strengthening our role in the local educational market. Because we are a trusted provider of regional content and a valuable partner for Canadian teachers, the NFB is increasing its online offerings and reaching Canadian youth on the platforms of their choice. For example, in partnership with LearnAlberta.ca, the NFB offers over 100 films online to all schools in Alberta, much like the community screenings that still remain important to us and the communities we work with. Web broadcasting of our works and stories serves to bring Canadians together.

New media is attracting ever-increasing audiences, but local television programming continues to play an important part in the political, economic, and cultural life of our country. It delivers information and entertainment and provides an important contributing element to community sharing and building. Conventional broadcasting will remain important in the years ahead. In fact, we'll be releasing a film shortly that looks at the major impact a local radio station has in the small community of Fort McPherson in the Northwest Territories. It's directed by Dennis Allen, a filmmaker from Inuvik.

We don't produce local news ourselves and can't provide those broadcasting opportunities, but we try to fill the gaps that can't be filled elsewhere. I mentioned our participation in the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, where we did exactly that and made it available to all Canadians.

We are currently working on a multi-year major project on residential schools. It's a way of telling the stories, from regions across the country, behind the very moving apology delivered by the Prime Minister last summer.

We have regional productions in both English and French programming that comes from across the country. Sabrina' s Law is produced in the Prairie Centre and aired last year on Global Television. It tells a story that affects Canadians but comes from a particular place. The Big Drive is a short animation film by award-winning Anita Lebeau from Winnipeg. It tells a story that is profoundly anchored in the experience of growing up on the prairies. But I can assure you that this very particular and regional story will travel the world.

We have productions from Newfoundland, P.E.I., and across the country. Radiant City, a film by Albertan Gary Burns, which had a story that was very much set in Calgary, found audiences across Canada and around the world.

We do programs in the Yukon and Nunavut.

The National Film Board does them in French too. We have done a lot of French projects, not just in Quebec, but across the country, in Acadia, in the west and in the north. What we do is very important because we make films that would not otherwise be made.

I am going to wrap things up by saying that we are going through a period of significant change. We really need to take a comprehensive look at all of the issues.

We are doing our part. In many areas we're leading the way. But as an industry and in terms of public policy, we need to take a larger and longer view. We need to bring private and public sectors together in a partnership to craft a national digital strategy that will form the basis for the creative economies of the future.

We must ensure that the infrastructure needs are there and put in place advanced digital networks. We need training, and we need to evolve new business and financing models.

The challenges we are facing can provide us with tremendous opportunities to try new things and explore new frontiers. We have to embark on this adventure together and have a vision for the future.

We can take this challenge and turn it into unprecedented opportunity if we dare, if we're bold enough, and if we have the vision.

Merci.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Now we'll move on to Syndicat des communications de Radio-Canada.

[Alex Levasseur, President, Syndicat des communications de Radio-Canada]

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?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much.

Our next presentation is from the Fédération nationale des communications.

[Chantal Larouche, President, Fédération nationale des communications]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for having us.

The Fédération nationale des communications represents nearly a hundred unions with a total membership of some 6,000 print and electronic media practitioners in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. It represents a majority of Quebec unions of journalists and technicians working for the major newspapers and large public and private radio and television networks, including those of the CBC.

The Fédération feels that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage does a good job of encouraging people to think about the complex environment in which the media are evolving. Over the years, the committee has produced important and relevant reports that have not, unfortunately, received all of the attention they deserved from Parliament. We think it is urgent that the Canadian government adopt the recommendations made so far by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, as well as those made by the Senate committee on media concentration to ensure the future of Canada's broadcasting system and the public good.

Because of major upheavals affecting the media, we must bring in measures to ensure the industry's viability and profitability, and to reduce the risk of undermining our social, cultural and democratic values. We must do everything in our power to guarantee affordable access to a range of quality Canadian services at both the local and national levels.

We must also protect the public's right to information that is independent of commercial media interests. We must recognize the importance of our public broadcaster and give it the resources it needs to fulfill its mandate. Television is still the source most Canadians turn to in order to be informed. Local programs and information must be a priority of the Canadian broadcasting system. The FNC believes that the CRTC made a mistake when it allowed TQS, a private broadcaster, to eliminate its newsroom and cut back its news service. General interest television must produce and broadcast local and national news.

The FNC also deplores the fact that the public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada, has removed the morning news program from its conventional network and is broadcasting it exclusively on RDI, which is only available on cable. There is a lot of financial pressure on local and Canadian programming, but we can make things better. We must restore the balance between funding for specialized services and that for conventional services. CRTC data illustrate the strength of paid and specialized services and the clearly inferior financial situation of conventional Canadian television, both private and public.

To maintain the outstanding contribution that general-interest television makes to the Canadian television system, we must give it access to additional revenue derived from distribution service fees. New media, audience fragmentation, changes in viewing habits and concentration are having an impact on local general-interest television broadcasting. Some solutions will require broadcasters to review their business plans. The CRTC must also strengthen its policies to require general-interest television to make quantitative commitments to producing and broadcasting local and regional programs as well as news and information programs.

Right now, the only incentive local television stations have to produce content is the fact that they have to if they want access to advertising. The CRTC can do a lot better than that. CRTC data show that between 1998 and 2007, there was no real increase in local spending by commercial English-language or French-language broadcasters. Spending on non-Canadian programming, however, increased by 61%.

The large groups formed by mergers engage in concentration of their resources. It is essential, both in the public interest and in the interest of the Canadian broadcasting system, to reverse the current trend towards dropping regional services and centralizing television content in large urban centres.

In a context of proliferating distribution platforms, local programming could become a development driver for general-interest television. The FNC wants the local programming improvement fund to encourage broadcasters to invest in local production.

The shift to digital and high-definition will mean substantial outlays for conventional broadcasters. It should be said, however, that for many of them, renewal of transmitters and equipment coincides with the normal equipment replacement cycle. Be that as it may, it is possible to look at how programs are broadcast, and we think that if there are other ways to distribute them, it is up to distributors and broadcasters, who are in a position to pool their technical and financial resources to provide free distribution services if they want to.

Given the size of the Canadian market and ease of access to foreign content via new technology, public funding for television production is more important now than ever before. We think that the recently created media fund is flawed. However, it has the merit of eliminating the previous bias in production resources that gave a near-monopoly on production to independent producers.

We are concerned that Canadian Heritage has withdrawn the 37% reserve from CBC/Radio-Canada. The loss of this guarantee, combined with the lack of adequate funding, makes the national public broadcaster increasingly vulnerable. Parliamentary votes for public broadcasters are down by nearly $300 million from what was available in the mid-1980s. Canada's Parliament must act on the most recent report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which recommended seven-year stable funding, and a funding increase, raising the contribution by Canadians from $33 to $40 a year. I want to emphasize that point with data from a survey commissioned by the FNC and conducted between April 16 and 26. Surveyors talked to 1,000 Quebeckers, 80% of whom thought that the Canadian government should increase the CBC/Radio-Canada's funding to ensure its development if necessary. Some 63% of respondents disagree with the Canadian government's decision to refuse CBC/Radio-Canada's request for temporary financial support.

Private television broadcasters are suggesting that radio broadcasters be denied the right to collect advertising revenue. At the moment, we are not prepared to say that doing so could help the industry, until we have a guarantee of stable, sufficient government funding that corrects the mistakes that have been made.

To conclude, Canadian media are going through a structural crisis that must be resolved by implementing sustainable solutions, particularly by maintaining and strengthening the fundamental social, cultural, economic and democratic roles that general-interest television plays in Canadian society.

Thank you for listening.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that presentation.

Now we'll move to the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, please.

[Peter Murdoch, Vice-President, Media, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada]

Thank you for the invitation to appear.

My name is Peter Murdoch. I'm vice-president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. CEP is Canada's largest media union. We represent more than 20,000 workers in Canada's media, including private sector broadcasters, specialty TV services, independent film and television, and Canada's newspapers.

With me today are Jim Holmes, who works at the A-Channel at CTV in Barrie; and Monica Auer, our legal counsel. In our written remarks, we refer to the tabs in a second document, copies of which we have given to the clerk.

We welcome your study. The letters and petitions you have been receiving show how Canadians value their local TV stations and local news, especially now, when information about their own communities is so vital.

Both this committee and the Senate's transport and communications committee, and other committees, and the reports that have been done by the ministry have been or done excellent work. All parties have contributed and done excellent work, and we applaud that work.

But the problem is that too few of your recommendations on broadcasting, regulation, and local news have been accepted, including the heritage committee's 2003 recommendation that a local broadcasting initiative program be created “to assist in the provision of radio and television programming at the community, local and regional levels”. That was in 2003, and it was your committee.

The CRTC in particular has ignored your concerns about highly concentrated ownership. It accepted broadcasters' claims that creating media giants would strengthen our broadcasting system and keep weaker stations alive. It ignored the looming “too big to fail” problem and told Canadians their concerns about unmanageable debt and loss of diversity were misguided. The benefits of consolidation would outweigh all of those problems, said the CRTC. Worst of all, the CRTC did not make the promises about local news legally binding. And when broadcasters began to break those promises, it refused to act because the promises weren't legally binding.

So here we are today. Having spent billions buying local TV stations, broadcasters now say these stations are too expensive to keep. Broadcasters plan to slash local news hours with the harmless sounding name of “harmonization” and threaten to close OTA TV stations altogether.

But only broadcasters know the real story. No one can question the figures they have given the CRTC, because the CRTC won't disclose these figures. But the CRTC has been printing individual specialty and pay TV services' results for years. Why hasn't disclosure hurt them? And since the CRTC used to disclose individual stations' financial results for licence renewals, why has it been fighting our access to information requests for more than two years—even for such basic information as the number of people each TV station employs?

All we know is this: no one can challenge what broadcasters have been telling the CRTC, because we don't know what is being said.

It's especially ironic that when interveners challenge broadcasters' arguments, the CRTC asks interveners to prove broadcasters are wrong. With what, exactly? The data the CRTC refuses to disclose?

The simple fact is this: aggregated figures show local TV programs have made more money than they cost for most of the last 20 years. Broadcasters' real problems are excessive debt and reckless foreign spending—all enabled by the CRTC and its irrational, outdated view that deregulation is the best way to regulate oligopolies in the public interest.

We understand that broadcasters' first duty is to their shareholders, and they are caught in the current temporary economic downturn. But the CRTC's duty is to Canadians. It is more than an expert tribunal; it is Parliament's deputy. It should implement the Broadcasting Act in the public interest and according to the rule of law.

Frankly, we were shocked when the chairman of the CRTC told us last Monday that defining original news is hard. Maybe that explains why broadcasters are rerunning their 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts the same night and the next morning to meet their local programming promises.

The CRTC also seemed surprised to learn that most TV stations now use their studios for storage and that most TV stations no longer produce and transmit their own newscasts. Instead, programming centres miles away control the station's studio cameras, their feeds, and their transmitters. If a hurricane hits Halifax tonight, someone in Edmonton would have to decide whether to let the CanWest station there run an alert. And CTV operates most of its stations out of Toronto.

We have concerns about the LPIF, and not just because it is too small and only broadcasters in the CRTC would know how it is being used. The real problem is that it will not raise spending on local programs. It should really be called the status quo fund, not an improvement fund.

We urge you to instead consider a local TV fund to strengthen local content. The CRTC does not have to raise subscriber fees to do this. It could take the money from the subscriber increases it gave the cable systems for capital projects years ago. This money went into the base rate but never came out.

Second, we urge you to re-examine the Broadcasting Act. Its goals are simply not being met. For instance, Parliament said broadcasters must use predominantly Canadian resources, but the CRTC is letting private TV broadcasters spend less on Canadian programs now than in 1994 and letting them double their foreign programming spending. Last year, for every dollar broadcasters spent on Canadian programming, they spent $1.25 on foreign shows. Buying CSI takes money away from local news.

Parliament also said that Canadians should have employment opportunities in our broadcasting system, but opportunities for jobs are shrinking because the CRTC lets private broadcasters cut or eliminate original local news on radio and TV. Should the CRTC promote employment in this sector or not?

Parliament said that the CRTC should decide who should have the privilege of holding broadcast licences, but rubber-stamping transactions for the last 20 years has led to a situation where broadcasters are dealing stations like poker chips through ads in The Globe and Mail. This is not just insulting to the communities these broadcasters claim to serve, or gut-wrenching for the employees, but is a clear signal that the CRTC has lost control of its own mandate to decide who will offer Canadians the best programming service possible.

It is true that Parliament receives annual reports from the CRTC, but while it has the data, the CRTC isn't exactly telling you how much closer it has come to achieving Parliament's objectives for our broadcasting system. It doesn't even tell you how many hours of original content our broadcast system produces, how much of that is news, excluding ads, or which stations are or are not following the rules. It took an access to information request just for us to see the CRTC's bylaws. Should we know if Parliament's objectives for Canadian broadcasting are being met or not?

Parliament also said that programming in Canada should reflect local communities, but it might surprise you to know that the CRTC has not made local news broadcasts mandatory on either TV or radio. There are no regulations about this. Should the CRTC make broadcasters' program promises mandatory or not?

Parliament said as well that the CRTC should hold public hearings when it renews or amends licences if that serves the public interest, but the CRTC is now expelling the public from its hearings. Incidentally, it doesn't help Canadians understand what is happening when the CRTC allows and encourages applications to be changed from one day to the next.

I will wrap this up soon.

Parliament probably assumed that the CRTC would enforce the act, its regulations, and its decisions. But although regulatory non-compliance has almost become routine, the CRTC still declines to rely on the use of all of its powers under the act to sanction or deter non-compliance. The CEP has now had to go to court for the second time to try to get the CRTC to examine serious breaches of and under the act.

Finally, Parliament probably assumed that the CRTC would serve the public interest, because the current act doesn't actually spell that out. But the CRTC regularly meets broadcasters behind closed doors, even in the middle of licensing proceedings. Its decisions routinely dismiss other stakeholder requests. Its policies merely pay lip service to Canadians' concerns. Now the CRTC wants the powers to fine the same broadcasters it meets behind closed doors.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, our broadcasting system faces real challenges. That is why we are urging you to support a local TV fund that is accountable and transparent. This is critical. Whatever fund we develop here, whether it's fee-for-carriage or the LPIF, has to be accountable and transparent.

We do not want to add more recommendations to the excellent recommendations made to Parliament in the past, but we are offering a few doable things this committee can recommend that can get done.

First, we recommend that you give the CRTC clear and detailed directions to initiate financial support for local programming. This fund must be accountable and must enhance or maintain local news programming. You must require the CRTC to monitor and report annually on the fund's use, station by station.

Second, we recommend that you review the CRTC itself to make it more democratic, more accountable, and focused anew on the public interest instead of constantly reworking Parliament's objectives to maximize income for broadcasters.

Third, we recommend that Parliament revisit the Broadcasting Act to ensure that its principles are being addressed in broadcasting and digital media, and with a fully resourced public broadcaster.

Fourth, and like the CRTC, we recommend Parliament move towards a more coherent communications act capable of dealing with our interconnected broadcasting and telecommunications systems.

We believe our recommendations are within your mandate and responsibilities. Parliament, and Canadians, are entitled to accountability and transparency as their access to vital information is being withdrawn. We think it is time to move on. Let's get some of these recommendations done.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Our last presenter before we go to questions is the Canadian Media Guild, please.

[Lise Lareau, National President, Canadian Media Guild]

Thank you for inviting us to appear before you today. My name is Lise Lareau and I'm the national president of the Canadian Media Guild. We represent workers at the CBC, at CanWest, and other media employers across the country.

With me is Marc-Philippe Laurin. He is the president of our branch at the CBC outside Quebec. Because of the size of the panel here, we have two of our other colleagues behind me. Karen Wirsig is our policy and communications coordinator, and Brian Olsen is our consultant on OTA issues where we've done some original research.

There are three main areas we'd like to cover today.

First is the crisis at the CBC and Radio-Canada that is forcing the cut of 800 jobs and undermining local programming. And now there is word of a threatened new funding cut of $50 million dollars or more.

Second, we'd like to see government add to the local programming improvement fund currently being developed by the CRTC.

Third, we'd like to see participation by the government and Parliament in the transition to digital television, to make sure that one-third of Canadians don't get left behind.

[Marc-Philippe Laurin, President, CBC Branch, Canadian Media Guild]

Mr. Chair, CBC/Radio-Canada is a fundamental part of Canada's broadcasting system. The public broadcaster provides 29 local services across the country on the radio, on television and on the Internet. The public broadcaster is, without a doubt, the most important cultural driver in the country. Moreover, CBC/Radio-Canada offers services that private broadcasters never will, such as local and regional services in small communities and in minority languages. Canadians depend on these services for information, debate and entertainment. These services help people participate in this country's public life.

You are most likely aware of the 800 job cuts and service reductions underway cut at the public broadcaster. There are two reasons that happened. The drop in advertising revenue during the economic crisis was significant, but the main factor was the combined year-over-year effect of inflation on public funding allocated to CBC/Radio-Canada. Last Friday afternoon, we learned that CBC/Radio-Canada might once again face the threat of another budget cut of some $50 million following a strategic review of its budget undertaken by the government. I must say that such a cut would be devastating and would prevent Mr. Lacroix, the president of CBC/Radio-Canada, from implementing initiatives he announced to the committee, such as restoring local service in communities where service has been cut. We beg you to do everything in your power to stop the government from carrying out this threat.

On Friday afternoon, we learned that the CBC is facing the threat of another cut, something that could be as much as $58 million, under the strategic review program launched by this government. This is on top of the cut that the public broadcaster is currently dealing with.

A new cut, I have to tell you, would be devastating and would obviously negate any efforts now being made by the CBC to try to restore local service in the areas currently being hit hardest by the service cuts this past spring.

We have to implore you, and we do so with heartfelt feelings, to do all that you can do to stop this review and stop this possibility of another cut.

As you know, funding for CBC/Radio-Canada is modest compared to public funding for public broadcasters in other industrialized nations. Parliament allocates just $34 per Canadian per year to CBC/Radio-Canada. That amounts to just over $1 billion for all 29 services. The average among the 18 OECD member nations is $80 per person. If Canadian funding matched the industrialized nations average—and Canada is an industrialized nation—the Canadian government would be giving CBC/Radio-Canada over $2.6 billion to carry out its mandate.

Furthermore, the funding CBC will receive from Parliament this year is the same in constant dollars as it received in 1995. When adjusted for inflation, that funding is worth $360 million less this year than it was in 1995. In 2005, the then president of the CBC, Robert Rabinovitch, stated in a public statement at McGill University stated that the CBC had not had a one-red-cent increase in its programming budget in 25 years. That was in 2005. This is 2009, and I don't think anything has changed.

There lies the crux of the problem. Even without further cuts, the public broadcaster struggles year by year with declining spending power. Unfortunately, we know that over the years it's the regions and local programming that have been squeezed hardest by the financial restraints.

As members of Parliament, you are the ones who can solve this problem. We are asking you to implement the main recommendations set out in your February 2008 report. Specifically, we are asking the government to sign a seven-year contract with CBC/Radio-Canada for increased, inflation-indexed funding.

For the past few weeks, people across Canada have been demonstrating their opposition to the public broadcaster's reduction of services. Yesterday, in Windsor, over 300 people denounced the closure, for all intents and purposes, of the only francophone radio station serving Ontario's south-west peninsula.

A few weeks ago, in Sudbury and Thunder Bay, hundreds of people denounced the reduction of services to Ontario's far north. Similar demonstrations have happened across the country wherever citizens are realizing that, bit by bit, they are losing their voice, the reflection of their community.

That is why we are asking for an immediate increase of $7 per Canadian per year in funding for the public broadcaster, as recommended in your February 2008 report. That would allow the immediate restoration of services that are about to be cut, and the improvement of local and regional services across the country, especially in communities that are growing but do not yet have local CBC/Radio-Canada service. For example, the French radio station in Windsor could be reinstated.

or we could maintain services in Thompson, La Ronge, Sudbury, St. John's, or Sydney. With proper stable funding, the CBC could also be looking at setting up new radio stations to better reflect and serve communities such as Red Deer in Alberta.

The time to act is now. We plead with you.

The time to act is now. We must not delay any longer.

We need Parliament to take action.

[Lise Lareau]

The cities that Marc-Philippe just mentioned are among the smaller cities in the country that have suffered most from cuts to their local media. Hamilton is another place that doesn't enjoy local CBC service and it's poised to lose its only local TV station, CHCH, owned by CanWest, as you know.

Local TV programming is as important as ever. We know that people of all ages continue to turn to TV to find out what is going on and to find live, quality local programming that is simply not available on the Internet.

We believe the government should support the local programming improvement fund being developed by the CRTC using revenues from cable and satellite providers. If the government participated in the fund the way it will in the new Canada media fund, the additional money could be used in part to finance initiatives such as the one being proposed by the CHCH employees and leaders in Hamilton to try to save local TV there. Obviously the money from the fund must be available to CBC and Radio-Canada for improving local news as well.

You need to be aware of another big development in the industry that's going to change the way people connect with their local TV stations. You heard about it earlier today. In fact, in just two years one-third of Canadians could lose free over-the-air TV. Why? Because the signals you get right now are analog. In 2011 TV in Canada is going digital, which is something the U.S. already did this year. And what does it mean? It means broadcasters will be shutting down their analog transmitters, but they have said they only want to put new digital ones up in the largest cities in Canada. That means some 10 million Canadians will lose access to free local TV just because of where they live. Among the communities proposed to be shut off are Gander-Grand Falls; Edmundston, New Brunswick; Rimouski; Sudbury; Chatham; Thompson, Manitoba; Red Deer, Alberta; Kamloops; and Kelowna. You get the idea. We've identified 977 communities that are slated to be cut off by the broadcasters in the research that we did by Brian Olsen, whom I pointed out earlier.

We have researched alternatives and are proposing a model, called “multiplexing”, that allows up to six broadcasters to share a single transmitter, to share the costs. This will reduce the costs immensely from what the broadcasters claim it will cost them through the transition. Multiplexing is now done all over the world, including in Ottawa right here, by the SUN TV station, which is broadcasting two digital channels over the air from a single transmitter.

We believe it's a solution for Kamloops. The CRTC chair even told us so last week when we proposed our model there. The committee members who were on this committee last year may recall the outcry when the people of Kamloops lost their free over-the-air CBC service. The issue was the subject of a large section of your report last year on the CBC mandate. Our solution would allow CBC to return to the public airwaves in Kamloops.

We estimate that the total cost of installing the necessary digital equipment there would be in the order of $160,000. Shared six ways, the cost per broadcaster would be about $26,000--hardly unaffordable.

All viewers would need is a $60 converter box. I have a prop here. Sixty bucks is all you need. Or if they had a new TV, they wouldn't need any additional equipment to get this free over-the-air TV. They wouldn't have to pay a monthly cable or satellite bill and they would get six channels. We think it would satisfy a lot of people. What's more, they would have free access to a good range of Canadian programming, and after all, providing Canadian programming to Canadians is the number one priority of the Broadcasting Act.

So is there a role for the government in this model? We believe there is. First of all, someone needs to tell the broadcasters that it's a priority to serve Canadians, no matter where they live, that their plans are not good enough, and that it's not okay to assume that Canadians in rural parts of the country should be satisfied with having no choice other than to pay for cable and satellite.

I see you, Mr. Schellenberger, and it doesn't mean I'm going to stop.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Mr. Rodriguez, I'm sure, is going to have question for you.

[Lise Lareau]

Listen, I'll answer further questions about this later on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Rodriguez, please.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for the union representing CBC/Radio-Canada employees, both English and French.

Have the 800 jobs been cut? In other words, do the 800 people who have lost their jobs know it?

[Alex Levasseur]

No. Right now, the Syndicat des communications de Radio-Canada does not know exactly how this will affect us because, as you know, CBC/Radio-Canada has implemented an early retirement incentive program. The program has been offered to employees under certain conditions, and we do not yet know the outcome of this initial measure. We do not yet know who wants to leave voluntarily. Once that measure has run its course, we will have a better idea of the outcome of the layoffs.

Our labour redeployment committee will be meeting on Wednesday.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Ms. Lareau or Mr. Laurin.

[Marc-Philippe Laurin]

CBC expects to lay off 393 people, but we do not yet have the list.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Has that made for a bad work environment?

[Marc-Philippe Laurin]

It has certainly created some uncertainty.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

It has created an atmosphere of uncertainty because these people do not yet know whether they will be laid off. That is very serious.