Canadian Heritage Committee on March 21st, 2011

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I've been here for 14 years. I have sat on a number of committees, some of which I've chaired, and I'm not aware that it is the privilege of any member of Parliament to actually interrogate a witness. I would strongly suggest to you, Mr. Chair, that the member stick to the actual subject that is under review here, and that the issue of either the witness' character or anything else pertinent to that should not be a question that is being discussed here.

I think Mr. Del Mastro is being absolutely insulting to the witness. I don't know the witness. I've never met him before, but I really don't think this kind of interrogation should be taking place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Madame Folco, for that. I've already asked members to exercise restraint, but I do believe Mr. Del Mastro has a question here that is not related to the topic, the issue, the point of order you've just raised. So I'll let him finish that question, and then I'll give the floor to Mr. Morrison, and then we'll move on to our next member.

Go ahead, Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

It's just very basically, as I said, that in 2005, funding to the CBC was $996 million, and last year it was just a little bit more than $1.135 billion. That's an increase of $139 million. If we use an annual inflation rate of 2% compounded over five years, it comes out to a total of $1.099665 billion, which means that we are a little more than $40 million above the inflationary increase since we became government.

We promised to maintain our increased funding to CBC every year. We've done that, but you've misrepresented us, sir. Why?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Del Mastro.

Mr. Morrison, go ahead.

[Ian Morrison]

Mr. Del Mastro's information is wrong, but if I have a few more seconds, I'd like to read something to you. I thought I had been misquoted from this letter, and I've now had the chance to find it.

There's a tick mark on the response device. Mr. Chair, have you ever received a fundraising letter in the mail with a response device, etc.? It says, “Yes, I want to preserve the CBC and strengthen Canada! Sign me up....” It says, “I authorize Friends of Canadian Broadcasting to deduct the following amount...$3.”

We are saying that we are there as an entity that is trying to defend and protect public broadcasting, and we are inviting people to get involved for as little as $3 a month.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Morrison, Mr. Del Mastro.

Madam Crombie.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It's nice to meet you, Mr. Morrison. Thank you for presenting to us.

I will give you an opportunity to finish some of the comments you started, but first I'd like to know, concerning the $2.3 million you raise from the 150,000 Canadians who support you, what percentage of your time and the funding you raise goes towards CBC issues.

[Ian Morrison]

I'd say about a third.

I have to back up and say something else, and that is that what we do, Ms. Crombie, is watch the entire Canadian audiovisual system. As I said at the outset of my remarks, we're a watchdog for Canadian programming. We watch public broadcasting. That includes such organizations as the Knowledge Network of British Columbia, or TVOntario, for example. We watch the entire private broadcasting system as well, television and radio. We keep an eye on the CRTC. We keep an eye on the very big and powerful cable and satellite distributors—the Rogers, the Shaws, etc. And we keep an eye on the federal government.

I did a recent analysis for our steering committee about how we spend our time. We found, if this is an indication, that we made 15 public presentations or filings of a brief or a submission in 2010. Two of them were to the Department of Industry, one was to the industry committee, of which Mr. Chong was the chair, and 12 were to the CRTC. In 2010, most of those were dealing with the agenda the CRTC had. The good majority of them had nothing to do with the CBC.

So I would say that on average, about a third of our resources go into watching and tracking, and as Mr.—I've forgotten his name, but the CBC guy whom Mr. Del Mastro just quoted—said, we are often critical of the management of the CBC.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I want to get a few more questions in, so I'll give you an opportunity to respond.

We know that this Harper government has an anti-CBC bias. We've heard statements like that which the parliamentary secretary has made. Here's a member from the Lanark area, who said, “I don't think government should be giving funding to the arts.” And we have our own Minister of Immigration, who said CBC “lies”—a direct quote—a number of weeks ago.

I wanted to ask you, concerning the Pollara poll you did in which 52% of the respondents said that the Harper government specifically underfunded the CBC because they thought there would be a mandate to privatize it, whether you concur with that view. Where are you with respect to the polling results that you...?

[Ian Morrison]

Well, that's just professional data. Pollara found that. It doesn't matter whether I agree; that's what Canadians—

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

It's what Canadians believe.

As we know, the CRTC is going to be renewing the CBC's licence, is that not correct? That's coming up fairly—

[Ian Morrison]

That's predicting the result, but yes.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

It's fairly certain.

They're claiming that they're going to allow key questions to be discussed, such as local and regional programming, and a guarantee that the CBC continue to respect its mandate as stated in the Broadcasting Act.

What are your expectations with the renewal process for CBC's licensing?

[Ian Morrison]

First, we often praise the CRTC when they do good things, but I would say that CRTC has dropped the ball on CBC issues. The CRTC last licensed the CBC's various networks in January 2000, and in their cycle they're supposed to do a review of licences every seven years. We're now into the eleventh year since there has been any substantive review of the CBC. I think that betrays, on the part of successive leaders at the CRTC, a bias towards responding to the private sector. It's not appropriate that the CBC is acting today under licences that were granted on January 6 of the year 2000 and just administratively renewed.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

You made a comment with respect to the lack of experience of the board members of the CBC. Would you go so far as to comment on the experience level of the recent appointment to the CRTC?

[Ian Morrison]

Are you studying the appointment of Mr. Pentefountas? Yes?

I assume that Mr. Pentefountas is a highly intelligent criminal lawyer. Based on any understanding I have of his background and experience, I think he is not qualified to be a commissioner of the CRTC and far from qualified to be a vice-chair of broadcasting at the CRTC.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Morrison and Madam Crombie.

Monsieur Pomerleau.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Morrison. I am absolutely amazed by your frankness and the precision of your answers. It is very well articulated, very precise.

This is the first time I have met you and heard about your group. I would like you to tell me where you come from, what prompted you to join this group and what your duties are within the group. Were you the founder, the organizer, or are you one of the members?

[Ian Morrison]

Mr. Chair, Mr. Pomerleau said to me, informally before the meeting, where do you come from? And I said,

I'm a little guy from Toronto.

My role is that of spokesperson.

Your question is really a question about the governance of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. There is a board of directors that is known as the steering committee, and that steering committee contains people you probably wouldn't know because of the language divide.

The chair of my steering committee is the dean of graduate studies at Memorial University, for example. The famous actor, R. H. Thompson, is a member of my steering committee. If you were from Alberta, you would know the name Aritha van Herk, who is the historian of Alberta, and on and on.

Those people are the governance body. I am the spokesperson.

And Friends is a virtual organization in the sense that it has no office, it has no employees.

Someone once sent me a note, Mr. Pomerleau. It said, “We're not going to send you $3 a month”--or something like that--“unless you promise us that you're not wasting money on an expensive address on Bloor Street in Toronto.” I'd have to borrow, again, the letter to give you the address because I never go there--it's a post box. I wrote back and I said, “I can't promise you that. It's 6 inches tall, it's 12 inches wide, and it's 18 inches deep.” So we are a virtual organization. We have a series of people with expertise in a variety of subjects: broadcasting, research, communications, fundraising, etc.

My role is the coordination and the expression of the Friends positions.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Myself, I think you play your role very well. I would like to ask you a question.

I am a sovereignist, which in reality means I want to bring about the independence of Quebec. It may seem odd, but I am absolutely convinced that if Canada doesn't invest money, resources and an lot of work in protecting its culture, exactly the same thing is going to happen to it as what is going to happen to us, it is going to be assimilated by the Americans. It's written in the sky. So the need to invest more in culture, in the CBC, and so on, seems obvious to me.

Based on your experience, I would like you to tell me why it is, in your opinion, that the government, which is in fact made of up intelligent people, doesn't understand that and is not investing a little more money in this area, as the people at the OECD are.

[Ian Morrison]

Going back to your original comment, you used the word “sovereignty”. It's a wonderful word. And we think in our organization that Canadian cultural sovereignty is a very important value. I quoted for you at the very beginning of my remarks that 88% of Canadians believe that as Canada's economic ties with the U.S. increase, it's becoming more important to strengthen Canadian culture and identity.

The chair will recall that when I appeared before him in his previous role, I was quoting from the Telecommunications Act, which talks about Canadian sovereignty, so being masters in our own house, so to speak. These are the values behind public broadcasting.

On the English language side--not dividing the country by territory, but by langue maternelle--two-thirds of what English Canadians watch on their television sets is material from a foreign country--the United States of America, most of it. So maintaining a share of that space--radio, particularly television, for Canada and Canadian programming--is the huge challenge, and that is the reason that our organization exists--

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Morrison.

[Ian Morrison]

--fraudulent or not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Merci, monsieur Pomerleau.

The last member for today is Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you very much.

You correctly pointed out that Peterborough is a subsidiary, that it operates under an agreement with the CBC. In fact, there are only two stations like that left in the country.