Thanks, Mr. Chair.
The last time I was at a parliamentary committee it was your committee. It was just another committee.
Mr. Chair and members of the Committee, thanks for inviting Friends of Canadian Broadcasting to appear today.
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is an independent watchdog for Canadian programming on radio, television, and new media. We're supported by 150,000 Canadians. Friends is not affiliated with any broadcaster or political party.
You are studying the mandate and funding of the CBC, a subject dear to Canadians' hearts. Since early in the 1990s, Friends has periodically commissioned public opinion research on broadcasting issues. You can find it in the resources section of our website, friends.ca.
I want to take a moment to summarize a recent survey we commissioned from Pollara on Canadian attitudes and expectations towards public broadcasting: 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; 78% tune in to some form of CBC programming each week; 81% believe that the CBC is one of the things that helps distinguish Canada from the United States; and 74% would like to see CBC strengthened in their part of Canada.
Finally, here is a question that might interest a group of parliamentarians: “Assume for a moment that your federal MP asked for your advice about an upcoming vote in the House of Commons on what to do about CBC funding. Which of the following three options would you advise him or her to vote for? Decrease funding, maintain funding at current levels, increase funding?” The data were: 9%, decrease; 31%, maintain; and 47%, increase. There's a message here: CBC is popular with Canadians of all political persuasions.
Friends has appeared before this committee on several occasions to underline our strong support for the CBC's mandate, as expressed in section 3 of the Broadcasting Act. In our view, a key point is the large gap between Parliament's intentions and what CBC actually delivers daily to Canadians, particularly the mandate to reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions. Also making up this gap is the English television network's failure to be predominantly and distinctively Canadian, especially in prime time.
This committee has been a source of valuable and comprehensive information about public broadcasting. For example, there is the graphic on page 178 of the Lincoln report comparing public investment in public broadcasting in western democracies as a share of GDP. These data show that CBC funding is near the basement, like the Ottawa Senators, with only Portugal, Poland, New Zealand, and the United States investing less than Canada in public broadcasting. So there's a disconnect between public sentiment and government investment, and this disconnect has become more severe in recent years.
Friends routinely tracks CBC's parliamentary grant, factored for inflation, in order to identify changes in CBC's purchasing power. On friends.ca, we have graphed these data over the past 21 years. Under each of the Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin, and Harper governments, CBC has lost financial capacity. Canadians can hear and see this gap every day. Regional programming is weaker and its reach is declining. More foreign content is televised in prime time, and repetition of programs is increasing. Ten years ago in prime time, CBC's English television network broadcast 27 hours of Canadian programs and only one hour of foreign programs each week. Last year, seven hours of foreign programs appeared in prime time, 25% of CBC's prime time schedule. I want to explain: that's seven to 11, times seven days a week. This comes after a recommendation from your committee that CBC television should be 100% Canadian in prime time. Each of you will probably have your own anecdotes on the results of underfunding.
Earlier this year, New Brunswick residents learned that CBC proposed to end over-the-air television transmission in Moncton and Saint John next September, leading to a storm of protest at the CRTC.
A few years ago, residents of the Comox Valley lost their over-the-air CBC television signal after an antenna fire, and it has not been replaced.
CBC seems to be backing out of affiliate agreements in several communities, including Peterborough and Kingston. Examples abound of parts of the country that are denied CBC services, all because of the shortage of money.
Friends welcomes this committee's recent recommendation that “CBC/Radio-Canada's core funding be increased to an amount equivalent to at least $40 per capita.” This would be a good first step in addressing the funding gap, raising Canada's per capita support for its national public broadcaster to half the OECD average.
Your recommendation is popular with Canadians. Pollara found that 54% of Canadians support this committee's recommendation that CBC funding be raised to $40 per Canadian; 20% of Canadians believe that your $40 recommendation is too low; and the balance, 26% of Canadians, believe that your recommendation is too high.
In our watchdog role, we keep close track of politicians' statements about broadcasting and cultural sovereignty. Our website is full of examples from years gone by—Liberal years—but today I want to focus on the current government.
Prime Minister Harper came up strongly on our radar when, as opposition leader in May 2004, he said, and I'm quoting literally:
I've suggested that government subsidies in support of CBC's services should be to those things that...do not have commercial alternatives.
He then added:
...when you look at things like main English-language television and probably to a lesser degree Radio Two, you could look there at putting those on a commercial basis.
In seeming contradiction, a few months later Harper said:
...we would seek to reduce the CBC's dependence on advertising revenue and its competition with the private sector for these valuable dollars, especially for non-sports programming.
In office, the Prime Minister has gone silent on this file, at least in public.
But troubling signs have emerged from Conservative Party fundraising letters, where public broadcasting has been featured. For example in September 2008, on the eve of the general election, Doug Finley, writing as the campaign director of the Conservative Party, sent donors a 2008 national critical issues survey, and promised, “I will personally share the overall results and any comments with the Prime Minister.”
Question 5 read: “The CBC costs taxpayers over $1.1 billion per year. Do you think this is: a good use of taxpayer dollars; a bad use of taxpayer dollars”.
This context might help you understand our concern when we read the transcript of your November 23 meeting, with the following question from Mr. Del Mastro to a Corus executive, and I'm quoting from a part of the question. The question is about 300 words long.
...maybe it's time we get out of the broadcasting business and get into investing more money in content?
And:
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. The $1.1 billion, plus a whole bunch of other stuff that we're investing into the public broadcaster: should we look at reorganizing that in some fashion so we could put more money into content?
Getting out of the broadcasting business—do you want me to stop, Mr. Chair?