Evidence of meeting #161 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cbc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
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Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
That's all of your time.
We're going to Mrs. Wagantall now for five minutes.
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Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate your being here and that I have an opportunity to hear you and learn.
I have one question. It's just a quick yes or no answer, because I have more after that It was mentioned that in the 1990s, Chrétien cut $400 million from CBC. Did you exist at that time?
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Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Yes—me personally, and the organization did.
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Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
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Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Thank you.
I'd like a little feedback on what happened in September 2017. The Minister of Canadian Heritage made an agreement with Netflix to create Netflix Canada. Netflix Canada announced that it was going to put $500 million over five years in Canadian content—into production here to support Canadian creators, producers and Canadian expression on a global platform. They're investing $500 million because of this opportunity, but then they immediately raised the cost of that service to every Canadian who had it, to the point where this $500 million became our expense, truly, rather than theirs. Given the context, I find that quite frustrating. The appearance is that they are doing something to work together with the government on producing Canadian content, but then what I said happens.
Is that a danger, quite honestly, in this kind of scenario where Canadians end up paying for it regardless?
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Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
No one's seen that deal because it's a cabinet secret under the Investment Canada Act, so I can only speak to the press announcements that you talk about. Canadian broadcasters that are licensed by the CRTC have something called a Canadian programming expenditure requirement. It's typically set at about 30%. Netflix makes about a billion dollars in Canada. Their Canadian programming expenditure requirement is zero, so the government tried to say that they were bringing them into the regime. In fact, what we've learned is that this is $500 million over five years. It's not $500 million new dollars.
They invest in Canada already, so we may have actually done this deal for zero new dollars. This is money that should go back into the production ecosystem. Potentially, there are opportunities to do things like telling Netflix that they have to spend money here to produce shows and that those have to run for the first two weeks on the CBC.
There are ways for us to finance public broadcasting creatively and to work with these platforms without costing the government money.
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Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Another thing that I've noticed—and I don't care about what the particular issue was—is that this behaviour of announcing punitive action against specific jurisdictions for their political perspectives is something that Netflix has done recently.
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Liberal
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Conservative
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Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
I've kind of let it go because there was a link being made for a little while as to funding for the CBC, but we are moving far away.
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Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
I'll make the link, Madam Chair.
I totally appreciate the very important role that you play. It's broadcasting across the picture in Canada. I really like this and I think there needs to be that kind of accountability and transparency. I'm very supportive of Canadian broadcasting, and that's what we want; however, Canadians still need to know that fact-checking is taking place.
Canadians are wonderful, but I work in a place called the House of Commons and across the floor, beside me and around me, all of us will present totally different truths. One of us could be right or we could both be wrong, but there's no way we're both right, so this is something that we need even within our broadcasting systems.
I had an individual during the last election stop me at their door before I even spoke and said that she'd been a journalist all her life and wanted to apologize for her profession. How do we make sure that fact-checking is taking place even within our own content? This is greatly disturbing to the students I meet. I go to so many schools and there's a lot of concern about making sure that facts are being presented in news.
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Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
I can't speak to this journalist's journey of repentance—
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Voices
Oh, oh!
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Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
—but what I can say is—
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Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Okay.
Within the context of the CBC, if there is a concern about bias or anything like that, it can be addressed by making both the administration and the funding independent of the whim of Parliament. This is something that we do hear from opposition parties. We hear it from government, too.
There is an old joke. I think it was Turner who said that if he could walk on water, the CBC would say he couldn't swim. That's the old thing.
The need for independence is big because that way, even if there is an adversarial relationship, no one can say that the CBC is hewing to the whim of the government; it's important.
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Conservative
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Conservative
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Liberal
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Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
I have a little timer beside me.
We're going to Mr. Hogg, please, for five minutes.
