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.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
No, you have some left. It's just that I wanted to bring the discussion back to the CBC. We were getting a little off topic.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Okay. So I will talk about the CBC.
The CBC has mentioned the possibility of replacing its advertising with public funds.
How do you see the situation with advertising funds, for the CBC and for all general-interest broadcasters?
Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Advertising revenue is in decline for all media, both for broadcasters and newspapers.
However, for the public broadcaster, this is of special importance. To provide something different in order to stand out from private broadcasters, it must have a specialization, as Mr. Arnold mentioned. Eliminating or reducing the dependence on advertising revenue can provide a different direction for programming. If your content is intended to attract the attention of, and be sold to, companies, that's one thing. If you have another objective, the programming can change and it's possible to create a different approach.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
You produced a video that has provoked a lot of discussion this week—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Mr. Nantel, your time is up now.
I'll give the floor to Ms. Dhillon for seven minutes.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
Thank you for taking the time to be here.
You mentioned during your statement that our government has allowed companies such as Netflix and others to give negative messages in Canada. Can you explain what you meant by that statement, please?
Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
I wouldn't include Netflix in that statement, but companies like Facebook, for example.
The example I gave in my prepared remarks was with reference to the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, which was live-streamed on Facebook to a potential audience north of 2 billion people. Retransmission of a hate crime is itself arguably a hate crime in Canada, and also a violation of just about every principle in the Broadcasting Act.
There are new realities in the media world, such as Facebook Live being a broadcaster and YouTube effectively being the largest radio station, and there are copyright rules, standards of quality, truthfulness and decency, and application of tax. I could give you a very long list of a number of provisions that are not applied to these foreign digital companies in the same way that they are applied to their Canadian competitors, which are offering essentially the same service, and when it comes to things like Christchurch, the example is pretty damaging.
Communications Advisor, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
All of these things have a value, as well. This goes to this question of competition. The value of the exemptions and direct subsidies for just Google, Facebook, and Netflix is $2.7 billion a year. It is a significant tilt of the playing field.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
We have this negative aspect, but there are many positive aspects, too. Do you not think Canadian consumers are entitled to having a diversity of opinions?
Liberal
Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Absolutely. Journalism is something that somebody does. It's not a licensed profession or anything like that. A diversity of perspectives is very important, but I would like to draw a line between the act of saying something and the act of having that thing retransmitted and promoted to a huge audience without any sort of context.
If someone sent a letter to the editor of a newspaper or to a television station saying something racist, harmful, misogynistic, or whatever, they can do that. They have the right to speech. That's not a crime. The editor putting that letter on the front page, however, is a slightly different story. We're talking about platforms that are effectively putting this stuff on the front page, and making a lot of money doing it, with total impunity. That's a competitive disadvantage, and I don't want to live in that society. I don't know if you do, but I don't think that's a good idea.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
What can your organization do to help itself? What can the CBC also do to be competitive?
Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
If the problem with Facebook is that they're basically prepared to do anything and everything in order to maintain attention, including showing some of this vile, awful stuff, which is bred into our evolution, then having a broadcaster or a media company like the CBC, which has a whole different set of incentives, be strong enough to be a counterweight or a complement is really important.
I'll give you an example from the 1920s. The CBC was created in 1932. In the 1920s, we were getting almost all of our news and ads from the United States. The most popular radio show in Canada was the Amos 'n' Andy show. When Amos 'n' Andy eventually went on TV, it was two white guys in blackface.
That was not funny here. So at the height of the Great Depression a Conservative Prime Minister created the CBC, because they said, that's not who we are and we are not going to let this incredibly powerful technology take us down that road. I think we're at the same moment here. We need a strong counterweight in the media sector that can reflect our values and allow us to be independent of countries that think it's okay to take a gun to a preschool. I don't think we want to go down that road, and with media you are what you eat, to some extent.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
You've spoken about the CBC and your organization helping to preserve and reflect the face of Canadian society. I don't see much ethnoculturally sensitive programming. Are you doing anything to help improve that situation?
Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
We are not part of the CBC and we don't participate in production decisions, which is probably a good thing. But I agree with you that programming needs to reflect all of Canada as it is, and where it's going, to challenge us to be a better country.
Here I would come back to what I said earlier: new programming of high quality is not free. If you wanted to hold CBC properly to account, for example, for not taking diversity seriously and not reflecting Canada's current face back to itself, I think it would be much more appropriate to do so if they really had the resources to produce that stuff and yet didn't.
Right now they simply don't have it, and when they're dependent on deals with Netflix, for example, to pay the bills, then they're going to do what Netflix wants, which is generic stuff that could be set anywhere, that doesn't reflect the issues and the dynamic that exist here.
I agree with you. We need more ethnicity and ethnic diversity. We need to reflect Canada as it is, but in order to do that, we need to finance that kind of programming.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
But how come other channels are able to do it and the CBC cannot do it?
Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
What example do you have that are different?
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
There are other ethnic channels. They give their time to other ethnic programming and kind of open that door. It's not just today that we have ethnocultural people; they've been here for centuries. For me, what I see is not reflective of Canada.
Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Are your referring to something like OMNI, or a broadcaster like that, which has...?
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
Yes. Why can't CBC do a little bit of something like that? They're doing other programming, so why not that?
Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
I think there are a lot of good examples like OMNI, which is a strong public service. There are a lot of other broadcasters that are trying to get in and are now doing things like IPTV, because they can't sell ad dollars. There's a lot of opportunity for us to use the broadcasting system to advance Canadian values. The direction you're going in is a positive one; I think we need to go further, just as you say.