Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 6th, 2016

[Helen Kennedy]

As you probably know, the Canada Media Fund, in terms of content, is provided to a limited number of genres: drama, children's, variety and performing arts, and documentaries. The decision around those genres is a policy decision on the part of the government. Opening up that fund to allow other genres to be eligible, such as news and information programming, would be a policy decision on the part of the government. It's essentially a policy issue.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

I hear what you're saying.

[Jean-François Bernier]

If I may add to the response, the idea of including local news in the tax credit for film and television has also been raised. There again it's a policy decision. News is one of the eleven genres that is not eligible for the tax credit for film and television production, along with sports events, current affairs, porn.... There's a list.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

That's it. You did very well. Thank you.

Now we go to the second round. We do have time for a five-minute second round, but I'm going to have to be very tight on the five minutes.

We will start with Mr. Waugh for the Conservatives.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you, and welcome back.

This industry is changing quickly, isn't it? How much does Canadian Heritage spend on digital advertising? How much, and what is your percentage?

We've heard around the table here in the last number of weeks about how CBC shouldn't advertise and so on. When I go to their site, I see a well-produced 15- or 30-second ad on Canadian museums. It's fabulous. It's a great shot, and all that.

I am wondering, since we've heard the paper industry say we're spending too much on digital and they're not getting any. What's the percentage of your budget that is spent on digital, and how much?

[Helen Kennedy]

Just to clarify, you were asking about how much is spent on advertising?

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Yes. I mean just on the digital aspect of it. You've heard our meetings here; everyone who comes from television and radio and newspapers says government has dropped their advertising in those three sectors, yet obviously they've increased it in digital.

[Jean-François Bernier]

The advertising budget of the department is as tiny as the tip of a paperclip. I don't have the exact figure, but I doubt that it has three zeros after a number.

What I think you're referring to, if I may interpret your question, is that a lot of those who have appeared here have noted that the advertising budget of the government as a whole has shrunk like ice in June.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

It's gone from $20 million to $1 million.

[Jean-François Bernier]

Of course, government advertising was an important source of revenue for the media, particularly in local areas. The numbers are there. He says it's gone from $20 million to $1 million. That's probably right. That's what you've been hearing from....

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

On the digital platform, the CBC has obviously been very robust at getting its ads up. The same is true for television, but not for radio. They don't advertise on radio, yet they get a lot of subsidies from the federal government. Why don't they?

I'm just looking at the three platforms. On digital they have lots of ads, on TV they have lots of ads, and on radio they have no ads. Why not and how come? Either reduce the subsidy for the general taxpayer or compete against the rest.

Do you know what I'm saying? I see the two platforms you're advertising on, and you're in direct competition, and yet on radio you're not in any competition.

[An voice]

We don't want ads on radio.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

You don't want ads on radio. Then why do we have them on television and why do we have them on the digital platform?

[Helen Kennedy]

I think those are very good questions to ask the CBC. Their mandate is to inform, enlighten, and entertain, obviously. I hear that the committee has invited the CBC to appear before it on October 25, I believe. I think that will provide a good opportunity to pursue those kinds of business questions with them, because obviously they operate independently of the department.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I have one final question. Pre-consultation shows the differences, I think, in the public's and industry's responses. Foreign competition was cited by 41% of public respondents as being the most urgent challenge facing the culture sector, yet 54% of the industry respondents said that it was creator remuneration. We're seeing big differences in responses from the public and those from the industry here.

[Helen Kennedy]

There are some nuances certainly, but there's also a lot of convergence in terms of the importance placed on Canadian content and local news in particular.

I did notice in looking again at the questions around local news that it was interesting that when Canadians were asked to choose what kind of information they would most like, the public respondents said information around local news and regional news. On the stakeholder side, it was news about cultural events, which I think is pretty understandable.

I think it was good for us to have that sort of breakdown, because it does show you the importance from the stakeholder's perspective as well as from the perspective of those who chose to respond from the public.

The other thing we need to remember when we look at the results is that it was a self-selected group. It was self-selected. It's not the same as doing POR, public opinion research, with a rigorous methodological framework.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

You have a 15% difference here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Waugh and Ms. Kennedy. You are over time.

Mr. Breton is next.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for joining us today. It's a pleasure to see you again; it's been a few months.

I have questions about the survey. We haven't talked much about it this morning, but I'd like to hear your comments on that.

Some 10,000 Canadians completed the survey. You released the results in early or mid September—I can't quite recall. What's the significance of consulting 10,000 Canadians? Should we consider the results credible? What does it mean? I'd like you to speak to that a bit.

Right now, we have data, facts. I'd like to know about the underlying assessment, what isn't necessarily obvious when you look at the results.

[Helen Kennedy]

I can make a couple of comments about it.

As I said earlier, the purpose of the survey was to try to get some feedback from Canadians and stakeholders on what the issues were and to get some sense of their views around the cultural tool kit. We wanted to do it in a tight way, in a targeted way, and we also wanted it to be voluntary, so it led to the development of an online survey.

As I mentioned before, there were 10,000 respondents. We were pretty pleased with that. We thought that was a good result, and it compared favourably with some other processes that we'd heard of. We do have to acknowledge that it is self-selected. The respondents are people who are by nature interested and want to participate and have something to say in this area. It doesn't have the same sort of statistical rigour behind it as, let's say, public opinion research, where you're not dealing with self-selected people but with a broader section of the population.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Very good.

In your analysis, did you compare those living in large urban centres and those living in small communities? I'm sure you can appreciate that that aspect could have some significance as it relates to our study.

No, you didn't examine that?

[Helen Kennedy]

No, there was no identification asked of participants, whether they lived in a big city or a little city, so we have no analytical breakdown according to cities.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

All the results were analyzed as a whole. We didn't necessarily do any comparative breakdowns.

[Helen Kennedy]

No.