Evidence of meeting #8 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 media.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Walter Duszara  Board Secretary, Quebec Community Groups Network
Hugh Maynard  Past President, Quebec Community Groups Network
Ian Morrison  Spokesperson, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Peter Miller  Expert on Local Broadcasting, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Ann Mainville-Neeson  Vice President, Broadcasting Policy and Regulatory Affairs, TELUS
Frédéric April  Manager, maCommunauté, TELUS Télé Optik, TELUS

April 12th, 2016 / 9:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

You have two minutes.

9:35 a.m.

Liberal

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

Let me give you an opportunity to address best practices. When you talk about Canadian content and the promotion or protection of Canadian content, what are some of the better practices that you've seen in comparable economies, obviously outside of the United States—I'm thinking more of European countries and Australia—in terms of the amount of national content and how they deal with their cultural industries through demanding that carriers, whether they be foreign carriers that broadcast within or domestic carriers...? What percentages do they ask be of local content—or national content, but in any case domestic content?

9:35 a.m.

Spokesperson, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting

Ian Morrison

None of them have faced for as long and as strongly as the English-speaking part of Canada has the huge “satellite reign”, as it used to be called, of Hollywood in their country. Canada has had a continuing struggle, since the early days of the CRTC and before, to maintain a share of content, a share of shelf space for Canadian content, and until Let's Talk TV, the CRTC has always been trying to build and maintain that.

Peter, go ahead.

9:35 a.m.

Expert on Local Broadcasting, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting

Peter Miller

Let me say that when we look at Canadian content we look at it in different ways. For those of you who have observed it, there has been a real switch to look at the economic benefits of production. We talk a lot about that, and we haven't talked as much about the cultural benefits.

The other thing—and this is what's vital to this committee—the big shift, the big trend, is that high-end drama is now easier to do than it ever used to be. Why? It's because we, in this country, got better at it. We got better at partnerships, co-productions, and exporting. If you are producing the high end, there is demand for it—this is the golden age of television—and you have an export market you go to.

However, if you are producing local news, you are relying on an ever-diminishing local advertising pool, and there is nowhere else for it to go. That is why we are in this unique period where the local stuff, the local newspaper and local television stations, which used to be completely profitable, are vulnerable. With the things we have worried about for 20 or 30 years, we are actually doing okay in, relatively speaking.

9:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

Thank you very much, Mr. Miller.

Now we go to Mr. Maguire for the second round. This is a five-minute round.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

I wanted to ask a couple of questions in regard to the Quebec Community Groups Network. You mentioned your 48 members, I believe, Walter, in regard to your network. You have a million English Quebeckers concentrated around Montreal, and a couple of hundred thousand in other areas. You talked about how local media was endangered. I'd like you to elaborate a little more on that, the democratic values that you talked about.

You mentioned the Canada periodical fund and the Canadian Heritage strategic fund. I'd like you to go a little more into how they have an impact on you as well.

You mentioned that the broadband continues to be a “limiting factor”, I wrote down here, and I wonder if you could expand on that as well.

9:40 a.m.

Past President, Quebec Community Groups Network

Hugh Maynard

Okay, which one should be first, the local?

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Go ahead with the local.

9:40 a.m.

Past President, Quebec Community Groups Network

Hugh Maynard

Here is an example of local. This is a French-language paper delivered to everybody weekly in my area. The local English paper has met its demise, and as a result it gets two pages in the middle. Those are three articles translated from French into English and, you will notice, rather poorly so. I am not criticizing the French-language publication, but the fact is the demise of the local media. The coverage in the news has become quite difficult. Outside of Montreal this is becoming the rule rather than the exception.

How do we replace that? We talked a bit about some of the multimedia models.

Into the second part, what that needs.... I'll give you an example. One of the Magdalen Islands, Grosse-Île, has about 700 anglophones, who lost their weekly newspaper five years ago. They have been trying to find a way to collaborate with the local French-language paper and with the local French-language community radio station, and also to provide their seniors with a publication and those kinds of things. They have a business plan and a model. It's all ready to go; they just don't have any competent personnel who can run it.

That's what we talk about with this fund. Is there a way to take a young journalist out of Concordia University, put them down in the Magdalen Islands for a year, give them an internship and some experience, and ship them back? They are trained a little bit, and it gives the community some expertise, some element so they can get these things going forward.

Lastly, with regard to the Internet, I live an hour southwest of Montreal, and when something starts in Montreal we get it where I live in about 10 years. The further east, north, or west you go, the more difficult it gets.

Canadian federal governments, of all political stripes—not the NDP, of course, but the other ones—have made commitments to rural broadband repeatedly over the last 20 years, and nothing has really substantially happened. The commitment in the latest budget would be a good idea if we could get that in there and expand rural Internet, because it is quite essential to all kinds of economic development, especially media delivery.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Yes, I have seen it expanding in southern Manitoba, and just from the province that I'm in I'm imagining that your example, then, could be dealt with in regard to the flip side of that: with other minority languages in other parts of Canada where English is more predominant.

9:40 a.m.

Past President, Quebec Community Groups Network

Hugh Maynard

Exactly so.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Would you say that this would be a corollary of what you're doing as well?

9:45 a.m.

Past President, Quebec Community Groups Network

Hugh Maynard

Yes. For example, I mentioned the community radio fund, which has traditionally supported the establishment of community radio stations. There is a financial resource that could be devoted to helping establish some of these other alternatives—not excluding, of course, community radio, because I think it's still very pertinent in rural areas. I think it needs to take a fresh look, however, at the changes that have occurred and the fact that it is very difficult for any community now to print a newspaper—just because of the costs of printing and distribution—and at some of the new models that combine different kinds of media together on a local basis. The key to it is having some competence, some young journalists or technicians who can help deliver it.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

My last question would be to both groups.

We've seen, in some of the presentations here, that some of the local television news is in pretty good shape south of the border. I'm wondering whether there's anything we can learn from the Americans to strengthen the local TV news that we have here.

Who wants to answer that?

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

I am sorry, there is no time left to answer that question, Mr. Maguire, but if the witnesses should like to send their view in writing to us, we would be pleased to accept it.

9:45 a.m.

Spokesperson, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting

Ian Morrison

We would be pleased to send you a detailed comment on that.

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

Thank you very much.

Now we go to Mr. Fillmore for the Liberals.

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you all for being here today. Moreover, I thank and commend you for the work you're doing to maintain balanced access to French and English media.

I want to address the guests from QCGN today.

Half of my family are Montrealers, and I know from lived experience that anglophone content is readily available there. I want to focus on that 16%, I think it was, of your target audience who live outside of Montreal, in many cases in rural and smaller communities, who also deserve access to English and locally relevant content, whether it be through traditional outlets or digital outlets.

I'll ask my question in three parts and invite you to apportion the time that remains in any way you'd like.

The first is, what is the current state of affairs outside of Montreal, in rural communities, for access to locally relevant English content? The second part is, what is in your work plan to help improve that situation? The third piece is, what can this committee do and what can the Government of Canada do to accelerate and help the work that you're trying to do?

9:45 a.m.

Past President, Quebec Community Groups Network

Hugh Maynard

I'll take the first one. Will you take the second one?

9:45 a.m.

Board Secretary, Quebec Community Groups Network

9:45 a.m.

Past President, Quebec Community Groups Network

Hugh Maynard

The state is that outside of Montreal you have the CBC, with a radio broadcast out of Quebec City, and then you have five or six local community radio stations and at this point fewer than 10 English-language community newspapers, all of which are either of limited range or in quite a bit of difficulty.

Attaching to the question from before, much of the English-speaking rural community is within access of radio and television from the United States. There's Derby Line in Vermont, as well, and publications. There is, then, easy access to English-language media, but there's not very easy access to local English-language media. There's CNN; there's lots of news on the airwaves, but not necessarily local coverage.

That comes back to questions of density of population. Obviously, on the Magdalen Islands, with 700 people, it's going to be very difficult to support a weekly newspaper again, but also, the institutions on the island of Montreal have great difficulty going off the island. For example, I work mainly in agriculture, so I get calls from CTV and the other news outlets about what's going on with crops or the weather, but when you say you're an hour from Montreal, they won't come out. Unless there's a flood or an accident—some great event—they just won't bother, and so the coverage is quite minimal.

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS

And in terms of your plans...?

9:45 a.m.

Board Secretary, Quebec Community Groups Network

Walter Duszara

I think what we're asking for here is consideration of creating an environment that invites experimentation, creating an environment that invites younger people and provides younger people with an opportunity to develop their craft and to develop perhaps new products that can be totally unanticipated. You're trying to seed a sphere of activity where we see right now that the old business model is failing, it's not working any longer. If you're trying to find a solution, you won't necessarily have one solution. You have to provide opportunity for many possibilities, and from those possibilities you learn certain lessons, and at the end of the day, you may come up with two, three, or four solutions. There's no one magic bullet.

Our concern is that, as we speak today, the quality of the journalistic efforts that are made in terms of being able to analyze issues at the provincial and municipal level that impact our community has dropped dramatically. The capacity to do that work in many areas no longer exists. The need is as important as it ever was. The exclusion of certain parts of our population is very dramatic, and we need to be able to work together to try to support a new kind of spirit of innovation in the whole area of media and in the entire area of the capacity that we now have through the Internet, through broadband communications.

We don't have a solution, but we're asking this committee to look at the potential for a solution for creating an environment that will allow us to engage our community in seeking out solutions in partnership with our neighbours.

9:50 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

Thank you, Mr. Duszara.

That brings an end to this session. I want to thank our witnesses for coming here and giving us quite a lot of very innovative recommendations and some clear recommendations. I would like to thank you, and we will now have a break just for a couple of minutes until Telus comes on.

9:55 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

The committee is back in session. Now we have Telus.

Welcome, Ms. Mainville-Neeson and Mr. April. Thank you for coming. As you know, you have 10 minutes. I will give you a two-minute warning so that you can wind down, and then we will go to the questions and answers.

Thank you.