Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 24th, 2020

[Janet Yale]

Well, let me start by saying, first of all, that we really embrace the notion of an open global market. We recognize that people are getting content, including news content, from anywhere, any time, on any device they would like.

The role of the CRTC is no longer one of gatekeeping, so if there are services in other languages that are available to people, they can get those online in a way that may not not have been the case earlier, when you had to have a licence to offer anything to somebody in Canada.

I think the first principle is that you can get content from anywhere, in any language, if it's available on the Internet, but second, I would think that's where CBC/Radio-Canada has a role to play, in particular with respect to diversity. I would expect that the government, as part of its negotiations with CBC/Radio-Canada, would include in its mandate the appropriate resources for the opportunity for diverse expressions and for inclusion of people with different languages.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. Yale. We appreciate that.

Thank you, Ms. Shin, as well.

Mr. Chen, you have three minutes, please.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you very much.

I do want to thank our guests today for being here and for presenting the report.

My question is with respect to cultural sovereignty, which you write about in the report and which you've referenced today. Can you expand a bit more on how important cultural sovereignty is to Canadians? How can we move forward? This is an issue that has been talked about at this committee and has been written about in previous reviews of the CBC. Can you give us some more context in this report on cultural sovereignty?

[Monique Simard]

Thank you for asking that question, which is very important to me.

Cultural sovereignty is a fundamental issue of national identity. This has always been the case. When the CBC/Radio-Canada was created in the 1930s, Canada wanted to set itself apart from its neighbour to the south by saying that we had things to say to each other and that we wanted to communicate with our people.

Then, in 1939, just before the war, Canada created the National Film Board, the NFB, which has now been around for 80 years. There was no studio in Canada, so they created one to produce works in Canada and, for a very long time, only the NFB produced them.

Later, cultural institutions were created so that all these networks and institutions could reflect who we are. Music must be encouraged. We should do it more, in fact. We have two organizations that support the music industry: Musicaction and FACTOR. We need to support the vision of what we are culturally.

It's true that there isn't a large market in Canada. We know that we have an extremely influential neighbour from a cultural standpoint. How can we distinguish ourselves, stand out and say that we aren't the same? What are our values? A lot of this is done through the affirmation of cultural identity.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Mr. Champoux, you have three minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you.

This is a lengthy report containing excellent recommendations. Many of the recommendations may be a little more complicated to implement. Of course, there is a concern that some of these recommendations may be forgotten. I guarantee that the people on this committee will work hard to implement as many of them as possible.

If you had to choose three recommendations from your report, which ones would you absolutely want to see implemented?

There are two of you, and I'm asking for three.

[Janet Yale]

Okay, well—

[Monique Simard]

The urgent measures.

[Janet Yale]

The things we recommended as requiring urgent action were these three. The first was making sure that everyone, no matter where they live in Canada, has access to broadband in a safe, secure, affordable and accessible way. The second was bringing the foreign streaming services into the legislation. There's no doubt that some of our recommendations can be taken separately to bring them into effect very quickly. The third was making sure that we remove the competitive inequity by applying the GST to all online players.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Okay.

Could you quickly talk to us about the fifth generation of wireless networks, 5G? It's pretty much inevitable. There's talk that 5G will be rolled out, and, of course, it's going to be an extraordinary revolution in the digital world.

However, we are starting to hear an increasing number of concerns in several areas. Have you addressed them in your report? Have you reflected on these issues, which are different for the different groups we are hearing from on this issue? I'd like your thoughts on that.

[Janet Yale]

In terms of advanced infrastructure, including 5G, about half the telecommunications section of the report is devoted to figuring out how to accelerate the rollout of advanced infrastructure, including 5G. We have a number of recommendations around the ways in which that infrastructure is different from traditional infrastructure and how we can, through legislative reform, accelerate that deployment, as well as make sure it is done in a safe and secure environment. We make some recommendations about ensuring, as an objective of the Telecommunications Act, network security and reliability, and we encourage the government to think about other security issues that may have to be addressed and then incorporated into any new legislation.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much, everyone.

Finally we're going to go to Mr. Bachrach.

I'm going to recognize you for three minutes. By the way, you're our guest, so I want to recognize the fact that you're from the stunningly beautiful riding of Skeena—Bulkley Valley, if I may be so biased.

You have three minutes, sir.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I didn't even ask him to say that.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry for being a late addition to the table.

Thank you to our witnesses for the presentation, the little bit of it I was able to catch.

As the Chair was saying, the region I represent and have the honour of representing in the House is Skeena—Bulkley Valley, which is the top left third of the province of British Columbia. It takes about four days to drive from one end of the riding to the other, if you drive all day, every day.

I note that your report finds a significant disparity between rural and urban communities in terms of access to broadband. I wonder if you might expand on what you feel the solutions are for communities and regions such as the one I represent.

[Janet Yale]

What we've said in our report is that it is an urgent priority and needs to be addressed as quickly as possible. We also recognize that there are many federal government programs, provincial initiatives and municipal initiatives all trying to ensure that everyone, no matter where they live in Canada, has broadband connectivity. We urge the government to address that gap as quickly as possible and to devote the resources necessary to do that in an expeditious way.

We also recommend that the minister of industry report annually to Parliament on the the status of broadband deployment to keep that visibility high around the urgency of the situation. Where there is no economic case, in other words, where the traditional players are not otherwise expanding broadband, we think it's the role of government to step in and ensure that no one is left behind.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you very much for that.

I'm wondering if there were any particular barriers that you saw in the work that's been going on now for several years. We've known that this is an issue for a number of years. I come from the local government sector, and we've been working on it for a long time. Were there any specific barriers that you found in your work?

[Janet Yale]

Money is obviously a barrier, and then coordination, so we address both the resources that would be necessary to close the gap as well as the need for collaboration and coordination.

Requiring the minister to create a report to Parliament would require an information-gathering exercise to look at all the different programs under way and try to make sure that any barriers to their implementation were addressed.

I did note before you arrived that, for the most remote communities in Canada, one of the things that's going to affect the ultimate delivery of broadband to everyone is the arrival of low-earth orbit satellites, whose deployment is not expected by Telesat for another few years. Where we can close the gap by more traditional methods, we can, and where we have to wait for LEO satellites to arrive, we will, I guess.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bachrach. I appreciate it.

We have a few minutes left. If I may, and hopefully I can get the permission of the committee members, I want to clarify a couple of points that were discussed earlier. I would ask you to keep your response very short.

You were saying that eventually you're recommending that ads be eliminated from all platforms of the CBC in time. Is that correct?

[Janet Yale]

Advertising.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Sorry, yes, advertising.

[Janet Yale]

Advertising, starting with news, over a period of five years. That would be within the context, though, of there being an operating agreement between CBC/Radio-Canada and the government with respect to clarification of its roles and responsibilities and the resources, the funding, necessary to achieve them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Okay.

[Janet Yale]

I want to be clear that we're not recommending the elimination of advertising in isolation of the package of recommendations around creating operating and financial stability for CBC/Radio-Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

To clarify another thing, what you're suggesting as far as legislation is concerned is revisiting the Radiocommunication Act, the Telecommunications Act, and the Broadcasting Act. Your mandate does not go into issues of copyright. It also mentions the Competition Act.