Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 24th, 2020

[Monique Simard]

I would add that everything is digital. Not 100% yet, but it is going to be.

Looking into the future, our first proposal is to re-christen the CRTC, to broaden its mandate to include all digital platforms, of course, because its authority is redefined. We want to modify its role.

So, as Ms. Yale has just said, it must be much more proactive, it must be ahead of things rather than simply reacting to them. We are making proposals about how its leadership should be composed and we are also deciding whether to give it additional powers. Moreover, we are adding a well-funded public interest committee, with representatives from across the country, who will be able to watch its work, make presentations and basically be guard dogs of the public interest with this new institution.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I am going to change the subject completely and talk about copyright.

I know that it was not part of your mandate. You were not asked to deal with it within the framework of your mandate.

Do you not think that looking at the eventual impacts on copyright should have been part of your committee's mandate? Clearly, digital is devastating for communications in a number of sectors like journalism, culture, the arts, and so on.

First, do you think that you should have looked at it? Second, did you hear from groups who came with questions on the issue, despite the fact that it was not part of your mandate?

[Monique Simard]

First of all, when we received our mandate, we had to take it or leave it. However, it took us one or two months to properly grasp the mandate and to break it down so that we could hold our public consultations. As you say, there are really a lot of things, but we did not get questions about copyright.

If you read the report closely, we deal with subjects like journalists whose articles are pilfered and reproduced on platforms without them receiving compensation and we have recommendations in that regard.

It was not part of our mandate, but it was difficult not to address it. In addition, of course, all the associations came to make representations. I am sure you know that we received more than a thousand presentations, in the form of briefs and meetings. It is critical that people are fairly remunerated for their work today. There is talk of a crisis in the media and in media companies, and it is real. Last week, you probably read a letter cosigned by newspaper editors from The Globe and Mail to Le Devoir, by everyone. There are also independent journalists whose work as writers is their bread and butter. It makes no sense that people are not paid for their work when it is reproduced.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I have one last question to ask. It's a more technical one, and concerns the timelines for connection in the regions across the country.

Particularly in Quebec, in my riding, there are municipalities that cannot wait very long. My colleague was talking about this earlier. There are businesses that have to leave because the Internet does not adequately meet their needs. In this context, municipalities tend not to wait for subsidies and they often decide to pay provider x or y or a smaller provider, a smaller player, to have fibre installed in their area.

Are you aware of this issue? Do you have any recommendations, such as making these municipalities eligible for grants at a later date or after installation has been completed, when they are no longer eligible for grants in the current environment?

[Janet Yale]

I think that's a great question. One thing we recognized explicitly in our report is the need for collaboration at the federal, provincial and even the municipal levels. One recommendation we made is that the minister should report annually to Parliament on the status of broadband deployment, and it was for exactly that reason, so that there would be an obligation on the part of the minister to report to Parliament on how all these programs are working together to solve the problem.

Whether or not that means some of the criteria should include, as you say, compensation after the fact for monies that have already been paid, that's a great question for the government to consider as we recognize the urgency of making sure every Canadian, no matter where they live, both individuals and businesses, have broadband connectivity. It's vital to succeed in today's economy where, as my colleague said, everything is digital.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. Yale.

Pardon me, Ms. Simard, we have reached the allotted seven-minute mark.

At some point along the way, you can work in those answers if you wish, because we still have a fair amount of time to go, but I have to go to the next questioner.

Ms. McPherson from the NDP, you have six minutes, please.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Ms. Simard and Ms. Yale, thank you both very much for coming.

This is my very first opportunity to sit in a committee and ask questions, so please forgive me if my questions are not as concise as perhaps they could be. I'll try not to use names inappropriately this afternoon, as I've already done.

Some of my questions are going to be around CBC/Radio-Canada and what you've recommended.

You have recommended that we move toward less advertising on those platforms, and I'd like a bit of information on how you think that will impact the budget that CBC gets. Could you talk about any information you might have on what budgets might be for other national broadcasters that are similar to the CBC, like BBC or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation?

[Monique Simard]

First, we are redefining and confirming the key role a media organization plays. It's important to understand that we're talking about media organizations here. In order for a public broadcaster like CBC/Radio-Canada to be able to take on and fulfill its mandate properly, its funding must be stable for at least five years. That is extremely important. Anyone who has worked in television—I know some of you have been in the profession—knows that it is very difficult to work when you don't know what your budget will be from year to year. So we're talking about financial stability. The government should increase the annual envelope allocated to CBC/Radio-Canada through parliamentary appropriations for five years, to the level it requires to fulfill its mandate.

Why are we proposing a reduction and gradual elimination of advertising revenue over five years?

First, advertising revenue across all media, including CBC/Radio-Canada, are in steep decline. They are melting like snow in the sun. You can see that in 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2017, advertising revenue went down everywhere. That partly explains the media crisis. Because it's already happening, we are proposing an attempt to free up those funds. Furthermore, the quest for advertising revenue cannot be allowed to influence programming choices. We are, of course, aware that advertisers want to be associated with specific programs.

Entertainment would continue to be part of CBC/Radio-Canada's mandate. A number of people told us that CBC/Radio-Canada should be limited to just news and public affairs. Our response to that was that entertainment should be maintained. Entertainment, television series and comedy programs reflect the spirit of Canadian culture. That's what the issue of CBC/Radio-Canada funding is all about.

In fact, we are not taking anything away from CBC/Radio-Canada: we're actually doing it a favour in making this proposal. I'm sure you are aware that there has been a lot of tension.

[Janet Yale]

I just would add that we looked at the funding of public broadcasters around the world, and of the OECD countries, CBC/Radio-Canada is pretty much at the bottom of the list at about $30 per person per year, whereas if you look at the U.K. and other countries that are really well established, well recognized, it's more in the $55 to $70 per capita range.

It's our view that certainly to be the public media institution that we envisage, CBC/Radio-Canada is underfunded.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

As a quick follow-up on that, your recommendation would be that we would move forward with increasing the funding and that this would all be done within a five-year period. Is that what you're envisioning?

[Janet Yale]

The recommendation is that the government enter into an agreement with CBC/Radio-Canada, a five-year agreement, with a clear understanding of what they would be expected to deliver and the resources necessary to deliver it, with an annual report through the CRTC back to Parliament on their meeting the commitments set out in the operating agreement.

[Monique Simard]

Advertising would be phased out over five years. The first step would be to withdraw advertising from news programming.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Okay, perfect. Thank you.

I have one more thing on a different slant. The report makes some recommendations on the rights of Canadians and enhancing trust. Could you talk about where you see the rights of Canadians in terms of hate speech and how you would recommend we deal with that? As a politician in Canada, I can tell you that it's pretty rampant.

[Janet Yale]

We addressed it in a number of different ways. We certainly have to balance the rights of individuals to freedom of expression. We spent some time already talking about the importance of free speech.

There's freedom of expression on one side and illegal content on the other. What's the grey matter in between which is about misinformation, fake news, whether it's collectively targeted or targeted towards individuals?

It certainly wasn't explicit in our terms of reference to deal with that. Many of these issues transcend domestic boundaries because they're platform providers that operate globally. We really felt that it was important for the government, in effect, to undertake a separate initiative to look at what the right legislative and regulatory model is to address the social harm issues. These are the issues associated with misinformation, targeted bullying, sexist comments, all of that content that doesn't actually cross the line into illegal content where the Criminal Code applies, but is something that requires real effort to understand how that works. In a world of big data and artificial intelligence, in particular, what is the responsibility of those platform providers for the content that they allow to be shared or disseminated online?

That question of what's called “intermediary liability” is one that is evolving internationally and where we think the government needs to take direct actions through a separate process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. Yale. Thank you, Ms. McPherson.

We're now going to our second round. These are five-minute questions. Before we do that, I would just like to point out to the committee, and I'm trying to give you advance notice by doing this, that if we go through what the Standing Orders dictate to us about the rounds of questioning, it will take us up to about 4:40 p.m. We will have remaining about 20 minutes. Here's what I would propose. We repeat the first round but instead of six minutes for each party, we give five minutes, or we could go into committee business earlier.

You don't have to answer now. We can talk about it a bit later. Just think about that, and we can do one of the two. It's at your discretion.

In the meantime, we'll go ahead with the second round.

Mr. Shields, I believe you're up for five minutes, please.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming.

It's a lengthy document. We read through all the recommendations and it's something like what we put together in committees. We listen to a lot of people and do some similar things. You're immersed in it and we're at superficial to where you've been in your story on this one.

On recommendation 27, you bet. I really agree with it.

You talked about rural a number of times. What's your definition of rural?

[Janet Yale]

We didn't really get into the definitions of what is urban versus rural versus remote. What we focused on in the telecom section was making sure that every Canadian, no matter where they live in Canada, has broadband connectivity. It really was a question of who doesn't have broadband connectivity and how fast we can close that gap.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

It's really critical because I've heard twice already here a real problem that has already been mentioned here. It says, “to the communities”. That isn't rural. I have farming operations that have 25 pivots, 70 pivots, 25 combines in a farm operation. They're rural. They have just a little better than dial-up.

We have used that word constantly. The government says, “to the last community”. It needs to be the last farm gate. You haven't defined that in here and that's a problem.

[Janet Yale]

With respect, I think what we said is that every Canadian, every person in Canada, no matter where they live, expects and deserves to live a connected life. We've made it about the individual, not about the community.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

But you've said “community” today.

[Janet Yale]

Fair enough and—

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

That's wrong.

[Janet Yale]

If you look at our report, we really start with the principle of universality of service and we propose enshrining in the telecom act, as an objective, that everyone, no matter where they live, deserves to have universal broadband connectivity in a safe and secure environment, at an affordable price.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Great. I really appreciate that clarification because that is brutal in the sense that it's the farm gate that needs it, not the last community—

[Janet Yale]

Absolutely.