Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 1st, 2021

[Ryan McAdams]

Sorry. You broke up there, Mr. Shields.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

You talked about the accuracy of rural radio and newspapers, how important it is in rural, and how accurate it is. How are we going to maintain that?

[Ryan McAdams]

As you are aware because of your riding, we have growing gaps of news deserts. The only way we can do it is through support and a growing level of coordination for taking the tech giants to task with respect to how they create and I'll say “scrape content” from the local sites. If they don't participate at some level and contribute to our challenge, we will see an increasing decline in local reporting.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you. I appreciate your responses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Shields.

Mr. Louis, you have six minutes, please.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank all of the witnesses for being here. This is an amazing opportunity. I hope I get a chance to talk to each of you, so I'll dive right in.

Mr. Kassem, I'm very interested to hear more. The smaller the communities in Canada, I find, the more challenges you have promoting diversity and inclusivity. You seem to be doing an amazing job. I looked up your organization—the insights, the advice, the promoting of community events, the diversity awareness, the empowering of newcomers—you're doing a wonderful job and I appreciate that.

I know that one of the clauses of the bill outlines in section 3 of the Broadcasting Act to emphasize that the Canadian broadcasting system should “serve the needs and interests of all Canadians—including Canadians from racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages”.

I wonder if you could comment further. It's always wonderful to hear a success story—one of the local stories that you hear on your show promoting people feeling comfortable in a small community.

[Ahmed Kassem]

Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate it.

We've been working very hard to have the newcomers integrate to the rural area as part of the rural immigration policies of both the federal and provincial governments for many years.

When someone comes from overseas, they will be coming to a country where they have no connections, they will be running away from problems or they'll be coming of their own choice. There is always difficulty in leaving your social net or your family social net and coming to a new culture, a new language and a new and different environment. That alone will put stress on many of the newcomers or immigrants.

On our show we highlight the success stories of immigrants who have contributed well and have businesses in the country. When they come to Canada—we all call this country “a paradise”, we really like to be in Canada—they are very excited to be here. Some of them are successful due to their hard work. Most of them are very business-minded.

We invite those business entrepreneurs to the show so the rest of the people will see that hard work and dedication will pay off in the long run. We always try not to entertain the notion of victimhood or of blaming others for your shortcomings. That is the way that you can empower individuals.

Educate them and give them the tools to succeed rather than having them depend on you. We help them by giving them the tools to succeed in Canada and to open up a new life, but they have to be hard-working, honest, dedicated and willing to contribute to the society they are in.

The show is dedicated mostly to newcomers and immigrants who have businesses and who are professionals. Most of them are from South Africa. Most of them are medical doctors from South Africa. We invite them to talk about their successes, their difficulties when the came to Canada and the challenges they faced. The listeners will see how difficult it was for them, but how they achieved success despite those difficulties. There's always a light at the end of the tunnel.

Those stories are all on our website. Anyone can link to it and watch these nice stories.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I did, thank you. It has that feeling of “success breeds success”... and for people watching, “if you can see it, you can be it”. I thank you.

I'm going to keep moving on.

Mr. Petrie, I know the importance of local radio. I myself was a host of a local radio station. I volunteered and served for seven years on local radio. I understand the need right now is to balance how digital technologies have changed with how we can protect our cultural environment, promote our artists worldwide and still protect our identity here.

You also work with Stingray Music.

[John Petrie]

Yes, I did at one time. I'm retired now.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Okay. I see.

We're talking about 40 million viewers in about 50 states. We want to promote Canadian music and Canadian stories outside Canada, but we want to protect our local stories. Can you tell me a good way to try to strike that balance, in your opinion?

[John Petrie]

You're talking about the CanCon regulations, then? Is that it?

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Yes, absolutely.

[John Petrie]

CanCon is a tough one, because I'm a firm believer in Canadian content and promoting local artists, and I think you can do that. A lot of our radio stations were restricted—I think somebody brought it up before—by the programming out of Toronto. If I have a guy playing a nice song around Brooks here and it doesn't appeal in Toronto, I don't have much leeway anymore for that music to get on the air here. We have to open up that too.

The other thing I'll mention about CanCon is that I think it was in the seventies—you or somebody might be able to correct me—that CanCon came up here, and this is where we have to challenge ourselves. How important is that 35% Canadian content anymore? Would Justin Bieber have made it without that? Would Drake have made it? Would The Weeknd make it?

Would Céline Dion and all of those have made it without that 35% Canadian content? I don't know, but yes, I think we all want to promote our local music. We want our stars to be big because they do represent us on the world stage. We're proud of The Weeknd at the Super Bowl. That's Canadian. We're proud of that, and we have to promote it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much, everyone.

Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have other questions for Mr. Petrie.

Mr. Petrie, I'm a former radio host. I must say that, when you talk about old technology that young people don't know about today, it's music to my ears. I'm thinking of call letters and digital indexing.

I was recently talking about power with a young host who started his career just a few years ago. I was talking about 50,000 watts of FM antenna power compared to 150,000 watts or 200,000 watts. I seemed to be speaking a language that he had never heard before.

You said that you have 40 years of experience in radio. I have nearly 30 years of experience. If we add Kevin Waugh's experience, we must have 150 or 160 years of experience around the table today. I'm saying this with all due respect, Mr. Waugh.

I mainly wanted to talk about how quickly this industry is changing. This has been particularly noticeable in recent years. During your career, did you feel that concerns such as the ones discussed today were being raised? I'm no longer talking about technology. I'm talking about protecting content and protecting cultural identity. We talk a great deal about Quebec and francophone culture, but this also involves Canadian culture in general.

[John Petrie]

I've always been a proud Canadian, and when a show like Corner Gas comes on, or Schitt's Creek or whatever, I always make a point of watching them. I was probably one of the first ones to watch Corner Gas or Schitt's Creek.

I was a fan of Schitt's Creek even before it became famous like that. Did I see it going and evolving that way? I think we've always been influenced by the Americans. Their production house is so big. I look at the time when shows started to come out of Canada. We didn't make them Canadian. When they filmed something in Toronto, they tried to make it Los Angeles or New York.

I think we have to promote more shows like Corner Gas or Schitt's Creek. Canadians will watch them, and so will Americans, and so will the world, if it's a good production.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

If we don't strengthen the regulations, do you think that we may be left out in the cold?

[John Petrie]

In a way, but how do we get there? We can produce more local content, but the problem is, how do we promote it around the world? I could produce a program here, and I think Ryan.... A lot of people will open up a business and open up a website thinking that everybody is going to go to that website. The problem is, there are three billion websites in the world.

The issue is, how do you promote it? The giants do. Netflix has the ability to do a lot of promotion, whereas I produce a movie here and I don't have the background to promote it. We can produce it here, but promotion is the other thing we have to work on.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

According to a current school of thought, we should lighten the responsibilities and demands with regard to traditional broadcasters rather than imposing the same constraints and rules on new technology.

What are your thoughts on this? Should we maintain the current regulations and impose them on new players in the field or should we lighten the load?

[John Petrie]

I think we have to lighten it up there. Like I mentioned before, if the traditional broadcasters are forced to play 35% CanCon, do the online radio stations have to play 35% CanCon? I think we have to lighten it up because it does open up the field here. We don't know where this is going to go. A lot of this has happened pretty rapidly in the last almost five years.

We have some former radio announcers on here. I've seen, even in this province, where one broadcaster lost his job at a radio station. He's doing YouTube now, streaming his stuff and getting a lot of listeners. He's not going through any other channels.

A lot of people can do that.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

We saw the implementation of the 1991 regulations. Thirty years later, we're working on a reform of the Broadcasting Act.

You must admit that the development of this industry has proceeded much faster in recent years than in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

In your opinion, should we review the Broadcasting Act and require frequent reviews? How often should this review be done?

[John Petrie]

One thing people talk about is Moore's Law—the exponential growth of technology. We almost have to review it every three years because if you look back in the last year, what we're doing today probably didn't exist 18 months ago, before the pandemic. With the way we're communicating through Zoom and technology like that, the growth is phenomenal. I think it should be reviewed more often.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

Before I get to the last question for this round, it looks like we could extend to 10 minutes, given the issues that we had earlier. That takes us to 1:10 eastern time,

I'm now going to go to Ms. McPherson. Before I do, though, I'll say that January 18, 1971 was the introduction of CanCon rules.

Ms. McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, for your detailed knowledge of the subject matter and dates.