Evidence of meeting #115 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was company.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I'll now go to the Bloc Québécois.
Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for six minutes.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, I would like to say to Mr. Bibic that I am pleased that he is here with us today.
I would also like to point out to the committee that we had issued a summons to Mr. Bibic to appear, because we believed he was refusing to provide us with information. We subsequently learned that this was not the case; rather, it was a question of incompatibility between the committee's schedule and that of Mr. Bibic. I think the summons was a little heavy-handed, and I want the committee to think about that in the future.
Mr. Bibic, thank you for being here today. I recognize your willingness to come and answer members' questions, despite the fact that I don't think these are pleasant topics to discuss. The cuts that Bell has made over the past year are very worrisome, particularly in terms of regional news. This is a subject that is of particular interest to me: in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, for example, Bell newsrooms and radio stations are no longer able to cover what is happening at city halls, city councils and local events, because television newscasts are now broadcast from Quebec City and Montreal, depending on the region.
How do you explain that you say you are investing massively in news production, and particularly in local news, when, in fact, when we look at what is happening in the regions of Quebec, people are complaining about a situation that is the polar opposite? People are bemoaning the fact that Bell has gutted or reorganized its newsrooms, which has caused a dearth of regional coverage.
What do you have to say to that, Mr. Bibic?
3:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
Thank you for your excellent question.
Without question, journalism plays an important role in our society. In 2021, I made the decision to build Noovo Info's newsroom from the ground up, to serve Quebeckers. We are present in Montreal, Quebec City, Saguenay, Mauricie, the Eastern Townships—
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Mr. Bibic, you say you built it from the ground up, but you nevertheless acquired TV channel V, which provided you with some infrastructure. It's not as if you had to buy consoles, cameras and all that. You set up a system, a new news service, but you acquired some equipment when you bought channel V. You launched a news channel. In the beginning, you covered the regions fairly adequately, I agree, but, for some time now, we have been seeing cuts in terms of jobs and regional service, specifically in the regions of Quebec, despite the regulatory relief provided by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. People are concerned about that.
3:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
Noovo Info broadcasts more than 3,000 hours of news a year, of which 1,300 hours are devoted to local news. We take it seriously. Noovo Info now employs 80 people, which is 25% more than when we launched the service. The newsroom is getting bigger. Our journalists are given a mandate to remain relevant to the audience and to reflect the regions that are covered. That is how we will serve Quebeckers across the province.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Nevertheless, I urge you to listen carefully to what people in the regions are saying. It's all well and good to devote hours to news production, but having regional news broadcast from a city is not really providing regional coverage.
I urge you to pay attention to these regional concerns, because they are real. We need local news; it's crucial. We are in the process of losing it. I would go so far as to say that democracy is suffering. It is very important that you remember that in your investments.
I would like to come back to the more recent cuts that were made at the beginning of the year. I know that Bell made cuts in a number of areas, but I would like to know how many of those affected customer service.
3:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
I don't have the exact numbers in front of me for the client service positions, but I can say that we have made tremendous progress in terms of improving client service. In fact, I am extremely proud of the team.
According to data from the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services, Bell is improving the most from one year to the next, which is due to the phenomenal work done by the team across the country.
In Quebec, the Bell team, which is made up of 12,000 employees, is very proud of that fact.
4 p.m.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Can you reassure people who are afraid that the jobs cut from client services will be sent offshore where those services are offered at a lower cost, to put it politely? Are the employees who have been laid off at Bell right in fearing this?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
There have been no positions cut recently that have been sent offshore.
4 p.m.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
How did you replace those positions if they are customer service positions? Is it because they were surplus to requirements?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
We're becoming more efficient. We can reduce the number of callouts, because the service itself is better than it was before. With the construction of the fibre network, the network is performing better: There are fewer outages and fewer callouts, so we don't have to send a truck or a technician to repair the network as often. I can give you several examples, if you wish. People contact us with the MyBell app, which allows subscribers to repair their service themselves or run diagnostics.
We do that by investing in the grid and the applications and improving them.
4 p.m.
Liberal
4 p.m.
NDP
Jagmeet Singh NDP Burnaby South, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
First, it's pretty clear that things are going well at Bell if you're a shareholder and a CEO but not if you're a worker or a consumer. Bell reported a whopping $2.3 billion in profit last year. As CEO, you, the chair, profited or pocketed $13.43 million in compensation. However, Canadians are paying some of the highest cellphone and Internet fees in the world. You laid off, in nine months, over 6,000 employees.
How does a profitable company justify these layoffs, particularly in light of the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from the government? How do you justify that? Is it just about making even more profits? You're already profitable. What is the justification, then?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
When we make our decisions, we have our consumers front of mind and, in terms of media, our viewers front of mind, as well as the investments we need to make to better serve consumers and viewers. We're doing this in an environment with—as I said earlier in the appearance—increasing costs, bad foreign exchange, high inflation and increased competition, which is fundamentally a good thing. We have to manage all of that.
4 p.m.
NDP
Jagmeet Singh NDP Burnaby South, BC
Mr. Bibic, I think I missed something you said. Just to understand, did you say that your justification for laying off workers is that you had the consumers in mind? I must have misheard that because that does not make any sense at all to me, sir.
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
It makes very good sense because what we're trying to do is continue to grow.
4 p.m.
NDP
Jagmeet Singh NDP Burnaby South, BC
You're saying you fired 6,000 workers because you're worried about consumers.
4 p.m.
NDP
Jagmeet Singh NDP Burnaby South, BC
Sir, I'm having a hard time understanding that. I thought I must have misheard you, sir, but go on then.
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
No, I'll explain.
What we need to do is to continue to invest in our networks, in our content and in our services to better serve consumers and viewers, and in order to continue to invest, we need to continue to grow our revenue—
4 p.m.
NDP
Jagmeet Singh NDP Burnaby South, BC
I'm sorry, sir. Are you saying “invest” and not “divest”? You're firing workers, and you're saying that's an investment.
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
We need to adjust to the macroeconomic environment around us. In Canada, we have one of the most poorly performing economies in the industrialized world. We have a massive productivity problem, which the Bank of Canada has identified as a crisis.
We have to adjust to the macroeconomic environment around us so that we can continue to grow our revenues, and so that shareholders and lenders will continue to give us capital so that we can continue to invest to better serve consumers. That's how it all ties together.
4 p.m.
NDP
Jagmeet Singh NDP Burnaby South, BC
Okay. Thank you for explaining that.
I want to point out something and ask you to kind of look in the mirror. You tried to blame the government by saying that the government didn't act fast enough and didn't help your company fast enough. I want to outline some of the choices you made, because I think this is really a choice. I don't agree that this is something you had to do. You chose to give $3.71 billion in dividends to shareholders. You chose to buy back stocks for $140 million in 2023. You pocketed a staggering 42% pay increase from 2020 to 2023.
You could have chosen to prioritize workers with that money. You could have chosen to give consumers a break and make it more affordable for cellphone and Internet fees, particularly at a time when people are struggling with the cost of living. However, you chose greed. How do you justify that? Those are the choices you made.
April 11th, 2024 / 4:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
Thank you for the question.
I would start by saying we are continuing to lower wireless prices each and every day, to the point where our prices are fundamentally lower than they are in the U.S. In fact, I appeared on March 18 in front of INDU, and we established all those facts. I'm sure the transcript is available.
Just this week we launched a new service at very low prices called No Name Mobile. It is going to better serve customers who are in the market for lower-priced cellphone plans.
As it relates to dividends, there's an important fact that gets lost when we have a discussion on Bell dividends. We're very unique. Forty-six per cent of our shareholders are individuals who rely on that dividend. About 70% of employees at Bell are also shareholders. That's very unique. The individual shareholders who invest in Bell, the individual Canadians who invest in Bell, like the dividend, and we're supporting them as well along the way.
Fundamentally, we need to come to grips with the fact that, if we don't have Canadian companies that grow, that invest in critical infrastructure like ours and that create jobs, we're going to have a massive problem in the country. That goes for media as well. We should be having a discussion broadly speaking—because we have the right forum for this and the right individuals here—on how we can fix Canadian media. Without a Canadian broadcasting system, there will be no news, except for maybe the CBC. We need to—