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.
Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, BCE Inc.
When the Online Streaming Act came into effect, one of the provisions was to enable the private broadcasters who had been paying that tax to no longer have to pay that tax in order to partially level the playing field between—
Liberal
Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, BCE Inc.
The Online Streaming Act came into effect last year.
Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, BCE Inc.
Yes.
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Okay. What savings does this represent for Bell over the next 10 years?
Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, BCE Inc.
The tax has been eliminated. Our share of the tax when it was payable was $40 million.
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
It was $40 million per year. Is that correct?
Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, BCE Inc.
That's what we were remitting.
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Okay, so for the next 10 years, that would represent $400 million, give or take. Is that correct?
Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, BCE Inc.
It depends on how the tax is calculated in any given year.
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
For the sake of maintaining some sort of logic here, if it's $40 million in 2022, in 10 years we're looking at an easy $400 million.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
None of us has a crystal ball as to how the world will unfold over the next period of time.
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Okay. In the last, say, three or four years, has it been around $40 million per year? Has that been the average?
Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, BCE Inc.
In the most recently completed year in which we paid the tax, it was $40 million.
Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, BCE Inc.
I don't have that number sitting in front of me.
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Okay. My point is the following: Why didn't Bell reinvest these savings into its newsrooms and local journalists?
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
We've invested massively in the delivery of news. We're actually delivering more news than we ever have in more ways than—
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
My question was about local journalists and newsrooms.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
We did. We invested significantly more. That's why we have 35% more news correspondents today than we did in 2023. That's why we launched Noovo Info to serve the francophone viewer in the province of Quebec and elsewhere. That's why we now have journalists in 10 provinces, all 10 provinces, whereas before we didn't, and we spent close to $300 million producing news—significantly more than the requirements. It's how we're doing it that's different.
We're generating efficiencies behind the camera—
Liberal
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
—so that we can deliver more news in front of the camera because the viewer matters the most.
Liberal
President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE Inc.
We invested $1.7 billion in content. Close to $300 million was in news, local and national news across the country. As I mentioned in my opening statement, we also invested over a billion dollars since I became CEO to improve our infrastructure and our platforms and to launch digital platforms like CTV News and CP24 online, and then the web and the apps, so that we can better serve viewers.
Viewers today want news as it happens all the time. Appointment viewing is no longer nearly as relevant as it was before, so we've invested massively to change how we deliver the news so that the viewer can be served all day long.