Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 21st, 2024

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Good for you—

[Catherine Tait]

I went to the Yorkton festival—

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Okay, so—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Excuse me for just one minute. Order, please.

A question was asked of the witness. Can she finish answering it, and then you can go with the other question?

Thank you.

[Catherine Tait]

I would just point out that there is a large indigenous community in Saskatchewan. We spent a lot of time engaging with those communities in the development of our indigenous strategy. I would say that across the board, I have heard only, quite frankly, a willingness to work with the CBC and with Radio-Canada to change the narrative about indigenous people in this country. That's something that this organization is 100% committed to.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I have 30 seconds left.

From your strategy, public affairs and government relations person, on average, each visitor spends 37 minutes a month on your platforms.

Ms. Tait, that is like watching At Issue two times. Thirty-seven minutes is nothing.

You talk about 21 million people hitting your platforms each month. The number that stood out to me is they're on there for 37 minutes a month. It's deplorable. You're not reaching out to Canadians at 37 minutes a month. Think about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Waugh.

I now go to Ms. Gainey for the Liberals for five minutes, please.

[Anna Gainey, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hello to both of our witnesses. Thank you for being with us today.

I'm wondering if you could go back a bit to this notion of defunding the CBC. I think, on this side of the committee room, we're in firm agreement about the value of the narrative-building and the exposure of our athletes, arts and culture. There's tremendous value in the CBC.

There will be two parts to this question.

One, I'm curious about whether you could re-offer the per capita cost of what we're spending here in Canada compared with other countries. I believe my colleague Mr. Champoux started on that. I think it would be interesting to set the conversation around how much value we're getting, given the cost and what we're investing in the CBC. It strikes me as quite impressive.

By extension, we hear about, for example, the challenge of hiring in rural parts of the country—as my other colleague addressed—for your workplace and the CBC community. This defund narrative, with its tweets and in front of the headquarters in Toronto, is diminishing and reducing, in a sense, the value, while fuelling that discussion around defunding the CBC.

How does that impact your ability to recruit the talent you need, from both a resource perspective and a morale perspective? What is the impact of this line of thinking being advanced around the CBC?

[Catherine Tait]

Thank you for the questions.

On the first one, I articulated earlier that the cost to Canadians is $32 per person per year. For that, CBC/Radio-Canada provides, as I've said before, services on linear television and radio. There are over 45,000 hours of original video content, with 7,000 hours a day distributed across the country, and 95,000 hours of audio. The list goes on. That $32 has not budged. We used to just deliver television and radio, and we're now doing all of those other things on digital platforms that are streaming audio and video. We've expanded the services without increasing the budget.

With respect to morale, I can tell you that it is not easy, especially for our employees at the CBC, though I would say our colleagues at Radio-Canada are equally nervous. At the CBC, it is highly demoralizing to be the target of constant criticism when you're working each and every day to bring fact-based news and information to Canadians across the country and commissioning some of the best programming in the world. It is hard to attract people when the future of the organization is so uncertain.

The sooner this narrative is shut down the better, because it is certainly more damaging to the reputation of the organization than performance pay is.

[Anna Gainey, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Thank you for that.

I believe I'm sharing my time with my colleague Patricia. I'm happy to turn the floor over to her.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

That's news to me. I thought Ms. Lattanzio was up in the next round, Ms. Gainey, so unless that's changed, you have two minutes.

[Anna Gainey, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Oh, I must have misunderstood. I will wrap it up, then. That's fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Go ahead, Ms. Lattanzio.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Madam Chair, can I use the two minutes that are left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Would you like the two minutes?

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, go ahead. That's why I called your name.

Thank you.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Tait, and welcome again.

Welcome, Mr. Goldbloom. My questions regarding the financial situation will be addressed to you.

We understand it's the same as what other broadcasters are facing. How is it different from or unique to CBC/Radio-Canada?

[Michael Goldbloom]

I was fortunate to participate in a conference held here in Ottawa just two weeks ago with the major public service media from around the world. I think there were 30 or 40 different organizations represented. The message from everyone was the same: The importance of the public service media in the democratic world is greater than it's ever been, particularly around the question of disinformation.

There was a lot of discussion about how our public service media can help in the process of informing our citizens. Our democracies are predicated on our citizens being informed, and the challenge of disinformation is greater than it's ever been. That's what I mentioned in my opening remarks regarding the concern that Canadians will not be able to know what's true.

The funding is a similar situation. We're all facing the same challenges in private and public media from the large global tech companies—Meta, Google, Amazon and what have you. It's a significant challenge for all public service media around the world to continue to provide the service to their citizens, and that's certainly the case for us here in Canada.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Okay.

You say that more than 20 million Canadians are using the digital services, or at least that was what Ms. Tait testified to earlier, so why is it that the digital revenue is seemingly not making up for the decline in television revenue?

[Michael Goldbloom]

Very quickly, it's the reality for all media that digital advertising is much less profitable than the advertising that supported traditional media.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now we go to Martin Champoux for two and a half minutes, please.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Tait, there's a lot of talk about the survival, future and sustainability of the public broadcaster, today in particular.

A report was submitted to the Quebec government by Ms. Amélie Binette and Ms. Michèle Fortin, the former senior vice-president of French television at Radio-Canada.

Are you aware of this report?

[Catherine Tait]

I haven't read it, but I am fairly well aware of its content.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

So you are aware that certain requests, certain recommendations are being made by the province of Quebec, which wishes to participate in the reflection process.

What do you think of the recommendations that have been made?