Evidence of meeting #143 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 media.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
I've been a journalist for most of my adult life. I do hits and media interviews with all outlets.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Are you concerned that True North took a government subsidy? Have you expressed that same concern about True North?
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
No media company should take government subsidies, period.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
You said they need to defund the CBC, and I want to be very clear. When you talk about the CBC, you're talking about CBC/Radio-Canada, the entire thing? Is that correct?
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Yes, $1.4 billion should not be going to that company.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Then every French-language broadcast, everything in Quebec—I just want to be absolutely clear—every dollar of federal money that goes to the CBC and Radio-Canada should be taken away.
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
We'll point out that the CBC, to its credit, does raise some of its own money. I think it's around—I'd have to go back and check—$400 million. It's around there and may be even $500 million. That's nothing to sneeze at. That's an awful lot of money that it's generating on its own.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Right, but you would say all federal money, all federal subsidy for CBC and Radio-Canada, should disappear.
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
No taxpayers' money should go to that company.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Okay, so taxpayer money would be government subsidies. Is that correct?
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Sure, it's whatever you want to call it. It comes from the taxpayer. It doesn't come from the government, but it's issued by the government.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Then if we dig into this a bit more deeply, where there are markets that are called “news deserts”, and there is no ability for news to get to those places, and we have coverage concerns in this country, how do you respond to the fact that there are populations in this country...? If the CBC were to disappear or to be defunded to the point where it focused entirely on those things that were profitable, which is largely going to be urban and those types of things, what would you do for those communities? How would you ensure that the communities in rural Canada, indigenous communities, or francophone communities in places like Vancouver got access to news coverage and to media coverage that would inform them?
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
With respect, through the chair, you mentioned indigenous programming, and I wanted to share this with you. According to the CBC's 2022-23 annual report, it spent $6.4 million on its indigenous services. That is about 0.5% of its budget—
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Ms. Sims, my question is, how would you get coverage to those communities?
My question isn't just about whether or not the CBC did this. My question is, if the CBC money were all to disappear, where would you go and how would you get news into these communities, particularly francophone communities in language-minority places like British Columbia, and indigenous communities that are doing this programming?
It's not a question of the dollars for me. Dollars are important, but my question to you is, how would you actually deliver that programming? That's what I'm concerned about.
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
That's perhaps something that Canadian Heritage could figure out, maybe even around this council table, this committee table—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you.
I think we have ended your five-minute round, Mr. Noormohamed. Thank you very much.
Finish your sentence and let's....
Director, Alberta, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate that.
I just did want to point out in terms of the spending with indigenous programming that the CBC spent more than double on its bonuses alone than it did on its indigenous programming, so it has a lot of work to do there.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much.
I think we have to end this session and start with new witnesses for the second 90-minute session, so I want to thank the witnesses for appearing. Thank you very much for your patience.
We will now suspend the meeting before we return for the next 90 minutes.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I now call the meeting back to order. We are resuming the meeting.
I need to give you some information. One of the people on the list for this session, Pierre Tousignant, is unable to be on. Madame Charette wanted to come on, but we're still waiting to find out where she is, so I'm going to begin the meeting. I think we should get on with it and not keep waiting for people to come on.
For those of you who are here at the meeting, you have five minutes to present, and I'll give you a 30-second shout-out so that you can wrap up. You can elaborate, if you missed anything, in your question and answer session.
Welcome, Ms. Kolt, director of culture and community initiatives, Flin Flon. Begin, Ms. Kolt, for five minutes, please.
Crystal Kolt Director, Culture and Community Initiatives, Flin Flon, As an Individual
Thank you very much, Madam Chair, vice-chairs and committee members.
I'd like to sincerely thank the committee for inviting me here today as a witness before this Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to discuss the consequences of defunding the CBC/Radio-Canada. I deeply appreciate the foresight of the committee to include a northern voice.
To give you a perspective on how I came to form my opinion on the matter, I would first like to share a bit about myself. My husband Mark and I moved from Winnipeg to Flin Flon, Manitoba, almost 30 years ago. Flin Flon is a semi-remote city of 5,000 people, located 800 kilometres north of Winnipeg, straddling the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. We are graduates of the University of Manitoba school of music and we studied as a piano duo in New York City. Mark was an accompanist for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers.
We worried about potential budget cuts to those organizations, so Mark decided to change careers. He was accepted into the faculty of law, which eventually led us north, to the small city of Flin Flon. We thought we were leaving our love of the arts forever, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
The north was and is teeming with opportunity and ambition, especially culturally and artistically. Since our arrival in northern Manitoba in 1995, we have founded the Flin Flon Community Choir, which has performed at the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall four times, most recently participating in the world premiere of Ola Gjeilo's newest work, Twilight Mass. We have produced Broadway musicals for northern audiences, like Les Misérables and Mamma Mia! We introduced northern choristers and audiences to most classical masterworks, performing with the Saskatoon and Winnipeg symphonies. I was on the provincial task force for Culture Days and on the board of the Manitoba Arts Council. Presently, I am on the boards of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Manitoba Association of Playwrights and the Manitoba Choral Association. I am now the director of culture and community initiatives for Flin Flon. For 15 years, I was the cultural coordinator of the Flin Flon Arts Council.
I'm currently on the executive of the organization that founded the Uptown Emporium in 2020. This space is both a physical and an e-commerce marketplace for northern artists and artisans. We develop an export plan for northern Manitoban goods, and for 15 years we've been working towards the development of the North Central Canada Centre of Arts & Environment. Most recently, we received funding for the imagiNorthern network from the Canada Council for the Arts, which aims to support and develop prosperity and well-being for northern artists and their communities through the creative sector.
I wonder whether you have heard of any of my projects. The only way I can share this information nationally is through the CBC. Social media is too unidirectional. If you are not my friend on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, you may not hear or know anything about what I am doing.
We have not had a permanent journalist in northern Manitoba for several years. My relationship with the CBC is a two-way street. I need to have the opportunity to share my stories with the rest of the country. Northern and rural communities are relying on the CBC to provide consistently professional facts on local, provincial, national and international affairs. I believe that all of our governmental parties understand that the country is a mosaic of voices and that northern and rural voices need to be heard.
How can this be possible by providing fewer resources and support to the corporation? How can one journalist, if we are lucky enough to have a journalist, service all of northern Manitoba? Defunding the CBC, in my opinion, is a mistake. My fear is that the weakening of the CBC would be death by a thousand cuts. Now, more than ever, we need to support this corporation. Additionally, who would replace this national voice? The void would be filled, for sure, but, I fear, by the myriad Joe Rogans, Rachel Maddows and Sean Hannitys, instead of our own Canadian voices.
Losing CBC entirely would be devastating. We need a unified national perspective. My eldest son, a dad of three young kids, expressed how important and deeply comforting it was to have our Deputy Prime Minister announce that our government was coming up with strategies to deal with a possible Trump administration prior to the U.S. election. He prefaced this comment by saying that the comfort came from knowing that we were all hearing the news bulletin together, as a nation, at the same time and without inflammatory rhetoric. News that impacts and connects all of us in this enormous country, sourced from one reliable national news source.... How do you put a price tag on that?
There has been criticism about the cost of the CBC. Of course, I have little to no authority to comment on this. It's safe to say that many things cost money. There's much criticism about the financial management of our universities, but we need universities. There's criticism about our health care system, but we need a health care system.
Actuaries and politicians can deliberate on policy and procedures until theories are proven and problems are solved. We expect this. I just don't know how policy can be determined without fully understanding and supporting the field in question.
Rather than defunding this organization, I would ask that we head in the other direction. We need to establish locally based broadcasting outlets in a media desert like ours. In a region where physical distances are immense and access to other forms of communication is often limited, CBC/Radio-Canada is more than just a broadcaster. It is a cornerstone of community life, a guardian of cultural heritage and an essential service for fostering connection and understanding in Canada's north. The CBC plays a vital role in northern communities, serving as a lifeline for information, connection and cultural expression in some of the most remote and diverse areas of Canada.
Without boots on the ground and the support they require—
Director, Culture and Community Initiatives, Flin Flon, As an Individual
We need a national broadcasting corporation. It needs to be professional, responsive, insightful, non-partisan and clear. It needs to represent the mosaic of Canada. Professional journalists need to be sprinkled throughout our country from north to south and east to west. You never know where a Peter Mansbridge and Tomson Highway are waiting for opportunity.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much, Ms. Kolt.
Now I will go to Ms. Carol Ann Pilon from the Alliance des producteurs francophones du Canada, please, for five minutes.