Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2023

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to the 96th meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

Welcome to all of you. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

While public health authorities and the Board of Internal Economy no longer require masks to be worn in or at the House of Commons, masks, including N95 masks, remain excellent tools to prevent the spread of COVID‑19 and other respiratory illnesses. Their use is strongly encouraged.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind all participants and observers in this meeting that screenshots or photos of your screen are not permitted.

Our meeting room has a very good audio system, but audio feedback is possible, which can be extremely harmful to the health of our interpreters. Please be extremely careful: when you are handling your earpiece, for example, make sure that it is not near a microphone that is on.

We will obviously hold the meeting in both official languages. The work of the interpreters is extremely important. Hello to the interpreters.

The first part of this meeting is the order in council appointment of Ms. Catherine Tait to the position of president of CBC/Radio-Canada.

Ms. Tait, the members around the table will be able to ask you questions in a few moments. Beside you are Barbara Williams, Executive Vice-President in charge of CBC, and Dany Meloul, Interim Executive Vice-President in charge of Radio-Canada. Welcome to all three of you.

Ms. Tait, you have five minutes for your opening remarks. You now have the floor.

[Catherine Tait, President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Honourable committee members, thank you for the invitation to meet with you today. I am indeed accompanied by the two executive vice-presidents of CBC and Radio-Canada to help answer any questions you have.

Since the committee's motion states that this invitation is to discuss my mandate following my reappointment, I feel that it is important to start by clarifying that the president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada does not receive her mandate from the government.

As many of you know, CBC/Radio-Canada, as an independent Crown corporation, has its mandate set out in law in the Broadcasting Act. It is to provide “services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains”. That law also protects the corporation's “freedom of expression and the journalistic, creative and programming independence”.

I mention this because that independence is essential to our existence. It marks the fundamental difference between a public broadcaster that serves citizens and a state broadcaster that serves the government. CBC/Radio-Canada is accountable to the public.

I mention this because I am concerned by some views expressed that the power of a parliamentary committee could be used to summon employees who make day-to-day decisions about our journalism. Political interference in journalism is precisely why the Broadcasting Act protects journalistic independence in law.

As president and CEO, I'm also responsible to parliamentarians for CBC/Radio-Canada. That is why I am here today. The heads of CBC and Radio-Canada are here with me to provide accountability to you and to Canadians without threatening that independence. I trust that you will support me in that effort.

I am proud to be able to lead this public media service that touches the lives of Canadians every day. The public money invested in CBC/Radio-Canada ensures that everyone can get not only the best-quality news and information in the country but also the very best in Canadian drama, comedy, music, podcasts and so much more.

Before we take your questions, let me tell you about a few of the priorities for my second term as president and CEO, developed with the support of our board of directors.

The first is the launch of the national indigenous strategy at CBC/Radio-Canada. This is a first for us, a first strategy developed and led by indigenous employees and leaders in concert with indigenous advisers, stakeholders and communities, a first framework for the public broadcaster to deliver on its promise to serve all Canadians and all indigenous peoples.

My second priority is to ensure the importance of the public broadcaster in our news ecosystem as well as our creative sector, particularly as the CRTC considers how to implement the Online News Act and the Online Streaming Act.

My third priority is to work to secure recognition of journalists as essential to the protection of our democracy. Journalists are disproportionately targeted by online harm and physical attacks on a global scale.

Finally, there is much to do to prepare CBC/Radio-Canada for an uncertain future. We are also experiencing the same challenges as other media here in Canada and around the world. Fierce competition from the global giants has upended our domestic industry, both in terms of news and entertainment programming.

Our new corporate strategic plan will focus on trust—earning, maintaining and building trust. We will do this by doubling down on our strengths—proximity, relevance and inclusion. This issue of public trust is the most important priority of all. It's an issue every western democracy is facing, and one that all my public broadcasting counterparts are committed to addressing, because a strong public media is undeniably one of the most important tools a country has for building trust.

In brief, those are my current priorities. With that, I welcome your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Thank you very much, Ms. Tait.

We will now proceed to questions from members. I remind members that I will hold up a card when you have about 30 seconds of speaking time left so as not to interrupt people. I would obviously encourage you to look in my direction at some point to make sure you still have some time. In short, we will try to do that as clearly as possible.

Mr. Berthold, you will begin this round of questions, and I understand that you want to share your time with your colleague Ms. Lantsman. You have the floor for six minutes.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Ms. Tait.

I wanted to take this first opportunity to ask you an important question. I am the son of a proud mother from Beauce and a father from Sherbrooke. I am proud of my Quebec roots and heritage. Do you find my accent offensive or incomprehensible?

[Catherine Tait]

That's not the case at all, sir.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Can you explain to me why the CBC wanted to avoid the Quebec accent and chose to turn its back on Quebec artists by having the English podcast “Alone: A Love Story” translated in Paris, which was produced here with Canadian money?

[Catherine Tait]

I want to clarify something. As soon as I became aware of this, I immediately called the president of the Union des artistes québécois to apologize. That was a mistake on our part. I apologized, and we, including Ms. Williams, reviewed our practices in that regard. We've corrected that. It won't happen again.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Tait.

I now turn the floor over to Ms. Lantsman.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thanks, Ms. Tait.

You mentioned in your opening comments that public trust was the most important, so I want to speak to this notion.

On October 17, the CBC published a false headline based on dangerous disinformation that incorrectly stated that Israel was responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians. If you don't have it, I have it right here. That is the headline. It says, “Hundreds killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza City hospital, Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza says”. That was since changed—if you don't have this—to “Palestinians say hundreds killed in Israeli airstrike on hospital; Israel blames Islamic Jihad”. This still lives on the CBC website. This headline is still there. It remains on the website.

I would hope you would agree with me that in fact the Palestinian health authority is controlled by Hamas. I think that is a fact.

The Prime Minister, the Minister of National Defence and the governments of the United States, Britain and France all have definitively said that the attack did not come from Israel, so why won't the CBC?

[Catherine Tait]

If I may bring the member's attention to the facts and correct the record, CBC first reported on the terrifically horrific attack or bomb on the hospital in the Gaza Strip based on an Associated Press report, which is a trusted source of news for us. You'll notice, if you go to CBC.ca or Radio-Canada.ca, that we often use news feeds from other trusted, reputable news organizations, and we cited the source of that information, as Ms. Lantsman has just pointed out. Ninety minutes later, when we received the corrected information, we updated the site.

I would just like to say that we stand behind our journalism. In conflicts and in war, news comes at a very fast rate and people are claiming on both sides of the story. Our journalists on the ground and in our newsrooms are obliged to measure and take account.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I appreciate that it's an Associated Press article. In your mandate, you are responsible to Canadians. It's $1.4 billion of taxpayer money.

You said that you stand by the statement “Palestinians say hundreds killed in Israeli airstrike on hospital; Israel blames Islamic Jihad”. That still exists. It is a headline that has been debunked by governments across the world, including even our own Prime Minister, albeit seven days late.

I want to know if you'll apologize to Jewish Canadians. I want to know if you'll apologize to Canadians, and I want to know when we can expect a retraction from CBC.

[Catherine Tait]

Mr. Chair, I will not apologize, because the journalism is among the finest in the world. Our journalists operate in an independent fashion, independent of management, independent of the board of directors, and independent of government and political influence. They are guided by their journalistic standards and practices, and I invite any member and any Canadian to refer to these practices on our website. They are transparent and they are public, and if you have a concern, if anyone has a concern, with our journalism, I invite you to address it to the independent ombudsman, in French or in English, in order to have them independently investigate and review the application of our journalist—

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I understand that you're not going to apologize for printing disinformation.

How can the CBC, which is committed to truth, committed to standards, not call Hamas terrorists? We saw a leaked memo from the director of journalistic standards, Mr. Achi, who sent a directive to journalists not to describe Hamas as a terrorist group. You do agree it is a fact that Hamas was listed as a terrorist organization in 2002 in this country. Is that correct?

[Catherine Tait]

I will address the issues as follows, Mr. Chair.

There's a fantastic blog by our head of news, Brodie Fenlon, which you can refer to. He does this very often to comment on making journalism transparent, explaining to Canadians how we do the journalism. In the case of the attribution, this is a policy that we have had at CBC/Radio-Canada for several decades. It is shared and mirrored by many other reputable news organizations, including The Globe and Mail, the BBC, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and any number of other agencies.

I would just say on the attribution that we use the words “terrorist” and “terrorism” and acknowledge that Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. consider Hamas a terrorist organization, but we as journalists do not make that attribution.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Thank you, Ms. Lantsman. Your time is up, but you will have an opportunity to speak again in the next round of questions.

I will now go to Lisa Hepfner for the Liberals for six minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today to explain the journalism process to people at this committee.

I'll go back to your last point, because people keep saying that this was a leaked directive from the CBC, but in fact it was just a note pointing to the CBC style guide, which, as you mentioned, is in accordance with other journalism organizations that have style guides. Could you maybe explain in a bit more detail to this committee why we have style guides in journalism and how they help journalists be more independent? You know what I'm trying to say.

[Catherine Tait]

Thank you for the question.

The journalistic standards and practices have been developed over many years. They are under regular review. With social media and different things changing in our industry, we have to constantly make sure they're up to date.

They are founded on five critical principles: impartiality, fairness, balance, integrity and accuracy. These are absolutely fundamental. They are common to CBC and Radio-Canada newsrooms and they inform everything we do.

Today is our annual public meeting. I have to mention that Adrienne Arsenault said in a clip the most moving thing I've ever heard. She said that of all journalistic practices, it is integrity that informs everything our journalists do. The integrity speaks to balancing the impact of a story, trying to understand the source, trying to make sure we acknowledge sources, and being as fair as possible so Canadians receive the best possible fact-based information. They can then judge the news as they see fit.

To the question of how that works.... I'm not a journalist. I was a producer before I had the privilege of serving in this role. I've had the honour of witnessing an assignment room at CBC/Radio-Canada. That's where, every morning at 80 stations across this country, managing editors are sitting down with their teams of journalists, producers and researchers. They talk about the news: fast-breaking news, hard-issue news, investigative news and international news. They discuss, balance and consider, and that's where the integrity comes in. They determine what they feel they must be focusing on for that particular day.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I listen to CBC coverage all the time, and I regularly hear CBC say that Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by Canada. It's simply that the journalist isn't making that distinction. Is that right?

[Catherine Tait]

That's correct.

The determination, as mirrored in other news organizations, is that the word is extremely politically charged. If journalists use the word, it causes them to enter into a debate that is not our business. Our business is to remain independent and fact-based.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

You're the head of CBC as a whole, so you really don't have any say in the newsroom.

I've worked in many newsrooms. There's a line that separates management from the newsroom, so you're not part of those conversations in the morning, are you?

[Catherine Tait]

No, absolutely not.

In fact, it's not only that we have an independence from government through Broadcasting Act, but we have an independence from the board of directors, which has an oversight role. There is this team you see in front of you; we have an oversight role. Then there is the journalism. The journalism is entirely independent.

It's extremely important for Canadians to understand there are three layers of independence. We do not interfere in, direct or try to influence the news.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I'm sure you were kept apprised of this committee and the last few meetings we had. How did you feel about politicians or members of this committee trying to tell CBC how to tell the news, how to tell the stories and what words to use?

[Catherine Tait]

Very honestly, I'm disturbed. I'm disturbed by political interference. I worry about our journalists.

We're living in a world where.... The world press freedom index, in its annual survey, which they've been conducting for many years, concluded that over 80% of the population on this planet is living under authoritarian regimes where there is limited to no press freedom or independence. We are the minority. This is a precious asset. This independent journalism is the pillar of our democracy. If we try to influence it on any side of any particular debate, we are threatening the fundamental building block of this country's democracy. That's why I speak with the level of passion I do today about this subject.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

How would you say CBC journalists reacted to hearing a parliamentarian accuse the CBC of being on the side of Hamas?

[Catherine Tait]

Again, I do not speak to the journalists about how they feel or react; I respect their independence.

I can only imagine they are concerned, mostly because we have spectacular teams on the ground in Israel right now who are putting their lives in danger bringing the news back to Canadians. Any conversation that foments division or a suggestion that they are on one side of a war puts them in danger.