Canadian Heritage Committee on April 23rd, 2026

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Just to be clear, these are not my statements. These are statements made by these local news initiatives that are doing good work on behalf of their communities.

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

Mrs. Thomas, I was trying to reflect on all of your commentary, including the cities you mentioned. I think we've had a station, both in French and in English, in Calgary for years and years and years. This is not a news desert.

We are reinforcing our coverage in smaller locations where we have not had a presence before. Sometimes there is local media there; sometimes there is not. Not everything is equal or the same. Where we do have local media—which we are hoping to collaborate with—we enter those markets with conversations with local media to see how we can help each other and how we can support each other through training opportunities or facility sharing. We are there not to extinguish existing media but to enrich—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Ms. Bouchard, with all due respect, they don't see that. That's not how these local news companies perceive the CBC. That's not how the CBC is entering into these local communities.

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

With respect, Mrs. Thomas, I go out in those markets and meet with local media—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

—and I have frank conversations with them face to face. So do our newspeople.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

I will turn the floor now to Mr. Al Soud for six minutes.

Sir, go ahead.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being with us today.

Ms. Bouchard, I want to begin by setting the tone for my questions. You will be popular this morning. I have a deep respect for the work of the CBC. I believe in its mission. I believe in the integrity and good faith of the people who work within it, and I believe its role is more important now than ever.

As Canada's national broadcaster, you carry a unique responsibility, one that comes with heightened expectations around transparency, credibility and public trust. You are asked to do more than most, often with fewer resources than your international counterparts.

The nature of my questions today is to reflect concerns and perspectives that have been raised throughout this committee's proceedings. Some of these do not reflect my personal views, but I think it's important that they be addressed directly and on the record.

I'll admit that you've beaten me to my first question on the idea that the CBC could play a greater role in sharing its infrastructure—that is, equipment, facilities and other resources—with smaller outlets when appropriate, so instead I will ask this: We've heard concerns that the CBC operates at times as though it is competing directly with private sector news organizations. How do you view the CBC's role within the broader media ecosystem, and do you, in fact, see yourselves as competitors to other outlets or as complementary to them?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

I have addressed this in previous appearances before the committee.

My personal philosophy is that, as a public broadcaster, we are responsible for making sure our actions serve the citizens and, at the same time, encourage a vibrant media ecosystem. This means entering into all sorts of discussions, and I listed a number of them in my opening remarks, in which we can help support independent media, both community and privately owned, and we do this through various initiatives.

These are very dire times, and I am very concerned. The stories we heard this morning about the fragility are just some of the examples that we live through every day.

This is part of our team's responsibility. It doesn't mean there is one story or there should be one side always sharing storylines or angles. It's important that there be different points of view and different voices in a market. This is why it's important that there's diversity of ownership and news format. It's what we're trying to help preserve.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Bouchard.

Another concern raised is the idea that the CBC, given its scale and resources, sometimes draws from journalists. I believe this was just asked; I don't know that you were given the time to respond.

How would you respond to this characterization, and what responsibility do you believe the CBC has in supporting a healthy distribution of journalists across our country?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

First, I want to say that our first interest, when we try to start a new bureau, is to ensure we will have somebody who knows the local community and who will stay. We all have this interest. Whether it's local independent media, community media, the CBC or bigger media, we all want to have local people reporting on their community.

Sometimes this means we have to develop new training paths, and this can serve other media as well. We've had discussions about sharing the training capacity that we have or that we can trigger with colleges and universities to the benefit of independent and community media in the market.

Yes, we are looking to have people locally who will stay and commit to the community.

We don't approach journalists from other media. If there's a posting, we can't stop people from applying. That's a reality. We can't exclude people, but we don't approach them. There are plenty of cases in which they come to us, and eventually, they've gathered their experience and they're looking for something else. Journalists are known for wanting to gain experience through various postings. Sometimes they go to some other media in the same town or in another community. This is a situation we deal with all the time.

We are recruiting, and we are concerned about having enough professional journalists to feed all the media that are out there and want to hire them. This means trying to work with other media and colleges and universities to train more journalists. Unfortunately, a lot of them are exiting the profession because of the precarity of the circumstances.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

The CBC is often subject to criticism based on trust. It was alluded to not long ago. You highlighted a figure of roughly 75%, or in that range.

I'd like you to walk us through the mechanisms currently in place to ensure editorial independence, transparency and accountability at the CBC, as well as what you believe defines credible, high-quality journalism today.

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

First of all, we have long-standing, very extensive journalistic standards and practices. They are our own. They are a model for others. Each media has their own, and rightly so, but we are influencing each other. We have a code of conduct that teams are held to. There's a healthy debate in all of our newsrooms about what subject to cover, what angles to cover and what guests to chase. There is an editorial process in which stories are vetted and sources are checked.

We have teams that are specialized in verifying information, because there's so much misinformation and there are AI-generated images. We have teams specializing in debunking this type of material that is toxic to some extent or could be very misleading. We have very rigorous processes that are a process of debate within our own newsrooms.

There's also accountability. If we receive a complaint or a concern, the news management is responsible for replying and for answering, and this gives rise to an examination of the process that was followed. If the person who wrote in a complaint or a comment is not satisfied with the answer, they have access to a completely independent ombudsman. They are responsible for French and English services to answer and completely review the journalistic work that was done. They then come out with a ruling.

Our ombudsman's rulings are very useful, because internally—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you. I don't mean to cut you off. We have run over your time, but well done.

Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Welcome to all the witnesses; my thanks to them for being part of this important study.

Ms. Bouchard, I am going to start by asking you the $150-million question.

The government has provided an extra $150 million to you—not to you personally, of course. It was an election promise.

Are you able to tell us how that money was spent or invested? Is any of it left? Do you have other projects to fund with it?

Can you give us a little update about it?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

The $150 million you are referring to appeared in November's budget and was approved by a vote in Parliament at the end of March. At that point, the money came into our books. It has been distributed according to our strategic plan as the result of a vote by the board of directors. The money is spent to correspond to the priorities in our strategic plan.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

So you didn't take the money for specific projects you would not have done normally. I will let you continue.

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

As I said in my introduction, adding positions for journalists was a major priority for us in bringing us closer to Canadians. We, both Radio-Canada and CBC, have announced a number of community journalist positions.

We have also made investments to improve our digital platforms with a view to enhancing discoverability and to prioritize entertainment content locally, regionally and nationally. We have also invested heavily in independent productions because that is where most broadcasters have had to make cuts.

So that is money that has been committed but not really spent right away, because the productions are not yet available.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

My concern is that those $150 million will not be available again next year, at least so it seems at the moment. So the journalist positions that you have created and the productions you have invested in are at risk.

Are you going to be able to keep the positions you have created?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

When we invested that money, according to the priorities in our strategy, as I told you, we knew that it was temporary. But we said to ourselves that we still have to move forward because that's a priority. Canada needs those resources. We need to better serve all our communities. If the funding is not renewed, we will have choices to make. But we are going to protect those priorities.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I feel that the priorities we are dealing with in this study are really about journalistic coverage in the regions, any regions. You answered questions on that previously. While some colleagues and I will have different opinions, I feel that we need as many different voices as possible. A diversity of information in the regions has been sorely lacking for years, important though it is.

I think you know that I see the public broadcaster as having an important role to play in that, in collaboration, not in competition, with other media. We may have to be careful about the way in which the collaboration is done, but I feel that it is important to maintain the investments you have made in regional journalism.

That leads me to ask you about greater Montreal. I know that, in more remote regions, positions for journalists have been opened and journalists have been hired. But recently, we are hearing a lot of concerns in greater Montreal. I know you are making an effort there, but concerns have been expressed recently. One is that media coverage in the Laurentians is not good enough, despite the issues that the media, especially the public broadcaster, should be addressing.

How do you see those concerns?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

You are quite right. The demographics of greater Montreal are changing. A lot of people have moved to the suburbs. Our Montreal newsroom used to cover the suburbs, but it was not enough. So, for French-language services, we created two positions in Terrebonne, in the Lanaudière region, two positions in Laval and Mirabel to cover the Lower Laurentians, and two positions in Brossard, to cover the south shore and Montérégie.

I can also announce two positions in Mont-Tremblant, in the Upper Laurentians, and two positions in Vaudreuil on the West Island. We did not announce those positions in the first wave, although we did internally. So I can tell you about them this morning.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Just now, when you were replying to my colleague opposite, Madam Chair interrupted you and said that your time had expired. That leads me to a question that Quebeckers often ask: why can't we see the playoffs? The Montreal Canadiens hockey team have unfortunately been playing a lot of overtime games recently.

Why did our French-language public broadcaster not get the rights to broadcast the playoffs? Why can't we follow the Montreal Canadiens?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

The National Hockey League is a business. The league controls its broadcast rights in order to get the greatest amount of money out of its markets. They do not seem to consider free access for Canadian citizens on Canadian soil to be a priority.

So the rights were negotiated with other partners. They have to make money from them, of course, because they paid a lot for them. I have no problem with them doing that. However, they put the games behind paywalls or they provide them by subscription, because they have to make their money back.

We just have no access to that market. Radio-Canada lost those rights a very long time ago.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Bouchard.