Canadian Heritage Committee on April 28th, 2026

[Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba, Liberal, Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC]

Thank you. Is—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you, Mr. Ntumba. Your time is up.

Mr. Waugh is next, for five minutes.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome, everyone.

I just want to say off the top that I really appreciate CPAC and, Ms. Dickenson, your fact-based reporting. I am sorry that your two flagship public affairs shows are now gone.

You mentioned Mr. Fife, and that's kind of interesting because, as you know, I'm a longtime broadcaster, and we have talked about the opinion pieces, the journalists, the commentating and the objective reporting. All Mr. Fife has done for the last year is go on these shows—CTV, CBC—ridicule my leader, Pierre Poilievre, call him names and talk about our party and how many people are moving. It's totally garbage on the air. This is where I think the public has just said, “Enough: I no longer want to watch these public affairs shows with statements like that.”

I turned to The Globe and Mail the next day, and guess what: Mr. Fife has the PM giving him the lead story on the front page of Canada's national newspaper. You can see the objection from me, with 40-plus years of journalism, after seeing him ridiculing the Conservative leader and our party in the afternoon and then seeing him the next morning spewing what the Prime Minister is going to do that day.

Do you find that interesting?

[Christa Dickenson]

It points to the importance of having CPAC so that you can see the full picture. Above and beyond the parliamentary proceedings that are our core business, it's the wraparound materials—all the caucus ins and outs, all the press conferences.

Ad hoc press conferences are our leading content on YouTube and online. That's what people are coming to watch us for. On television, appointment viewing is question period. It isn't a selection that we have made. It really is what's there for the taking, in its entirety.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

To be honest, ParlVU is eating your lunch.

[Christa Dickenson]

ParlVU serves a different purpose.

Like many people in this room who speak both English and French, I love floor language. One thing is that, on CPAC, I can go from English to the original language. I can realize that I'm not on the original language and select “floor”, and then it continues. On ParlVU, it stops, and you go all the way back to the beginning.

More than anything, CPAC has a discoverability purpose and brand awareness with Canadians, with its audiences, and there's that 70,000-hour archive. Have I said it yet, a couple of times? There you go.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Thank you for the word “archive”, because we are in the heritage committee, and I've seen many TV stations throw their archives in the Loraas disposal.

I talked about this with the minister during the Harper years. He had no idea when we closed Brandon. We had Lloydminster and Medicine Hat closing.

You've talked about the archives from 1977, I believe. That is our history in this country. Unfortunately, Mr. Desjardins, I think the CAB should be talking more about the archives, because I thought we had the best archives in the country at CTV. I was there for 40-plus years, and people would come to us and say, “You know, the camera was there in 1979. Do you have that touchdown?” We did, but I am worried that this government doesn't care about archives, and I have seen that.

Ms. Dickenson, you've mentioned archives. When you can do these specials, it's taking the past and putting it into the future so that other Canadians can enjoy that aspect of our country. Do you want to comment on the archives? I'm really worried about this.

[Christa Dickenson]

It's one of our gems, so we can't talk about it enough. We have 70,000 hours in the cloud, and it keeps on growing. We contribute 20 or 24 hours or more a day. I see that growing. We think it's quite special.

You're right, and I am aware of other broadcasters that have had to step away from their archives because it is a behemoth of a task, but CPAC protects ours because we see it as the democratic memory of Canada.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Well, I wish you all the luck.

The service of importance fund is a new one I've heard about. What's that fund?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

We're out of time for this question.

[Christa Dickenson]

Someone else could pick it up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Next time you can get back to that one.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Christa Dickenson]

I'm leading the witness. I'm so sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Mr. Myles, you have the floor. If you wish to be led, apparently there's....

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

It's okay. We still have some time to get through some more questions.

Thanks, everybody.

Mr. Thiessen, it's great to have you here from MP Thomas's riding. I'm also very pleased to have Mr. Desjardins here with us today. He's from Fredericton—Oromocto, the greatest riding in Canada. It's nice to have you here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Are we voting on that?

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Yeah, can we vote on that now?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Now that we have a majority, let's vote on that one.

I appreciate you all for being here.

One thing that we've all been grappling with is the future of the market, and not just the government supports. Maybe we can talk about some of the opportunities for growth from a market perspective, and not just the decline. I know that overall the market has been very tricky, and we can talk about some of those elements, but before we go into some of the funds and how they've affected you, maybe we can speak about the future of some of the market opportunities, particularly for radio. I'm curious.

Maybe we can start with Mr. Desjardins.

[Kevin Desjardins]

Thank you very much.

One thing that is always a challenge for broadcasters is.... The reach of our members is still very strong, but in fact one thing we're seeing is that while retail sales and advertising tracked very much to broadcasters for decades, in the last decade there's suddenly a gap between those.

I've had a radio operator say that 100% of vehicles have the radio app, basically, in them, and 89% of Canadians listen to the radio every week. There are a lot of apps that would kill to have that sort of penetration into the market. Radio remains very vital.

One thing I would say in terms of an important piece of innovation when it comes to news is that over the past decade, as we started to see some of the local dailies and weeklies close, a lot of radio stations took their websites and turned them from promotional websites into community news portals. A number of groups, including Arsenal in Quebec; Vista out west, primarily; and Golden West have really invested in those community news portals. They are community news portals that exist outside of the foreign digital behemoths' systems. Those who invested in their own digital properties have been able to withstand some of the challenges of news blocking and threats from outside the country.

This is one area that's very much responding to the community and finding the digital tools, as Jeff said, to innovate and serve the community better.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Part of the challenge is that even when you have listeners showing up, it's hard to monetize if people aren't advertising there. Am I understanding that correctly?

[Kevin Desjardins]

Yes.

As a couple of lads from New Brunswick, probably living within....

My family came from Grand Falls and St. Stephen, two border towns. One thing in a border town is that if you owned a car lot in St. Stephen or Grand Falls and you advertised on the radio station just across the border in Maine, you could not claim that as a business expense, because there are rules in place that were always intended to help preserve Canadian media. When it comes to Internet-based platforms, there's a loophole, and it has not been closed. As for all of that $11.2 billion in advertising that has left the Canadian market, this is one thing that has helped to spur it on.

It's not to say that people would stop advertising on digital platforms. It is certainly an incentive for them, because they get a business tax credit for that business expense.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

The money going toward the States and the larger digital platforms was the impetus for Bill C-11 and Bill C-18.

Can you talk about your support for those bills and how they've changed? If they're not quite living up to their capacity now, then where do we need to look at changing them?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

You're at five minutes. We can come back to that question.

Thank you.