Madam Chairman, good morning.
Members of the committee, I thank you.
I'll try to be as brief as I can.
You've invited us here to explain why we have been in court with the Information Commissioner.
As you know the Federal Court of Appeal released its decision yesterday. The court has ruled that the commissioner has the right to examine CBC/Radio-Canada records relating to journalistic, creative or programming activities, subject to certain exceptions including, most importantly, journalistic sources, which is unequivocal in our opinion. The court said: “in the event that a request seeking the disclosure of journalistic sources was made, a record—or the part thereof—revealing this type of information would be exempt from the commissioner's power of examination.”
We are still reviewing the judgment. At first reading, we feel that this judgment clarifies the ruling of Justice Boivin in a manner which might satisfy most of our concerns.
This finding is extremely important to us. Protecting our journalistic sources was one of the most important considerations for pursuing this court challenge.
As we have said from the beginning, the courts are the appropriate place for this issue to be decided.
The court process has triggered a lot of unprecedented action. However, through it all I believe what has been lost or distorted in the general confusion is our actual record on public accountability and access to information--and what this court challenge was all about.
This court challenge was only about the jurisdiction of the commissioner. It was never, and still is not, about the information we release to the public under access to information. The Federal Court of Appeal decision doesn't increase or decrease a requester's ability to access our journalistic, creative, or programming activities, or increase or decrease the information we will disclose.
Let me now address our actual performance, because accountability and transparency are central to our role as a public broadcaster and absolutely critical to our credibility, as is our arm's-length relationship with government.
We have an independent board of directors, including an audit committee and a governance committee. They are all independent and appointed by the government. It's their responsibility to oversee our budgets and operations and ensure that our programming and journalistic resources are being spent wisely.
We also provide detailed financial information and reports to the CRTC. This ensures that we are accountable to the public in relation to our licence conditions.
We have the Auditor General of Canada, who reviews and signs off on our financial statements each and every year, and who conducts a comprehensive special audit, every five to ten years. His report is tabled in Parliament.
We also report to our minister and to parliamentarians on the fulfillment of our mandate and objectives via our corporate plan and annual meeting, and our annual report. We even provide quarterly financial information to Canadians, together with an analysis of our performance during the period.
And, yes, we are accountable under the Access to Information Act for the general administration of our corporation.
That is how we are accountable. But there is more. We have taken steps to proactively demonstrate our accountability. Maybe you'd like to know how much I, as president and CEO, am charging to the company for working meals and business travel. That information is already public and I'd like to walk you through it.
Please go to your folders. Take a look at tab 1-A. You'll see a printout of what you would see if you went to our corporate website and clicked on “transparency and accountability” and then“proactive disclosure”. You would see a list of names including mine. Pick one, literally any one, and you'll see the expenses each of us claimed every three months going back to 2007, when we became subject to the act.
Pick mine and you'll see, among other things, if you flip through the pages, that my visit to Quebec City and Rimouski this past summer generated a cost of $1,608.73 for the public broadcaster. I also spent $5,472.29 to travel to Calgary and Saskatoon to meet with staff and unions, speak at the University of Saskatchewan, and meet with various local opinion leaders.
But there's more. Maybe you'd like to know how CBC/Radio-Canada decides what to release under access to information. Maybe you'd like to know what kind of information has already been requested under access to information and released. We've already made that information public--and by the way, no other organization has done that yet.
Last Wednesday, Treasury Board President Tony Clement announced that by January 1 all departments and agencies subject to access to information will post summaries of completed access to information requests on their websites. We post more than the summaries. We actually post the documents themselves for requests of general public interest, and have been doing so for one year.
Go to your files again, please.
In your folder, under “Access to Information”, Tab 1-B, is a print-out of what you would see if you went to our website. This section entitled “Access to Information” contains more than 27,000 pages of information requested under Access to Information. It is available to anyone.
You will also see, if you click on my trips to Ottawa, that I have stayed regularly at the Château Laurier. Quebecor papers have called this information proof of my “taste for fine hotel rooms and pricey lunches”. It is of course their right to take the information we have made public and to run inflated stories based on the information that we publicly release. Our responsibility, our commitment to accountability and transparency, is to make this information public. They can twist it and distort it in whichever way they want. That won't deter us.
You will also find on our website a copy of the guidelines we use in applying section 68.1 of the act.
Please go to tab 4-A.
The commissioner said she was concerned about the guidelines; concerned that we decide what information is excluded based on the nature of the request. Our approach was designed to avoid charging fees unnecessarily for collecting documents that clearly fall under section 68.1.
Nevertheless, we have already gone ahead and changed our practice.
We have also made significant progress in reducing the number of our deemed refusals, those requests to which we haven't responded quickly enough, and which accounted for the F we received last year from the commissioner.
As you will see in your folders at tab 1C, deemed refusals now represent less than 5% of all requests, a commitment we made to the commissioner in March 2011. You will also see at tab 1D that as of November 22, 2011, we have dealt with 1,449 of the 1,477 information requests we've received. Of course new requests continue to come in.
However, none of this changes the fundamental principle that if you—or any other broadcaster that competes against us for audiences, producers, talent and programs—want to know how much Peter Mansbridge gets paid, or how much Radio-Canada spent developing its hit show Les Enfants de la Télé, or what CBC's promotion strategy is, including how much it spends on advertising George's show on billboards or through a special launch of his season at TIFF, that information will not be disclosed publicly. That is because the law draws a clear line at those things that would undermine our independence, our prejudice, and our competitive position.
Yesterday's judgment does not change that fundamental principle. Without the protection for journalism, programming, and creative activities, we could not operate as an independent public broadcaster.
As a final point, you invited Quebecor and others here to share their opinion on our performance. I heard and read some pretty amazing things, so in your folders you will find a document correcting the record under tab 2, which addresses some of the claims that were made before you in the last weeks.
For example, I just can't believe that in answering one of your questions Mr. Drapeau did not tell you that on September 7, 2010, his office filed 72 information access requests on the same day. Quebecor's strategy is clear. Their properties will continue their campaign. They believe they can benefit from diminishing the role of the public broadcaster. They have a self-interested agenda, and they will continue to use access to information and do stories in their newspapers and on their television stations to pursue it. So be it.
Where do we go from here? Parliament can always change the law, but it must do so in a way that doesn't turn what is currently an independent public broadcaster into a state broadcaster. In the spirit of the Federal Court of Appeal's decision, we believe this committee should now consider language that clearly protects journalistic activity from access to information.
In the meantime, we at CBC/Radio-Canada will keep implementing our 2015 strategy to improve the services we provide to Canadians. We will keep making great Canadian programs and will broadcast them in prime time. We will work to deliver better value to Canadians in the regions and across all of our platforms.
We're ready for your questions, Madame Chair.