Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 24th, 2011

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

I'm going to deal with the accountability piece and Maryse will answer the question on what happened with the fleet question.

I can't let your first comments go without a respectful comment in reply. If we did what you suggest we could do, we'd be cheating. We have a board of directors that oversees through its audit committee the expenses that we use for activities. On a quarterly basis, we release financial information like any other public corporation. We release with that information an analysis of our performance over the last quarter. You can now follow this—something we never used to be able to do because the act did not allow it, as it does now. You have more financial information about how we deal with the $1.1 billion that we get from government and taxpayers, for which we are very grateful, than you ever had before.

Let's deal with the fleet question now.

[Maryse Bertrand]

The fleet question has to do not so much with the fact that this request was made or that we somehow tried to hide information. On the contrary, a year ago we came up with our guidelines, at the suggestion of Justice Boivin in the judgment of first instance, as to how we would apply section 68.1. The wording in the exclusion of section 68.1 is that information related to programming activities is a very wide concept.

The case law is actually even broader. Everything that has to do with the collection and dissemination of information is considered to be part of programming. All of the vehicles in that fleet, except for the one vehicle that was unredacted on the page, which was Mr. Lacroix's personal vehicle, are microwave trucks, transmission trucks. They are vehicles that we use exclusively for purposes of our programming.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you for that. You're answering the question, which is to say you're taking the exclusion to an extreme that I don't think most people would find reasonable.

Also, frankly, Monsieur Lacroix, I think anyone who reviews the access information that has been released could only conclude that there's been a reclassification of expenses since transparency has been provided in this regard. The overall expenditures on items like hospitality and so forth haven't changed, but the actual amounts that each member of the executive is charging have changed. Either the practices on the executive have changed dramatically, or things have been reclassified.

I'd be happy to provide documentation to you on that.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Yes, because we'd be happy to answer the question, sir.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

One of the witnesses I thought was very good when he came before committee was Howard Bernstein. He said:

The CBC is a web of internal empires, where everyone controls his own money. ... It's hard for the president to tell other people what to do, because there are so many separations in there and there's so little general accounting. The accounting seems to cover only one's own unit. How you present the money you spend is indecipherable, even to the bosses.

How would you respond? This is somebody who knows the internal workings of CBC very well, and I think that's quite an indictment.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Mr. Del Mastro, Mr. Bernstein was with our corporation 20 years ago. There was no Internet 20 years ago, no CBC/Radio-Canada like the one you now have, no integration of services, and surely not me at the head of CBC/Radio-Canada.

When Mr. Bernstein makes comments of this kind, with no knowledge whatsoever of what's going on with all the processes we've put in place, with the accountability through our audit committee, with the Auditor General signing off on our statements, with all of the processes we have right now to follow the dollars and make sure we're accountable for them.... I find it surprising that you would give credibility to a person who has been outside of our corporation for 20 years.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

I will remind the witnesses and the members to address your comments through the chair. Thank you.

Mr. Scarpaleggia.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm standing in for another member today, but I've been following the matter pretty closely as a former member of the heritage committee, and I've been following it through the press.

I must commend you, Mr. Lacroix. I was on the committee when you were appointed, and of course we all approved your nomination. As a good opposition member, I had some doubts, but you've erased those over the last year or so. This is an extremely succinct and well-documented presentation, and I congratulate you for that. I came here today, as I say, as a substitute, and within minutes I was able to grasp the issues almost totally because of this document. So thank you for that.

I would like to give you an opportunity to respond to some of the things Mr. Del Mastro said, such as the idea that the accounting system is indecipherable. I find it hard to believe that if you have an auditor.... How many auditors do you have? You have a corporate auditor, then you have the Auditor General.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

We have the finance people who work in our corporation, headed by Suzanne Morris, who is the CFO. The two media lines have a director of finance. We have an internal auditor who goes through our systems, our controls, our risk management, and reports to the audit committee directly.

The chairman of the audit committee is completely independent from CBC/Radio-Canada, a well-versed, seasoned executive who has been a CFO of a major corporation and has sat on boards of directors for years. And we have the Auditor General, who comes in and signs off on a yearly basis.

We provide the CRTC with audited financial statements for every station and where we use those dollars in every region. We have controls to make sure that Canadians can be reassured on our use of those dollars.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Even the auditors who are not from outside the corporation, who are not technically independent--I'm talking about the internal finance people--are professional accountants. So their loyalty is to the ethics of their profession more than it is to some corporate interest within the corporation, I would think.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

And their reputation is on the line every time they prepare documents. These documents are reviewed again by the management team, by me, by our audit committee, and by our board. This is what we did just yesterday as we released our information for the second quarter.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Of the access to information requests you've received.... I forget how many you said you received since the law came into effect. Was it 1,200 or 1,400?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

It was 1,477.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

How many of those came from Quebecor?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

I know that Colonel Drapeau's office filed 914 of those requests. I don't know how many Quebecor filed directly, but I know that a link was made, I think in front of this committee, because Monsieur Drapeau actually said he worked for Quebecor. That was one of his clients, and that's why he couldn't provide you with some of the details of their relationship; it was privileged. So I know that at least 914 came from there.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

That's interesting, because you have other competitors as well. You have CTV and a whole list of competitors, yet they don't seem to be as bent on seeking all this information as other competitors are. So it leads one to believe that there's really some bad blood out there in the Quebec media world. To someone who is an outsider to this committee, it seems we have a bit of a witch hunt going.

As a member of Parliament and as a taxpayer and as a Canadian, at some point I take objection to that. I understand that financial accountability is very important. Yet we have a government that muzzles its scientists. We have a government that wants to make sure that the RCMP doesn't really deal with the public unless it goes through the Prime Minister's Office first. So I see a bit of a contradiction. But I also see something of a witch hunt going on, because the last time I substituted for a colleague, it was at the heritage committee, and you were appearing there on the same topic. That was 15 months ago.

On another matter, how much does Peter Mansbridge make?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

I'm just kidding. But to be fair, how would that one piece of information alone compromise CBC's competitive position? I'm sure everyone in the media circles in Toronto and elsewhere knows pretty much how much he makes.

[Maryse Bertrand]

It's the war for talent, basically. If precise salaries for our talent or even our programs are known, then others can try to poach them or somehow compete more efficiently against us than they would otherwise be able to.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

You don't think they've tried to poach already?

[Maryse Bertrand]

They can try, but if they know exactly how much to offer, it makes their life a lot easier.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

So really all we're dealing with at the level of the Information Commissioner now is that she's going to look at some of these access to information requests to decide whether or not they fall under section 68.1. Is that it?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

That's exactly right.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

So if the government really wants to go further with this, it's going to have to amend the law, I guess. That's where we're at.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Our suggestion was that if this committee was going to make recommendations on the act, it focus on the protection of journalistic activities and journalistic sources.