Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 10th, 2024

[Richard Gray]

It is.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Bell Canada makes about $2.3 billion in profit based on 2023 numbers. Is that about correct? Would you agree with that?

[Richard Gray]

I'm not aware of how our company performs overall. My responsibility certainly is—

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I can confirm that it's true. I'm looking at it on your website.

Does the CTV News division turn a profit for Bell Canada?

[Richard Gray]

No, it does not. We lose $40 million a year in news.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Okay.

Bell Canada makes a lot of money because it operates in a protected marketplace. Is that correct?

[Richard Gray]

Again, my responsibilities are for managing the operations of CTV News. I am not an executive at Bell Canada.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I can tell you that it does. It makes an awful lot of money off the backs of consumers because of government policies. In fact, I have here that Bell Canada, in the last year, lobbied this government over 50 times. That's more than four meetings with government officials a month. That's more face time with senior government levels than some Liberal MPs get.

I would like to point out that Bell would fear a government led by a party that believed in consumer-first, free market and pro-competition types of policies. It would benefit greatly from a party in power that continued the status quo or, even worse, took away more avenues for consumer choice, which would allow Bell to continue to make that kind of profit margin.

Is CTV News' viewership increasing or decreasing year over year? Would the viewership this year be higher or lower than last year?

[Richard Gray]

There has been a consistent erosion in viewership in broadcast media in this country for a number of years. It's falling year over year.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I wonder why. When you get caught putting things on the air that you then have to admit never actually happened, I can understand why viewership, as well as trust, would erode.

[Richard Gray]

I can give you a couple of specific—

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I'm sorry, but I only have about a minute left, so I just want to understand one thing. Does CTV News have a diversity target?

[Richard Gray]

Our goal is to reflect Canada. The current visible minority percentage in this country, according to the 2021 census, is 26%.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Do you have a target for diversity of political viewpoints at CTV News?

[Richard Gray]

It's our job, as I said earlier, to present all sides of public policy issues in a balanced, accurate and fair way.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

That doesn't answer the question.

Do you have a specific policy to ensure that the editorial direction, the journalists and the producers at CTV News reflect Canadians' political spectrum?

[Richard Gray]

It's not the job of journalists to reflect the Canadian political spectrum. It's our job to present stories in an unbiased, balanced, accurate and fair way.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Are you telling me that you have no way of determining whether or not the producers, the editors and the journalists all have the same Liberal bias? You have no way to determine that.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Give a quick response, Mr. Gray, please.

[Richard Gray]

Our team does not have a Liberal bias.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Scheer.

We're going to go to Mr. Fisher on Zoom.

Mr. Fisher, you have five minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Gray, for being here.

I have to say that the questions posed by my colleagues from all parties have been excellent, and I'm sure you completely expected them. There'll be a little bit of repetition, just for some clarity.

I want to reiterate a few of the things you said in your opening statement. You claim to be the most trusted news source. You said that you have a responsibility to manage your own affairs. That strikes me as something that's difficult to jibe with when we're talking about the elephant in the room today. We're talking about the broadcast. We're talking about inaccuracies regarding a leader of a Canadian political party.

I think you may have touched on some of these, but can you go over with some clarity the steps you've taken to ensure you can still say that you at Bell Media, at CTV News, have journalistic integrity and the ethics that you must have under that Bell Media umbrella?

[Richard Gray]

I'm going to answer your question in two parts.

First, I'm going to talk about this particular incident. We had the matter brought to our attention. We immediately apologized. I took the further steps, because of the nature of what had transpired, to initiate a fulsome investigation into what I was concerned was a very serious breach of our ethics and our policies.

We made the decision as a result of that to do two things. We made the decision to terminate the two individuals who were involved in that policy breach, and we took the step to apologize one more time. I think that is entirely appropriate, given what transpired, and I think that is indicative of the manner in which we take seriously the trust that Canadians have in us.

The second component part to my answer is this. Canadians in this country overwhelmingly choose CTV as their number one source for news with respect to broadcasts at the local level and at the national level every day of the week. We are also the number one source for digital news in this country. That is not us pandering to an audience. That is people tuning in to us because, for 60 years, we have presented a product that they know, they like and they trust.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

You seem like a very earnest person, and I want to thank you for the tone that you've struck here.

You said that you've never seen anything like this before, yet you also said that it was impossible to catch this error.

Have there been other errors like this where it was impossible to catch them and they've gotten through? Can you give me other examples of something like this that might have happened that slipped through and didn't get caught?

[Richard Gray]

Errors happen in news. It's the very nature of what we do. We try our absolute best to prevent them from going to air or being published. We are never happy. We are absolutely angry at ourselves when there is a failure in our checks and balances.

They happen in large measure because of the deadline pressure that exists and by virtue of the volume we produce. CTV produces approximately 25,000 hours of local news a year, approximately 20,000 hours of specialty news a year and almost 500 hours of national news broadcasts a year. There is a massive volume there. We go to air with stories that have been vetted and screened, and we do our absolute best to present material in a factual, accurate and balanced way at all times. However, sometimes—as with everyone—mistakes occur.