Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 30th, 2017

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I think I'm out of time. Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We have Ms. May for five minutes.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to colleagues around the table because I'm allowed to sit at the table, just for background, but I'm not necessarily allowed to speak without the consent of my colleagues.

I've been engaging with the consortium. In fact, the first and only face-to-face meeting I had with the consortium was back in 2007, so it's a decade of experience. I have to say that over that time I've had the impression that many individual members of the consortium regarded the task as thankless. I think your appearance before the committee today absolutely underscores how thankless it is, but I do want to thank you, although I've had a rather bad experience.

I want to approach the narrative that's emerging today that somehow the debates were all going really well between the late sixties up until 2015. Just for purposes of historical interest, I think you may recall Tony Burman's op-ed. Tony Burman, who was editor-in-chief of CBC News, chaired the consortium between 2000 and 2007, and this op-ed ran in The Globe and Mail under the heading “The election debate process is a sham”. What he concentrated on was this, which is his first line:

Prime Minister Harper's refusal to allow the Green Party leader to participate in the Federal Election Debates is cynical and self-serving, but at least it exposes the sham that Canada's election debate process has become.

This article appeared in March 2009. What he refers to, of course, is that:

The CRTC and federal courts have reaffirmed the networks' right to “produce” this broadcast on their own, without any outside interference. And this is certainly the claim of the networks—including by me when I chaired the “consortium” for those seven years. But in reality, the government in power has a veto, and without the Prime Minister's participation, the debate won't happen.

We've skirted around this issue so far today.

In terms of reflecting back, I've been involved in getting in the debates, not getting in the debates, rules changing, debates disappearing, and so on, for a decade. I'm just wondering whether you would agree with Tony Burman that the parties negotiate, but the larger parties have systematically operated to exclude smaller parties from access to the room where the negotiations happen.

[Troy Reeb]

First off, I won't fully disagree with Mr. Burman's comments on that. I've been involved in lots of debate negotiations not only at the federal level but at the provincial level as well. I would say that the front-running party in the election often has the hammer in terms of how they get pulled to the table or not, or they perceive that they have the hammer because their participation is key. They're the ones that are either going to go up or down following the debate, and they have wielded that hammer to the best of their ability.

To the point about the exclusion of smaller parties, it is not simply a function of the parties involved. It's a function of us as well who have worked at times to exclude smaller parties. We want debates that work well on television. We want debates that don't become a cacophony of arguing. We want debates that are simple for the viewer to comprehend. We understand that we have obligations in terms of how we cover news, and we want to ensure that we give proper coverage to smaller parties elsewhere.

However, I wouldn't say it's only a function of the major parties that have worked to exclude the smaller parties. Certainly, it's part of it.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I'm sorry for switching gears. I have a minute left.

There is one thing I've observed over the years. It's that being in the debates also dictates how much coverage those parties get. You'll see the bands of the colours of the five parties on the screen at the beginning, and when the Bloc or the Greens are suddenly out, it goes to the three parties' colours.

Could you reflect on the news coverage that is linked to debate participation?

[Troy Reeb]

I won't. I'm not here to justify our news coverage. I'm happy to talk about the debate participation.

[Michel Cormier]

But we do have criteria for allowing the parties, and I think that's why Radio-Canada has to be.... We haven't talked about the French market, which is very different. We have TVA, which is basically a Quebec-based network, and Radio-Canada, which broadcasts more across the country.

In the debate that we had, we included the Green Party. Although a lot of people told us it was suicidal to do that, we thought it would make for a better debate. There was a broader view expressed and the ratings were there.

[Jennifer McGuire]

We monitor our election coverage pretty closely overall, and I don't think those are themes that we have seen play out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

Now we move back to Mr. Nater.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again for the opportunity to ask a couple of questions.

I want to follow up on a question that Mr. Bittle asked. In response, our panellists gave certain general comments about journalistic standards and production values of the debates that were held. I want to get to a greater level of specificity.

I'd like to offer each of you an opportunity to tell me exactly what your concerns were with the journalistic standards of the moderators, such as Paul Wells, David Walmsley, Rudyard Griffiths, and Pierre Bruneau. What was the problem with the journalistic standards of those moderators in the debates?

[Jennifer McGuire]

I don't think it's fair for us to comment on how David Walmsley performed as a moderator, or the journalistic credibility of Paul Wells—

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

But you did—

[Jennifer McGuire]

—who clearly is a very capable journalist. I think our position is to move this process forward. We can debate for hours what happened in 2015, but our understanding of the goal is for us to bring insights to this process to move it forward.

What I will say on behalf of CBC/Radio-Canada is that we know the nature of the discussions in the negotiations to make a debate happen. We know it involves who gets to play. We know it involves a format, locations, timing, topics. To not be part of any of those conversations in other sorts of contexts, for us, is an issue in terms of offering our airways and opening them up. It's not a political advertisement or a political announcement. This is a journalistic exercise for us. If that shifts, then the framing of it will shift for us too.

We absolutely want to play, but as it stands now, we treat this very much as a journalistic exercise. Just as we wouldn't rerun content that we haven't verified in terms of a news organization, the same approach applies in terms of understanding the trade-offs that are made to guarantee a debate.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Ms. Freeman, I see you want to answer.

[Wendy Freeman]

I agree with my colleague. We want to move this forward.

I'm not going to talk about what they did and who moderated, and all of that. This is about finding a solution. That's why we're here today, to find a solution, and look forward not backward.

Canadians were not well served, and it's about serving Canada in the future, and looking ahead.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

You're saying Canadians weren't well served, but yet you're not willing to pinpoint exactly where that failure happened in these other four debates. You're not willing to tell me where the journalists who moderated the debate did not perform well. You're not willing to tell me that. You're saying that only you, the consortium, should be hosting the major national broadcast. You're not willing to pinpoint exactly where those so-called journalistic failures happened and where that challenge is, yet you're casting aspersions that they were.

My second point is on production values, and I'll give you the opportunity....

In each of those four debates that the consortium didn't run, tell me specifically what you would have changed in terms of the production of those debates? What were your concerns with the production of those debates? Was it camera angles?

[Troy Reeb]

If you would like me to respond to that—

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Please do.

[Troy Reeb]

—there was lots to criticize in the production of several of those debates.

However, the bottom line comes down to, I'm not going to flip the switch and put on to our network a product that we're not familiar with. If someone hands you a sandwich on the street, you might be hungry but you're probably not going to take a bite if it's a strange sandwich suddenly coming to you.

That was the choice we were being offered, to basically open the switch and take a product from the Munk centre or from Rogers—“Hey, put this on your airwaves”—for which you have accountability for that broadcast.

We answer to the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council, to the CRTC. We're not prepared to do that. We weren't prepared to do it then. I wouldn't necessarily be prepared to do it if it was the CBC that was putting on its own product as well.

We want to have a voice and we want to have an understanding of what that product is going to be.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

So you want to be in control.

[Jennifer McGuire]

To be clear, in 2015 the rationale was really that we were still in active conversation, and we were hopeful and confident that we would get a debate.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Airing more than one debate would have been a problem for you as a national broadcaster committed to—

[Jennifer McGuire]

No. In fact, in 2015 we were proposing four.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

But only those that were hosted by you, the consortium.

[Jennifer McGuire]

We had organized a consortium to create the widest reach of the debates to Canadians and to defray our individual costs to produce them.