Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Dec. 5th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I call the meeting to order.

Good morning. Welcome to the 83rd meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Today's meeting is being televised.

I'll ask members if they could stay until 1:15 or so to try to get as much done as possible, because we've lost some time due to the votes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I can't.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You guys can't either?

We're normally scheduled to go until 1:10, though, because of the extra five minutes, so we'll go to 1:10. In the last five minutes, we'll do a little bit of committee business.

As we continue our study of the creation of an independent commissioner responsible for leaders’ debates, we are pleased to be joined by Catherine Cano, president and general manager, Cable Public Affairs Channel, and Peter Van Dusen, executive producer. We're delighted to have you here—I know you're both very busy—and we look forward to your input on this interesting topic. Something came up, so the Globe and Mail person couldn't be here. You'll get more time, which should be great.

You could make some opening comments.

[Catherine Cano, President and General Manager, Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC)]

Thank you very much.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I want to say how much we appreciate your invitation and the opportunity to participate in the committee’s discussions on democracy and the best way to handle leaders’ debates during federal elections. This is complex, but extremely important, work.

Joining me today is CPAC’s director of information, Peter Van Dusen. Our opening remarks will be brief.

Let me first say that the work this committee has undertaken is important and the subject matter is very complex. Most democracies have the same debates over the debates and struggle with many of the same issues we have here in Canada. We're not alone in trying to figure out what is best for our country and for our people. To complicate things further, the ways citizens are consuming and accessing information are changing and expanding at each election cycle, adding new opportunities and also new challenges.

We have followed the first few meetings of this committee with great interest and have been heartened to hear that this committee, and indeed all parliamentarians, hold CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel, and its role in high regard. Perhaps I can begin there.

For the last 25 years—and by the way, this is our anniversary year—CPAC has built and fiercely maintained a reputation for independence, balance, fairness, and political impartiality. It's not just a slogan for us; it's our mission statement. We believe that Canadians have come to count on us, knowing that we have only one interest in mind—theirs.

Through our coverage of Parliament, politics, and public affairs; election campaigns and conventions; and our digital initiatives to engage Canadians, especially young people, to better understand their democratic institutions, we are the window on the democracy we have and the builders of the democracy we want.

[Peter Van Dusen, Executive Producer, Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC)]

Our role is never as important as at election time, bringing us to the committee’s topic of study: the proposal to create a commission or an independent commissioner responsible for overseeing leaders’ debates during federal election campaigns.

I would like to take a moment to tell you about the role CPAC played during the last federal election, in 2015.

We offered to carry any and all debates at which the party leaders agreed to appear. We did not organize any debates. We became the carrier for others. There were five debates in all. We felt it was fundamentally important to the democratic process for CPAC to make these debates available to Canadians everywhere, even if they were not the traditional consortium-sponsored debates.

We didn't set the rules and we didn't decide the format—we left that to the debate organizers—but we made sure that all Canadians had access to the debates. We put the interests of Canadians first.

To be clear, CPAC was not then, and never has been, a member of the consortium of mainstream broadcasters, although we have always purchased access to the debates from the consortium and carried them on all CPAC platforms.

We also understand that leaders' debates aren't the only defining moments of campaigns. That's why we believe we have the most extensive national coverage of grassroots campaigns of any media outlet in the country. We provide half-hour riding profiles of the key election races unfolding across the country, almost 70 races in the last election alone.

What role would CPAC be prepared to play in future elections as it relates to leaders' debates? Our answer is simple: just let us know how we can help.

However, please consider a few things. As we've stated, we place our reputation for fairness, independence, and impartiality above all else. We feel that organizing debates and deciding who's in and who's out could easily jeopardize those hard-won attributes and threaten that reputation. Fights over the rules and invitations are in part why the consortium model collapsed.

CPAC prefers to occupy the neutral ground and then deliver the content once the rules have been established—in this case, through the proposal before the committee being adopted by the commission or commissioner and those rules being set in that way, or through some other mechanism that may come from this process.

[Catherine Cano]

As always, we would be interested in bringing the debates to all Canadians once the rules are established and approved by all involved. We also would like to point out that CPAC works on a weekly and mostly daily basis in partnership with all media organizations, including members of the consortium.

We value this collaborative approach. We strongly believe, especially at election time, that what matters most is giving Canadians all the information they need and want to understand the issues at stake and to know the leaders who are seeking their trust.

We welcome working with all to ensure election debates are distributed as widely as possible on all platforms.

In conclusion, we are very proud of the work we do to provide Canadians with direct access to their democracy, democratic process, and democratic institutions. We would happily consider options to build on that role to the benefit of Canadians.

Thank you for listening. We would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

We'll have time for one round, one slot of seven minutes for each party. If you want to share that, it's up to you.

Mr. Graham is first.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you for being here. It's nice to see you again, Ms. Cano.

Mr. Van Dusen, I've been watching you for some 16 years on CPAC, since you've been there. It's nice to meet you in person.

[Peter Van Dusen]

Thanks very much.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

One thing you said in your opening comments struck me. You said you have purchased the debates from the networks. What did that cost? What's the deal?

[Peter Van Dusen]

To be specific, are you talking about purchasing the consortium debates or all the debates we've carried in the last election?

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I mean the consortium debates.

[Peter Van Dusen]

Okay.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

It's the consortium debates. I'm curious how they handled that, because we didn't know about the purchased part.

[Peter Van Dusen]

Right.

There's typically a fee that all broadcasters pay to be part of the consortium debate. I'm not sure that's public information or if people give out that fee. It's part of a business arrangement, so I'm not sure I'm at liberty to say what that is today.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

All right.

Would CPAC be interested or willing to host debates directly? Is that something that you'd want to do?

[Catherine Cano]

That's a good question. You're talking about being a host broadcaster, as with the Olympics or something like that.

I think we're open to ways in which we could contribute. It depends what it is and what we're talking about.

What we don't want to do is decide who's in and who's out. We don't want to be in that space. As for contributing in other ways, it will really depend on what the committee comes up with at the end of the day—what will be recommended, what the role will be, how the roles will be decided, and all that.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Okay.

If there is a commission or commissioner, do you think it is reasonable or unreasonable that the main broadcaster be required to carry debates—at least one debate in each language, for example? Is that a good idea, a bad idea, or do you have no opinion?

[Catherine Cano]

I think it is up to this committee to decide. I don't think it's CPAC's role to determine that.

I can tell you one thing: as far as we are concerned, we certainly feel that it's important for citizens to have access to as much information as possible during an election. Debates are important, so we will carry as many as we can. I'm hoping that the solution will help to favour Canadians' understanding of the choice they have in front of them. We certainly would do that.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Understood.

You've broadcast most or all of the debates that have happened over the last few elections. Can you give us a sense of audience numbers from election to election?

[Catherine Cano]

I think those are public. The numbers we had for 2015—I don't have the ones before that—were aggregated numbers of all the people broadcasting, which included CPAC and a couple of others. There were five debates. If you cumulate the reach of all of them, it's a bit under 10 million, but we're talking about the reach.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

If it was, say, two million per debate, it might be the same two million over and over again.

[Catherine Cano]

It could be. There's no way to know—or maybe there is a way to know, but we don't know if it's the same people who have been watching all the debates.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

You don't have the numbers in front of you, but in ballpark figures, do you remember what it was like when the consortium had their debates? Was it a much higher number than that?

[Catherine Cano]

You know what? I don't know for sure. I know there's a number that's been going around of about 14 million for the one debate—or maybe the two, including the French one. You should double-check that with them. I wouldn't want you to take my word for it.