Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Stursberg, thank you for coming today.
I would also like to thank my colleague, Daniel Petit, who put this topic on the committee's agenda. It was perfectly justified.
Mr. Stursberg, I'm going to try and analyze this issue as objectively as possible. From the perspective of identity and culture, I think that what I have heard you state is very harmful. Allow me to explain.
First, you say that your viewers were made up of anglophones and that you had to respect their culture and avoid offending them from that point of view. That was the issue. If I look at this from the other end of the lens, I see that Quebec pays 25% of the taxes provided to CBC, and francophones living outside Quebec also pay their share of the funding allocated to CBC. The issue is not viewers, the issue is respect on the part of a gala whose purpose is to showcase music, song, music composition and the performers who are the standard-bearers of that music.
You tell me that you produce documentaries, that's well and fine but this program was not a documentary. The purpose of this show was to present culture, Quebec, Franco-Canadian, Acadian, Anglo-Canadian cultures all together in order to show Canadian taxpayers, regardless of where they live, this extraordinary variety of artists.
Mr. Dubois stood up and banged his fist on the table. I don't think he was only doing it for himself, he was also doing it for the principle. You were surprised that the media reported this. Listen, the issue is not the media. This is striking! When we found out about this, we felt excluded.
I'm going to give you an example that will explain why I perceive CBC the way I do. It's unfortunate and it has to change. When the 1972 Summit Series was going to be produced, Foster Hewitt spent some time at the Soviet Union's embassy in order to learn how to pronounce the names of the Soviet players. It was a very good exercise. Yet, throughout his career, he never learned to pronounce the names of Jean-Guy Talbot, Yvan Cournoyer or even Jean Béliveau. La Soirée du hockey arrived in 1976 in Western Canada. Before then, we used to listen to CBC. We couldn't see ourselves in the "Djang-Gaille Tâllboat" and "Djînn Ballâvô". CBC is still like that. We don't see ourselves in this machine, we don't see our culture, our points of reference. When there was going to be a Radio-Canada station in Saskatoon, everyone talked about "CBC French". I never, ever, saw CBC referred to in Quebec as "SRC anglaise".
You want to meet the needs of your public. Fine, but showcase reality. Why was the word "racist" used? Because we were excluded. Excluding individuals implies taking one group and not taking the other. In this case, francophones felt excluded and we're pointing it out to you. Don't tell me that you do other programs; I know that and that's fine. But when you produce a show whose purpose is to showcase music, you must make the effort to ensure that a quarter of your 45 minutes of programming will reflect a quarter of Canadian taxpayers who are francophone and who have the right to be represented in these types of programs.
I read the articles. They appeared in the month of March, not so long ago. Have you started giving serious consideration to a better representation of the cultures throughout the Canadian territory during the next gala show?