Official Languages Committee on May 12th, 2009

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Earlier you said that agreements had set a precedent with Radio-Canada, in the case of La Soirée du hockey. If I remember correctly, Radio-Canada had its own advertisements on La Soirée du hockey.

[Gerry Frappier]

No. Radio-Canada took the entire RDS signal. There was advertising on the RDS signal. It was the same advertising. A whole signal was transmitted. A single RDS production was broadcast on the two networks. That was done over two years, around 2002 and 2003.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

As my colleague said, it doesn't work anymore. Perhaps there's a reason for that.

[Gerry Frappier]

That lasted two years and Radio-Canada subsequently decided to withdraw. Since then, we are the only ones broadcasting the hockey as a whole.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

If you consider two weeks of programming without any advertising, there are few people who can accept that. Will RDS or TQS have their own advertising, or will that be CTV advertising?

[Rick Brace]

It's all the same. It's a consortium. So all of the advertising, both English and French, is sold by a single group and placed. The reason you do that is you have to really protect what we call exclusivities.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Did you suggest that Radio-Canada should be compensated for lost advertising?

[Rick Brace]

Yes, we did. But we have another proposal today. Maybe this will preempt some of the questioning, because we are prepared. No one has heard this, so this will be brand new for everybody. We are prepared to look at a proposal whereby CBC/SRC could produce their own coverage, but we would have to control the advertising. That, I think, is going a long way from where we were at the beginning. This is on the table. It hasn't been discussed with SRC. It hasn't been put forward anywhere but here today. But in recognition of the issue, in a demonstration of the goodwill we're trying to put forward here, we would be willing to discuss that with SRC.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

Thank you, Mr. Brace.

We'll now continue with Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you very much.

The games will definitely be a jewel for Canada, and it's very important that francophones be able to receive them in their language.

I'm the member for a riding where a lot of Franco-Ontarians live. I represent a large official language minority community. As I said, it is important that francophones outside Quebec have access to the games, not only in my riding, but across Canada as well.

However, there are definitely some major challenges. I'm an engineer and a former military member. I like details.

Much of the discussion we've had so far—not with you, but previously—has been very top-level discussion, so I'd just like to ask you a few questions about some of the technicalities. You've already alluded to them, but I'll just seek to clarify them so we can all better understand some of the challenges that are here, that are facing you on this issue.

One question I have is this. If Radio-Canada were to transmit the games, would it be your coverage simply passing through their system to francophone homes, or is this what you're talking about with production, where they want to get their own reporters in, they want to get their own news desk in, and they want to get their own set-up in?

Is it just carrying your transmission, or is it much more than that?

[Rick Brace]

You've described it fairly accurately. Yes, our proposal was that they take our feed and put it on their waves.

By the way, I missed saying this: we're talking about outside the province of Quebec. But yes, that's the proposal we made, that they would take our signal, unaltered, do nothing to it; our commentators, the look, everything would be the consortium's feed, produced by Gerry, who by the way, is also—

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Which would be in French; I just want to confirm that you're talking about French coverage—

[Rick Brace]

It's French coverage. It's—

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

—produced by you. You're trying to say, just carry your signal, just carry your coverage right into francophone homes.

[Rick Brace]

It's exactly what we did with the Montreal Canadiens, and their concern is exactly as you've stated, that they do not want to have another company's production on their airwaves. They want to produce it themselves, and if they produce it themselves, obviously there's a cost to that; therefore they also want to have the ability to sell the advertising. That, of course, makes this situation completely impractical for us.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Right, but you do say there is a social responsibility as well, and they're a publicly funded broadcaster, so it would be my hope that the financial part of the equation wouldn't be a great stumbling block.

[Rick Brace]

I think in the proposal we made, the first one, where they pick up our signal, there really is no cost. There's no incremental cost. In fact, in that model we offer to compensate for any lost advertising revenue for the signal they were carrying outside the province of Quebec. So it really was, we thought, an elegant solution to the problem. Really the concern they had was taking someone else's production, which, as I say, we created a precedent for with the Montreal Canadiens, so it wasn't something new.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You were going to cover some of the costs they would incur to transmit your production outside of the province of Quebec.

[Rick Brace]

To the extent that they lost advertising revenue for shows they would have aired outside of the province of Quebec, we said, “We will make you whole”; so it's not to cover some of it, but cover all of it. That was the proposal, and that's where we started. Unfortunately, it never went beyond that.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

You wanted to give them all if it; they didn't want to have any of it.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Another question I have is this. We're often talking about the missing 4% here. As you mentioned, of course, some Canadians don't necessarily have access to any TV—it just depends—but we're talking about the 4% here.

What I want to try to figure out is this. If Radio-Canada does transmit your production, or their own production, however it happens to be—I think I know the answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway—they can't just focus on the missing 4%. I believe it goes out over all of their network. Am I right?

[Rick Brace]

It would be blanket coverage outside the province of Quebec.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Right.

[Rick Brace]

TQS would still have exclusivity for the province of Quebec. They were our partner at the bid, so that's just the way it is, and we're proud to have them on board. But we're talking about outside the province of Quebec. Our proposal would have them distribute everywhere outside the province of Quebec, on all their transmitters, the signal that Gerry provides.