Evidence of meeting #21 for Official Languages in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was coverage.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
I want to come back to the contract. It was clear for Radio-Canada/CBC that coverage had to be delivered in both official languages of Canada.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
Yes, it was one of the conditions set out in the call for tenders.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
Mr. Godin, we presume that to be true, but we are not a party to the contract that CTV signed. I presume that the answer is yes.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Some time ago, the President of the CRTC asked you if you would like him to intervene and force the two of you to negotiate, with him imposing a solution. That does not seem to have scared you much, because he said when he appeared before the Committee that he has no power.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
The President of the CRTC does not have the power to force us to do anything in that area. We are talking about a business agreement between two parties.
I would like to come back to one point. The people at CTV are big boys. It is a serious network that I have a great deal of respect for, even though we sometimes clash because we are competitors, so that makes sense. But they are serious people who have made significant efforts. They paid a great deal of money to secure the rights to the Vancouver and London Games. They told you about everything they had done to reach agreements with local cable operators to have the signals unscrambled. I believe they told you that they are able to cover 98 or 99% of Canada. That is why CTV must be wondering why there is any need to do more. They have honoured their obligations. It is difficult to explain to CTV or interest CTV in reaching an agreement with us, because it believes it has fulfilled its obligations under the contract.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
In a way, there was a proposal made, and they spoke of the last one here, when they appeared before the Committee, rather than telling you about it first and talking to us afterwards. I have negotiated lots of collective agreements in my time, but I never liked hearing about deals on television. If someone has something to say to me, I prefer he say it to my face. I found that to be a little bit much.
If I am not mistaken, one of their proposals was to have the CTV or RDS signal carried by Radio-Canada/CBC, and they would pay all the losses…
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
Sylvain, could you address that? That was one of their first proposals, back in 2005, and one we responded to on many occasions.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
This week, they repeated to the Committee that this offer was still on the table. They said that, if they were in Radio-Canada's shoes, they would accept that first offer.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
Sylvain, could you take that question?
Executive Vice-President, French Services, CBC/Radio-Canada
There are many different things to be considered. It is important to understand how things work on television. This is the prime TV broadcasting season. Major Canadian dramas series are ready, and we have newscasts and major variety programs as well. Everything is ready. We will have to pay for them because, in any case, they have already been developed. For two weeks, we would have to stop broadcasting our cultural and news programs, simply because TQS does not have a transmitter outside Quebec. In other words, because 12,000 people outside Quebec would not be able to receive their programming, we would have to put everything on hold at CBC/Radio-Canada for two weeks. We would give those two weeks to TQS, which would pocket all the revenues.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
Sylvain, I would like you to comment on revenues from outside Quebec—please explain what that represents.
Even Mr. Frappier explained that the amount of money that part represents is insignificant. However, we would be losing a lot of money, because advertisers do a media buy for the entire network. They do not just buy a certain amount for the regions outside of the major urban centres.
Executive Vice-President, French Services, CBC/Radio-Canada
Major advertisers will be buying time on RDS and TQS, because they are the ones that own the broadcast rights for the Olympic Games. Our status would be that of a third broadcaster and we would lose the commercial revenues that normally flow from our major drama series, series we have already paid for.
Now, these people are telling us that we would have access to some assistance in the form of revenues from outside Quebec. However, revenues from outside Quebec represent about 3%. The fact is that these revenues are based on population. Naturally, most of the revenues come from Quebec. So, that is a business model that makes no sense for us, and they are perfectly aware of that.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
Mr. Frappier even made the following comment to you this week:
Francophone services outside Quebec do not make much money because the marketable value of advertising time, compared to the audience that is generated, is relatively low.
Conservative
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
Thank you very much.
Welcome. It is a pleasure to see you again.
I think I need to start by saying—and this is probably the tenth time I've said it—that we all believe in a strong Canadian broadcaster. We all believe that it is essential to try to reach every single francophone and anglophone in this wonderful country with an Olympic broadcast. I want to put this to bed. I do not understand why this is not clear on the other side of the table. We're committed to making sure that every single person in Canada, if possible, will get to see the Olympic Games. That is important to us. That is what's at the heart of this discussion.
So let's put partisanship aside. Let's lay it to bed. We want to help you and CTV and all the other broadcasters provide that. That's where I'm going with my questions, so please let this give you some insight into my questions as I ask them.
Apparently there was a hockey game for which CTV had the same contract. They offered the same original contract to you and you accepted it. It worked out fine, and this had previously been done as a practice. But now something has changed. What has changed?
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
The economics of the situation have changed. It will be explained by Sylvain, who was part of that transaction. He'll tell you why this was not an ideal situation for us and why we are no longer in that contract.
Executive Vice-President, French Services, CBC/Radio-Canada
I'm totally with you. There's nothing I would have liked more than to broadcast the Olympic Games. For our team, it's a great moment. For Canadians, it's a great moment. We all know that. The problem is that we lost the bid. We lost the bid to those guys who made a proposition—
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
Can you go back to the question? Could you just tell me what happened with the hockey game?
Executive Vice-President, French Services, CBC/Radio-Canada
About a year or a year and a half ago, we offered to enter into a co-production agreement, which would have allowed us to have a presence everywhere, but that did not work out.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
A few years ago, we used to broadcast the Saturday night hockey games, and that is the agreement Ms. Glover has asked us to comment on.
Executive Vice-President, French Services, CBC/Radio-Canada
Oh, I understand.
At CTV, they felt the agreement had worked very well, and I fully agree that it was very profitable for them. Indeed, CTV provided the coverage via CBC/Radio-Canada and picked up all the profits. It was an extraordinary arrangement for CTV—I will give you that. But we had to end it after a year, because it made no sense for a public broadcaster to be directly participating in the profits generated by a private corporation. At the very least, there should have been a call for tenders where everyone interested in making money on hockey would have been asked to apply. From our standpoint, that agreement made no sense.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CBC/Radio-Canada
That's why we exited.
Conservative
Shelly Glover Conservative Saint Boniface, MB
I would really like to focus on your mandate, which is to provide coverage to all Canadians of cultural and other important events here in Canada. That is the reason why we would really like to see these contractual arrangements work out between you and the people who will be providing Olympic coverage.
Also, I was wondering how it was that CTV had been able to get help from TQS, RDS and RIS. Do they not have problems--
