Official Languages Committee on May 1st, 2014

[Shelagh Kinch]

What I can tell you is that, first of all, it's a network commitment, not a local commitment. Locally we continue to work with our English-language independent producers by producing six documentaries every year.

Recently we brought in our executives from Toronto to meet with the independent producers here in Quebec to address how that money would be spent, to talk to them about how they could make their pitches to the network and what the network was looking for in terms of programming moving forward.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

So these docs are produced by local Quebec independent companies?

[Shelagh Kinch]

Yes.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I'm curious about the ten cuts you mentioned. Were these mostly from the television wing or the radio wing?

[Shelagh Kinch]

Every program was touched—radio, TV, and digital.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Can you give the committee the details of the budget cuts and how they will affect each regional station? Is it one region in particular in Quebec that will be affected, or is it...?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Shelagh will tell you how we are structured in Quebec and how we deliver our services out of Quebec City and out of Montreal to English-speaking Quebeckers.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Sorry, I have one supplementary question to that. In this chart here, you have “to be determined” and you have 55 cuts under English services. Will any of those involve Quebec?

[Shelagh Kinch]

Are you talking about Quebec City or about the whole region?

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I mean as a whole.

[Shelagh Kinch]

As I told you, we have 10 positions that are being cut in Quebec.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Shelagh, I think the member would appreciate understanding what you do out of Montreal, what the Montreal CBC delivers, its services, what we do in Quebec City, and what the Quebec City station does for the rest of the country. We don't have as many stations in the province of Quebec as Radio-Canada does. We actually deliver our services out of two different stations.

[Shelagh Kinch]

In Montreal, naturally, we have a more urban focus on the English-language minority community. We have many special projects that you've probably heard about if you listen to Mike Finnerty, in which we specifically target the issues and concerns for that community.

In Quebec City, we have two programs. We have Quebec AM, our morning show, and Breakaway, our afternoon program, which address the issues of the English-language-speaking community across the province.

We also have a reporter in Sherbrooke, so that we have somebody available in the Eastern Townships, where we have a larger English-speaking community. We have a travelling journalist. We have a journalist who travels throughout the province and tells stories that are clearly of interest to our audience.

As well, we go on remote as often as we can. It's very important for us to get out into the community and to talk with the community itself. Recently, our Quebec City bureau went to Baie-des-Chaleurs and did a remote there. Three weeks ago, I think it was, we were in Lennoxville for Quebec AM, and we did a remote show. Actually, it was more than three weeks ago, because it was around the election. We went down to Lennoxville to do a remote show there to talk about the issues and the concerns during the election.

We're constantly finding ways to reach out to our audience and really speak to them on a more one-to-one level as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

You can have one last question.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

There is a substantial TV and film community in Montreal as well. Has it ever been within the plans of CBC to perhaps provide a dramatic show that's produced out of Montreal, rather than documentaries, in the future that could maybe provide a sort of different angle from what's usually offered by CBC programming produced out of Toronto?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Actually, we had such a show. It was called 18 to Life. It was based in Montreal on our prime time television schedule a couple of years ago. It wasn't renewed. That's something that we're always looking at. It's a question of resources and how we can best impact Canadians through the prime time television schedule. It's a question of the funding of that schedule and of how we trigger that funding mechanism.

We've always been interested in trying to showcase different parts of the country in our television schedule on CBC. Look at what we had for a long time. We had Republic of Doyle out of St. John's, Newfoundland. We had Arctic Air, which we no longer carry, but this was the north end of Vancouver. We had Little Mosque on the Prairie, which was in Saskatchewan. Again, this is no longer on the schedule. Heartland, which is there, is from Calgary. We had Being Erica, which was from Toronto.

We do that, and most often—and this is something that we're very proud of—the Canadian city is as much a character in the show as the actors themselves, and that's why you recognize the program as being a CBC program or a made-in-Canada program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Daniel.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here this morning.

I'm going to follow on a little bit about your workforce and the changing technologies that are coming along. I actually don't have TV at home at all. I get all the things I need completely off the Internet. You can see the changing environment in the broadcast industry.

There are several parts to my question, but let's start with this one. One of the key things we've noticed from a number of other committees is that getting technical francophone staff is very difficult, because there are very few universities or colleges that provide technical engineering degrees, etc. As you're transitioning into the future like this, say over the next few years, five years, ten years, or whatever, you're going to need more of these sorts of folks. What's your plan?

[Patricia Pleszczynska]

Certainly what I can tell you is that when I was talking earlier about our relationship with some of the universities, francophone universities in Quebec and colleges outside of Quebec, we work with Université de Moncton. We work with Université de Sudbury and, here in Ottawa, with Cité collégiale of Ottawa-Gatineau. Cité collégiale is a very important supplier for us of young journalists and young artisans, as we call them, young professionals who in fact do come in to us with an ability to do technical work.

But I would say that what used to be a fairly strict and a fairly clearly defined distinction between editorial staff and technical staff is no longer the way we work, because, in fact, our journalists use Twitter, they do their own editing, and they often will do their own shooting. They'll do it on their iPhones, they'll do it on iPads, and they'll do it with light cameras. We also have video journalists. The technology has become lighter, so the mix of responsibilities that our professionals have is becoming even more complex, in the same way that some of the professionals who were previously exclusively technical are now working in digital. Our engineers are doing graphics and all kinds of creative work that contributes to the quality of our programming.

Perhaps I could add one little comment to what you were saying about not having a television. It's true, but whether it's a television or a radio as a piece of equipment is really not the issue. There's visual content and there's audio content, and that audio and visual content has to be produced by somebody. Whether the actual platform on which you consume it is an old-fashioned AM/FM radio, a television that's on cable or satellite, or a large screen monitor that connects to your Internet, the video content has to be produced by our teams. These are same teams that will produce material for the Web as the ones that will produce material for the traditional platforms, because our teams across the country, in Radio-Canada as well as the CBC, are fully integrated journalist and production teams.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

But presumably you have your own networks that need to be maintained: your connections to the Internet, your radio in terms of the technical transmission, etc. Are you able to get the right kind of people, the engineers who can actually put that up and maintain that? How do you propose doing that in the future?

[Patricia Pleszczynska]

Certainly we have the right people. I think the problem is that for the traditional platforms—and I don't know if Hubert wants to get into that—the whole distribution network is a very heavy one for the traditional platforms, and it certainly is a very costly one, one for which we haven't had any increased funding to maintain all of those transmitters across the country. It's an aging infrastructure, and certainly it's one that is very costly to maintain.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

But presumably you're going to be transitioning into the newer technologies and the newer radio systems for wireless, etc., and all those old ones will be just antiques, really.

[Patricia Pleszczynska]

Sure, but I'll tell you something. I heard this very clearly during the consultation in Edmonton that I just came back from. We spoke to about 400 people. Some of them were listening to us on the Web. We had about 100 people in the room in Edmonton, and the rest of the people were connected to us through video. We were broadcasting on the Web, so people were contributing to that conversation by texting us or by emailing us from the four western provinces and the three territories.

What people were telling us is that we are very much in a transition period. In the same way that we had people who—just like yourself, sir—no longer consume media on traditional platforms, other people were telling us to wait a minute, that they don't even have cell coverage in their community, let alone broadband. They were saying, “Don't abandon me, because I'm not there yet and my community isn't there yet.” I think that's particularly true for francophone communities in many parts of the country, because francophones are not necessarily concentrated in large centres. Whether it's Manitoba, Alberta, or Saskatchewan, you'll have a sprinkling of small communities all over the countryside that are struggling with the connectivity issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Daniel.

Monsieur Nantel.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First I want to thank you for being here with us. In the current context, I can well imagine your concerns, Mr. Lacroix. I'm going to call you Hubert since you generally sign your communications with your first name only.

Hubert, you just mentioned the good ratings results you have obtained. I am happy to learn that the surveys mean I am right. As a Quebecker and French-Canadian from Montreal, I ardently defend what is referred to as the Radio-Canada brand. People say that it is in trouble right now but I don't know what they are talking about. I think that CBC/Radio-Canada programs, be it on radio or on television, are just as relevant as ever. As for ratings, the latest BBM surveys correspond to what you have just said.

I don't know how we can let Minister Glover say things like she said last April 9. She said among other things that the drop in the number of viewers was what explained CBC/Radio-Canada's difficulties. She also said this:

CBC/Radio-Canada has enough money to fulfil its mandate under the Broadcasting Act, and it is up to that organization to offer Canadians the programming they want, whether in English or French.

I would like to hear your comments on that. I think that a lot is being put on your plate here.