Madam Speaker, I would like to second the motion presented by my colleague, the member for Rimouski-Témiscouata. The motion reads as follows:
That the House condemn the government for the refusal by the Minister of Canadian Heritage to publish the government's decisions concerning funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for the next three years, thus causing an ominous threat to loom over the CBC's French language network.
First, I will give a brief background. Then, I will describe the present situation and analyze its impact on the French-speaking community of Quebec and Canada.
Before starting, however, I would like to point out that, unlike the government, I will use both terms, that is SRC and CBC, to refer to the two sectors of our public television instead of SRC in the French version of documents and CBC in the English version. For greater clarity, the term SRC will refer only to the French network and the term CBC, to the English network. You will see later the importance of this distinction.
Under the precedent Conservative regime, many cuts were made. In 1990, certain services were abolished, 1,100 jobs were cut, three local television stations were closed, eight stations were transformed into information production offices. These cuts resulted in savings of $108 million.
These measures were vigorously denounced by the Liberals. The famous red book put it this way: "Funding cuts to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canada Council, the National Film Board, Telefilm Canada, and other institutions illustrate the Tories' failure to appreciate the importance of cultural and industrial development". Those are the words of the Liberals in their red book.
And it went on: "A Liberal government will be committed to stable multiyear financing for national cultural institutions such as the Canada Council and the CBC. This will allow national cultural institutions to plan effectively". It would be difficult to find better intentions concerning culture and the SRC.
What is the situation today, following the tabling of the budget in February? On that famous day, February 27, 1995, we learned the extent of the budget cuts which would affect the Department of Canadian Heritage. We learned that this department's budget would be cut by $676 million over the next three years, in other words, 23 per cent of its global budget.
These cuts would affect the budgets of the CBC, Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board, which would be reduced by 4, 4 and 5 per cent respectively. In the case of the CBC, depending on how you understand the figures, it means a minimum cut of $44 million for the 1995-96 fiscal year. Furthermore, the day after the budget, the government decided to transfer Radio Canada International to the CBC and that accounted for an additional amount of approximately $12 million.
At the same time, the minister announced that the government would review thoroughly the terms of reference of the CBC, the NFB and Telefilm Canada. The CBC mandate would be examined, according to him, within a framework similar to that of the study being done by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on the role of the CBC in a multichannel environment.
We must remember that, before the budget was introduced, the CBC already had to support a loss of revenue of $180 million because of the cuts previously made by the Tory government and a decrease in commercial revenues. The former president, Mr. Anthony Manera, was already worried that these cuts could kill public television for good.
Nevertheless, the Liberal government, in spite of the rhetoric of the red book, will not be impressed by so little, and certainly not if it is the Minister of Canadian Heritage talking.
And the saga goes on. Right after the budget was tabled, on February 28, it was announced that Mr. Manera would talk to the employees to explain the financial situation of the CBC. The explanations remain vague because figures can be seen differently by different persons. Yet, everybody agrees that in April 1995, the CBC will have to cut between $40 and $50 million to offset this loss of revenue, also called the structural deficit.
On the same day, Mr. Manera announced his resignation as chief executive officer of the CBC, when his mandate was supposed to end in February 1999, that is in four years. Talk about an early retirement!
In support of his decision, Mr. Manera alleged personal reasons, which the Minister of Heritage hurried to repeat using these words: "Mr. Manera has resigned for personal reasons; everything else has been totally invented".
By "everything else", the minister was referring, among other things, to the scenario of a $300 million reduction in the budgets of the CBC over the next three years. I would recall that, on his appointment to his position, in November 1993, Mr. Manera had demanded assurances from the minister that no huge cuts would be applied to the CBC. At that time, the same minister had made a commitment to give the CBC multi-year financing. He even went so far as to promise Mr. Manera that there would not be any more budget reductions at the CBC. He had dared describe himself as a "friend of the house", meaning the CBC, when he had been appointed as the Minister of Heritage. That is too much!
We must realize that we are not talking about ancient history here. We are talking about November 1993, just 18 months ago. We are talking about assurances that were given by a minister to one of the most important departments of his government. How sad and shameful.
Mr. Manera, who seems to have been somewhat more lucid than his minister, came back by setting the record straight: it was a cut of not only $44 million that the CBC would suffer, but of $350 million by 1997-98. The government was getting ready to reduce the total budget by 23 per cent over three years. All this after the minister had confirmed to his president that there would be no more cuts.
How did the minister respond to his president's statement? First, as I said earlier, he repeated that Mr. Manera had resigned for personal reasons. According to the minister, there was no relation between this resignation and the budgetary cuts announced. He said he knew that Mr. Manera was going to resign and that his resignation was for personal reasons. Somehow, Mr. Manera made it clear in his speech to the employees that he was resigning because of the budget cuts. This is quite a lack of communication. This minister is no doubt fully proficient in the
area of communications. He went on to say the same thing again on March 16 in similar circumstances.
In Montreal, the vice-president of the CBC French network, Mrs. Michelle Fortin, could already foresee the impact the announced cuts would have on the operations of her organization. On March 15 and 16, she called a meeting of her employees to take stock of the situation. According to her, the organization in Montreal would suffer cuts of about $60 million and there would be a downsizing of some 750 jobs over the next three years.
In answer to a question asked in this House in that regard, the minister said he knew nothing about the downsizing and tried to justify his position by saying that the CBC, his "official source" of information, had made no official decision. Need we remind you that the president and chief executive officer had already resigned and declared that he had no intention of presiding over the implementation of the new budget.
I would like to go back briefly to the minister's statements, in the order in which he made them. We saw that when he received Mr. Manera's resignation on February 28, the minister said it was for personal reasons. The day after, on March 1, he only mentioned again the figures contained in the budget. On March 2, we learned that Mr. Manera recognized he had received from the deputy minister of Heritage a secret document outlining the scope of the cuts for the three following years. The members of this House were treated to blatant nonsense.
While the opposition had that document in hand and was quoting it, the minister refused to admit that the figures were right. According to him, this document is based on assumptions which are part of a program review undertaken by another minister. All this when we know that the cuts depend on Cabinet's decisions. Where was the hon. minister? Is he not a member of the Cabinet? It seems that Radio-Canada employees and executives are better informed than the minister about the situation that is prevailing in this organization. In fact, on March 18, the Gazette published the information that Mr. Alain Pineau of the CBC had announced that the regional stations were threatened by the budgeraty cuts.
For the time being, it is more than appropriate to wonder what the minister has to gain by hiding the truth, since evidence points in that direction. We also have to wonder if further cuts are not going to be announced soon. We have to wonder what major initiatives the minister intends to put forward within the national television, and what political implications they will have.
It is interesting to look at the public opinion about these cuts in the French network. A recent SOM poll released last week by La Presse showed that 60 per cent of respondents want the subsidies allocated to the CBC maintained or increased. It seems the public can only praise CBC-SRC for the way it does inform Canadians and increase their general knowledge. In Quebec, the results are even more impressive since one Quebecer out of three are opposed to the cuts Radio-Canada is facing.
That raises a completely different issue: the gap in the audience ratings between Canada and Quebec. Quebecers listen a lot to national television whereas only 12 per cent of their English-speaking counterparts watch it. This is a big difference which should, in theory, have an impact on the subsidies allotted the two networks. Up until now, however, viewer ratings were not among the criteria used to determine budget allocations. We pay more attention to the production costs of the programs, which are higher in English Canada than in Quebec. This is a vicious circle in which we have been trapped for a long time and which has been raising questions for many years.
Let us turn to the announcement made by the minister with regard to the CBC mandate review. For the French network, this announcement raises a lot of concerns. Indeed, we know that English Canada is generally not happy with the CBC, as far as its cost-quality ratio is concerned. For $1 billion, many people think that we could get more for our money. As I said, this vision is not shared in Quebec where people are satisfied with the performance of Radio-Canada which is reaching, on average, 35 per cent of the viewers. Once again, we are faced with the dilemma of the two solitudes.
Once again, these two solitudes have different needs and tendencies. Could the government decide it woud be politically correct to invest more in the French network, which has good ratings, than in the English network that is not very popular? Can we imagine that the Canadian federalism could be flexible enough to allow for the government to be very generous with the French network, while reducing drastically the subsidies allotted to the English network? This question has not been debated yet. We must also ask ourselves what would be the consequences of the budgetary cuts.
In his brief to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, the CBC spokespersons mentioned the possible impact of the reduction of its budgets. They said that the CBC would have no choice but to put thousands of people out of work. They added that their services would have to be drastically reduced and that no part of the mandate of the CBC would be left untouched.
The Minister of Finance said recently that any important reduction of the CBC budget would require a review of its current mandate. The citizens, the corporation employees and this House have the right to know where the minister and his government are going with the CBC. The Canadian public will not tolerate any longer the mysteries and the balderdash of the minister. Therefore, tell us what to do.