Motion No. 2
That Bill C-65, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing lines 13 and 14, on page 2, with the following:
"the Corporation consisting of two directors, not including the Chairperson and the pres-".
Mr. Speaker, once again we have the challenge of persuading the government members since they outnumber us. In the next few moments I will try to persuade them to our point of view.
This motion specifically concerns the CBC and its board of directors. We are all aware that Bill C-65 reduces the number of directors from 15 to 12. We have the horse headed in the right direction and somebody will have to slap its rump so that it gets going.
To go from 15 to 12 directors, we barely started doing it. We want to be a little more dramatic in our cutting of the CBC board because we feel the functions it performs could be efficiently carried out by two members, a chairman and the president.
It is unfortunate we do not have full freedom in the House to do whatever we want. Maybe that is okay, it helps to limit us from bizarre decisions. The amendment we would have really liked to make would be that CBC be privatized or sold to private interests.
We think it is time CBC make money for the country, that its shareholders should make a profit and should all pay some taxes instead of taxpayers funding the broadcasting organization.
In saying this I am certainly not speaking against the CBC. I am one of many Canadians who enjoys the CBC and certain parts of its programming. It is not all bad, it is not all useless. It has a lot of very good public service time. Some of its musical programs are excellent.
We object to its being such a sinkhole for taxpayers' dollars. CBC radio operates without commercials and I guess we could argue that if we listen to other radio stations we pay for them through the products we buy. We indirectly pay for the advertising costs those producers incur by advertising on other radio or television stations.
CBC television, on the other hand, has ample advertising. It has such a large share of the market potential. It was in there ahead of the game and taxpayers funded a great deal of hardware for it. They gave it the inroad into many markets not originally viable financially.
Why in the present day of modern technology with very efficient and excellent ways of communicating electronically with people can this organization not now be turned around and made into a profit producing organization?
As long as it stays under government control with government subsidization most likely this will not happen. That is why we favour privatizing the CBC. We believe good solid entrepreneurs could turn it into a real money making machine.
A person who started a small television station out west told me a few years ago that having a television station was like having a printing press to print money. It was very lucrative 20 years ago. He has had difficult times more recently.
We want to support a substantial reduction in the size of the board of directors. If we had had the total freedom to do what we wanted we would have reduced them to zero with the recommendation to privatize. However, we were told that would be outside the limits of this bill and would be ruled as an illegal amendment. So we compromised. We knew we already had them going in the right direction by reducing the number of members from 15 to 12, so we should just take 10 more off and we would be down to two and that would do the trick for now and would give a very clear message as to the direction in which we would choose to go.
We also want to indicate that the CBC, as other crown corporations, must get the message very clearly that they have to become more efficient. They need to operate with lower costs and wherever possible with as large a generation of income as possible. That is the message that goes along with this amendment. It reflects the Reform Party's position that we ought not to be taking by coercion money from Canadians via the medium of taxation in order to fund a particular point of view. We believe that the marketplace would carry that through.
It has been enlightening in the last little while to find that the CRTC has been giving approval to some types of broadcasting companies that before this would not have been considered. So there is that move anyway, and we feel that this would hasten it.
We are the stewards of the money entrusted to us by the Canadian taxpayer. Consequently, in promoting and encouraging support for this motion we are simply strengthening that message. I urge all members opposite, who by their majority have the power to determine how things will be, to think very carefully and do the right thing here.
We know that the deficit and the debt need to be cut. The CBC, with its access to the Canadian taxpayer dollars of over a billion dollars per year, has to undergo a very rapid restructuring.
With that, I simply urge the people to support this amendment and get the show on the road. Let us get that horse moving.