Madam Speaker, as Parliament resumes, I am delighted to take part in the debate on Motion M-432 presented by my colleague, the NDP member for Dartmouth.
It reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should restore full multi-year funding to the CBC, sufficient to meet its stated public service goals.
Until very recently, the Bloc Quebecois would have supported this motion unconditionally. Since its inception, the CBC has been a public institution dear to the heart of Quebeckers. The CBC French-language radio and television network has made a great contribution to the development and enrichment of the Quebec culture and identity.
The Bloc Quebecois cannot therefore be opposed in principle to the Canadian government's restoring a budget that it has slashed considerably over recent years, despite numerous promises. These cuts have obliged the CBC to reduce its operating budget by more than $414 million between 1994 and 1998.
The Bloc Quebecois finds, however, that history is repeating itself and that, once again, the Liberals are trying to control the CBC. According to the National Post of Saturday, February 26, the 1984 Trudeau cabinet wanted more control over Canada's cultural institutions. The article states as follows:
“Senior members of Mr. Trudeau's cabinet wanted all the arm's length cultural agencies to carry the Canada logo more prominently and through a strict system of reporting to be brought under more direct government control”.
It goes on to say that the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources was the keenest about this and that Mr. Trudeau had given him a two-fold mandate: to help draft a bill limiting CBC and the cultural agencies, and to determine the share of the federal budget to be devoted to each of these agencies.
Members will never guess the name of that minister who was so keen to control culture. Yes indeed, it was the hon. member for Shawinagan, the present Prime Minister. Unfortunately, he has not changed over the years. He is still pushing that same idea, and this time he is asking Treasury Board to do the dirty work.
On March 26, 1998, the President of Treasury Board issued a clear directive requiring all federal agencies and departments to standardize the use of the Canadian government logo. The CBC, generally exempt from such directives, was required to conform this time. Most fortunately, to date the corporation's board of directors has resisted and refused to do so, refused to commit a kind of hara-kiri.
It is public knowledge that the Prime Minister is no lover of the CBC, suspecting it of being pro-separatist. And more recently, the Prime Minister's Office's contacts with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation concerning a report on “peppergate” have done nothing to reassure the Bloc Quebecois.
We know the effect of the Prime Minister's displeasure: the journalist was suspended on the pretext that his reports were not in keeping with the rules of the art. Strange, though, that the corporation realized this only after a complaint was received from the office of the Prime Minister.
In another vein, during the latest referendum in Quebec, Quebeckers saw that for the federal government bigwigs, including the federalist Liberal Prime Minister, promoting national unity was an integral part of the official goals of the CBC public service, the goals referred to in the motion currently before the House.
I refer my colleagues to the statements made by the current Prime Minister and member for Saint-Maurice and to those made by the Minister of Canadian Heritage and member for Hamilton East in the latest referendum campaign that the corporation had failed to fulfil its mandate to promote national unity.
In addition, the Bloc Quebecois notes along with other cultural sector stakeholders and with at least two other political parties in this House that, for several years now, including following the 1995 Quebec referendum, the federal government has been putting considerable pressure on the CBC to change the independent nature of its national news service. And the article I was referring to earlier indicated, and I quote:
“With a CBC board of directors well stocked with Liberals, there is now a proposal on the table to give control of news and information programming on both CBC and its French service, Radio-Canada, to Ottawa under a senior news czar”.
This must never happen. And I take the position of Professor David Taras, director of the graduate studies in communications program at the University of Calgary, who said that distance from the government is particularly essential to the integrity of CBC journalists.
Finally, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the federal government is trying to give itself the power to intercede by ensuring it has control over cultural appointments. At least, this is the clear message of Bill C-44, which aimed to provide an ejection seat for the position of president of the CBC. Fortunately, the government dropped this idea following public outcry.
All these examples show the federal government's thrust and its desire to challenge the independence of Canadian cultural corporations. By constantly confusing culture with propaganda, the government is trying to get involved in the content of the programs presented by the CBC.
Consequently, the Bloc Quebecois has some reservations about the second part of the motion, which reads:
—to meet its stated public service goals.
The Bloc Quebecois is prepared to support a motion seeking to restore sufficient multi-year funding to the CBC to enable it to continue to present information and cultural programs while remaining fully independent of the federal government and political parties.
However, the Bloc Quebecois is opposed to the motion if restoring sufficient multi-year funding means that the corporation will have to serve the state and not the public, and that it will have to comply with government directives, submit its plans for government approval, or be accountable to the government and lose its independence with regard to the production of news casts or the content of its programming.
Before unconditionally supporting the motion, the Bloc Quebecois wants guarantees from the federal government that no federal cultural agency will be subjected to the directive released by the Treasury Board on March 26, 1998, demanding that such agencies display the Government of Canada logo. Everything must be done to ensure the independence of cultural institutions, and no measure that threatens that independence should be implemented.
The Bloc Quebecois is also demanding that all the provisions in Bill C-44 that have the effect of increasing the federal government's control over appointments in the cultural sector be eliminated.
Moreover, since the Prime Minister himself, through his statements and actions, has questioned the CBC's independence, the Bloc Quebecois is asking him to formally recognize the corporation's editorial independence, for both its creative and information services. That statement should apply to all the members of his government.
The Bloc Quebecois is also asking the CBC's board of directors to make a public commitment to Canadian taxpayers that it will fight tooth and nail to protect the corporation's independence, and that it will inform the public of any attempt from any party to influence the corporation.
These are the minimal assurances the Bloc Quebecois feels the federal government owes Canadians and Quebeckers if the CBC is to keep its independence. Without that independence, which has until now been a hallmark of the corporation's French and English networks, increased funding to the CBC would be seen by the public as nothing more than a boost to a federal government propaganda tool.