Scott Simms

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am impressed with the member's question.

He illustrates a very good point of this motion, about the multi-year funding, because there is the responsibility of our public broadcaster to raise money through revenues. Bidding for the Olympics is not a cheap thing, but it is great that our public broadcaster can cover the Olympics and hockey and that sort of thing. I know that now it is different with the contract going to the private sector. However, to provide programming that is illustrative of who we are as Canadians, for education purposes and also for entertainment, and to be serious about providing something that is not always achieving the biggest number of viewers, we have to do something that enriches our nation. Multi-year funding will go a long way in doing that. It allows the broadcaster to make these plans so that programs like Quirks and Quarks, which he is a fan of and continues to be today because it is a great program, can continue. That is fundamental in this debate.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I came here today to talk about public broadcasting, quite frankly. With all due respect to my colleague, I have no interest in answering that question.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I think it is. By way of illustration, if I may continue with my testimony, over the next little while we anticipate getting from that dollar value to a world average, which is about $88. That is a substantial amount. That is more than double what we are doing right now.

The models we could use in other nations may dictate. It is more expensive for us because of revenue sources. We are not in a country that is relatively the same size. Let us take a look at places like Switzerland and those areas. They do not have to broadcast to a much larger geography; however, that gap is now decreasing, given digital and satellite technology. There is room to grow in that part.

The member mentioned $45 million in cuts to be restored, which is true. However, the most important part of this has to deal with the fact that it is a multi-year model for funding. This is the most vital part of the motion that all parties should consider doing.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Do not boo, because we lost. Seriously, we cannot rub it in any more than what it is. That is the passion we share.

As a child, I loved watching baseball. If I could bring the Montreal Expos back, I would bring them back tomorrow. God love them. The issue is not just about baseball or the Carnaval or the hockey that we share. The issue here, if I may steal something from a Canadian intellectual, the late Marshall McLuhan, is that the medium is the message.

Today, that is exactly why we are debating this. It is the medium that brought us the message of Canada. That medium is not just about radio, not just about television, not just about the Net or any social media out there, but it is about the existence of public broadcasting.

What worries me is there is a change in ideology. I know that once I sit down, I will be questioned about cuts that happened in the 1990s. I am well aware of that. There were budgetary constraints. The Liberals were under pressure to wrestle a massive deficit and tough decisions were made. It was not just the CBC that was affected. Other tough decisions had to be made as well. However, we never lost sight of the fact that public broadcasting was vital to our country. Funding was stabilized once the budget was back into balance.

What worries me, however, and I hope it is highlighted in this debate, is an ideology is creeping in that dictates, “Why should I pay for public broadcasting when private broadcasting can fill that space?” Through you, Mr. Speaker, to all my colleagues in the House, that is the most dangerous attitude we can have against any semblance of public broadcasting.

I believe that our private broadcasters are doing a wonderful service to our country. They donate to the Canada Media Fund, which is a wonderful program providing movies, documentaries, and funding for all these things that tell our story, not only to each other but to the world. However, our public broadcasting is incredibly sacrosanct.

I would like to talk about some of the issues of recent time. I noticed the motion itself calls for multi-year funding to the public broadcasters so it can fulfill its mandate. Indeed, in the last couple of elections we talked about that. It is really the only way we can go about doing this. The BBC does it, and it does it well. If members noticed, some of the best programming in drama is now coming from the BBC, a public broadcaster. One of the greatest worldwide news services, the most respected, is the BBC. We must look to other models around the world, and the BBC is one example, especially when it comes to multi-year funding.

I want to talk briefly about CBC/Radio-Canada and its history through the years.

It has been said that through 1920s, there was a proliferation of private radio stations in our country, but we also had a lot of private radio stations streaming across the border. The origins of public broadcasting are not dissimilar from the origins of public broadcasting around the world, which is to say that we need to protect our message here. This is becoming more difficult because of the regulations in place to help protect our Canadian culture, like Canadian content rules allowing certain channels on the satellite spectrum. There are certain regulations, but a lot of people are now able to get around that because of technology.

By way of example, there is Netfllix, or what is called an over-the-top broadcaster, essentially, through the Internet, because the CRTC does not regulate the Internet. Therefore, content is now streamed through our computers. We can get copies from iTunes and these sorts of things. There is a fundamental shift in content and how we deal with content now. We will have to subsidize content in the future, but in the meantime, the CBC started with the very basics of protecting our own culture.

In 1928, it established a royal commission to advise on the future of broadcasting in Canada.

Going ahead to the 1940s, the national public broadcaster took off.

In 1941, CBC news service was formally opened. Radio-Canada's news division was also created. As the next decade approached, getting into the 1950s, television was on the horizon and CBC/Radio-Canada was preparing.

In 1947, the corporation presented a 15-year plan for the development of television in Canada.

Throughout the 1950s, CBLT Toronto and CBFT Montreal began broadcasting.

In 1955, television services were available to 66% of the Canadian population. That is a pretty big goal and accomplishment for a country with a few million people, the second-largest country in the world, and most of this stuff was over-the-air transmissions.

In the 1960s, the regulatory framework was refined. The CRTC formally took over as the regulator. Before that, the CBC handled it.

In 1968, the new Broadcasting Act confirmed CBC/Radio-Canada's role in providing the national service. Therefore, 1968 was the year when we said that we had a national broadcaster, a public broadcaster, and, therefore, it should be enshrined and protected.

Recently, however, due to cuts, the CBC had to make some fundamental decisions on its service. It had to manage $390 million in financial pressures since 2009. Overall, these reductions have affected the equivalent of 2,107 full-time positions.

We talked about some of the numbers earlier in this debate. For people are just tuning in now, I would like to repeat some of those numbers because it is very vital that we do so. A lot of people think we may spend too much on public broadcasting, but let us put it into perspective. Each Canadian pays $29 per year for the combined services, CBC/Radio-Canada, but the worldwide average in other nations is $82. Of the 18 countries that invest heavily in public broadcasting, we are at number 16. Therefore, there is room to grow.

Again, I go back to what was in the original motion. We also have to provide a model for multi-year funding.

The services offered now to Canadians include 88 radio stations, 27 television stations, three all-digital services, two specialty television news services, RDI, CBC News Network , three other specialty television services, and 11 other services, including music channels and services in two official languages across six time zones. Therefore, we get the vastness of what our public broadcaster has to accomplish.

The 1980s saw a tremendous growth in the number of private and specialty channels. We went from a four- or five-channel universe to about a 60-channel universe in the 1980s, with American channels being the most prolific at the time, the CNNs of the world. We followed suit with Newsworld, which it was called at the time, the CBC component of an all-news channel. CTV did much the same. We had TSN as well as the Weather Network, MétéoMedia en français.

The corporation continues to push ahead this multi-channel universe. Throughout the 1990s, it was much of the same. All of a sudden we find ourselves now in the proliferation of not just channels but platforms. Therefore, we move into the digital world, providing content. The way we consume our entertainment through digital devices has changed dramatically. Tonight's Hockey Night in Canada starts at 7 p.m., 7:30 p.m. Newfoundland time.

Basically, we are moving out of making appointments to see entertainment. What we are doing now is downloading content in our digital world. Whether it is to save it to view it another time or to stream it from a cloud or from the central service that is provided. CBC, our public broadcaster, has to fit its way into that.

However, what is interesting about that is it also provides a great deal of opportunities. Through one of these providers, lately I have downloaded—and paid for it, I might add—several programs that originated with the BBC. One has to wonder, with the BBC providing this content, if we could do much the same.

However, we have to get serious about content, and that is a conversation and a debate we should have in the future about not only the CBC but the National Film Board and the Canada Media Fund. We can look at Canadian content.

I thank the hon. member for Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher for bringing forward the motion. I hope the debate will be a fruitful one, despite the vote. We pretty much know how the vote will go, but in the course of this conversation, we can talk about fundamental reasons why we like our public broadcaster and how we can improve it, given technology today.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to speak about CBC/Radio-Canada, for very important reasons. Our public broadcaster has been a stalwart for this country in building its culture from coast to coast to coast. I have always said that people say CBC is vital for regional programming, where it has served for many years.

We have parallel situations, of course. We have the private sector and we have the public sector, meaning the CBC. When we look at many of the smaller markets where the private sector could not survive on its own, the CBC provided that vital service. I speak specifically of CBC North as a prime example. In my province of Newfoundland and Labrador, it provided a service in Labrador in places where it was not obtainable through the private sector.

As I look back at both Radio-Canada and the CBC, I look at how they provided a national conversation and a national understanding. Before the days when we could talk to each other with a small mobile device, our way of communicating with each other was through a public broadcaster.

I remember as a child growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s watching the CBC. There was no thousand-channel universe at that point, and we did not have a computer or the Internet to use; television and radio were the only ways. Therefore, our conversation took place through the viewing of television and the making of documentaries and information programming, primarily provided by the CBC. There were no specialty channels back then, so we had our main broadcast channels, such as CTV, Global, and the affiliate, and we had the CBC and its regional station in addition to the American broadcasters, which came over the border and through cable.

At the time, I remember watching the traditions of organ-making for churches in Quebec. I had never really known about it. I remember writing about it in high school. I wrote about how Quebec was famous worldwide for developing these large pipe organs in churches. I had not known that. Here I was, a young child in Newfoundland and Labrador, learning about what was a tradition in the province of Quebec. I learned about Bonhomme and the Carnaval de Québec through CBC. I was not in Quebec, but I learned about it.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, I learned about the majestic mountains of British Columbia through the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I also learned about Canada's north and the 24-hour sun, the 24-hour daylight, through the CBC.

In the course of growing up in a small province on the eastern coast of this country, on a small island, in the days when communications were not as prolific as they are now and certainly not prevalent by any stretch, all we had were three or four channels. The CBC was my window to my country. Not only was it the ability to see the country; it was the ability to converse with the rest of the country.

Later, when I grew up, I joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. I joined the air cadets and got to see the country that I had seen on television. I travelled to Alberta. I travelled to Nova Scotia and these areas. I had a genuine interest in doing that because I had seen the country laid out in front of me on a small television screen. I got to see the majestic mountains of both western Alberta and British Columbia in person, and I was astounded by them. If it had not been for our national public broadcaster, I never would have really appreciated what I was about to see, and I never would have had a genuine interest to see it.

This is what our public broadcaster has done. Through the years, it has provided us with a yearning to be Canadian in all facets of this country.

Let us not forget one of the greatest institutions alive in this country. That is Hockey Night in Canada. It was formerly La Soirée du hockey.

For a child growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador, the upbringing was not that much different from growing up in Trois-Rivières. I grew up in the small town of Bishop's Falls. On Saturday, I would go and play hockey at the local arena, but I certainly would not miss Hockey Night in Canada. I am sure for kids growing up in Trois-Rivières, Saint-Jean, or other small towns in Quebec, it certainly would not have been dissimilar.

Our public broadcaster united us in what we had a passion for, whether we were children, teenagers, or adults, as we are today. However, the public broadcaster has had challenges. It has had budgetary challenges through the years, as the Government of Canada has had budgetary challenges over the years. I could say the same for the National Film Board, given what it is going through.

What we must not forget is the genuine understanding that our public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada, is still vital to us today to make sure we share these conversations across this country. We want to know what is happening in Canada's north. We want to see what is happening in Canada's north. We want to hear what is happening in Canada's north.

Let us not forget another element of CBC/Radio-Canada. We pushed Canada out to the world through short wave radio service for many years. We were a pillar for shortwave radio, with our ability to communicate around the world and spread our message to billions of people in China or India and throughout the United States of America. We had a service similar to its public radio, NPR, but ours was more challenging because we only have 30 million people right now, and in those days we had about 20 million people, trying to support this service that went from coast to coast to coast.

Let me go back to my original point. It is not just about having local stations, which are very vital and important, but what the CBC did, secondly and just as importantly, was allow a small child in Newfoundland and Labrador to experience the country through French Canadians in Quebec, French Canadians in New Brunswick, English Canadians in British Columbia and Alberta, and of course through many aboriginal groups across this country. The conversation was shared.

There are institutions in this country that are famous, and not just by themselves. Let me use an example I used previously, the Carnaval in Quebec City. It is a fantastic event. Its mascot, Bonhomme, is famous. It is not just a Quebec phenomenon. I always wanted to meet Bonhomme, and I had never been to Quebec at that point.

Many citizens in this country want to meet Bonhomme, and they know Bonhomme because of our public broadcaster. That is why. It is because we had a conversation between French Canada and English Canada. In doing so, we got to share its triumphs, such as last night, when the Montreal Canadiens won game seven. That is not a bad admission, given the fact that I am Boston Bruins fan.

[Fisheries and Oceans, May 14th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in 2007, conditions were worse well into June. I can only assume that would be case here again, but I am not sure if I am reading this correctly. Is the door closed on this?

When I spoke to Ron Coles from Embree this morning, he mentioned this devastating situation, and it is not really warm weather that is needed. If we ask the fishermen, they will say they need a couple of storms, those strong winds to get the ice out into the ocean and away from the harbours. That is the key here.

I thank the parliamentary secretary for coming in to do this, but my question is, very pointedly, if this situation we have right now persists, is the possibility still open to provide ice compensation, as was provided in 2007 and 2009? Let us bear in mind that I now have close to 200 calls in my offices alone over ice compensation and how nobody can get out there on the water.

[Fisheries and Oceans, May 14th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to follow up on a question I asked some time ago regarding the fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador. There are two issues at play in my riding and for the northern coastline, even in southern Labrador through to the Northern Peninsula and the rest of Newfoundland. Basically, we are looking at fishing areas 2J, 3K, and 3L.

The first issue is with respect to the shrimp fishery. It suffered a big cut in the inshore fishery of 30%, whereas the offshore fleet was left out of it by only 2%.

The other major issue is ice compensation, which I asked about in the House last week. I spoke to a fish harvester in my riding, Ron Coles, who lives not too far from me. Ron updated me on just how bad it is with the ice forming now in all the major harbours. I am talking about White Bay, Green Bay, Notre Dame Bay, and even around the cape toward Bonavista Bay. The ice is hampering the crab fishery, no doubt, as well as the other fisheries involved. A lot of people cannot get out. As a result, it is a devastating situation.

Many people who rely on fishing EI benefits have not received a cheque since the middle of April, and now it is a month since that time. They have had no income for about a month. This is affecting the harvesters, the crews on their boats, and hundreds of plant workers.

My question, once again, is for the parliamentary secretary. When can we get an answer on what should be an ice compensation package to get some income for these people who have been devastated by the ice?

[Petitions, May 14th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, this is a petition, once again, regarding Canada Post.

Outrage has been displayed in many of the small communities in my riding regarding the downgrading of postal services. This one comes from the communities around Indian Bay. There are several signatures to show that they are highly dismayed with the reduced hours and diminished services of Canada Post in their community.

[Democratic Reform, May 14th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is with a certain degree of disappointment that I must rise in the House today and challenge members of the government caucus for passing the unfair elections act at third reading. It is an act widely panned as an attack on our democracy. It is a bill whose process was flawed, and there is more. It is a bill whose objectives has more to do with ensuring a Conservative advantage in 2015.

Sheila Fraser put it best when she described the law as “clearly an infringement on the independence of the chief electoral officer”.

The flaws in the reduced vouching system, the reduced independence of the officer, and the inability of the elections commissioner to compel witness testimony mean that the bill should be sent back to the drawing board, not sent to the Senate.

However, seeing as the bill is now in the Senate, I call upon our senators to show that they are indeed the house of sober second thought and take the time to carefully dissect and fix the significant flaws of this democracy-changing bill.

The Conservatives have placed the health of our democracy in the hands of the Senate. Good luck.

[Fair Elections Act, May 12th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member made the point that the bill is in response to requests made in how Elections Canada carried out its mandate, and so changes were made.

Who made these comments to the Conservatives before the bill was tabled?