CHER Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, December 2, 1997

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[Translation]

The Chairman (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib)): I call to order this meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which is continuing its study on Canadian culture and the impact of certain innovations, such as new technology, and of international trade on Canadian culture.

[English]

I would like to warmly welcome our witnesses. We're extremely honoured today.

I would like to mention for the information of our members that unfortunately, due to the illness of somebody close to her, Mrs. Joan Pennefather couldn't be with us today. She apologizes to the committee for not being able to be here.

We are extremely fortunate and honoured to have with us today two very distinguished Canadians and members of the cultural community.

First, I'm referring to Mr. Bernard Ostry, who is a former deputy minister in the ministries of industry, trade, communications, and citizenship and culture in the federal government and the Government of Ontario. He's also a former chairman and CEO of TV Ontario.

Mr. Ostry has received the Order of Canada. He is one of the most distinguished Canadians in the area of culture. We are extremely fortunate today to have his wisdom and expertise to guide us in our study.

With Mr. Ostry,

[Translation]

there is Mr. Florian Sauvageau, to whom we extend a warm welcome. He is of course known for having co-chaired in 1986 the Caplan-Sauvageau Commission on broadcasting in Canada. He is one of the most renowned professors from Laval University, specializing in communications, information and journalism. He has had an outstanding career as a journalist, filmmaker and writer. He is one of the leading Canadian experts in culture and communications.

Mr. Sauvageau participated in the study Développement culturel et mondialisation de l'économie, which he wrote with Marc Raboy, Yvan Bernier and Dave Atkinson.

We are therefore very pleased to welcome here today Mr. Ostry and Mr. Sauvageau, to whom we now give the floor. Please decide between yourselves who will begin.

[English]

Mr. Bernard Ostry (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Given all you've said about me—I can't speak for Florian—maybe I should leave now.

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I want to thank you and your clerk, research staff, and secretariat for continuing to try to drag Parliament into a productive examination of our country's cultural needs. I also thank you for your touching belief that a retired old bureaucrat might have something useful to say on the subject. It's indeed an honour to participate in such intellectually inquisitive company.

I understand from Mr. Radford that he circulated recent remarks by me bearing on some aspects of culture-trade issues, so I'm not going to bore you by regurgitating my pearls here, except to take five or six minutes to underline what I believe needs special emphasis.

The Canada quandary or problem to which I referred in the paper that was circulated is the fact of our having provided for a massive cultural invasion by our neighbour while ostensibly seeking the most advanced means to express our own views to one another and promote national unity, and it's well known.

This dilemma is best revealed by the current statistics on the high percentages of foreign—chiefly U.S.—films, books, recordings, magazines, TV programs, etc., distributed in our country. The fact that 75% of prime time drama on French-language TV in Canada originates outside Canada says it all. The recent WTO decision concerning magazines is a reminder or wake-up call regarding a cultural crisis that has obtained for ages.

So for a Canadian government that believes being swamped in such a way is neither healthy nor acceptable, how does it deal with the challenge effectively?

In my limited experience in government in Ottawa and Toronto, where I served all three political parties that have formed governments, you cannot begin to seriously approach a cultural policy unless it is seen to be and accepted as a central rather than a marginal issue.

The quality of a government's response is largely determined by the attitude of the prime minister or premier of the day. So the first question I ask myself is: what is the status or priority of the subject matter within government? Is it central, marginal, or somewhere in between?

If it is central, as responsible ministers invariably and publicly proclaim, then where's the beef commensurate with such centrality and urgency? If there is a commitment to the blue-ribbon stuff, who is meant to consume it and for what declared purpose?

I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, that this is not my place to be posing questions to this august committee, but I raise these three queries somewhat rhetorically so that I can clarify my own position on each, ill-informed as it might seem after so many years away from public administration.

My contention is that in spite of your bold and determined efforts, culture in this federal government today, as was the case with its predecessors for nearly 20 years, is marginal, if not trivial. In my view, it must be moved swiftly to centre stage, politically and financially, in the fundamental interests of Canadian unity and of Canada's international stature, as the rhetoric of Ministers Axworthy, Copps, Manley, et al., trumpets.

There is simply too huge a gap between the language, claims, and promises of the portfolio outlooks of departments with a finger in this pie and the resources being spent on programs meant to deliver results. As for the quantity of beef, if the annual federal budget is about $150 billion, of which well over $100 billion goes to programs, then 7% to 10%, rather than the share of 2.5% to 3% today, for so central an array of programs would seem reasonable, again, in light of the goals to be served and assuming 2.5% to 3% is a reasonably accurate figure.

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Finally, if the beef is forthcoming, it should be fed to content providers, to international as well as our own delivery systems, because that's where the largest audiences are for the products of Canada's individual and collective imaginations.

The content kitty suggested seems large only when compared with its inadequate, piddling base. In fact, it must be viewed against twice that cashflow for software in any one of a half dozen international conglomerates, such as Time Warner, Disney, or Viacom.

With a critical mass of capital and with competitive entrepreneurial and political leadership guiding its use, a huge opportunity for Canada's leadership on the world stage will have been seized. Of course, once you genuinely shift resources for content, the whole current infrastructure of agencies, which believe they are in this business already, will have to be re-examined and today's lack of focused co-ordination within this policy field rectified.

Distinguished members of this committee know better than anyone that Canadians are uniquely equipped for the opportunity and challenge to lead the developed and developing world as partners in such an adventure. We are rich enough. Our history and geography and peoples have given us a place in the vanguard. We possess the languages, the technologies, the experience, and the understanding. We are close friends with the United States, and we are blessed with many other friends who respect our endeavours.

Think about it. It is a great challenge and a great opportunity.

In the meantime, I'll try to answer your questions after my colleague gives his statement. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Ostry.

[Translation]

Mr. Sauvageau.

Mr. Florian Sauvageau (Professor, Laval University): Mr. Chairman, I would first like to thank you for your invitation and your flattering introduction. For anyone having to make a presentation, it's always a bit complicated when the introduction is too generous as people then expect too much.

I would like to make two general comments and then develop on them. I may be a little longer than Mr. Ostry. I always admire those people who manage to say important things in a short time. I did so when it was less important, when I had to repeat what other people said because I was a journalist. Since I have been in academic life, I have found it very difficult to be brief. I hope that committee members will forgive me for this.

I always feel a little apprehensive when people prepare for the future. From reading the questions you have asked, it is very clear that you're trying to prepare, in the area of culture, for the 21st century which is not very far away, as well as for the longer term.

My fear is that in preparing for the future, we may forget the present. My fear is that we may be practising futurology. In fact technology, which is one of the subjects you asked us to speak about, lends itself well to futulogical scenarios, whereas, as explained by the French specialist Bertrand de Jouvenel who clearly distinguished between futurology and forecasting, the future is rooted in the present. If, in preparing for the future we neglect the present, we could well face problems tomorrow.

In a moment I will explain what I mean by that, when I elaborate a little on technology, future possible scenarios and actual realities.

In your presentation you spoke about the globalization and liberalization of trade. I don't think that you can prepare cultural policies nowadays without in fact considering globalization. Cultural policies, like all policies and the role of government, are called into question by globalization because, as you know better than I, globalization is far more than just a trade matter.

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I also think that even if the apostles of globalization challenge the very idea of ideology, globalization is in fact an ideology. It is the ideology of the market, of the sovereign consumer, which involves a withdrawal by the State because the State is seen as an obstacle to the sovereignty of the consumer. However, it seems to me that public service is still as essential as it was in the past, and that certain social and cultural activities must not be subject to the logic of the market.

The problem is that public service in the cultural sector, for example, often refuses to change and adapt to the new situation.

Therefore, let us come to my first point, technology. Mr. Chairman, when you introduced me you referred to the Caplan-Sauvageau Report. In that report, we quoted the American scientist Vannevar Bush. I have referred often to that quotation over the past 10 years because during that time I have tried on a number of occasions to warn against what I refer to as technological euphoria.

However, I am not a technological sleepwalker, to use the expression of Neil Postman in his distinction between sleepwalkers and those who are euphoric. I know that technology changes the world, but Vannevar Bush clearly pointed out that we always overestimate the short-term impact of technology and underestimate its long-term impact. There are many examples of announcements made in the communications sector over the past 15 years regarding developments which in some cases we're still waiting for, and other developments which will no doubt materialize one day or have already emerged, but in a different way from what was announced.

A very good example is direct broadcasting satellites. In 1983, in order to address the threat of direct broadcast satellites, the Department of Communications revamped its policies. When technological changes are announced it is always thought that they are just around the corner, whereas often they materialize only some time later. It was thought that just around the corner there were direct broadcast satellites which would beam in programs from the United States, bombard us with American culture and sweep away our Canadian culture which was already facing enough problems.

That was in 1983; it is now 1997 and it was only recently that... Well, there is of course the grey market. You will remember the debates about the deathstars. And yet Canadian satellites have just started to get going, and you know with how much difficulty.

It's somewhat the same situation as regards convergence. Telephone systems which will provide television, cable systems which will provide telephone services, and the 500-channel universe. We have been told about these 500 channels, but we are still waiting for them. At present we don't even have the technical capability to broadcast all these specialized channels granted licenses by the CRTC. So we are still a long way away from fads and euphoria. There are of course tests being conducted by Bell Canada to distribute television, but when will we see television distributed by telephone lines and Bell Canada? I don't know.

I would just like to quickly give you an example of technological euphoria. Northern Telecom announced a few years ago, in 1989, at a major press conference in Montreal, that we would soon have what they referred to as the universal octo-numeric system. I will read you an extract of the press release issued at the time, which was obviously picked up by journalists who are always the first to be taken in by technological fads.

The journalist from the newspaper La Presse forecast that after 1995, Bell customers could order at home the film, rock concert or databank of their choice. "Imagine", added Northern in its publicity material, "that all these services will be available in every Canadian home within just a few years". That was in 1989. We are still far from that in 1997.

I could also remind you of the example of Télidon, which would also be available in the immediate future. There are many other examples of this kind.

No one knows, and this is the problem for those people who eulogize technology, what consumers will do and how, for example in the case of the Internet, they will balance their time and money between traditional audio-visual services and the new media.

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It is quite possible that if you spend all day working or studying from Internet or working on databases, you may want to spend your leisure time on something else than the Internet. I don't know. All I'm saying is that no one knows and that opinions are being presented as certainties, whereas in fact no one knows what will happen.

It could well happen, and this is perhaps what Hollywood is doing by increasing the number of large-screen theatres where the spectator is enveloped in a new visual environment, that if you spend a day at home working in front of your computer screen, you may want to escape outside in the evening, and the cocooning which distinguished the 1990s may be replaced—and here once again, I am offering an hypothesis not making a statement, although other people claim to know—by outside leisure activities, in large-screen theatres, so as to do something else than just look at your screen at home.

However, while the future is being announced, the number of speciality channels is increasing. Canada is adopting the American model, as our channels are just copies of American models. We stop thinking as we are dazzled by American products. We stop thinking about the American models we are increasingly adopting despite the fact that our reality is completely different from that of the United States. We don't concern ourselves about the consequences on democracy resulting from the increase in the number of channels. While mass media have contributed and are the main cause of mass consumption, they are also an essential tool for bringing people together, essential to democratic life.

That's all I want to say about technology. I would now turn briefly to the issue of globalization. The 21st century will soon be with us. There is a lot of talk these days about the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which is being discussed in the OECD. Nor should it be forgotten that discussions will resume at the World Trade Organization, that the issue of cultural exceptions will be examined again in that forum and that the Americans have never given up, despite the fact that this cultural exception was accepted in 1993. We can see on the horizon—because there are some things that are true in technological change, the multimedia, etc.—an enormous industrial and commercial battle coming up, and they will not give up easily.

What I myself think about globalization and the cultural exception, is that we urgently need to clarify our cultural policies. It is obvious that there is enormous ambiguity in these discussions. The Americans do not place the same cultural value as we do on cultural industries and cultural products. For them, this is entertainment. For us and other countries, such as France, this is culture. If we want the cultural exception to be retained, the cultural dimensions and impact of our cultural policies must be more obvious.

Over the past 15 years it is the economic aspect which has prevailed. There are two aspects in the media and cultural industries: the economic aspect and the cultural aspect. It seems to me that until the mid-1980s, we in Canada had always managed to maintain a balance between the cultural dimension and the economic dimension in the media and cultural industries.

I think that the balance has been broken and that people have not easily accepted policies aimed for example at establishing copies of US speciality channels. I can understand that the Americans don't fully appreciate the cultural impacts of the rebroadcasting by MuchMusic and Musique Plus of the same clips as MTV. I can understand that it's difficult for them to appreciate the profound impact on culture of such policies.

Economic and industrial policies have been promoted and increased. At the same time, we have witnessed a decline in cultural institutions. Cultural industries have been promoted while cultural institutions such as the CBC, the National Film Board and the Canada Council have declined. However, it is the cultural impact of these institutions which can be clearly seen and would allow us to argue for the cultural exception.

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It also seems to me that your committee should have very close links with the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which discusses international cultural policies. These areas are so closely linked nowadays. I think that to some extent in the cultural area—and here I come back to what Mr. Ostry said—the sense of public service has been lost. I even wonder whether the harm done to our major cultural institutions can be redeemed. In the case of the National Film Board, I think that the damage is beyond repair.

We must therefore rediscover the sense of public service, review our cultural institutions to make them correspond to the new reality or recreate cultural institutions in keeping with the current situation.

I think this is the message delivered in the little book I left with Mr. Radford, the clerk. This is all part of democracy, because the media and the cultural industries are linked to our democratic life. If globalization jeopardizes our cultural institutions, in some sense it also jeopardizes democratic life.

Thank you for your attention, and of course I look forward to an interesting dialogue.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Ostry and Mr. Sauvageau. Our first speaker is Mr. Abbot.

[English]

Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay—Columbia, Ref.): Thank you very much.

Gentlemen, you've been very challenging this morning. You've lived up to your billing. I wonder if you might be able to help me and perhaps the committee with a definition. I'd like to briefly give you a background.

If we take a look at the Time Warners and the Disneys and the pervasive influence of what I call American cultural imperialism, we seem to know what we're talking about. We do understand the difference, for example, between a Maclean's magazine and Time magazine, or things of that nature. But what I'm grappling with is to define specifically what we're talking about. Could you help me define or describe Canadian culture?

You see, if we don't quantify, if we don't specifically describe what it is we are attempting to do here, if we don't identify clearly so that everyone in this room and the public at large is aware of exactly what it is we're trying to enhance, to bring forward, then we all end up chasing rabbits.

For example, is the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Canadian culture? Is a country and western show Canadian culture? Where does this fit? Is a demolition derby at the CNE Canadian culture? What would be really helpful to me would be if you could help us define what it is we're about.

We talk about public service and cultural institutions. Mr. Ostry spoke of culture being marginal if not trivial to governments, and so on. But until we specifically define the word “culture,” particularly—let's throw in the adjective—Canadian culture, I think we could all be going in different directions. Could you help me with that definition?

The Chairman: Are you asking both witnesses?

Mr. Jim Abbott: Yes, please.

The Chairman: Mr. Ostry.

Mr. Bernard Ostry: I can answer the question for my purposes, but I don't know that I can for yours. In the document I gave the clerk, there is a definition of culture, which I used in my book The Cultural Connection. It's a broad, sociological, universal definition.

If I told you that when you were born your first breath was a breath of the universe and that your culture began probably after your 28th week in your mother's womb, you wouldn't accept that because you can't ask how it compares with Time Warner's product X. I think the difficulty becomes one of accepting the broad values of the culture that emerge over time in a community, a region, and a society.

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As for your specifics, yes, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, which has raised its profession and money and people in the community in Winnipeg and has performed around the world to considerable applause, is a Canadian product even though most of the music and some of the choreography they choose to use happens to be foreign.

I don't know if Maclean's and Time are very different in format, but the content of the two is why we passed C-58 and why we have Maclean's today. We wouldn't have it all if you didn't take that legislative action. I don't know how else I can describe my own personal view, which can probably be distinguished from your own, except in terms of what I've said and written.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Before the professor answers, maybe I could clarify this with the example of Bryan Adams and the recording for which he was considered not Canadian enough to be classified as Canadian in order to be on the air. That's the kind of thing I'm trying to get at. It seems to me we have to define what Canadian culture is so we can get away from the Bryan Adams kind of example.

Professor?

Prof. Florian Sauvageau: Please don't try to define what Canadian culture is.

We had a symposium at the Museum of Civilization last Friday on the topic of “models” in television or in recording. For a long time in Quebec we had on French television what were called “les téléromans”, which have always been seen as the best example of Quebec's national identity, because those téléromans are about history or stories located in Montreal or Quebec City. They deal with our problems, our past problems, and our problems of the day.

More and more in the last seven or eight years the téléromans have been replaced by telefilms. The téléromans were done in studios and the form was very original, not just the content. Now we are using the American form, the American way of editing. It's very rapid, with very quick images. And because the American model is being used, a lot of people are wondering if those teleseries are still Canadian or Quebec programs. We had a debate on that last Friday.

Generally speaking, I think over the years we stressed too much the opposition between Canadian and American culture.

For me, a Canadian commercial program might be as much of a problem as an American one. Let me give you an example. In Quebec, on hotlines, we have some announcers—they are not journalists—who are, if not worse than Howard Stern, at least as bad. For me, we were so aggressive towards Howard Stern over the last three or four months, since September, that we are in the process of forgetting that we have our own Howard Sterns.

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What I'm trying to say when I talk about democracy is we never tried in Canada to build a wall against Americans. What we always tried to do was to allow our creators, our artists, to have their say. What we wanted to do was build a choice between Americans' products and our products.

For various reasons, I have the feeling that the choice is decreasing, that we are using more and more the commercial American way of doing things and less an original way of doing things, because most of our media are more and more commercial. The profit motive is more and more the main argument for our media.

I think what we should try to do in the future.... This is not stressing, as in the past, the opposition between Canadian and American, but trying to build a space where something different from the commercial models can be seen, heard, or read by the Canadian public, create a space where we discuss our own things, as we tried to do in the past. As I tried to explain in my presentation, the balance doesn't exist any more as it existed in the past.

What we did with the little book was try to shift the argument from Canadian versus American to commercial versus democratic.

I hope I'm clear; on those precise things it's very difficult to be clear in English.

The Chairman: I think your point is made very clearly. All of us seem to understand exactly what you're driving at.

Madame St-Hilaire.

[Translation]

Ms. Caroline St-Hilaire (Longueuil, BQ): First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Ostry and Mr. Sauvageau for their presentation. You spoke a great deal about exports and our problems with the United States. Can you tell me whether you are in favour of exports or whether you think Canada would be better off improving its local production?

What is your position on exports? Do you think it would be better for the government to play a greater role in local production, in developing our talents here at home?

Mr. Florian Sauvageau: I see exports as one of the major problems. Policies began to change with the development, in the mid-1980s, of a world audio-visual market. We wanted part of the audio-visual market, and we decided that the way to do that was to create strong, independent producers. In my view, that was the beginning of the dismantlement of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

I am not saying that all CBC productions should have been kept in-house but the public service, in CBC, the hospitals and education, does have an approach in which quality is the main concern. Quality takes time.

In the case of independent productions, the main concern—and a very legitimate one—is cost effectiveness. Sometimes, quality and cost effectiveness do not necessarily go together. I think by putting so much emphasis on exports, on the need to promote exports using independent producers, we gradually undermine the public sector.

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Telefilm in fact played an important role in undermining the public sector by giving CBC's production to independents in order to create strong independent producers. That was the objective at the time.

That was precisely the economic argument, the industrial argument. I am not saying we should lose sight of that, but when we said in the 1980s that culture would be dependent—and here I am quoting what was said almost word for word—on a strong industrial base, I think that in some ways we were mistaken.

Look at the French network. I will give you two examples of television series this year that were made for the foreign market: Paparazzi and Diva. One series is about photographers, the paparazzi and the other is about top models. There are virtually no paparazzi in Quebec and there are no top models either. Quebec or Canadian supermodels go to New York or Paris if they want to make a career of modelling.

Why are stories of this type being chosen, when in the past, series told local stories, stories related to our identity problem. I am not saying that there are no programs about our identity, because there are.

In order to export, we have to find subjects that have international appeal. A series or documentary set in Sudbury or Kelowna would not sell very well on the international market. I am thinking of the extremely successful television series, Le temps d'une paix, which was set in the period between two wars in the Charlevoix region. It might not sell that well internationally either.

If we produce for foreign countries, we will stop producing for ourselves. As a result, our television or cinema will contribute less and less, not only to our identity but also to democratic life, because cinema and television are as much a democratic tool as is journalism. The problems faced by society are not expressed only by journalists in news bulletins, but can also be very clearly explained and understood by the public through a television serial, a television film or a movie.

It is here that we see a difference between exports and culture. Exports are great in economic terms, but they do not contribute to the vitality of a society's democratic life.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Ostry, would you like to comment?

Mr. Bernard Ostry: I don't know that I can add very much, but I will try to distinguish my answer from Florian's in this way, which may be a difference. In my experience, creative people—and I'm not talking about journalists as creative people but novelists, writers, people who write music, choreographers, the whole range of people who deal with their particular cultural set—produce for people. They may only produce actually for themselves, but that's very rare.

I've not met an artist or a creative person who didn't hope for a large audience. Today, in a globalized world, that's in the world. I really don't think Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro or Mordecai Richler write about southern Ontario or eastern Montreal or Sudbury...except that they themselves are Canadians, but the product they're trying to create is for the widest possible appreciation of their work. The same is true of people who write music.

So I think one should—they're going in the same direction—separate what the people who produce want to do and the people who are in an industry that is competitive in a society or country that has a very limited market for the costs of that production.

In the film business the average amount of money the U.S. film industry puts into a single film is somewhere between $12 million and $13 million. We read about the $125 million films, but the average is about $12 million to $13 million. In Britain it's about $6 million. In France it's about $5 million. In this country you would be hard-pressed to get it between $1 million and $2 million.

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If you're going to be in the competitive market, you have to look at how you invest in this and whether or not the level of investment is something you can cope with. Either that or you stop talking about being in that market.

If I may, Mr. Chairman, I think Mr. Abbott's question about definition is an extremely important one, because in a way it has to do with the politics of culture outside. People have to understand what it's about. It's complex, and that's why it's so difficult to sell it to large numbers on the outside. That's why people aren't queuing up nagging every member of Parliament to vote for increased amounts of money for culture. But if you leave out the people in tutus in Winnipeg, as an example, and ask yourself....

We have medicare. We have a large medical industry in this country. We have lots of doctors. We approach the care of a population in a particular way. It is not the American way. It is different from what there is in western Europe. It is a Canadian approach to the issue of providing care for people in Canada.

We have a military. It's unlike that of the United States. We had the same kind of equipment as the Americans, but we entered the war the day war was declared in Europe against Germany. The Americans didn't enter the war until they were bombed.

Those things are cultural differences. They may be hard to explain to people, but the people of this country are different because of the environment and the nature of the society. There is a whole series of areas in which this country, because of its cultural difference from the United States, has in effect been ahead of the United States. It's not ahead in a lot of technology, but it's ahead in the subject of participation, which they first discovered in their academic institutions. It's ahead in the whole issue of multiculturalism, which goes up and down in terms of the politics in this country, but which they are discovering they have to deal with. It's ahead in the way we've dealt with our native and indigenous groups in this country.

Those are part of the cultural differences. They are not definable with numbers for the CRTC to determine Adams' points. That's a different, semi-judicial issue over how you measure something. That's a measurement, not a definition.

I don't want to pursue it further, but I think it's a very important question.

The Chairman: Mr. Muise.

[Translation]

Mr. Mark Muise (West Nova, PC): First I would like to thank our two guests for their excellent presentations.

[English]

We have been discussing the MAI and cultural exemptions over the last little while. A concern that keeps coming up for me is how strong that cultural exemption will be or how it can be enforced.

When we discussed technologies and the changes in our technologies in the past, our cultural policies were basically in support of hard cultural goods like books and magazines. Now we're seeing more and more of our cultural goods taking the form of soft things. You can now get the magazines like Maclean's or Saturday Night on the Internet. Newspapers can be distributed electronically. How are we to regard these on-line cultural products? We can hardly monitor them, let alone control them. I'm just wondering how we can have a cultural policy that will have teeth when we have this technology that we can hardly control. I'm just grappling with this issue a little bit.

I'd direct that question to both.

Mr. Bernard Ostry: My wife's an expert on MAI; I'm not. I don't know anything about the economics of what the OECD or the WTO do. Otherwise I wouldn't have a marriage.

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The issue of controlling is in a way what I want to get away from in my thesis. I don't believe at all—it may be Florian does to a degree—that you can control what you're talking about. I don't mean we have to be prisoners. It depends on how you're going to respond to your concern about control.

My response is, if you want to be on the net and you want to be in pop culture, or you want to be in special niches, you have to have producers and distributors. In a country with a small population and a limited market you have to do that, you have to be in the world market; and to be there, you have to spend some cash. There is no way around that. You have to spend the money that allows you to compete, to build up the critical mass of product. You have to get to where the Hollywoods are.

And it's nothing compared with what it will be when the Indians and Chinese get there. The market we're concerned about in the United States is relatively small. We just follow it now because it's in the same language as two-thirds of the population speak. But the fact is the language barrier is not going to be a huge barrier before too long. In spite of the predictions that get made, it won't be.

I think if you're going to be concerned about where you are on that screen, then you have to pay for the production of the software.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Sauvageau.

Mr. Florian Sauvageau: In the questions you sent to us, various possible means of government intervention are given. The government can: legislate, regulate, act as an owner and operator or as a sponsor or partner. Those are the traditional forms of government intervention.

To simplify this further, we could say there are two possible ways the government can intervene: negatively or positively.

I am not very sympathetic to negative interventions, that is stopping other people. Basically what you are saying is that with the Internet, Canadian quotas are no longer possible. You are suggesting that Canadian content rules no longer apply because of the Internet, because of technology. In fact, there are no longer any borders.

I come back to what I said at the beginning. This will not take place tomorrow either. As a result, Canadian content rules should not be dropped immediately. I saw in the newspaper last week that although the number is increasing quickly, the latest figures from Statistics Canada indicate that only 13% of households are hooked up to the Internet. Also, the figure varies from province to province. It's higher in British Columbia and not as high in Quebec. So, we shouldn't think that everybody will be hooked up to the Internet tomorrow morning.

Nevertheless, I prefer positive government intervention. Examples of this are the CBC and the Canada Council. I think that positive government intervention should be reviewed in the context of future media developments.

Do we in Canada want to adopt the information highway development model proposed by President Clinton and Vice-President Gore? The U.S. information highway development strategy is to leave it to the private sector. In the past, the U.S. media development strategy was to leave it to the private sector to develop television. In the United States television is commercial. PBS is just a very small part of U.S. television. We decided in Canada not to adopt the commercial but rather the mixed model.

What are we doing now with new technology? The Internet is new technology, but so was radio in the 1920s. The approach taken to radio in the 1920s may be reflected in the 1990s in the case of new technology.

• 1200

Do we in Canada want to follow the U.S. model, something we did not do in the past for what we now refer to as old technologies? Do we want to continue along Canadian historical lines or adopt new legislation focussed solely on the market? That is the issue here. Does public service still have a role to play? And what should be the role of the public sector as regards the Internet? That is the question we have to ask now.

I agree with Mr. Ostry that if we want to be faithful to Canadian tradition, it's essential to state that there is a role for the public sector in the Internet. Perhaps our society has changed so much that we no longer want to follow a past which, in my view, has however served us well. I think that there are far more positive than negative aspects to the Canadian tradition. Do we want to accept the sudden break proposed by trade liberalization? That is what trade liberalization is proposing. it is a sudden break with the traditions of the past. Is that what we want, or do we want to continue in the same spirit, in keeping with what we have always done?

I think we have to ask the questions in these terms. We should not be asking whether we can resist technology. In the 1920s, we could have said as well that American programming was going to spread throughout Canada and that nothing could be done about it. We did not say that. I think that we are giving up a little too easily to the steamroller of globalization. We should rather be asking some questions.

[English]

The Chairman: Just to inform members, we have about an hour to go. We are going to complete the first round of questions, Mr. Mills, but after that I have a lot of requests for questions from Madam Bulte, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Obhrai, Mr. Godfrey, Monsieur Bélanger, and Mr. Lowther.

Mr. Mills.

Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview—Greenwood, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Ostry, you have had a tremendous amount of experience with the political and bureaucratic culture of this city and the national government. Why do a majority of politicians and senior deputies treat culture as trivial when it comes to promoting or supporting it in terms of the overall fiscal framework or budget required to really do the job that culture is supposed to do for community and country?

Mr. Bernard Ostry: If I knew the answer to that I would have done a lot more in my time.

Mr. Dennis Mills: I've had a little time to reflect on this in the last little while. It's very important for those of us who are trying to show some determined leadership in this area. Maybe with your experience you can give us from your vantage point some of the things we could do to soften up the ground.

Mr. Bernard Ostry: My reference to the importance of prime ministerial or premiers' leadership derives from the history of cultural development in this country. It's not something I've made up as some ideological or theoretical thing. It's a fact that the pressures have not come from the trade union movement or the farmers. They haven't come from numbers. They've come from one or two people who have convinced one and a half other people who have convinced the prime minister or premier of the day, who may or may not have been that interested but took the decision and did it.

I think the question then has to be asked “How do you convince the prime minister of the day to play a leading role?” Well, he or she is your prime minister. I don't know the individuals that well. I can tell you that much of the progress was accidental. Historians and academics may put it in a context in which it looks like a natural evolution, but I think in most cases it was accidental, whether it was a death and a chance conversation on a street here in Ottawa that led to the Canada Council, or the kinds of things that occurred over three or four years between 1929 and 1932 with respect to the CBC or other of these matters. They are largely accidents.

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In the period when I was here, when there seemed to be more sympathy, I suspect that if the minister at the time, who was deeply interested in the cultural subjects and had his own view, stemming from his own view of this country and his own knowledge of cultural development in France and elsewhere, the late Mr. Pelletier—if he hadn't been the prime minister's closest friend, I'm not so sure the prime minister of that day, in spite of the credit that's given him, would have moved as swiftly and as often in support of this.

Let me turn it around to another thing that seems to be going around the table here that concerns me, and that is that a lot is said about the United States. I think it's important when we're talking about our problem with what I call “smotheration” because of their product in pop culture. The other side of this is there isn't one United States on this cultural issue. There are lots of people and groups who are talking just as we two and many cultural leaders in this country talk. The president's commission, which I made reference to in the document that I believe was circulated.... Say what you want about public broadcasting, but the PBS destroyed the conservative Republican campaign against them and every one of those birds in Congress voted for the increase that will occur in two years of $300 billion.

So it is possible to deal with it, but you have to have what we do not have in this country: a united cultural community. Once you start fragmenting support, whether it's in culture or something else, people with a special interest find a special way to get their special interest served in politics. The publishers want this, the theatre people want this bailout, and the dancing community wants this. They're not together asking for a larger group of things under an umbrella. They're there saying they need this because of this particular industry and these 14 people are going to be unemployed and all these people who are waiting for my novel, and the rest.

It's not that they haven't tried under the Canadian Conference of the Arts. I sat on the executive of that for years. It's not that they don't have organizations that are to be umbrella organizations. It's that in the general thrust there is no general sense in the community—which Mr. Abbott was referring to—that there is a strong, powerful cultural lobby that's insisting Mills get off his butt and go down to the PMO and demand that they do something there; there isn't.

The Chairman: We'll start the second round. Ms. Bulte.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte (Parkdale—High Park, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I'd like to thank both of you for your long-needed discussion on arts and culture and your positions.

Mr. Ostry, I'm going to disagree with you right now that the arts aren't doing this. They sure are. Maybe they haven't had the ears here in Parliament to show just how important the arts are. I think if anything right now the arts, the theatres, and the dancers are getting smarter and they're realizing just how important the arts are as an investment. It's not just black hole funding. I think that's the whole problem. It's not just black hole funding; it's not just art for art's sake. I think if anything the arts are getting smarter and finding out that it is a great investment opportunity, both economically and culturally, and for our educational system to have these arts.

Having said that, I wonder if both of you would comment. Mr. Ostry, you talked a little bit about critical mass and about the production of new work. Where do you think this government should go? The Canada Council works. We know that. If it wasn't for the Canada Council 40 years ago we would have no original Canadian artistic product. That's a fact. So I don't want to throw that out with the water.

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But where do you think the focus should be? Is it the artist? Is it the arts organizations, which provide the venue for the artists to become part of the critical mass, which move into the commercial sector, into television? I'm looking at the not-for-profit side. Could you comment on that side?

I wonder if you could help me out. I've been sitting on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment subcommittee. One of the things we are grappling with right now is the definition of culture and cultural industries in light of the new technologies. Our minister has said our opening bargaining position will be a general exception, much like the French one. That will be something we start coming in with. But how do you define it? We cannot use the NAFTA definition because the technologies have changed.

Mr. Bernard Ostry: I hope you have lots of time.

I think I've made clear in my public statements recently that my concern has been with the vast overwash of American pop culture. I'm not talking simply about the dumbing down and the violence. I'm talking about the quantity that flows into this country by the nature of our democracy and technology.

My view has never been to control this in a protective sense, because I have never believed it was possible. I did believe one should have policies that relate to it. In the late 1960s, when I was at the CRTC, revising all the regulations, and Mr. Juneau had just brought me in as he had taken over as the first chair, I left because the decision had been made that they would license everybody without having a policy on cable. I thought it would be a useful thing if we worked out what it was we were going to do, since these people had been illegal for quite a long time with their little outfits across the country and they could wait a little longer and we would have a policy to deal with it. That didn't seem to be the general view, so I left.

I think the same thing is true now about the overwhelming cultural problem that exists because of what I call “swamping”. That is, we have all the creative people, all the technical people, all the technology, to do everything that can produce popular culture, nationally and internationally. We have all the equipment. But we don't have a cashflow in the market the United States enjoys.

It enjoys it, first of all, because it makes all its money back by the nature of the size of its market before it sends anything abroad, so it can sell the stuff abroad for anything. Everybody who is in an expanding television, cable, or film industry is going to buy it first, because it's much cheaper than buying something produced in their own country. The only answer to that, it seems to me, is to produce product.

I don't think we should wait for the corporations the Department of Industry is waiting for to produce an information highway, which we announced in this country in 1968. Unlike the Americans, we didn't skip it into the market, we just didn't do anything with it; which is rather like what we're doing now, which is having large committees meet over two years and publish lots of reports, and we don't have an information highway in spite of all the large statements made about this over the past few years. So we don't have the software for it either.

If we can't drive the technology, then let's drive the software. The Internet is there. The percentages may not be huge in Quebec or the rest of Canada, but they are growing at a pace in the world that is far beyond that, and it is the world market that this is for. That's what the Internet is about.

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In the next two or three years—I make a prediction, and two years from now Florian will be able to say it didn't come true—with compression and digitization the stuff you're going to get on the Internet will be equivalent in quality to what you're seeing on your screen. The reason it's full of data now is you can't deal with digitized sound yet, but you'll get that. Once they have sound, once you can have voices on there, the data thing will proportionately decrease.

The main thing is the software, and because the Americans have set a cost standard that fits their market, the software is not cheap. So for a while, until the world market gets larger and all of the prices begin to decline, I've talked about the kinds of billions of dollars that are required.

There ought to be in this country private sector money as well as public money, if the public were large enough to create the carrot. I say this because banks that weren't in this business five or eight years ago all have divisions that deal with multimedia now and they make investments of a controlled kind. They're not huge, but they're there and it's growing.

I think that if the Bronfmans can see some advantage in Hollywood, they'll see some advantage in Canada.

Mr. Florian Sauvageau: To define culture is certainly as difficult as to define Canadian culture. There is the restrictive definition of culture in an artistic sense, to the very broad definition of culture in the sociological sense, where everything we do is culture. If we eat, it's culture.

With regard to the arts and the media, you have high culture, mass or pop culture—which is not popular culture; this is something different.

If we have to stress something in the future, I would say that we should help the artists and those firms that can't develop themselves with the market. I say this because more and more we'll see some of our cultural industries going to the international market, and these industries don't need the help of the state. Also, you help someone at the beginning of his or her career and five or ten years later he or she doesn't need the help of the state any more. Céline Dion doesn't need the help of the state any more, but without the content rules on radio I don't know if Céline Dion would be known.

In the cultural sector there's an idea that to develop on the world market you have to start from a solid base in your own market. So there government has to help, but at a certain point the industry doesn't need that help any more.

[Translation]

I will continue in French.

You ask your question in the context of Multilateral Agreement on Investment. Canada looks very isolated for the time being. It seems that only France and Canada are seeking a cultural exemption but it seems the situation could change.

I was in England at the beginning of the month and a friend from the London School of Economics gave me David Puttnam's book, which had just come out. He is a British director who lived in the United States, came back to England somewhat disappointed and who has just written a book about the war going on in the film world. In the final chapters of his book, he explains that the fight will resume at the WTO on January 1, 2001. He says that Europe should not leave France to fight it out alone, because of the whole issue of cultural diversity.

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This is not something we have been hearing internationally from British politicians in recent years.

The day after my friend gave me the book, I read in the newspaper that Mr. Puttnam had just been named both Lord Puttnam and also chairman of the Committee on Cultural Industries established by Tony Blair. Will Great Britain's attitude suddenly change in the next few years? Is it possible that all of a sudden, in the area of culture, there might be an alliance between Great Britain and France? This fact alone would make the Canadian position much less isolated in the discussions at the OECD and in the future discussions at the WTO.

It is also interesting to note that, for once, on this issue of the cultural exemption, Quebec and Canada are saying the same thing. That is noteworthy as well. That is not insignificant given the political situation in this country at this moment.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Sauvageau.

Mr. O'Brien.

[English]

Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll limit myself to one question in view of what you said about the number of colleagues.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentations.

Mr. Ostry, you mentioned that in your judgment, the view of I think this federal government now is that culture is marginal, if not trivial. You based that, sir, as I heard it, on the underspending on culture, if that's a fair summation of what you said.

I support that, having come from a number of years in municipal government. I used to tell people they could give all the fine speeches they wanted, but until there was some money in the budget, it was a fine speech. So I hear your comment.

I wonder if there are other factors on which you base your judgment. If there are, perhaps you could give us a couple of those factors, and what would be the best response of government to those non-monetary factors. Or is it solely based on the fact that we don't spend enough money on our culture?

Mr. Bernard Ostry: To irritate some of you even more—

Mr. Pat O'Brien: I didn't mean to suggest that.

Mr. Bernard Ostry: —apart from the remarks I made about cultural leadership in this country from the creative community itself, I think the biggest cultural problem is within the cultures of the institutions that handle culture for the federal government. They haven't changed from the time they were set up, practically speaking, from my terms, in terms of the problem today.

Florian has made reference to the National Film Board. The National Film Board, as all of you know, was created as a propaganda machine for the war effort. It grew from there, because of some talents, to serve—and I'm not criticizing this as inevitable—the turf and territorial and intellectual interests of the people who were in that piece of property. Then it grew and grew until it took over the acreage on the outskirts of Montreal, which it now has, and had to fill with people and activities, which it's done very well. But whether that—and I'm sorry Joan is not here—is a service in terms of its budget today, given the problem we have, I have very serious doubts.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which absorbs, I don't know, as much money out of the Heritage budget as the department itself, has operated, in my view, in the face of globalization and all the problems facing public broadcasting for the past 20 years, as though this was 1949. It's not that they haven't responded to cuts and put people out on the street and closed stations and kept on saying they can “do more with less”, or whatever the line is that week about how they've absorbed it and are smiling. The reality is that public broadcasters around the world, not only the CBC...this cultural problem administratively is not only the CBC's. It's in Britain and France and Germany and Tokyo and all over. They have refused to do, in a public sector manner, what the private sector has done.

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The private sector, confronted with the technology and the opportunity, realized that it has only two things to make the thing work: a competitive entrepreneurial capacity at the top and access to capital, as required, in order to expand. Those two things are totally absent from the public sector, and have been totally absent, and nothing's been done about it by any of the pieces of the public sector, whether it's in this country or in western Europe or in Japan. Why? You'll have to ask them. I can't get any answers.

I have to tell you that—we were talking earlier, before the meeting started—it's nearly 15 years since I made a speech in Edinburgh to 1,000 broadcasters, and I said to them that unless they were to find the equivalent to what Murdoch and Time Warner and Berlusconi and Bertelsmann are doing, they would be dead. It can't be beyond our capacity. If Michael Milken can find things like junk bonds to work on, we must be able to find something in the public sector that allows us to provide the necessary capital and an entrepreneurial leadership at the top that isn't guaranteed a pension at the end of five or six years.

The first head of a broadcasting corporation to come to talk to me about it was from PBS. It was Christmas. The second was the guy who thought he was going to be head of the BBC. Out of this grew Public Broadcasting International. But the person who didn't come to see me at all, who sat next to me at dinner that night and who didn't want to be involved at all in anything international—nor did his successor—was the president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

So if you ask me, I think there's a cultural problem there, and if there's going to be some change in the amount of money it has to be in an organization where you have entrepreneurial capacity, where somebody isn't simply there for a stated period of time and is protected. It's that kind of capital the industry must have access to.

With your permission, I'll just mention two other things because of the question you raised. I've talked about software and about pop culture, but in this country—and again, I've begged prime ministers and premiers and heads of corporations in this country—we talk a lot about jobs and unemployment. The only “solution” that anybody's come forward with that doesn't lay out all kinds of money for jobs that won't last anyway...the only agreement is that there should be training for skills and life-long learning and a new culture for a workforce that has to deal with this transition and what comes afterwards.

We have all the capacity we need to produce a satellite-to-cable Internet system of training and learning. We have all the software, and we have the recognition abroad of the fact that we're not being imperialists. We could be a global distributor of skills training through the technology. It's not only pop culture.

But we don't do that. It's not expensive either. With the digitization satellites there will be so damn many satellites up there they'll be costing nothing. We won't do that and yet we say we want to do something about unemployment. That's important software. It's not pop culture, but it's going to be a big business when the private sector moves in there. Countries like ours who believe in public education and public access are going to be swamped with bills for learning.

To come back to your MIA and the rest, because of that we have a basis for international leadership in this field, for not waiting for the Brits to wake up or the French to finally drag their rear ends on the thing. We should have been having meetings in this country and having ambassadors talk this up in foreign offices for the last 15 years. It's always been our problem. We knew it was a Canadian problem, but we also knew, because of the technology, that it was a world problem.

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Thank you.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Would you like to add something, Mr. Sauvageau?

Mr. Florian Sauvageau: Quickly.

[English]

I agree with Mr. Ostry that the public sector has to learn from the private sector some ways of doing things. I agree with that, but I'm afraid that in the process, if we imitate the private sector, the public sector will lose its purpose.

It's okay to use some methods from the private sector, as long as we never forget that the goals, the objectives, are different: service on one hand and profit on the other. That's not the same, and it does have some influence on the way you do things.

If the public sector is driven only by efficiency, we can have a problem, as I tried to explain. It is a long process to achieve quality.

[Translation]

That said, I don't want to give the impression that I am defending dinosaurs that want to remain dinosaurs. I would like to quote for you two comments made at a press conference I gave last summer to show that I am aware that change is necessary.

We must redefine the public service by specifically examining, sector by sector, those activities which still demand, by their very nature, to be handled by the public sector. These are not necessarily the same activities we had 50 years ago. On that, I agree with Mr. Ostry. We cannot maintain CBC in the same position it was in 40, 50 years ago. Things have changed.

Some duties that were formerly performed by the public sector can now be left to the private sector. In order to remain credible, the public service must constantly adapt to changing realities.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Sauvageau.

[English]

Mr. Obhrai.

Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, Ref.): I would like to thank our guests very much for coming in here today. I actually really enjoyed myself. As much as I tried to go to sleep, I couldn't because you held my attention so much.

In many of your answers to my other colleagues, you have answered some of the questions and concerns I have. Some of those answers were very interesting and far-reaching, going into this, dwelling on the problem of culture here.

As to my question and concern, we talk about all this American influence coming into the Canadian culture, and we have been talking about it for years now; it's nothing new. But a new reality is also taking place in Canada. Canada, within itself internally, is making a dramatic change in the culture. Jim was asking what is culture, and you rightly said it's getting more and more difficult to define Canadian culture somewhere, with all the internal changes taking place in Canada.

What I am seeing—and I may be wrong, considering I'm a new member of Parliament—is that right now Canada is going into.... We have the French influence, the English influence, the ethnic influence—and when I say ethnic I mean ethnic from all parts of the world—and our first nations influence. Right now, the way I see them, all of these lines are trying to develop by themselves, in different directions. The challenge to us would be to bring and develop them together. But it's not taking place. One line is going here and the other line is going there.

If I tune in on Sunday, I can see the ethnic channels all going in different directions by themselves, and you can see there is nothing much on native Canadians coming on the main channels, which is what the majority of Canadians view, as well as the French.

So for us, would it not be this challenge within ourselves that would allow us to focus our attention on this challenge, as opposed to worrying about the American influence coming in here? I think as one of you mentioned very quietly, with technological advances, world influence will diminish the American influence.

My final question is this. What is your own view on the so-called multicultural policies implementation? Forget about the great preambles about all these things. Has it really been successful in bringing in what I'm asking about? Could you comment on that?

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Mr. Bernard Ostry: I have to say, as the person who brought the documents on multiculturalism to the government in 1970, I think it's a great success. What else would I say? But let me try to answer your question.

I think there's a huge vacuum here in terms of public policy, and it has a long history. I don't know whether I understand it fully. At the time of the policy of multiculturalism—which was at the same time we were doing the bilingualism things, the native political organizations and communication societies, the gender issues and the rest—we proposed to the government of the day a very large-scale movement of young people between Quebec and the rest of the country and the rest of the country and Quebec, largely supported by a voluntary organization. It was in 1970-71. If we had moved 10,000 or 20,000 kids a summer across this country for the last 27 years I think that minor investment would have produced a lot. It's about the only cabinet memorandum on which I failed to get support from the government. I can't explain why. I don't remember why.

Let me give you another example, and I'll come to what I think should be done about some of these things. I've never been able to nail down the person at the CBC who decided to separate the networks to the degree they've been separated. That has actually contributed to the separation of the two cultures because of the power of radio and television.

I spent part of my time not in government but in the CBC. Some of us went to the senior officers on two or three occasions, with Radio-Canada people equal to them as producers and writers, to do things together so there was some sharing of ideas and cross-cultural material, including in public affairs, but it was always rejected by the brass. Can you explain it? I cannot explain it. That's a very unfortunate thing for this country and we pay a very heavy price for it today.

The third thing is that as multiculturalism developed beyond where it began, in very different ways to some extent, there's never been a series of policies that was directed to dealing with what you're talking about, which is cross-cultural relations. They still do very little. I don't know what the programs are. There may be some and somebody here may know about them. But there are almost none.

In a country that historically doesn't believe in assimilation and does believe in the quality of distinctiveness of various peoples across the country, from the first people through to Quebec, to the recent newcomers, programs in terms of cross-cultural relations are critical. I'm not designing them. I'm not in the business, but I think it's something that should be done. I agree with that.

The Chairman: Mr. Sauvageau.

Mr. Florian Sauvageau: First, I don't agree with Mr. Ostry. I think we need two networks. This is a very complex issue, because the audiences of those two networks are different. Some people would like, for instance, Le Téléjournal and the news on the English side to be very similar. It doesn't make sense. Journalistically it doesn't make sense, because you have to take care of your audience and the audiences are not the same.

• 1240

Secondly, I just completed with a colleague—an American colleague, as a matter of fact—a survey on Canadian journalists. This is the first survey to be done on Canadian journalists. The fact that the francophone and the anglophone journalists don't know each other is unbelievable. I'm talking about journalists, who should know a lot about the other society. They don't read the other society's newspapers. They don't look at the other society's television.

Both groups of journalists, anglophone and francophone, have the same practice of journalism. This is also a problem of American influence. They practise journalism in the same way, the American way of practising journalism, but in two completely isolated worlds. The francophones will read Time magazine much more than Maclean's magazine, and of course the anglophones will read Time magazine much more than L'Actualité, which is the counterpart of Maclean's; they hardly know of the existence of the magazine. This is an important problem.

Third, about the francophone media and their new audience, the ethnic groups in Montreal, at the Centre d'études sur les médias, at the university, we did a survey on which network the ethnic groups in Montreal are listening to. Only 33% are watching television in French. That compares with 71% of les Québécois d'origine who are listening to television in French. You see the difference, 33% versus 71%.

I think as Montreal is changing so rapidly, this is the main challenge now for the francophone media: to find ways to interest the ethnic groups. Otherwise the future of the francophone media might be in jeopardy, because their future audience is there and this audience of the future is not interested, or hardly interested, in what they see on francophone television. This is a big problem.

The Chairman: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.): First of all, I will just comment on the oddities of public policy.

I think I'm right in saying that Céline Dion's record output...it wasn't until the fourth or fifth record that they actually qualified as Canadian content. So you could say Canadian content rules didn't make a difference. In fact, public policy did make a difference, because it was the response of Sony when a new executive came in under pressure to deliver some net public benefits that they decided to take this woman with the extraordinary voice, put her in the hands of people in Los Angeles and London, get her the right orchestration, get her the right composers.... So it's the perversity of public policy...not the perversity; it's just that there's the law of unintended consequences.

I just want to check that we're going at our study in the right way. In a sense it goes a bit against the tenor of the morning, which has been to suggest that there are global solutions, in some sense, although most of the problems have been rather site specific—in broadcasting, Internet, magazines—in Mr. Ostry's paper.

• 1245

I think the approach we're going to be taking is to chunk out various of the cultural ecosystems, to say the impact of trade and technology is not the same on opera, ballet, the visual arts, and heritage buildings as it is on broadcasting or the Internet.

So we are going to try to understand—I think dynamically through time, as Mr. Sauvageau would have us do about the future—how the past has worked as well; that is to say, where we've come since 1967 in each of the sectors and examine them to see what's the impact of public policy in producing the fact that on the Globe and Mail best-seller list of last Saturday five of the ten hardcover works of fiction in English in this country are Canadian. Three of the ten non-fiction books are Canadian.

This is a success. This is extraordinary.

I think sometimes in the morning we've tended to lose sight of what the successes are. If you walk down the streets of Ottawa and go to Famous Players, you'll find The Sweet Hereafter, which clearly is set in Alberta. You'll go down to the Odeon Cineplex and you'll find The Hanging Garden, which clearly is set in Nova Scotia.

So there are successes.

I guess the issue is, is there a danger in globalizing a cultural policy that comes down to a sum of $7 billion, for instance, because what it doesn't do is to chunk out the success stories and say that this doesn't need money any more, that this works compared to where we were? Maybe where the money really has to go is into things like television and film. Is that what it's really about, because if you start figuring out where the hot spots are that's where you put the money?

Mr. Bernard Ostry: I think it's very difficult to deal with culture but not deal with the world's demands on it, or impression. You can categorize this as you wish and work that out in terms of cash.

I haven't tried to say how the billions should be spent. I've suggested that, in the free institutions, for example, that deal with multimedia, the development of a critical mass requires that, whatever you do with those three, there will have to be change and there has to be some equivalent of a centre where people who want to produce their Hollywoods north of the United States can have access to the capital necessary, with some hope that the entrepreneurial leadership will emerge once you do that.

I'm not saying that you should stop money for the Canada Council because you've got six best-sellers on the Globe and Mail list. Why should a generation that benefited from one—it finally took 25 years to produce that six—be stopped? It doesn't make a lot of sense.

It doesn't make sense to me either that in art galleries and the rest, in a market where you've got to contend with Getty—it's like contending with Hollywood—if you're going to have acquisition funds at the National Gallery and other museums, as was the case with the recent Victoria Cross or McCrae....

I think the institutions that the public sector has created require amounts of money that really haven't been contemplated in the past, because if they had, they wouldn't have produced as many as they did. Whether it's theatres because of 1967 or museums right across the country, there are a whole bunch of places that are extremely costly. I don't know who's going to be the genius who sits down and says, well, we're taking these people off the books now. They've been there.

Since in my view you can't do that politically, I think you have to find out how you're going to fund them.

The Brits got around this because they're a gambling society. So they created their scheme and they have more money than they know what to do with. Because there's a larger dependence on the public sector here than there is in Britain, I don't think that would happen in this country.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Bélanger.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa—Vanier, Lib.): Thank you for taking the trouble to appear before us.

[English]

Mr. Ostry, on your message of driving the software or creating product or creating content for the vehicles for the information highway that is being built, if you will—and I'd hoped that it was being built a little bit faster than you seem to believe. We'll have to perhaps take a peek at that.

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I appreciate your last comments that building up the pool of capital need not be all in cash transfers. It could perhaps be in other mechanisms.

I wanted to get your reaction to two notions that might be heading this way. One is, for instance, that in this committee in the last Parliament we did a substantial revision or updating of the copyright legislation. One of the arguments put forward at the time, which I bought into—actually I might have put it forward myself—was that creating an environment where the creative community's copyright is more and more protected and valued might indeed help create a situation where this community will be lured into Canada and therefore help create that. That's number one.

The other is your comments on what I would call hybrid mechanisms, such as is happening—whether it's good luck again or not—with the cable production fund, where the Government of Canada put some money in Telefilm. It seems that whereas initially it was slightly opposed by the industry, in some quarters anyhow, it's now totally supported by the industry. Not only do they want it not cut, but they want to maintain it and have the Government of Canada add to it.

I'd like your comments on these two. I want to have the comments of both,

[Translation]

please, on this concept, because you do not seem to agree entirely.

Personally, I find the idea intriguing. I think we should be encouraging Radio-Canada and CBC, through RDI or Newsworld, to spend at least five minutes of an hour-long newscast on similar news items. I think the networks have to agree to spend three or four minutes talking about national news items without censorship. I am not talking about devoting the whole hour to this, and I do understand your argument. I would like to hear your comments on this.

Lastly, Mr. Sauvageau, you consider that the liberalization of trade represents a threat, and I am inclined to agree with you on that. I would like you to please hear the other side of the coin. When do we become so cautious or worried about liberalization or globalization of trade that we fall into the trap of insularity? We in Canada have witnessed insularity between the two cultures, and I would not like to see us isolated from the rest of the world.

Thank you once again for your patience, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Florian Sauvageau: I would make two or three points. First, I think that the networks are in agreement about presenting the same news. I think that really you are confusing government communication and journalism.

As we move towards more and more networks, there will be less and less journalism in the world and more and more partisan information and various kinds of publicity. There will be so much space that business and governments will all have their own sites to communicate 'their information'. I am not saying propaganda or publicity here, but information. But this is not journalism. Free journalism must allow all those people who make choices to do so with complete liberty as regards what they consider to be important for their audience.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: I would like to say something here. I would never venture to suggest that there should be no choice available to journalists, who are responsible for reporting and explaining what is going on in the world, because it is not up to politicians or anyone else to do so.

However, could we agree that the content presented should be similar on the English and French-language networks? Could journalists find a way of agreeing on the news without anything being imposed?

Mr. Florian Sauvageau: In my view, it cannot be similar in each case, because you are dealing with different audiences. I know that both networks are broadcast to Canada as a whole, but you cannot ignore the fact that 90 or 95% of viewers do in fact constitute a potential or a real audience.

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When I talk about a real audience, I should point out that 10 years ago we conducted a study which showed the frustration of francophones outside Quebec because of the news information and programming provided by Radio-Canada, which focussed primarily on Quebec.

I can appreciate that there is a significant problem here, but at the same time you can't ignore the fact that 95% of the audience lives in Quebec and that increasingly—and this is the second point I would like to make—media money comes from the private sector. I know that money is not everything, but as funding for the CBC has been cut, there is more and more competition with the private sector. This shows us how essential media funding is in defining media content.

Radio-Canada now looks more and more like a twin of the TVA network, and this has become increasingly the case over the past 10 years since advertising has become an increasingly large component in funding. This seems to me very, very important.

As regards isolationism, I am not advocating that. I fully understand that the future of many industries in Canada is based on exports, as is the case with certain cultural industries. However, Canada must retain cultural industries with a purpose other than selling the country abroad if we want to promote debate on our own concerns.

I said in my presentation that we need a balance. We have to reestablish that balance because I have the impression that it has been lost.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Ostry, do you want to add something briefly?

Mr. Bernard Ostry: Yes, briefly, to end it with a story, I think we might use some constitutional language here. I wasn't suggesting what Florian picked up about the problems with the two networks.

There is a difference between distinct and separate. There's a difference, and it isn't only news. That network is on all day long in all kinds of areas. It's a disgrace in this country that the history textbooks in Quebec and in Ontario and in B.C. are all different, as though there were no facts, let alone a place to interpret facts.

The idea that you can't do this is false. When I came to TVO we did a 13-hour series on the history of Canada. We had to find 40 historians so that we wouldn't leave out any view. It was paid for, thank goodness, by the Canadian Pacific Railway. The fact is, that was a hugely popular series on television. There was agreement on the text and agreement on the pictures.

So the idea that it can't be done, and that you can't accommodate people's views, and that you have to let them take what they know by some God-given way as what their public wants to hear, is simply not the case. It requires some kind of supervision and oversight and desire to have the facts, in one way.

Your other question I will have to answer privately.

The Chairman: Would our witnesses mind staying a few more minutes? In fairness, Mr. Lowther has been extremely patient.

Mr. Lowther.

Mr. Eric Lowther (Calgary Centre, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your giving me an opportunity to ask a question and trying to move everybody along so I would have an opportunity to do that.

My question is pretty much to the point and it's primarily for Mr. Ostry. I listened interestedly to your comments and have also been looking through your document. I want to try to paraphrase where you're coming from and then be open to correction if I've missed it. You make a variety of interesting points and I'm trying to pick out a nugget here.

Your document implies or says pretty directly that the information highway, the information explosion, the open skies, and the movement of information are putting a lot of our cultural programs at risk, and that we have the option of saying “Well, gee, that's terrible”, and letting ourselves be overrun. You're saying that's not the thing to do. If I understand you, you're saying to be much more proactive, to take the strengths that we have, that are inherent in our Canadian culture and in our creative community in Canada today, and to somehow promote those and make them stronger. We should move away from the phraseology we so often hear in this committee: monitor, control, and regulate. We should go more to promoting and strengthening and I guess selling abroad and within Canada itself. Is that the thrust of where you're coming from?

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Mr. Bernard Ostry: Yes.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Good. Can I ask one other question about that, then? Who should pay for that? If I can paraphrase again, I think what you're saying is that it's a combination of private sector investment and government funding. Do you have any quick synopses as to how that might work out?

Mr. Bernard Ostry: I think you have to encamp yourself outside the Prime Minister's and Paul Martin's offices to make sure that some money will be forthcoming so that you can provide a public carrot for private partnerships. Those private partnerships may extend beyond Canadian partners, as long as there are some ground rules set out here—it's done here, with Canadians and for Canadian purposes.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Were you always there, or is that the voice of experience speaking?

Mr. Bernard Ostry: Was I always where?

Mr. Eric Lowther: Did you always hold this opinion, or is this something you've come to through your years of experience?

Mr. Bernard Ostry: Oh, no, I've come to this opinion in part because of what I said earlier about the institutions we created to deal with these things, refusing to grow up in this globalized world and altering how they do business in order to contend with it.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Good.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Ostry and Mr. Sauvageau, by the intense interest of the members and all their questions, I guess you gathered how very fascinating your remarks were.

[Translation]

Mr. Sauvageau, I think that you could feel the interest of committee members in your presentation. I think your presentation was one of the most interesting our committee has heard in a very, very long time.

[English]

I would like to thank you both very much for joining us today, for being so patient with our questions, and for giving us so much of your wisdom and expertise.

Mr. Bernard Ostry: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Florian Sauvageau: Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chairman: The meeting is adjourned.