HERI Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, January 29, 2002

À

1010

The Chair (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.))

Ms. Christiane Gagnon (Québec, BQ)

The Chair

Professor David Taras (Faculty of General Studies, University of Calgary)

The Chair

Mrs. Betty Hinton (Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, Canadian Alliance)

Ms. Christiane Gagnon

Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP)

Prof. David Taras

Ms. Wendy Lill

Mr. Grant McNally (Dewdney--Alouette, PC/DR)

Mr. Claude Duplain (Portneuf, Lib.)

Mr. Rodger Cuzner (Bras d'Or--Cape Breton, Lib.)

Ms. Sarmite Bulte (Parkdale--High Park, Lib.)

Mr. Roger Gallaway (Sarnia--Lambton, Lib.)

Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.)

The Chair

Mr. Terrence Thomas (Committee Researcher)

Mr. David Black (Committee Researcher)

Mr. Joseph Jackson (Committee Researcher)

The Clerk of the Committee

The Chair

À

1015

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

À

1020

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

Ms. Christiane Gagnon

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

À

1025

Prof. David Taras

À

1030

The Chair

Marc Raboy (Department of Communications, Université de Montréal)

À

1035

The Chair

Ms. Sarmite Bulte

À

1040

The Chair

Mrs. Betty Hinton

The Chair

Ms. Wendy Lill

The Chair

Prof. Marc Raboy

À

1045

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

À

1050

The Chair

Ms. Christiane Gagnon

The Chair

Mr. Marc Raboy

À

1055

The Chair

Mr. Marc Raboy

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

Á

1100

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

Ms. Bulte

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

Prof. Marc Raboy

Á

1105

The Chair

Ms. Christiane Gagnon

The Chair

Ms. Sarmite Bulte

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

Á

1110

The Chair

Prof. Marc Raboy

Á

1115

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

Mr. Abbott

Á

1120

The Chair

Prof. Marc Raboy

The Chair

Prof. Marc Raboy

Á

1125

The Chair

Mr. Abbott

Á

1130

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

Ms. Christiane Gagnon

Mr. Marc Raboy

Ms. Christiane Gagnon

The Chair

Ms. Christiane Gagnon

Á

1135

Mr. Marc Raboy

The Chair

Ms. Sarmite Bulte

The Chair

Ms. Sarmite Bulte

The Chair

Ms. Sarmite Bulte

The Chair

Ms. Wendy Lill

The Chair

Prof. Marc Raboy

Ms. Wendy Lill

Prof. Marc Raboy

Á

1140

The Chair

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

Mr. Abbott

The Chair

Á

1145

Prof. David Taras

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

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NUMBER 034

l

1st SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

Tuesday, January 29, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

À  (1010)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.)): Order, please.

    Professor Raboy, we can't use the system in camera; it will have to be a public meeting from this point on. They are just switching the system on so that we can connect with Professor Taras.

    Meanwhile, Madame Gagnon,

[Translation]

    Have you got a question?

    Ms. Christiane Gagnon (Québec, BQ): Yes, I would like to participate in the discussion on option 1 or 2. You talked about an advantage in selecting option 1. If the government had to make a decision on a given policy because it had to take action at that time, we could perhaps zero in on the problem more quickly and deal with it in an interim report.

    The Chair: Ms. Gagnon, may I interrupt you? We have to have silence for one minute so that...

[English]

    We're okay. Is Professor Taras on now? Can you hear us, Professor Taras?

    Professor David Taras (Faculty of General Studies, University of Calgary): Yes, I can.

    The Chair: Thank you for waiting. I hope the coffee was good. We welcome you here.

    I'd like to ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves, so you will know who they are. I should have done this with your colleague, Professor Raboy. Maybe, Professor Raboy, you could sit somewhere with our colleagues here, so that Professor Taras can see you when we have a discussion.

    I'm Clifford Lincoln. I'm a member of Parliament for Lac-Saint-Louis in Quebec, on the Liberal side, and I chair the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. This is the official opposition side, and I'll ask Mrs. Hinton to introduce herself.

    Mrs. Betty Hinton (Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, Canadian Alliance): Good morning. I'm Betty Hinton, and I'm a member of Parliament for Kamloops, Thompson, Highland Valleys in British Columbia.

    Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I'm Christiane Gagnon. I'm from Quebec City and MP for the Bloc Québécois.

    Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): Hello. I'm Wendy Lill. I'm the New Democratic Party critic for culture and the member of Parliament for Dartmouth.

    Prof. David Taras: We've spoken.

    Ms. Wendy Lill: Yes, we have.

    Mr. Grant McNally (Dewdney--Alouette, PC/DR): I'm Grant McNally, PC/DR MP--I won't go into the whole name because it might take a bit of time. The riding is called Dewdney-Alouette; that's in the Fraser Valley in B.C. Nice to meet you.

    Mr. Claude Duplain (Portneuf, Lib.): I'm Claude Duplain from Portneuf in Quebec.

    Mr. Rodger Cuzner (Bras d'Or--Cape Breton, Lib.): I'm Rodger Cuzner from Bras d'Or, Cape Breton.

    Ms. Sarmite Bulte (Parkdale--High Park, Lib.): I'm Sam Bulte. I'm from Toronto, from the riding of Parkdale-High Park, and I'm also the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

    Mr. Roger Gallaway (Sarnia--Lambton, Lib.): I'm Roger Gallaway. I'm the member from Sarnia in southern Ontario.

    Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.): I'm Tony Tirabassi, MP from the riding of Niagara Centre in southern Ontario.

    The Chair: I have spoken to our researchers; maybe they could introduce themselves.

    Mr. Terrence Thomas (Committee Researcher): Terry Thomas, House of Commons, with the Library of Parliament.

    Mr. David Black (Committee Researcher): I'm David Black. We talked before.

    Mr. Joseph Jackson (Committee Researcher): I'm Joseph Jackson from the Parliamentary Research Branch. We talked as well.

    The Clerk of the Committee: I'm Christine Fisher, the clerk of the committee. We have talked.

    The Chair: She's the most important person of all, as you know.

    Professor Taras, we've had a discussion with your colleague, Marc Raboy. I just want to tell you what consensus we have arrived at in regard, first of all, to the issue in the contract we are signing with you concerning information and statements you can make outside the study. We agreed that there's a distinction involving what is specific to the study, where the committee is in charge of its information, releasing information, taking part in interviews, and so forth. So what is germane to the committee work itself is in the purview of the committee. Outside that, we understand that you are only working on a part-time basis as an expert for us, so when you're asked questions in general about your field and you're asked to comment, we can't restrain you, obviously.

    If we agree there's a distinction between your function as an expert for your own work as a university professor and researcher and as an expert generally and the work you do for the committee, if we can distinguish between the two, we'll have some kind of phraseology in the contract that will distinguish these two. So with whatever happens in the realm of the committee, it is in the purview of the chair or the committee members to comment or pass information along. Is that okay?

À  (1015)  

    Prof. David Taras: I'd like to ask you a specific question, if I may.

    The Chair: Please do.

    Prof. David Taras: Yesterday I had a phone call from a journalist who I think got wind of the fact that I'm working for the committee. They wanted to do an interview on where the committee was going, what the prospects were, and what the directions were. My sense, given what you're saying, is that I would not give that interview; I would not participate.

    The Chair: I think that would be fair, unless we had a previous agreement where, for example, you just say you can't comment right now, we have a chat together, and then we agree that it would be of benefit to the committee to have you, as an expert, say something with regard to a particular topic. That would be different; otherwise, I would say no.

    Prof. David Taras: Understood.

    The Chair: Then we'll move on.

    The second question we discussed with Marc Raboy, while you were waiting on the sidelines, was what do we do with the work of the committee so far? This is the question we have to ask ourselves. We've had a few hearings so far that have been very quiet, and certainly there's been very little feedback in the press and so forth. That's okay, but now we have to make a decision on whether we keep to the schedule we had set, which would be to publish a report by the end of this year, or, realizing the magnitude of the work, do an interim report, say in mid-year or October or whatever, and follow up afterwards with a final report.

    The researchers had discussed the issue, I believe, with you and Marc Raboy, and had come up with two options. On the first, an interim report, just to set out the disadvantages of this, once you have an interim report and you have covered one or two subjects, they can take on a life of their own and become big issues, drowning the rest of the work. It's almost impossible for the committee to gather momentum afterwards and finish it off. There are examples of this already.

    The second option would be to stick to the schedule, with a possible third option that the members seem to favour--that we stick to the schedule, but realizing that we may not finish in time and that it may not be credible if we try to cram it through, we just let things slide to March or April and extend it so that we do something credible with a bit more time. That would be some kind of third option.

    It seemed to me the consensus was on that third option, except that Marc Raboy made the important point that if, for instance, we were to find out that the ministry was intent on soon setting out some policy on foreign ownership, for example, then it would almost pre-empt the work the committee was doing in that area. This would then suggest that perhaps we should have an interim report on a particular issue if we found out this was so.

    I thought it would be good to have your viewpoint on these areas.

À  (1020)  

    Prof. David Taras: My sense is that the best option is the third option, simply because there's so much work to do. I'm particularly worried about the definition of broadcasting in light of new technologies and very rapid changes. I think that needs considerable study.

    My sense is that if the committee gets it wrong, we're going to have to do this exercise in two or three years anyway. We'll literally have to come back to it. So I think it's very important to get it right, and I think that will take more time.

    My sense is the third option does make sense, but I also take Marc's point that if we see a train coming down the tracks, we do want to get ahead of it. Perhaps some type of interim statement or report would make sense in that context.

    The Chair: That's very clear.

    Are there questions to David Taras?

    Madame Gagnon.

[Translation]

    Ms. Christiane Gagnon: If we were to produce an interim report, would it be possible then to assess the questions that are more pressing than others or to steer the committee towards answers that are more...?

    This is a very broad mandate. Right now we are meeting various witnesses and we are going off in all directions. If we keep this pace up until we complete our work, in June, we will have a real hodgepodge of information. If we are to table a report, we have to be able to assess, right now, the most pressing issues. If, for instance, it's a matter of foreign ownership or the purchase of Canadian businesses by foreign interests, what impact will this have? So we may need to ask our various witnesses two or three of the most urgent questions so that the interim report will be focused on a specific issue, and not on our work in general. If not, we may sidestep what is important and then it may be difficult to draft a final report covering all of the measures.

[English]

    Prof. David Taras: Do you want me to respond to that?

    The Chair: Yes, please.

    Prof. David Taras: My sense, in just reading the testimony and the submissions, is that basically, the map is a huge one. There's a huge alphabet soup here from A to Z, and I'm not sure we can cover it in such a short period of time. The question is, does the committee have a sense of what the key issues are? Is there a precise sense, a highly focused sense, of what the three or four critical issues are? If the committee does have that sense, perhaps an interim report makes sense, but if the committee is not yet at that point, it may be too early to think about an interim report.

    The Chair: Yes, the researchers and I were chatting yesterday about this very point, and whether we could pinpoint three or four basic areas that we could define as critical ones.

    While we are talking about this, Marc Raboy made a big point as well. He said we have these hearings going on until June or so. The hearings won't tell us all we want to know, because they will be confined to a short time span in each case. So, really, in the summer, there's a huge amount of work to be done in culling information from the briefs and also in researching other areas ourselves, so that the report will be a compendium of what we heard, as well as a lot of other information that will be gathered by us.

    When we discussed things with the researchers yesterday in trying to pinpoint what we felt were important areas, we determined Canadian content would be one huge issue. The economics of the industry are another, because I remember that at the CAB conference, outgoing president Mike McCabe was giving his swan song speech. He said this used to be a very profitable industry, but he could see the time when it will dry up completely with competition and there will be no money left in the system. That was certainly a bit of a shock to a lot of us who thought it was a potentially very prosperous industry, so I thought maybe the economics of the industry, the economic viability....

    Support for Canadian production is a possible subject, perhaps. How does that happen through government? What are the sources?

    Local and regional programming is a huge issue with us for sure. It comes up all the time.

    And maybe organization and regulation by government and the CRTC, all it implies, and the extent to which it does so, are other topics.

    These were things that perhaps were brought to mind yesterday at a meeting with the researchers, if we had to pick up perhaps four or five. It was certainly not a final list or anything like that.

    But you started by saying we have to define broadcasting as such. Maybe that is the most important thing. This is what we are here about today—to just pick your brains and find out.

À  (1025)  

    Prof. David Taras: I think there's a tremendous tie-in between the economics of the industry and its survivability, and I think you and the researchers are right, it is open to question. This is not a money machine. I think the margins for the Canadian networks are very narrow. But it's also tied in, I think, with changes in technology. I don't want to give a speech here, but if you give me two or three minutes, I would argue that we're in an era where all media, including television, are converging on the Internet.

    If you go back to your office and you hook up your computer and put it on, what can you do with your computer? You can get e-mail. You can get music from all over the world, some of which you might want to pay for, some of which you can get for free. You can get any newspaper. You can get TV ads. You can get radio from all over the planet. How long will it be before there's video-on-demand television, where Hollywood could decide that for a price, maybe even not for a price, maybe for free, they will bypass the networks, they'll bypass CTV and NBC and ABC and CBC, and feed programs directly to you on your computer, leapfrogging over the networks? When Mr. David Colville gave his testimony, he said the CRTC can't regulate the Internet, because it's a vast ocean, it has no borders, it's a Milky Way. But even if the television business five years from now is made up of just 5% downloading to individuals, that could be catastrophic for Canadian networks.

    That's the kind of question. There are many more technological questions, one of them raised by NTT DoCoMo in Japan, which, basically, has developed a TV phone, where everything is converging in the cell phone. This is a remarkable new technology, and the question is how we define broadcasting and what the future will hold. I think part of our problem is to envision the future. My suggestion to the researchers was that we could go to the MIT labs in Boston, we could go to the Bell labs, we could go to Wall Street. We could try to get a picture of what the industry will look like five years from now or ten years from now, and that might alter the way we look at these questions.

À  (1030)  

    The Chair: Professor Raboy.

    Professor Marc Raboy (Department of Communications, Université de Montréal): Hi, David.

    I think David has given us a brilliant characterization of the context in which broadcasting is evolving right now. Basically, you can reduce that to a couple of buzzwords: technological change and globalization.

    We need a knowledge base about this context. We need to understand as clearly as possible what is going on, but once we have that the question then becomes, what should we do about it?

    There are, very generally speaking, two broad views about this. One is that there is no longer a place for public policy and the other is that there is still a place for public policy. I think that's one of the critical things a committee such as this can underscore.

    My own view is that there is a place for public policy, but what can it be? How can you rethink the kinds of mechanisms that have been put in place historically and, let's always remember, in keeping with the context of the time? The context is different now, but the issues in terms of what Canadians want as a society may not have changed that much. For example, when you look at some of the principles that are mentioned in the Broadcasting Act--and from what I've seen, certainly in the testimony and in the briefs that you've received, many of those are still extremely valid and extremely important to Canadians today.

    So how can you address these public policy issues in terms of the new context? That's kind of an overriding question, I think.

    I thought a little bit about how to succinctly present this, and I think there are basically three types of issues. There are regulatory issues: what is the role of an agency like the CRTC? How can it be changed? Do we still need such an agency or do we need something else?

    The question of ownership--and this is the second time I've mentioned it today--I think is critically important. I mean, when you receive a brief from AOL-Time Warner saying Canada doesn't need foreign ownership regulations, where are they coming from? What are the implications of something like that, all the way down the line, for the capacity of Canadians to influence the system?

    The second set of issues are really public treasury issues. We talk about--and I would add to Mr. Lincoln's list of critical issues--the question of public broadcasting and the relationship of the public to the private sector in the overall system.

    There has been so much written and studied about the CBC over the years, and it all keeps coming down to the question of how you are going to fund it. Yes, we want public broadcasting--Canadians want public broadcasting--but how are you going to fund it? The same thing applies with regard to Canadian content. You've heard from the television fund and other actors involved in funding issues.

    So this is a second set of issues related to what extent public policy is going to support with public funds or promote through different kinds of mechanisms the different aspects of the system.

    The third set of issues is something that I like to refer to as citizenship issues. To what extent and how can you make the system meet the needs and aspirations of Canadian men, women, and children, as section 3 of the Broadcasting Act says at one point? This was a very important section that was added to the act during the last important review in the late 1980s, leading up to 1991.

    Questions such as the balance between the national and regional services, the place of community broadcasting--all of these cultural diversity issues are extremely difficult to put into practice. It is very easy to say we want the system to reflect the cultural diversity of Canada, but what do you do to actually make that happen? These are extremely difficult to put into practice. It's very easy to say we want a system to reflect the cultural diversity of Canada, but then what do you do to actually make that happen, particularly given the situation David just described?

À  (1035)  

    The Chair: Could we have a discussion about this? I really think we're getting to the fundamentals now.

    If I understand you correctly, Professor Taras and Professor Raboy, you're saying we should have some sort of idea in mind of a concentrated number of big issues that drive the committee work, so when we question our witnesses we get on to these issues for the future.

    A journalist told me the other day--and I took this as being very constructive--that she had attended all our hearings and felt that our questions had related to the day-to-day and the past rather than the future. She said there was not enough about the future, and we were trying to find out about the future.

    I'm wondering if we can just address these questions.

    Ms. Bulte.

    Ms. Sarmite Bulte: Perhaps I can go backwards, because I want to comment on a number of things Mr. Raboy said.

    With respect to not going forward or not asking the right questions, I take issue with that. I think part of the problem occurs when we have ten people coming here, like the day the National Film Board and Telefilm were here. Telefilm has been absolutely instrumental in the creation of Canadian content in this country. We had a two-minute presentation by Mr. Macerola because there just wasn't time.

    I asked the National Film Board, “What has been your vision over the last 60 years? You're honoured in the United States. What is your vision?” We didn't have time to go into that.

    So I think we're asking the questions. We're just pushing everything. There's too much information to look at these things.

    On some of the issues that have been raised, my understanding is that there were fundamental issues, when we go back to our terms of reference, looking at cultural content and Canadian content--the basic questions the government has been asked. How do we ensure that we can foster an environment for artists to be able to create? I think that is our overall cultural policy that's been in place for years. Secondly, how do we assume that the infrastructure is there to let those creations be seen? If we go back to our terms of reference, we're fine where those broad issues are.

    On the foreign ownership rules, which I've heard a number of times, we just can't look at them in isolation with broadcasting. The question is rising from the fact that the telecommunications companies and the cable companies want the foreign ownership restrictions. That has implications on the convergence. How far do we go? You can't just start by saying.... I know exactly where AOL is coming from. It's not a surprise to me. So that's number one.

    With respect to the CBC, you will not find a greater supporter of the CBC at this table than me. However, it's not just a question of money all the time. There are wider issues. How do we make it sustainable? What are the issues? Is the CBC filling its mandate?

    Here we have a wonderful opportunity to explain it. But when I hear talk of money again, “How are they going to be able to carry it out?”.... It's not just about money; it's about relevance. It's what we as a government can do to foster the environment. We want Canadians to crave that content. We want them to see the CBC all across this country, from coast to coast.

    So I think there are really important issues, much greater than just “Where's the money?” It's not just about money. I think it's very important that we make that clear.

    I think that's all for now.

    An hon. member: Do you feel better, Sam? Way to go.

À  (1040)  

    The Chair: Mrs. Hinton.

    Mrs. Betty Hinton: I'll make it quite quick. I always enjoy Sam's passion, because she really believes what she's saying, and I can agree with parts of what you're saying, but I've also heard some things today that made me feel hopeful, I guess.

    One of the things that was raised was, do we promote or do we support? I think we should be promoting, not supporting, Canadian content. I've been saying that since the beginning of these hearings. What I think is important is to address the cultural component of Canada with regard to supporting Canadian talent, not the content of the programming. We have absolutely no control over what Canadians watch in this country, none at all, and until we realize, as a committee, that's the way it is--they have it from all sorts of different sources that we can't control it--we're fighting a losing battle.

    So if you want to do the Canadian cultural part of it, we've got to do it by supporting our talent in this country, not by trying to support what we see on television--it's impossible to do that--or what we get over the Internet. That's where I've been coming from since the beginning, and I'm really happy today to hear that kind of view coming from these two experts as well, that we have to have a stronger look at where we're going.

    I agree with everything you said too, Mr. Lincoln. The Canadian content part we have to address. I agree with the economics; it's very important to this country. I agree that we need to support Canadian production. We've heard over and over from smaller communities about how important local programming is for them. And the organization and relationship of government to the industry is also very important. I feel really good that you've narrowed it down to the point where we're not trying to look after this whole building; we're only looking at three or four offices now. That's when we can be effective, when we're not scattered all over the building and we're only looking at components of it. So I'm quite happy with what's going on today.

    The Chair: Mrs. Lill.

    Ms. Wendy Lill: I want to ask both of you what you think about this issue. Simply, how much do we try to determine how we're doing now in relation to the document at hand? We have the Broadcasting Act, and it has some very lofty goals. I'm looking at some of them right now, and they really do guide me in what I'm doing in this committee, certainly paragraph 3(1)(b):

(b) the...broadcasting system...comprises public, private and community elements, makes use of radio frequencies that are public property, and provides, through its programming, a public service essential to the maintenance and enhancement of national identity and cultural sovereignty.

    I'm very concerned about making sure that as we go through this study we do a health check on that goal, whether or not we're meeting it. What exactly are the goals of public service? How are they being met by the public, private, and community sectors? How are we strengthening the political and economic fabric of Canada? That's in subparagraph 3(1)(d)(i). How much are we reflecting and serving the special needs of the region? Certainly, that was an addition to the act in 1991, that we have to strengthen the system's commitments to the regions, and I don't think we would find at this point that people feel that's being successfully dealt with.

    I guess I'm saying we have a document here that is the best we've got, and we have to figure out whether it is meeting anybody's needs at the present time. Then we figure out whether in fact we are going to make changes. This is the living document at hand: what does it mean to you in respect of this study?

    The Chair: Mr. Raboy, will you start off?

    Prof. Marc Raboy: I think that's a really crucial question. I think one of the ways the study could begin would be to look at how well the system has met the policy objectives as they're spelled out in the act. That could be one way of getting into the subject--a kind of critical evaluation of where we are with respect to those goals that were spelled out ten years ago.

    I agree entirely with the points you referred to, and others as well that one could cull from that act as being really fundamental. That is the basis of why the state feels it's necessary to intervene in the broadcasting system, so that it can be (a), (b), (c), (d), and (e)--everything that's mentioned in section 3 of the act.

    Of course, it's important to recall that that section was the result of a very extensive consultation process, and it was the result of a consensus at the time, I think it's fair to say. There is really a lot in there. I remember debates taking place over commas and individual words and so on.

    I think it would be a fair starting point to say, is the system a public service as the act says it ought to be, and is it really made up...? What is the balance between public and private and community elements--in reality, not just in the rhetoric of the act? Then you can ask, do we still think these are valid objectives? And of course that's a very essential part of any kind of evaluation process with regard to policy.

    But basically, to cut the answer short, I think I agree with you entirely.

À  (1045)  

    The Chair: Professor Taras.

    Prof. David Taras: Yes. I think, Wendy, you're right on in terms of your question. Maybe we have to start with a health check--take our pulse, put on the heart monitor, and get a sense of where we're going.

    My sense is that maybe there are two fundamental issues. One is that when we look back to the 1970s and 1980s and all of the studies that were done, the basic question at that time was the future of public broadcasting.

    My sense now is that the question is whether there is a future for Canadian broadcasting. I think there are two fundamental questions. First of all, can the CBC and the privates survive? They're buried in a sea of 300 channels now--we'll probably have 500 channels in a couple of years--and there's no end to the channels. I think there's an extent to which every channel causes the main channels to become weaker, to make less money, to bleed a little more.

    The other issue is some of these corporations, Global and Quebecor, are shrouded in debt. They're absolutely battered. They haven't figured out how to make convergence work. It seems to be a kind of Rubik's cube for them, where nothing seems to fit quite the way it should. Even AOL-Time Warner is plagued by difficulties and can't quite swallow the idea of convergence. And the mandate of the CBC, of course, has been cineplexed and downloaded to the cable channels. Its audience is in free fall. Who will produce the fine, high-quality, big-ticket, memorable Canadian programs? How will they actually be produced?

    I think the question is, what will our networks look like in three, four, or five years, given these trends? Secondly, how do we go about promoting--and I like that word; I thought that last MP was very articulate--excellence, the kind of excellence that will make Canadians want to turn to Canadian programming? So those are absolutely key questions.

À  (1050)  

[Translation]

    The Chair: Ms. Gagnon.

    Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Yes indeed, this is a good question. When I hear Ms. Bulte defend the CBC or the SRC, I know right away that she wants to preserve public broadcasting. Is the broadcasting on the SRC and the CBC quality broadcasting? Is that what people want? Are the people satisfied with the programming? Do the people associate it, because of the type of programming, with...? When I look at La Fureur on the SRC, this is not, in my opinion, what the SRC is all about. This is not what I expect to see on the SRC. I know people who work at Radio-Canada and they tell me that this type of program enables them to live and do other types of less profitable programs that won't attract such a wide audience.

    Consequently, I think that we have to give this matter a great deal of thought before we even come out and say that it needs to be saved. We also have to consider the public. It's all well and good to write speeches about the fact that we give people the television that they want to watch, but everything depends on what we provide to the viewers.

    I think that we need to do some serious thinking. We have to take the pulse of the consumer. Today, watching television is becoming more and more expensive. Public television is funded through the taxpayers' dollars, but we also have to pay in order to watch commercial television, because we have to subscribe to cable, which costs $500 or $600 per year. We now have to pay a lot of money in order to watch a variety of programs.

    I therefore think that we need to debate public and private television. Are the SRC and the CBC so different from TQS? In my opinion, TQS often provides regional news that is better suited to the type of information that people in the region want to get.

    Personally, I'm not sure that I will be able to make an immediate assessment and say that yes, we need our television, public television is necessary and so on and so forth. I do not know if we can do this, but I would like the committee to take the pulse of our citizens to find out whether or not people see any difference between private and public programming. How many times a week do people tune in to Radio-Canada television, and is it necessary to continue providing this type of programming to support culture...? I will not be referring to Canadian culture, because I am not very much in favour of the word “Canadian”. It is but one of the cultures.

    I would like to hear your comments on this issue.

    The Chair: Professor Raboy.

    Mr. Marc Raboy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    This is an issue that should be explored in an in-depth fashion. Personally, I would approach the issue by taking a step backwards. Earlier, when I said that I thought public television was, to a certain extent, a question of money, I was thinking, for example, of the role played by advertising.

    We can look at Radio Canada as it is today. What is the difference between the SRC and TQS? When the two networks, for financial reasons, are forced to compete for the same advertising dollars, they tend to produce the same type of programming.

    I just got back from a short stay in Scandinavia, where the traditions are different. They have some real language barriers with respect to American television, but what is so significant in the Scandinavian countries is the fact that public television has no commercial restraints whatsoever. It does not compete directly with private television and, as a result, it does not show the same type of programming. If we had conditions enabling us to really demand “quality” television... Let's set aside what we mean by quality, because we could get into a big debate about that issue as well. In actual fact, we set the bar quite high when it comes to our public television requirements, but we have not created the conditions enabling public television to meet our expectations. That's what I think, at any rate.

    Another aspect of the question pertains to the contribution at various levels: namely, the national, regional and local levels. We repeat ad infinitum that the SRC should make a contribution in terms of communication with the national and local levels. However, as an institution, Radio-Canada made the choice 10 or 15 years ago to emphasize the national level because, given the means at its disposal, it had to make such a choice. We may very well feel that Radio-Canada does not meet its regional commitments as stipulated in the legislation, but I do not think that this is done as a result of bad faith.

À  (1055)  

    The Chair: Professor Raboy, did you in fact say that, in Scandinavia, the public network did no advertising, did not have the right to do advertising? Is that right?

    Mr. Marc Raboy: Yes, that's right.

[English]

    The Chair: Would you like to comment, Professor Taras, on what Mrs. Gagnon said?

    Prof. David Taras: I think to some degree regional and local broadcasting is the bread and butter of the broadcasting system.

    The local news shows--not the CBC shows, but the other news shows--have huge audiences. That's the place where Canadians gather basically to connect with public affairs. The national broadcasts of CTV and Global and CBC at night do get substantial audiences, but if you add up the local supper hour audiences across the country, they're far greater.

    So I think local is critical, and I think Marc was absolutely right. CBC had to abdicate that role in the 1990s and it has never recovered. Without strong local connections, I'm not sure the national network can do very well.

Á  (1100)  

    The Chair: Can a national network exist and thrive in parallel with a strong local and regional, or if CBC had to make a choice because of its means, can it do both and do both well in your view, and how does it do that?

    Prof. David Taras: I can give you a very local commentary based on my experience in Calgary. When CBC decided to leave Calgary and close the local supper hour news, it was second in the market in a thriving market and was making money. It decided at that point, in 1990, because of the overall budgetary picture, not to continue with a local strategy. Calgarians left in droves. In fact, in one night, 60,000 people went from CBC to the local CFCF, a CTV affiliate. They have never come back. I think there's an extent to which people in the west feel abandoned by the CBC because there's no strong local connection. There's no sense of loyalty because the local face isn't there.

    I'm not sure you can ultimately be a strong national public network without touching people where they live. And if you can't touch people where they live in strong local programming, I think it undermines your ability to be a national programmer.

    Ms. Sarmite Bulte: Just on this issue of local, and I brought this up before--the whole role of what it is to be a local broadcaster--again let's not forget when Mr. Rabinovitch came before this committee when they were cutting their supper hour shows, I specifically asked him then whether regional programming did not include local programming. He actually quoted the Broadcasting Act and said nowhere does the Broadcasting Act speak about local; it speaks about regional.

    We've been using the words “regional”, “local”, and “national”, but where is the local within the act. And certainly Mr. Rabinovitch's interpretation was, and legally so, that they're not mandated or required under the act to provide local programming. It's only regional. Again we're using those terms interchangeably. They mean different things to different people, and obviously something quite different to the present management of the CBC.

    The Chair: That calls to question one area that we should really address and sort out. From your example of Calgary, you're saying--if I understand the difference between what we are saying about local and regional--regional would be the program that is based in British Columbia and goes through different parts of the west at a certain time, and local would be one in Calgary, one in Winnipeg, one in Saskatoon, etc. Is that your understanding as well?

    Prof. David Taras: And the vast majority of Canadians live in cities.

    You're right. The sense of “local” or the sense of “regional”, as defined both by the CBC and under the act, allows the CBC to think in terms of an Alberta region or a prairie region, but it doesn't mean to them that they have to be strong in Edmonton, strong in Winnipeg, or strong in Vancouver. The act doesn't in fact force them to be strong locally.

    The Chair: Maybe you might comment on whether or not you think the CBC, if they had a choice to make and decided the supper hours were to be based in Vancouver and Toronto and were then to be broadcast to the various regions at a certain time, could have maintained, in your view, a strong local presence while fulfilling what they see as their mandate nationally. Or is there a choice to made? Could they have done both?

    Perhaps you could both address this.

    Prof. Marc Raboy: I don't know if I can answer that question, because I don't know if I have the necessary data to do so. But I would strongly suspect they felt they could not do both. I don't see why they would frivolously abandon a part of their programming if they didn't have to.

    I think Patrick Watson was the chairman at the time when the big cuts were made in 1990, if I'm not mistaken. I remember him being quoted at one point. He made a medical analogy—it was a rather terrible analogy—of cutting off the limb to save the—

    A voice: —the finger.

    Prof. Marc Raboy: Yes.

    I would just like to suggest, though, that I think we're in a vicious circle here if we're talking about limited resources and a vast mandate. One of the things I would certainly like to see looked at, at least, is possible alternative models to dealing with this. We've never really looked at other ways of delivering public broadcasting other than through a single national public broadcaster, the CBC, which has to be all things to all people and meet a very vast mandate.

    There are other examples of public broadcasting systems in the world, systems in which you have a national channel, for example, and you have a second channel that is different in different parts of the country. This could be one way of resolving this vicious circle dilemma. If you had different corporations with different mandates and each had its own guaranteed funding sources, then the national public broadcaster would have to fulfill its mandate within its budget and the regional broadcasters, or whatever else you want to call them, would have a different mandate and a different source of funding. This is a very complicated path to take. It would take a good deal of determination to try to go that way, because there are a lot of vested interests that would....

Á  (1105)  

    The Chair: Before I give the floor to Madame Gagnon and Ms. Bulte, I should mention that this issue of the CBC deciding to cut out local content is perhaps the most controversial before the committee. There was a huge explosion among the MPs here.

    Right now, one of the hot issues is the same thing happening in the private sector. CTV is cutting off its programing in northern Ontario. That's really a very controversial issue there, so what they are proposing as a possible solution is some kind of a cooperative arrangement with the CBC and the private sector to try to save this local stuff.

    Madame Gagnon.

[Translation]

    Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Along the same line, Radio-Canada is mandated to provide entertainment. When you talk about quality or a different type of television, we don't expect to see programs on the SRC such as, for example,La Fureur. Should we not define what we mean by entertainment in public television?

    Entertainment can have a very broad meaning. Personally, I think that La Fureur would be more appropriate for TQS or TVA. When I asked whyLa Fureur was included in Radio-Canada's programming, I was told that it was because it was more profitable, because the program enjoyed a good rating. At that time, the SRC was meeting profitability requirements regarding ratings. There's also the matter of commercials.

    However, I have been told that Radio-Canada has been mandated to, among other things, entertain Canadians. Is this word “entertainment” too broad or has it been misinterpreted?

[English]

    The Chair: Ms. Bulte, and then both our expert colleagues.

    Ms. Sarmite Bulte: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Again, going back to the CBC, and before we start talking about more money, we have to make the case that Canadians want the CBC, need a public broadcaster, and need to be there to fulfill their mandate of local, regional, or whatever. You have to make the case.

    There are some people who think the CBC should be privatized. They think we can say we're just going to ask for more money. We have to make the case. You can't go to the Minister of Finance and say, “Cut me a cheque.” Where is the case? Where is the passion? Tell me why it's important to the quality of life for all Canadians.

    Why is it important? Because it is a centre of excellence, and what we're talking about is excellence in programming on the local side.

    The other thing that I think is very important to look at with respect to local is the role of the CRTC and the decisions they've made.

    One of the things that came before us--I think it was the television fund--when Richard Stursberg made his presentation...he showed that the amount of drama was going down and that the quality of programming was going down. But the television fund was also giving rise to drama.

    With the CRTC sitting at the same table, no one thought to mention that the CRTC has changed its requirements for drama. The CRTC has changed the licensing requirements so that broadcasters don't have to show drama. One of the requirements to get around that was to try to use local--again, how do you define local?--or more news, more entertainment events.

    We can't simply look at one isolated tool. We have to look at the toolbox as such to find out why we now have to make the case as to why it is important. If we ignore it and just assume that everybody loves the CBC, then we're being very foolish right at the outset.

    The Chair: Mr. Taras and Mr. Raboy, perhaps you would comment on both of these interventions.

    Prof. David Taras: Can I talk about the CRTC?

    I think it's very important to expand their sanctions ladder. The testimony we've received is basically that the CRTC can sanction with.... You know, the choice is either a slap on the wrist or all-out nuclear war. I think we have to create some middle ground for the CRTC so that it can do its work.

    My concern is with licence creep, where a cable channel gets a licence to do very specific things and then alters, expands, and broadens its activities as soon as it gets its licence, so the history channel does cooking shows and it does movies, and there's no way for the CRTC to get them back to their original mandate. So what you have is 200 or 300 channels--at least in the next couple of years as these digital channels come on line--all broadening their mandates.

    The basic problem for the CBC is, how do you swim in a sea of hundreds of channels? The CBC used to have first-rate--I think it still does--sports, excellent commentary. You'll see them in the Olympics. There are now 14 sports channels, and that sports market is getting sliced up to the point at which it's just fragmented. Every aspect of the CBC's mandate is fragmenting as well, because there's so much competition.

    I think we have to look at how much we want the system to expand, and will it expand to the point at which it becomes impossible for the major Canadian networks to survive, including the CBC?

    On a different note, perhaps it's important to look at the CBC in a different way than we have in the past. The Caplan-Sauvageau report talked about a dream of having a national educational broadcaster. That item, that proposal, was never picked up, but imagine giving a secondary role to the CBC, where it could integrate educational programming from across the country, reach into the schools, and have a very different mandate.

    I think it's important for the CBC, of course, to rethink its roles, but it has to do so with prodding from the public and also with a willingness for the CRTC to give CBC some of the tools it has wanted over the years. So I think it's important to look at the whole environment and say, how is the CBC, or any Canadian network, going to survive in this new sea, but then how do we think of these roles and what should these roles be?

Á  (1110)  

    The Chair: Mr. Raboy, would you like to comment?

    Prof. Marc Raboy: I think absolutely you have to make the case, but I would say you have to make the case for public broadcasting rather than for the CBC per se. I think it's important to get out of the mould of thinking that the CBC is the only way to go in terms of public broadcasting. In fact, we have examples in this country of other public broadcasters, which are very viable in certain areas and which constitute an important alternative model.

    If you wanted to give a new type of mandate for public broadcasting, why not create a new corporation, the way they did in Australia some years ago? They felt the ABC was too limited in certain respects. Rather than adding onto its mandate and getting involved in the whole internal corporate dynamic, they created something called the Special Broadcasting Service, and apparently it's very successful at meeting a specific different mandate than the mandate that's given to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is the equivalent of the CBC.

    Of course, if you're going to do something like that, you have to make a case for public broadcasting. You have to make a case that says there are certain types of programming in the new context, in the new environment, that are not going to be able to be done if it's all left in the marketplace. Can you, and do you want to, make that kind of case? That's up to you. Whether you want to and whether you can, I think the argument can be made.

    On the question of the CRTC, I think these are all related. Yes, absolutely, the CRTC has a very clear and specific role to play, particularly in seeing that the whole range of private broadcasting undertakings meet the objectives of Canadian broadcasting policy as specified in the act. The cutting of local services there is an excellent example of that.

    I like the idea of looking at the tool box, not just the tools. I like the idea of thinking outside the box. I think one of the problems, certainly in the last ten years or so with the way a lot of these issues have been dealt with, is that we keep looking for conventional solutions. I'm thinking, for example, of the Juneau report in 1996, which was very quickly buried because they made a very radical and unpopular proposal that public broadcasting be funded by attacks on cable and telecommunications companies. The 99 other interesting things in the Juneau report were never looked at because people couldn't get past that proposal.

    I would certainly like to see us at least think about and consider proposals that may be out of the box. We might not necessarily want to go ahead with them at the end of the day, but we should at least consider them, because otherwise we're going to keep coming up against the same stone walls that everybody who has dealt with these questions has come up against in the past ten years.

Á  (1115)  

    The Chair: Before I give the floor to Jim, I'd like to pick up on what you said about outside of the box. There's something you mentioned at the start, which I think we haven't discussed again.

    If you are right--and this is something we all witness every day anyway--that the Internet is now picking up all the latest services, the home computers, and that eventually the day will come within a few years where TV and computers are going to be merged, and if the CRTC doesn't regulate the Internet.... As we can see in music today, they tried to control it, and now it has exploded again where you can burn disks on the computer, and all the kids are doing it on a massive basis. What happens when everything becomes one service, which escapes control because the CRTC itself says they can't control it, it's too big for them? Maybe that's one item we should be discussing before we leave today.

    I'll pass it on to Jim, but I just thought you brought this up and it didn't get picked up. I must say I'm really intrigued about what we do with it.

    Prof. David Taras: It's important to note how fast the train is moving. For instance, TV cellphones are already in use in Tokyo City, in Osaka City, and in Osaka Prefecture. They will be here in about a year and a half.

    The Chair: How do they work? What happens?

    Prof. David Taras: Basically, you have a cellphone that has a flip-up screen, and you can get music, you can play games, you can do e-mail. What it also provides in fact is a little camera so that there can be an exchange of TV signals person to person via the Internet. So you can be on the subway, basically, producing TV signals that can be picked up by someone else. It's called the NTT DoCoMo. It is a primitive system but it is in use in Japan. It will be here probably within a year or a year and a half. Everybody else is working in the same direction--Motorola, Ericsson, they're all working on this.

    I'm just saying that if the committee wants to be relevant for three years from now, we have to look at what's already in place and then again how fast this train is moving.

    Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay--Columbia, Canadian Alliance): I think Dick Tracy would make us proud.

    I thought the interventions about the CBC and Professor Taras talking about the Olympics and so on....

    The question that I think Ms. Bulte was posing relative to the CBC and then the talk about whether the CBC should be the only way we do public broadcasting and so on all fits together. The question is this. If you take a look at the evening programming on Thursday presently on the CBC, why could that programming, for example, not be on Bravo or on one of the channels that's presently on the satellites or cable? If you take a look at the programming on Friday night on the CBC, why could that not be on the comedy channel? In other words, what is the real raison d'être?

    The position of the Canadian Alliance is that we believe there is broad public support for public radio. We're talking non-commercial public radio, Radio One. We'll talk about Radio Two in a different context. Let's be crystal clear about that.

    Let's now talk specifically about television. You have Newsworld, which is a stand-alone because of its 50¢ charge and because of its advertising base. They have a black bottom line. So now we're talking about CBC television. I think we should be asking and answering this question, if indeed there is an answer: why should the CBC exist if the current main programming can be handled on cable or satellite by current commercial providers?

    Along with that, take a look at the Olympics. First, it must be said that the Olympic coverage by CBC has been exemplary. That's a straight statement of fact. The other statement of fact is that I am of the understanding that the CBC fundamentally outbids private broadcasters for the broadcasting rights of the Olympics. So now you have Canadian taxpayers' dollars bidding against commercial broadcasters for the rights to broadcast the Olympics. So even the Olympics has to come into question.

    I'm consolidating what has been discussed here already. I think if this committee is going to do a proper job for the Canadian public, we have to come up with an answer to those kinds of questions.

Á  (1120)  

    The Chair: Would you like to comment on this?

    Prof. Marc Raboy: I have a comment, and I'll be very brief because I'm going to repeat something I already said. Why is public radio different from public television? Because it's commercial-free. You said that. You hit the nail on the head right there.

    A public television broadcaster should be in a position to do innovative and public service programming without having to worry about whether or not it's going to necessarily get the ratings that are going to make the advertisers happy. All of it won't work. Some of it will. How are you going to find what will?

    Once a kind of innovative program format gets established, the next thing you know, the commercial broadcasters are going to be copying it because it's successful and because that's what motivates them.

    Now, the CBC is just caught in this vicious circle because it's obliged to be down there in the ad market for 30% or 40% of its revenue, and every comparative study that's ever been done of this has shown that the relative success of a public broadcasting corporation in terms of distinctiveness is inversely proportional to its reliance on advertising.

    The Chair: Professor Raboy, if we can pick up on that, you mentioned that in Scandinavia--Sweden and other places--they have a public system without advertising. How do they sustain it? Is it by taxes? I know the BBC, for instance, has a fund that is huge compared to ours and backed by a foundation, but how do the Scandinavians do it?

    Prof. Marc Raboy: Basically by a licence fee, which is essentially the formula that's used in most of the European countries, including those that do get part of their funding from advertising.

    This was gone into in some detail in the Juneau report in 1996. The licence fee system, which is basically.... You can make an analogy with your car registration. If you own a car, an automobile, you're obliged to pay an annual fee for a licence, so in Scandinavia, if you own a television, you're obliged to pay a certain annual fee, and that's basically where the funding comes from. Then the role of the government is that the government sets the fee. So the politics are: should we maintain the fee, should we raise the fee, should we lower the fee, do we still need the fee, and so on?

    With regard to Canada, the Juneau report in 1996 suggested that this would be the ideal way, except politically it would be extremely onerous to try to introduce this because it would be seen as a new tax.

Á  (1125)  

    The Chair: Of course, the Scandinavians have this difference from us in that people would like to watch their television in their own language so they'll be protected from the English market in a sense, whereas with us, even if we had a licence for direct TVs everywhere, it would be a heck of a job to control it.

    Mr. Jim Abbott: I'd like to enter into a debate with Professor Raboy. I don't agree that the distinction between CBC radio and CBC television can necessarily be brought down to the issue of commercials. If you take a look at CBC radio, the fact is that in virtually every area of Canada there is on-air access to CBC radio, either AM or FM. It's this networking, combined with the relatively low cost of providing that networking and the relatively low cost of providing the services.... I think for CBC Radio One and Two, their budget is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $250 million, which is not chicken feed, but it is exceptional value for the dollars that are spent on that.

    Conversely, when you go to a television medium, the production cost for one hour of half decent television broadcasting in entertainment is at least $1 million for that hour. The advertising base--the return for that $1 million--that the advertisers in Canada can support is about $300 million. There's an immediate shortfall on the first showing of that programming of $700 million. So we have to have some kind of a subsidy program. Canadians are already on the hook through the Canada Television and Cable Production Fund, through Telefilm Canada, through the National Film Board, through whatever the medium is. Canadian taxpayers are already on the hook for $400 million, $500 million, $600 million, $700 million, just for the production of Canadian content to begin with.

    Now, with the advent of satellite, I think it can be said that, if they are prepared to pay ExpressVu or Star Choice, or whoever, the fee for the satellite, virtually all Canadians in every area of Canada can now have access to television. But CBC is just one of the programs carried on that satellite. The minimum package, for the sake of argument, is 25 channels to begin with.

    Again we come back to the question, which is the question that I think we are posing. Why the CBC? If CBC television has to use an electronic medium of satellite to get there, and that medium happens to be accompanied by 25, 50, or 300 other channels, why the CBC?

    This sounds like I'm saying no to the CBC. I'm really not. I'm asking where they fit and why, and what is the CBC is doing?

    With respect to the commercials, I think the total cost of the CBC, including radio, is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1.3 billion, of which approximately half a billion of that is from advertising revenue. So we're talking about a taxpayer subsidy of $800 million for the CBC. If we take off $250 million from the $800 million, we have a net amount that it costs for Canada to have CBC as a television network. Then you have to talk about the content that is on the CBC where you have various cable production funds and so on and so forth. So we're in, as taxpayers, for well over $1 billion. We simply have to answer this question: why are we in for well over $1 billion?

Á  (1130)  

    The Chair: Would you like to comment, Professor Taras?

    Prof. David Taras: Well, maybe it's time to take a look at the kind of work we'll have to do in the next six months. I'm just picking up on the conversation--and I think this has been very valuable in terms of what the members are thinking, and I'm very impressed by the ideas and the eloquence of the members--but what I'm hearing is that people want to talk about the future of public broadcasting. We have to get a grip on the new technologies and where they're bringing us. People want to talk about how to promote Canadian production and they want to talk about regional programming. All those questions are linked.

    I would like to ask what we have to do in the next six or eight or ten months to get that information. Who do we have to talk to? Where do we have to go? Who should we be inviting to address the committee?

    I'm impressed by Wendy Lill's comment that we may want to do a kind of report card, maybe even in each of these categories, about the health of the system.

    I'm also impressed by Marc's point that we really do have to think outside the box. We can't look to the conventional solutions because, again, the rapidity of change is so great that we have to really put our thinking caps on and have a sense of where we want to go, because the world that's coming is very different from the world where we've been.

    The Chair: Are there any other comments? Dr. Raboy, would you like to comment before I give the floor to Madam Gagnon? No?

    Madame Gagnon.

[Translation]

    Ms. Christiane Gagnon: People are talking about making Canadian content more accessible. At Parliament we have the cable, but LCN has just been taken away from us and we do not have the proceedings of the National Assembly either. But there is all sorts of programming from the American network on the cable. Who decides that it is those cable channels that will be available on Parliament Hill? That is the kind of thing that could be looked into if people wanted to have Canadian content more widely available in both languages. LCN is of interest to Quebecers who are here. It has a lot of local news. Moreover, we do not have access to the proceedings of the National Assembly, which could be helpful in informing francophones from Quebec and elsewhere.

    Mr. Marc Raboy: I do not know whether your system on Parliament Hill is different from the local cable.

    Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I do not have the answer to that question. That is why I asked it. I could watch programming... That is the kind of decision that we will have to look at. To what extent could we control the choices that are made elsewhere? If some of the programming that is done in Canada is lost, I think that we lose a great deal as a society. Why choose American networks when we do not have access to all the networks available in Quebec and in Canada?

    The Chair: That is a good question that should be asked in the House of Commons. I think that it is the House of Commons that is responsible for broadcasting.

    Ms. Christiane Gagnon: There is certainly room for improvement in the Canadian content that is broadcast, but why are we buying so much programming from the Americans? On the weekend, the Bloc québécois held a symposium on cultural diversity. People talk about cultural diversity. The threat is coming from the Americans who are invading our airwaves, but we have to keep in mind that we are buying that programming. What are people watching on television? They're watching American soaps that leave a lot to be desired and that communicate certain values. There are some good things but also some bad ones. We buy that programming because it is cheap and it fills air time. We play the game. To what extent can legislation be used to control the type of programming available? It is also possible to get high-quality programming from small countries that are struggling to survive and that have programming similar to ours about the soul of the people.

Á  (1135)  

    Mr. Marc Raboy: I believe that that is part of the CRTC'S general mandate. An example that comes to mind, when I listen to you, is TV5. TV5 is a showcase of francophone culture. At one point, there was debate within the CRTC as to whether TV5 should be offered across Canada or only in Quebec. Those questions are generally the responsibility of the CRTC.

    The Chair: I think that we have had a good overview.

[English]

    I think what we should decide before we break up this morning is, having listened to the challenges before us, do we try to complete our hearings between now and June so we have time to reflect? A big part of the work will be to digest afterwards what we've heard and cull information from all these briefs and so forth. Do we do more work? Do we have more meetings?

    Ms. Bulte.

    Ms. Sarmite Bulte: This is just a procedural question. I'm sure everyone has been hearing rumors or gossip that the House will prorogue. Will it happen now? Will it happen in the spring? What happens to all the work we've done if the House prorogues?

    The Chair: We'll just have to start again in a new parliament if there's a prorogation. I have heard these rumors too, but--

    Ms. Sarmite Bulte: With all this work and all these hearings, we'd have to start again?

    The Chair: I remind members that we're still broadcasting publicly. These are very wild rumours you keep hearing. In any case....

    Ms. Sarmite Bulte: I just think we should address the rumour. I'm not saying it's anything more than that.

    The Chair: Yes, that's fine.

    If Parliament is prorogued at any time, for an election or otherwise, we can pass a motion to enshrine the work we've done so the work that is there stays on record and is picked up by the next committee when it's constituted.

    The researchers were pointing out to me that it happened with our cultural policy report, which was broken up in two. Effectively, we ceased working on it because there was an election, but the work, by motion, got carried through and got picked up by the next committee when it was installed.

    Ms. Lill.

    Ms. Wendy Lill: This is just to your earlier point about where we go from here. It seems to me that out of this conversation, which has been really exciting, there seem to be some new elements we have to explore. We're already having trouble with the elements we have to explore now in terms of our timing.

    With respect to the fact that we have to get a grip on new technology and we have to possibly look at new models of public broadcasting as opposed to the CBC, how do we do that? Who would you recommend we bring before us? Where do we go? Are there any site locations we should be going to in order to actually get another way of seeing public broadcasting? I'd be very interested in hearing your comments on that.

    The Chair: Go ahead, Professor Raboy.

    Prof. Marc Raboy: Is this particularly on the question of public broadcasting, or...?

    Ms. Wendy Lill: Absolutely--public broadcasting. Just from what you see now in terms of our list of presenters, are we going to get the full picture, given the questions we've now been subjected to here? I kind of doubt it. I feel there are some people who are probably missing, and I'd like to know who they are so we can get hold of them.

    Prof. Marc Raboy: I'm afraid that what you're likely to get from your list of presenters is a pretty conventional list of complaints and suggestions. Public broadcasting is certainly one of the areas where there's a tremendous wealth of heritage in Canada, one that's often referred to by others. But there are also some really fascinating examples elsewhere, ones we never hear about because we're too focused on our own internal debates.

    For most of it, I don't know if it's necessary to bring someone in to talk about this because there is a tremendous amount of research out there on the record. There are documents and there are publications. If you actually wanted to bring people in, I could certainly make a few suggestions.

    What we probably need to do with the researchers is go through the short list of priorities and look at exactly what it is we need to generate in terms of data to complement what is likely to come up in the hearings and for the witnesses you're going to meet.

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    The Chair: Professor Taras.

    Prof. David Taras: Well, my sense on the technology side is.... Ideally, you would want to go to MIT, to the New Media Lab, and to the Bell labs, talk to analysts on Wall Street, and get a big-picture sense of the new technology and basically the challenges that technology will impose on us.

    In terms of public broadcasting, I think I'd turn to Marc Raboy for his list. There are countless people to go to. The Dutch system is so...their sense of public broadcasting is so different from other models in Europe. There are a lot of changes. Again, we have that Australian report. We'd have to sit down with the researchers, get their sense of some of the people who might be brought in or even connected through a conference call, and give that a lot of thought.

    The Chair: I have a practical suggestion for our following hearings. Perhaps the researchers could liaise with both of you, and perhaps for members, in anticipation of people who are coming in--say AOL-Time Warner, Inc.-- perhaps you could devise some trains of thought for us, some questions that we could put to them in the light of all your own experience and the researchers' experience as to what would hit the button with these people that we as lay people couldn't pick up readily. Thereby we would have a set of different parameters or questions that we could circulate among the members so that we would get the maximum input from them when they come. That would be appreciated.

    Otherwise, if there are no further comments and questions, I would like to thank you very much for attending today. We'll sort out the question of the contracts as soon as possible in light of the discussion today, and we've agreed that once a month we're going to have a roundup like this based on what we've heard in between. For instance, in February we are visiting Toronto and Montreal to see the infrastructures there. We're going to have hearings. So next time we meet we can just focus on those things and get your feedback in a session like this.

    Mr. Jim Abbott: As a practical suggestion, something I think we have to take into account is this business that obviously, because of the closed-circuit hearing we've had here, we do have to be public. I travel out of Calgary every week and I know it's not a lot of fun, but in regard to Professor Taras, the question would then be, can we continue to do this? If we are going to try discussing in camera and digesting what it is we've heard, then obviously Professor Taras would have to come and physically join us.

    The Chair: I think, Professor Taras, if I can put words in your mouth, you have agreed to come up here when possible, because there are times--and I take Mr. Abbott's point--when there are issues there that could be confidential that we want to discuss among ourselves as to the direction the committee is going to take. Otherwise, there will be leaks all over the place regarding our work. So we could do that as well. We'll have to look into that, provided your time is available.

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    Prof. David Taras: I'll do my best to get to Ottawa as frequently as I can.

    The Chair: Thank you very much. I really appreciate your input.

    The meeting is adjourned.