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37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Monday, February 25, 2002

0900

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

0910

Mr. Arthur Simmonds (National Representative, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada)

0915

0920

Ms. Joie Warnock (National Representative, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada)

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

0925

The Chair

Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay--Columbia, Canadian Alliance)

0930

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Jim Abbott

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Ms. Gagnon (Québec)

Ms. Joie Warnock

0935

Ms. Gagnon

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Ms. Gagnon

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Ms. Gagnon (Québec)

0940

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Ms. Joie Warnock

The Chair

Ms. Gagnon

The Chair

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

0945

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

The Chair

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Ms. Lill

0950

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

0955

Ms. Lill

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Mr. McNally

Ms. Joie Warnock

Mr. McNally

Ms. Joie Warnock

1000

Mr. McNally

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. McNally

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. McNally

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Mrs. Hinton

Ms. Joie Warnock

Mrs. Hinton

Ms. Joie Warnock

Mrs. Hinton

Ms. Joie Warnock

Mrs. Hinton

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

1005

Mrs. Hinton

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. John Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. McNally

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Ms. Gagnon

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

1010

1015

The Chair

Mr. Jim Abbott

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

Mr. Jim Abbott

Ms. Joie Warnock

The Chair

1020

Ms. Lill

Mr. Arthur Simmonds

The Chair

Mr. Harvard

1025

The Chair

Mr. Richard Ward (Executive Director, Community Media Education Society)

1030

1035

The Chair

Mr. Sid Chow Tan (Vice-President, Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians)

1040

1045

The Chair

Mr. Jim Abbott

Mr. Abbott

1050

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Jim Abbott

Mr. Abbott

1055

Mr. Sid Chow Tan

Mr. Victor Wong (Executive Director, Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians)

Mr. Jim Abbott

Mr. Victor Wong

Mr. Jim Abbott

The Chair

Ms. Christiane Gagnon

1100

Mr. Richard Ward

Ms. Gagnon

Mr. Richard Ward

1105

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

The Chair

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

1110

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

The Chair

Mr. Sid Chow Tan

1115

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Sid Chow Tan

The Chair

Mr. Sid Chow Tan

The Chair

Ms. Lill

1120

Mr. Richard Ward

The Chair

Mr. Richard Ward

The Chair

Ms. Lill

Mr. Sid Chow Tan

The Chair

Mr. Victor Wong

The Chair

1125

Mr. McNally

Mr. Sid Chow Tan

Mr. McNally

Mr. Richard Ward

The Chair

Mr. Richard Ward

1130

The Chair

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Sid Chow Tan

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Richard Ward

The Chair

Ms. Gagnon

Mr. Richard Ward

1135

The Chair

Mr. Digby Peers (Individual Presentation)

1140

1145

The Chair

Ms. Shyla Dutt (President, ATW Management Communications Inc.)

1150

Mr. Clifford Lincoln

Ms. Shyla Dutt

1155

The Chair

1200

Mr. Jim Abbott

Mr. Digby Peers

The Chair

Ms. Gagnon (Québec)

1205

Mr. Lincoln

Mr. Digby Peers

1210

The Chair

Ms. Gagnon

The Chair

Mr. Harvard

Mr. Digby Peers

Mr. Harvard

1215

The Chair

Ms. Shyla Dutt

Mr. Harvard

Ms. Shyla Dutt

Ms. Lill

1220

Ms. Shyla Dutt

Mr. Digby Peers

The Chair

Mr. McNally

1225

Ms. Shyla Dutt

Mr. McNally

Mr. Digby Peers

The Chair

Mrs. Hinton

Mr. Digby Peers

1230

The Chair

Mr. John Harvard

Ms. Shyla Dutt

Mr. Harvard

Ms. Shyla Dutt

1235

The Chair

Mr. Jim Abbott

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

NUMBER 037

1st SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Monday, February 25, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0900)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.)): I declare open the meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which meets today in Vancouver to continue its study of the Canadian broadcasting system. I'd like to say how very pleased we are to be in your city to be able to listen to especially the grassroots in Vancouver and British Columbia. We are very pleased to start up the hearings today.

We welcome the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, represented by Mr. Arthur Simmonds, national representative, and Ms. Joie Warnock, also a national representative.

The floor is yours, Mr. Simmonds. Usually what we do is have a direct presentation for 10 minutes or so, maybe 15 at the maximum, to allow time for questions by the members. Thank you.

¿ (0910)

Mr. Arthur Simmonds (National Representative, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada): Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for hearing us today, and welcome to sunny Vancouver, Greater Vancouver, home of Joe Sakic and Paul Kariya.

My name is Arthur Simmonds, and I am a national representative with the CEP. My responsibility, working out of the Vancouver western region office of CEP, involves negotiating collective agreements and providing other service to our members at radio and television stations in British Columbia and Alberta. With me is Joie Warnock, also a national representative in Vancouver, whose major assignment involves service to newspaper workers in B.C., including those at Pacific Newspaper Group, which produces Vancouver's two major daily newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and The Province.

CEP is a 150,000-member trade union that represents Canadian workers in such diverse industries as pulp and paper, energy and chemicals, telecommunications, trucking, and a whole range of other fields too numerous to mention here. Some 20,000 of our members work in media--newspapers, radio, television, and independent film production. In short, we are Canada's media union.

Our members are the voices you hear and the faces you see on radio and television across the country. They are also the people behind the cameras, including creative, production, technical, and administrative workers at locations in every province and territory of this nation. They are employed by CTV, Global, CHUM, Craig, Rogers, Shaw, Corus, Standard, CBC, TVOntario, and many other smaller broadcasters in the radio and television industries.

We bring to you a unique perspective, a view from inside the industry as observed by the people who know how things really work. Our members are also residents of the communities in which their radio and TV stations operate. They care very deeply about local reflection and the role that broadcasting must play in providing information to the citizens of a democratic society.

One of the questions that's being asked with respect to the state of Canadian broadcasting is how successful the system has been in meeting the objectives of the Broadcasting Act of 1991. Can we say that during the past decade the CRTC and broadcasters have safeguarded, enriched, and strengthened the cultural, political, social, and economic fabric of Canada? Has the system provided a wide range of programing that reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas, values, and artistic creativity?

It is our view that these goals have taken a back seat to demands from broadcasters whose primary concern is the bottom line. In television, even a cursory review of the record over the past 10 years reveals a race to determine which company can own the most stations and run them with the fewest people. The most significant developments in the post-1991 period have been the disappearance of virtually all local in-house television production other than news, and increased concentration of ownership.

In the early nineties the CRTC wanted to stimulate independent film and TV production, but broadcasters said they couldn't afford to support both their own in-house production and contribute financially to independent productions. So the CRTC said they didn't have to do both. They removed the long-standing requirement that each television station produce a fixed number of hours per week of local programming, and replaced it with commitments to drama and other non-news programs that were not produced in-house. Within a few years of that decision, most television stations had eliminated local production other than news and, as a result, were able to get rid of production workers not required for news programs.

Today many stations have lost the ability to produce anything but news. These stations no longer have the trained personnel or the technical facilities to produce musical concerts, live sports, or community-oriented programming.

Broadcasters will tell you that they fulfill their mandate to provide local reflection through the content of their news programs, but the truth is that today most newsrooms across the country have fewer editorial and technical staff producing daily newscasts than they did a decade ago when their stations were still involved in local program production. With fewer people, you simply can't produce as much news content, despite what any broadcaster may tell you.

The story in our smaller communities has been even more dismal. Major media corporations were gobbling up properties across the country, and at the same time they were freed from the burden of local programming. The result was the reduction, or sometimes the elimination, of stations that had served these small communities for decades.

CHUM reduced full television stations in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and Moncton, New Brunswick, to the status of news bureaus and sales offices by centralizing operations in Halifax. This change represented a significant loss of local reflection for these communities, but the CRTC wasn't interested. Residents of New Brunswick had their own independently produced daily newscasts originating from MITV in Saint John, but those programs disappeared with the takeover by CanWest Global.

Despite overwhelming opposition from Saint John residents and other New Brunswick communities, the CRTC approved CanWest Global's acquisition without demanding it retain a local presence. Today, CanWest Global serves New Brunswick with a pretaped newscast that is fed from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. It doesn't even have a production studio in New Brunswick.

In Ontario the communities of Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, and North Bay had their own local news shows until CTV decided to centralize in Sudbury. CTV applied the same technique in Saskatchewan, where hour-long news programs produced in Prince Albert and Yorkton were scrapped and replaced with token coverage fed out of Saskatoon and Regina.

Smaller players were able to downsize also. Take the situation in northwestern B.C. as an example. Telemedia's TV and radio operation has gone from about 60 employees to just over 20 in this time period. Residents of Terrace, Prince Rupert, Kitimat, and Smithers routinely complain about the lack of local news coverage in their area, but what can you expect from a combined TV-radio newsroom whose staff consists of only four people?

This is the scenario you will find across Canada, outside of the large urban centres. Local reflection isn't somewhat lacking, it's on the verge of becoming extinct.

So that was the trade-off: community service for big-budget, independent productions. It certainly worked well for those fortunate independent producers that were able to develop the kind of programming the big players were prepared to support. It boosted production in Vancouver and Toronto, but it didn't do much for Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, or Kamloops. In essence, program production was transferred from local communities to big-city production centres.

We say this is not the kind of broadcasting system that most Canadians would have envisaged in 1991 if they had been asked or if they had been paying attention. Nor do the developments of the past decade reflect an attempt by the CRTC to achieve the goals of the Broadcasting Act. The CRTC as it is currently constituted is an unmitigated failure, except in the eyes of a very small group of broadcast licence owners.

¿ (0915)

I have some comments about public and community broadcasting. As the private sector continues to evolve, it is becoming more and more important to preserve and nurture the CBC and other forms of public broadcasting. We strongly disagree with those who say the CBC has outlived its usefulness. Bad management and lack of funding has sapped the strength of an institution that was once envied around the world. It is true that CBC audiences have been shrinking, but this was the inevitable result of diminishing government support. It is now time for policy-makers to develop a clear, long-term plan for the CBC's radio and television services and to match it with the funding required to ensure we retain at least one voice that is independent and unique in a broadcasting system dominated by self-interested media corporations.

We also need to provide a public policy framework in which we can develop viable non-commercial broadcast media in our towns and cities. Priority should be given--priority--to license applicants who wish to operate community radio and TV stations. Their economic viability should be bolstered by requirements that private sector broadcasters contribute funding, while cable operators are mandated to carry the signals.

I will now ask Joie Warnock to continue our presentation.

¿ (0920)

Ms. Joie Warnock (National Representative, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada): Mr. Chair and members of the committee, we have a few comments about the issue of cross-media ownership. The CRTC's decision last year to allow CanWest Global to retain broadcast licensing and markets where they had acquired ownership of daily newspapers is the biggest blow to diversity and local reflection since the death of local programming in the early nineties.

The broadcaster doesn't just own the newspapers; it is now in the process of integrating television and newspaper newsrooms. Here in Vancouver, CanWest owns two television stations and two daily newspapers in the same market. In Victoria, those same two stations are seen by viewers whose daily newspaper is also owned by CanWest. CHUM owns two stations broadcasting into the same markets. Corus owns and operates four radio stations in the Vancouver market.

Is this our idea of how to reflect a wide range of Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas, values, and artistic creativity? In defiance of logic and common sense, the CRTC somehow believes that integration of CanWest's Vancouver media operations won't result in a loss of diversity as long as they maintain separate management teams at their television and newspaper operations.

Not only will there be fewer voices and opinions, but we believe the process threatens to undermine our democracy. We need more independent media sources, not fewer, if our citizens are going to have access to the kind of information they need to make decisions in their daily lives, not the least of which are political choices.

What we are seeing develop in this country is yet another trade-off. This time we are exchanging a free marketplace of ideas and informed self-government for closed markets, in which media conglomerates exercise increasing control over information. As our world grows more complicated, we need media markets that are open to newcomers with new ideas and innovative communications styles. Instead what we are getting is an oligopoly dominated by a few corporations that are not the least bit interested in a free marketplace of ideas or anything else except the freedom to do whatever it takes to maximize their return on investment.

By the way, we don't think it's a crime to make a profit--but not if it means sacrificing the public interest. After all, it is the public that owns the airwaves, not media corporations. Broadcasters simply lease their frequencies and channels. They are granted this privilege on the understanding they will put something back into the communities from which they draw their revenues. It is our view that the Canadian public has been getting the short end of the bargain for the past 10 years.

On foreign ownership, the very fact the foreign ownership issue is being considered in the context of the Canadian broadcast system is evidence of the extent to which our public agenda is being controlled by the forces of globalization.

With respect to foreign ownership, we say it would be the final nail in the coffin of a strong and independent Canadian broadcasting system. If the Asper family can dictate the editorial policies of the eight daily newspapers out of Winnipeg, imagine the influence that could be wielded across the border by giants such as AOL, Time Warner, Viacom, or Disney.

The direction indicated by the very few who advocate elimination of foreign ownership restrictions runs contrary to the fundamental goals of the current Broadcasting Act. We must protect our sovereignty in one of the few remaining bastions of Canadian identity.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: In conclusion, we believe the committee should consider the following policies for inclusion in a new Broadcasting Act. The Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission should be replaced by a body whose primary mandate is to protect the interests of Canadian citizens and not to serve the media conglomerates.

The new board or commission should be structured along the lines of public utility commissions, with staff acting as advocates for the consumer, subjecting applicants to rigorous scrutiny while commissioners fill the role of decision makers.

We need strict rules governing broadcast licensing that will ensure a broad range of local community reflection.

Broadcasters who refuse to provide meaningful service to small communities should have their licences revoked. These licences should be offered to new players who are prepared to give priority to the community's needs.

The CBC should be provided with long-term security, direction, and funding.

Non-profit community television and radio should be given high priority, and their signals should be part of basic cable service.

Common ownership of broadcasting and newspaper should be prohibited.

Foreign ownership restrictions should be maintained at their current levels.

Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, we thank you very much for hearing us today. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

¿ (0925)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Simmonds and Ms. Warnock, for your thought-provoking presentation. We work in the two official languages. Questions might be put to you in French. If they are, you have translation equipment on your desks.

Mr. Abbott, could you start the questions?

Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay--Columbia, Canadian Alliance): Thank you to our witnesses.This is very thought-provoking.

You may be interested to note that I conferred briefly with my colleague from the Canadian Alliance. There are a couple of points on which we concur with you very strongly.

We look at the conclusion. Taking another look at the CRTC and how it should be structured is absolutely at the top of our agenda. I think we would find some common ground on that one.

The other one is this point: “Broadcasters who fail to provide meaningful service to small communities should have their licences revoked. These licences should be offered to new players who are prepared to give priority to the community's needs.”

We are very strongly of that mind. You could go to a community such as one in my constituency, Revelstoke, which is geographically isolated by at least an hour and a half drive in each direction. It is down in the bottom of a valley and absolutely beautiful, but is nonetheless in an isolated location.

There are 8,500 people being served by a conglomerate out of Quebec that is basically selling advertising into the Revelstoke marketplace, but delivering no useful local service whatsoever. When I take a look at the advertising money they are drawing out of Revelstoke, and I see the advertising dollars in competition with newspapers that don't have the privilege of access to the airwaves via the CRTC, I think they are completely out of place and wrong. I am sure this would be duplicated in many locations across Canada.

We find some common ground on a number of issues, but I would like to challenge you. I wonder how serious you might be with your position: “We also need to provide a public policy framework in which we can develop viable non-commercial broadcast media in our own towns and cities.” We are in agreement.

“Priority should be given to licence applicants who wish to operate community radio and TV stations.” Again we are in agreement. I believe democracy is best served when access is given to any ordinary individual in Canada. It's what democracy is about. We're in agreement there.

How serious are you when you say their “economic viability should be bolstered by requirements that private sector broadcasters contribute funding, while cable operators are mandated to carry the signals”? When dealing with “private sector broadcasters contribute funding”, bear in mind that they are deriving their income from the advertising dollars that come from a measurement by the Board of Broadcast Measurement. If their BBM number goes down, the amount they can charge for the advertising goes down.

So the CEP is suggesting that the private broadcaster should be paying for someone to take away the audience, thereby lowering the amount they can get for advertising dollars. Is that really the position you're taking?

¿ (0930)

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: In fact it is, but let me say this. If you think back to what we said when we started, the CRTC made a decision in the early 1990s to transfer production out of communities to the production centres of Vancouver and Toronto. That was their goal. Broadcasters are required, by licence, to support that production. They have to pay for it. They're already being required to support it, and we're saying that if broadcasters are required to support independent producers operating in Vancouver and Toronto, then why not have a small piece of the pie going to community broadcasters who are going to fill some of the void that's been left by the broadcasters getting out of local production? We think that's completely reasonable and rational.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Obviously we have a very significant difference of opinion on that one.

On page 3, the second paragraph under “Public and Community Broadcasting”, your position on CBC, the last sentence says: “It is true that CBC audiences have been shrinking, but this was the inevitable result of diminishing government support”. While that is arguable, you seem to be completely avoiding the whole question of the availability of other channels and other media. I would suggest to you that an additional very, very important reason why the CBC audience is diminishing is because of the availability of digital channels on cable, as well as satellite, and you usually have to have one of those two mediums in order to pick up the CBC. Either that or you're captive to the CBC by virtue of your own rabbit ears. So if you're not captive to the CBC you have far more choices, and you don't seem to have addressed that particular issue in your position here.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: That's a very complex question. Most conventional broadcasters have had shrinking audiences because of the fragmentation of audiences, and the CBC has suffered some of that. But what we're saying is that the CBC has not been able to put out the quality product they once did because they don't have the resources to do it any longer.

We could argue about whether the cuts at the CBC were made in the right places, but our view of it is that with the conventional broadcasters, the large media players in this country, becoming fewer and fewer, we have fewer and fewer voices. And they are voices that are dictated by a corporate agenda.

The CBC is unique in that it provides us with a voice that is independent. We're not suggesting that we should not have Globals, or CTVs, or CHUMs. They're a reality and our members work for them. But in that mix the public broadcaster offers people something they're not going to get from these other sources and the loss of it would leave us with the corporate agenda. That's all we would have left.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mrs. Gagnon.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon (Québec, BQ): You have noted, in any case, the concentration of the multimedia. This has a negative impact on society, on the way we project the image of Canadian culture. Have you seen the same impact elsewhere, in other countries?

There are no forces which apply pressure in each country for there to be this type of single concentration of information. As they say, this is the era of globalization. How can we correct the restructuring?

Some outside observers tell us that everything that was available to be merged has been merged. Is it too late? In your opinion, what would be some concrete solutions that we could implement? Is it not illusory to think that we could manage to become more distinctive in how we cover information and thus disseminate Canadian culture.

[English]

Ms. Joie Warnock: Canada has one of the highest levels of media concentration of any major democracy. Some of the solutions we would seek to counterbalance this would be to have some form of limiting the concentration and making sure there is competition between major news organizations, because we're seeing the merging of newsrooms happening across the country in terms of the content.

Also, Art has spoken a lot about the need for the relative strength of non-commercial public broadcasting. That would be another way to counterbalance that trend.

I think the CTRC needs to have a willingness to monitor private broadcasters with respect to their mandate to provide balanced coverage. It think it's a very serious situation.

¿ (0935)

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: But you just spoke of replacing the CRTC with another organization that would provide a bit more monitoring. More specifically, aren't there also standards? Isn't there a Standards Commission which monitors the application of regulations? Is this the type of organization which could monitor more closely the independence of the different information sources .

[English]

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: I'm not sure if you're referring to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Yes.

[English]

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: That doesn't really deal with the content of news. It deals with content of commercials and content of programming with respect to meeting the issue of whether or not violence exists to a large extreme or there is sexual content in the program and that sort of thing. To my knowledge, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council does not deal with the issues of news content or news competition.

I don't know how many of you have actually been to a CRTC hearing. I've been to a number of them. The CRTC chair and commissioners are hands-on involved in the questioning of people who appear before them. If I appear before the CRTC as an intervener, I have no opportunity to cross-examine the applicants. The only people who get to cross-examine and to put the broadcasters' feet to the fire are the members of the commission.

We think that system is wrong. It needs to be structured in a way that the commissioners sit back, listen to the evidence, and the commission have staff that have a responsibility to represent consumers and citizens of this country and to hold the broadcasters' feet to the fire. In other words, we need a change in terms of the concept of the CRTC so that we get more of a watchdog, more of an organization that's willing to demand from broadcasters more than they are providing.

I would like to emphasize that to say broadcasters can have access to the airwaves in the community and not put a significant contribution back into that community, we think, is just a tragedy.

The Chair: I think what Madam Gagnon is trying to find out is this. If in your mind the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council is not a good example, can you give us a practical example of another already existing commission that provides the type of system you would be looking for?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: Well, I think if you take a look at public utilities commissions that operate in various parts of the country under different jurisdictions, they probably have various rules and regulations that they operate under. But I think there are bodies out there that operate in this manner. I don't think that we need to reinvent the wheel, but I think that we need to take a look at how the CRTC functions and whether or not it can.... I guess what we're saying is that we believe that the CRTC is just too close to the broadcasters.

The Chair: Madam Gagnon.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: My question is in the same vein. This type of model, of structure which makes it possible to follow the needs of consumers more accurately and the regulations which are part of the Act, exist elsewhere, in other countries, for example? Have you ever carried out a more in-depth external study so that we can see how the CRTC could be redefined, or so we can make some proposals regarding the CRTC?

¿ (0940)

[English]

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: The simple answer is no, I have not looked at other countries in terms of what they do, but since you have brought it up, we will do that. I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to respond to that at a future hearing.

Ms. Joie Warnock: I know that in Britain they have independent press councils that are at arm's length from the industry. So there is an avenue for the public who have concerns to bring them forward to councils that are at arm's length.

[Translation]

The Chair: Do you have any other questions, Mrs. Gagnon?

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I have others but I'll come back to them.

The Chair: Understood.

[English]

Mr. Harvard.

Mr. John Harvard (Charleswood St. James--Assiniboia, Lib.): Mr. Simmonds, you referred to certain matters in your presentation. You talked about fewer local programs put on by the commercial sector and even the total elimination of some local programs. You talked about smaller staffs, less diversity, and fewer opinions.

My first question is this. Do you think that there has been deliberate flouting of the Broadcast Act, and if so, was this allowed by the CRTC openly and to their full knowledge?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: I don't think I would say that. I think what I would say is that broadcasters were urged by the CRTC to support independent production, and I think that's great. I think that Canada needed, at the time, independent production, and it needs it today. It's a very valuable industry in this country, particularly in this city where we have more independent production than any other city in Canada. So it's a vital part of our economy in British Columbia.

So the CRTC said, let's go in this direction, but the broadcasters said, we can't do both. We can't pour revenues, money, our income, into independent production. We can't send that money to independent producers and continue to operate to provide this local service.

So we made a choice.

We're not suggesting that we can turn the clock back with respect to that--

Mr. John Harvard: But we have lost local programming as a result.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: We've lost it, so then the question becomes this. Where do we go from here?

Mr. John Harvard: Did the CRTC do its job or was it incompetent?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: No, I wouldn't say it's incompetent. I think they set a goal, and I believe they achieved it.

Mr. John Harvard: Do you think the Broadcast Act was flawed, then, to allow this to happen?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: No, I don't think the Broadcast Act is flawed.

Mr. John Harvard: So nobody's at fault? This thing just happened.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: No, I think what happened is we made a trade-off, and I'm not sure that in that trade-off we struck a balance. We needed to go toward independent production, but I don't believe we needed to sacrifice local reflection in order to do it. There was no balance maintained at all.

Mr. John Harvard: On the other hand, Mr. Simmonds, you just said that you can't go back and yet you would like to see a restoration of local programming, because you talk about the need for more diversity and more opinions.

How do you get that, post the kind of concentration that we've seen in the broadcast industry? We've allowed CanWest Global Communications to consolidate, to concentrate, to get bigger. Can you somehow unscramble the egg now that it's been done?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: I want to make a point here with respect to this question. I think you have to look at the large urban centres in a different light than you do smaller centres.

With respect to the large urban centres, yes, we're inundated with news programming. We think it was a mistake by the CRTC to allow CanWest to own licences in markets where they also own newspapers. And we still think this decision should be reversed.

But when you look at the small centres in this country, and I'm talking about some of the cities I mentioned, some medium-sized markets, we think there are broadcasters out there who would be happy to provide service if the large broadcasters aren't prepared to do so. That's where we believe there's still room to repair some of the damage that's been done.

I go into these communities, as I do my job in dealing with people who work in these radio and television stations, and I hear what they say. I hear what people in the communities say. They're not happy about the loss of these services. We don't know for sure if somebody else would do it, but my sense is that if others were offered the opportunity to provide the services, they would.

¿ (0945)

Mr. John Harvard: Develop that for me. Are you saying that in these smaller communities, it could be a Cranbrook, or whatever, here in British Columbia.... What would you do to allow for a different kind of broadcaster to come in and serve the local communities? How would that happen?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: If I could use the example, perhaps, of northwestern B.C. that I mentioned, which has radio and television--Cranbrook perhaps is a little different scenario--you've got one company that owns radio and television and until recently even owned the cable in that entire region of the province. If I were in a position to be a decision maker, I would say to that company, either provide the service by x point in time or you will not fulfill the requirements of your licence and we'll offer it to someone else.

Mr. John Harvard: Do you really expect the CRTC to do that, given the fact that there is so much investment, so much money invested in these operations? I just can't imagine the CRTC or any other body going in and cancelling someone's broadcasting licence.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: Then what are they there for?

Mr. John Harvard: Well, that's a good question, but I think that from a political point of view it would be practically impossible.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: You know, I can't ever remember.... I think there might have been one or two examples of licences being cancelled, but they were a long time ago. And you do have to ask the question. The system isn't that perfect that the CRTC should be giving everybody seven-year licence renewals. So we think that not only is it possible, if the will is there to do it, it can be done.

These are not extremely lucrative markets, either. They have to be run pretty efficiently. But we know that there are people--for example, I hear from people in Prince Rupert--who would be more than happy. Business people in the community of Prince Rupert would be more than happy to invest in radio or television had they the opportunity.

Mr. John Harvard: Can I have one more question?

The Chair: Briefly, yes.

Mr. John Harvard: I wonder about this question of diversity among the commercial operators. Basically, Mr. Simmonds, I really can't tell the difference between CanWest and CTV or anybody else. If I watch their newscasts, their newscasts are not very different. I don't think there's a lot of diversity.

My question is this. We have what I would call a two-track system or a dual system in this country, commercial operators on one side and the CBC. I can live with that provided we have a nice, strong public broadcasting system. I really can't see us going back to a day when there is less concentration and perhaps more opinions and more diversity, but maybe what we should be doing is concentrating all our efforts on building the CBC and making it stronger. Let the commercial operators do their thing. They're there to make a buck and that's fine. Let them sell products; that's part of the economy as well. Let them do their job, and as far as we are concerned, who really want the kind of broadcast system that you talk about, let's just concentrate on the CBC. Does that make sense to you?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: To an extent it may make some sense. The problem is the CBC is not in all these communities.

Mr. John Harvard: Maybe that's part of the building process, then.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: But that's a huge building process. That's huge.

Mr. John Harvard: I'm not talking necessarily about putting in more studios and so on, but serving these communities well, better than we do now.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: How do you serve a community if you're not there? And do you know what? We already have stations that are there and they're capable of serving those communities. But they're not putting the resources to it.

The Chair: Ms. Lill.

Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): Thank you so much for coming here today. You have offered a perspective I have a lot of time for and really sympathize with. There are many things in your report that I think are fundamental to what we are doing here.

To begin with, we are trying to determine the health of the present Broadcasting Act--the one we struck in 1991. You've actually enlightened us quite a bit about the changes that occurred early in the nineties that have in fact made the Broadcasting Act less than capable of carrying out this objective--certainly the objective of providing diverse voices and reflecting and serving the special needs of the regions. From all fronts we hear that this area has been an abject failure within the present Broadcasting Act.

As Mr. Harvard said, there seem to be different ways of going on this. We can either strengthen the public broadcaster, which has clearly demonstrated that it is the most efficient producer of Canadian programming and has put the most revenue into Canadian programming of all different kinds--news and current affairs and drama and sports. Even in the event that they have been cut continuously in their budgets, they continue to invest in their central goal.

You take great aim at the CRTC at this point, but I guess my question to you would be this. We have to decide if the act works, if it is actually implemented the way it's outlined. At this point in time--and I'm quoting from a document from the Canadian Conference of the Arts--“the CRTC has failed to ensure that highly profitable broadcasters undertake a fair and reasonable share of the efforts required to strengthen our broadcasting system, choosing instead to rely more and more heavily on Canada's underfunded public broadcaster. Overall, privately owned television stations have reduced their spending on Canadian content by 5% but have increased their spending on non-Canadian programming by 56%.”

It appears the CRTC as it is configured can create the kind of broadcasting system we say we want, but they're not doing it. The question is, should we be fixing the CRTC? You're saying we should be changing the CRTC, but if it actually is working the way it is supposed to work, can we not maintain the status quo system and try to actually make it work? If it's not broke, do we have to fix it?

¿ (0950)

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: This is my view: I believe the CRTC as it's presently constituted doesn't work. As I said, I've been at hearings where applicants are questioned by panel members on the CRTC. There are issues that cry out to be addressed, and they're not addressed.

As I said, the commission as it's constituted does not hold the broadcasters' feet to the fire with respect to the issues of local reflection--primarily, “What are you doing?”

The other thing the CRTC never does is actually look at content. Let's face it. For example, I'm embarrassed to watch a Canadian production called Due South that's produced by CBC because it's a caricature of Canadians and of Mounties. I'm embarrassed by it, but that's what passes for Canadian content. Well, it's Canadian content that's produced to be sold south of the border. It's not produced for Canadians; it's produced because they can sell it and make enough money from it to pay for the production.

The CRTC doesn't actually look at the content. It doesn't look at content of newscasts; it just looks at the number of hours of newscasts that are being produced. It looks at the number of hours a broadcaster is exhibiting Canadian programming.

I think there just are too many issues. We haven't even raised these issues in this presentation, but there are just too many problems with the way the commission is constituted. I think the way to do it is to start over again.

The Chair: One last question.

¿ (0955)

Ms. Wendy Lill: I'm certainly not disagreeing with you in any way with regard to the way the CRTC has been conducting itself. I'm just trying to understand whether the actual structure is there so that it can in fact do the job that it was tasked to do.

I agree with you that we need to look at content and certainly we have to look at the category of “industrial”, this generic drama that we are creating and is supposedly meeting the goals of Canadian content but is in fact not in any way, shape, or form indigenous to any place that we know.

I'm interested in your comment about local reflection and how it is in fact not only somewhat lacking, but on the verge of extinction. I'm wondering if you have any numbers that you could give us about the reduction in newsrooms. You talk about the fact that there has been a great reduction in staff in places such as Terrace, Prince Rupert, Kitimat, and Smithers, all sorts of places where we have seen staff reduced and programs deteriorating. I'm wondering if you could provide the committee with some statistics on that.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: I personally only have anecdotal evidence, but let me say this. I worked in the news business, in television. The last job I had in television was in Edmonton at the CTV station. What I've observed in the Edmonton market, for example, is that the established stations in that market have more news on the air than they had when I left the industry, which is some 13 or 14 years ago. There are more actual hours of news on the air, but there are fewer people producing the news. Fewer people are producing more hours.

In fact, where the money is going is into anchors, not into the people who gather the news. For people who gather news, those numbers have diminished. When I worked there I was an assignment editor. I had 14 reporters every day and I had 10 ENG shooters every day to work with. Today in that newsroom it's not unusual to see two or three or four people on a given day actually gathering the news. They've probably doubled or tripled the number of news anchors, the people who sit in front of the camera, and they spend a lot of money on clothes, hair, makeup and so forth, but as for the actual news gathering--and Joie will tell you the same thing about newspapers in this country--as for the people who are dedicated to gathering news, the reporters, editors, people who shoot, those people, their numbers have diminished.

As I said, there are fewer of those people today than there were back in 1991, when the broadcasters not only had to do all the news they did but also had to produce local programming. Those numbers have diminished, and I can say that about many markets in this country.

The Chair: Mr. McNally.

Mr. Grant McNally (Dewdney--Alouette, PC/DR): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for your presentation. I come from a strong union background myself. I was a former member of the BCTF, the B.C. Teachers' Federation, the retail clerks' union, and I was a telecommunications worker for a period of time while I was going to college not far from here. My dad was a longshoreman and worked here in the port of Vancouver.

I do want to ask you about whether you think it's possible to have independence between two arms of a company, i.e., a company that owns a television station and, let's say, a newspaper.

Ms. Joie Warnock: That's a very good question. Especially in Vancouver, where there is probably the heaviest concentration of media ownership, we're seeing the same story being filed in different formats with cost efficiencies. Basically we've had anecdotal stories from reporters. We'll have one reporter go to a news conference. There may be two or three TV cameras, but no actual reporters from the television station. There is basically a re-purposing of content happening. In my opinion it leads to a very sharp erosion in public interest journalism. If there's a lack of real competition, then there's not the business incentive to send people there to get the story for their own individual organizations.

Mr. Grant McNally: How is that different from the CBC, let's say, where we were in Montreal and heard of reporters who were filing stories in French and English for radio and the same reporters filing a story in French and English for television? They have one reporter basically doing four stories. Is that the same?

Ms. Joie Warnock: I think really the lack of resources puts pressure on journalists. It is a disservice to the readers that they're not getting the breadth of coverage they deserve.

À (1000)

Mr. Grant McNally: I know you talked about long-term security and funding for the CBC. Do you have a dollar total that you would like to see?

This would be the second part of that question. Would you be open, and I don't think this has been suggested in our hearings yet, to contributions from viewers, similar to what happens in other countries with public broadcasters, thereby reducing the reliance on advertising where the CBC often looks in many ways like a private broadcaster itself?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: We have an example with PBS in the United States. If you spend any time at all watching PBS, let's say, their flagship newscast, which is the Jim Lehrer News Hour, look who the corporate underwriters are. If you think that AT&T or Archer Daniels Midland--these huge multinational corporations--don't have an influence on what stories the Jim Lehrer News Hour covers and whether or not certain issues are on the agenda or off the agenda, then I think you're missing the point. What we are saying is that for viewers to contribute to the CBC is one issue, but it seems to me that this is probably not going to provide enough funding. If they go the route of trying to attract corporate support, then that corporate support is going to dictate the content. Clearly, if the corporation that's sponsoring a program isn't satisfied with it, it will pull its funding. As a consequence, those people who put that program together will sit there every day second-guessing themselves as to whether or not the corporation that's funding them is going to like what they're putting on the air that day.

Mr. Grant McNally: It sounds to me like what you're saying is that the person who is providing the buck often has a connection to the content, then, of what is being reported.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: It has always been that way.

Mr. Grant McNally: How is that different from, let's say, the government funding CBC and there being that same crossover, because of course then the government is paying the buck? How do you maintain the independence in that regard if you are arguing that there's little independence in the private sector?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: The government is, depending on your views, somewhat accountable for its actions and it can be held accountable through our democratic system and through our parliamentary system. I don't think that compares in any way to private media corporations, which in our view are not being held accountable by the CRTC.

The Chair: Thank you.

We are just about out of time, but I'll allow just a brief question from members.

Ms. Hinton, if you have a brief question.

Mrs. Betty Hinton (Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, Canadian Alliance): I would like to begin by telling you how much I've enjoyed your presentation. You are a very persuasive and logical arguer.

I do have a few questions, though. I gather that the wire service is the information source that passes the information to all the local newspapers and local channels, etc. Who contributes to that source? Who puts the information out there in the first place? That is one question.

This would be a second one. The reduction in staff that you've referred to, is that related to changes in technology?

Third, in your view, what would it cost roughly--a ballpark figure--to redevelop the local programming, the coverage that we've missed since the 1990s?

Ms. Joie Warnock: I have a brief answer on the wire services. Do you mean the number of services that newsrooms will buy to get lists of, say, foreign news that has been reported or national news such as the Canadian Press? Is that what your reference is?

Mrs. Betty Hinton: Yes.

Ms. Joie Warnock: Those are stories filed by reporters.

Mrs. Betty Hinton: Just different reporters from across the country filing stories--

Ms. Joie Warnock: Or internationally.

Mrs. Betty Hinton: Thank you, I needed to understand that. The other two questions, please.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: We've lost a lot of members in our union as a consequence of technology. We're not here talking about that today. That's a different issue. The technology results in a broadcaster being able to centralize operations technically. I am talking about the ability to feed programs from one location.

For example, in Ontario CTV feeds eight signals out of their operation in Sudbury: two signals to Sudbury, two signals to Timmins, two signals to North Bay, and two signals to Sault Ste. Marie. In each of those communities they are feeding a CBC signal and a CTV signal, and it is all done out of one control centre.

We are not talking about that. What we are talking about is that in that same location they have shut down the local newscasts. So we lost a number of employees, and not all of them are our members because they are not all unionized by CEP. We lost a number of our members through the technology, yes, but we are not here to complain about that. We are here talking about diversity. We are talking about the content of news shows and whether or not these stations reflect the local communities. I would say the issue of local reflection has nothing to do with technology.

Whether you can feed a program from Saskatoon to Prince Albert, that's one issue, but whether or not the news that people in Prince Albert see is originating in Prince Albert, that is the issue. That's why we say that if the broadcasters aren't prepared to provide that service, then someone else should be given the opportunity to do so.

I am sorry, I didn't get your third question.

À (1005)

Mrs. Betty Hinton: You get no argument out of me. I just wanted a clarification on those first two issues.

The third one is probably closer to your heart. In your view, what would it cost, roughly, to redevelop local average programming?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: I don't have any idea. I've not spent time nor has CEP put time into research with respect to these issues.

All I can tell you is that if a company like CTV were to tell us that it's too expensive to provide local reflection in some of those communities, one of the tests of that would be then to say, well, does anyone else want to do it? If the marketplace will produce another broadcaster who is prepared to do it, then it seems to me that CTV is not so much saying that it is too expensive, they are saying it is too much trouble. They have bigger fish to fry and they want to put their resources into their major markets where the real revenue is.

Ms. Betty Hinton: Okay, thank you.

The Chair: I want to ask you a question on job loss. You mentioned in your brief going from 60 people in one particular area to 20 people. And you also mentioned to us a little earlier that some of it, of course, has to do with new technology.

Have you taken any statistical evidence over the years of job losses due to local programming being curtailed so that we get an idea of how much that is versus how much is lost by technology advancement? In other words, is there any statistical evidence to give us?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: We did that several years ago. In fact, that was presented to the CRTC at some point. I would be happy to see if I can locate it and determine if it could be updated. And I will attempt to get that to you.

The Chair: Yes, perhaps you could send that to our clerk. I think it would be extremely useful because otherwise we talk into thin air.

The second question is regarding the small local broadcasters, whether radio or TV. I know you've made the suggestion that they should be non-profit ideally, because if they are not non-profit don't we get into the vicious circle of.... I know of all kinds of cases in small areas where somebody owns a local radio or TV broadcasting station. It might be a family; it might be a small corporation. Eventually, the usual normal cycle of business and life takes place where the owner wants to ensure his future or make a profit out of the operation and sells to a bigger group.

How do we avoid this in the future so you restart the wheel by giving a licence to somebody else and they go along for five or six years, the thing builds up well, then the temptation is to sell to a bigger group?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: First, I don't think you can assume that a large media corporation can't operate stations that provide local reflection in small communities. I don't think we can say that. I think they are more than capable of doing that. Whether they have the will to do it or not is a different question.

Second, you're right, if someone started a local station that was successful there might be a temptation for a larger corporation to buy them out. But I do have to put this to you: there are properties in this country that have been put on the block and they have been snapped up. Somebody is buying them. They're buying them for a reason. They're not buying them to lose money; they're buying them because they can make money.

Yes, they can probably maximize the profit and operate on a more efficient basis if in fact they are able to centralize some things. Sure, they could centralize things like payroll, a number of administrative functions, maybe some operations functions, but what we are saying is that you cannot centralize local reflection. You cannot centralize local news coverage. It's not good enough to put a photojournalist in a medium-sized town or a small city and say, just feed your stories into us somewhere else and we'll feed them back out. We don't think that's good enough. That's not providing a local service.

We believe these companies can do it and still make a profit. They just don't have the will to do it.

Mr. John Harvard: If I wanted to start up a small magazine or newspaper in a small community I could do it. I would not need a licence. Could that system apply to the broadcast system? If I wanted to start a little radio or television operation to offer what you call “local reflections”, is there any reason in the world why we couldn't just say, all right, if you think there's room in the marketplace, go ahead? You wouldn't need a licence as long as there's room on the spectrum. There is always that question. But provided there would be room, just let them do it.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: I don't have a big argument with that concept. You will get a huge argument from broadcasters who already have the licences and aren't much interested in more competition.

Mr. John Harvard: Broadcasters will always say good things about competition, the more the merrier and so on.

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: They may say good things about competition, but they certainly don't practise it. If you look at the record at CRTC hearings, they intervene in opposition to virtually every new licence application that occurs, whether it's big cities or small centres.

I do recognize, however, that there is difficulty in smaller centres in supporting more than one broadcaster, but perhaps if one of them fails then that's the way the market works.

Mr. Grant McNally: Mr. Simmonds, I had asked for a dollar total. I think I cut you off in trying to get all my questions in. But do you have a dollar total to recommend to the committee in terms of funding for the CBC?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: No, I don't. I think that what we have to do with respect to the CBC is look at what it is going to take in order to put it back on its feet. That's where you start, and then the costs will be fairly clear after that.

The Chair: Mr. Simmonds, the sign of a good hearing is that people want to ask you more questions, so we will just extend the time for a few more minutes to allow Madame Gagnon and Mr. Abbott to ask more questions and then we will close.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: You spoke earlier of the quality of CBC productions. You say it is because there has been a reduction in financial support. I look at Radio-Canada, the Francophone section, where they have less money for productions but where the audience ratings are higher nonetheless. Do you not think it is because of the American market, because of the fact that English Canadians watch many shows and watch less CBC because they have productions coming from the United States?

[English]

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: That's been a problem ever since we were able to receive American stations on cable in this country. That's been inevitable.

I think what we are saying, though, is that if we bring it back to the question of local reflection, American channels can't provide us with local reflection. Only Canadian stations can do that, and the CBC, at one time in the country, was the absolute undisputed king of local reflection.

À (1010)

When we're talking about nationally produced programs--dramas and other programming the CBC has produced--I think if you actually look at the numbers, and I just recently saw a report, probably in The Globe and Mail, CBC-produced programs were actually the most-watched Canadian programming as compared with the Canadian programming produced by the private sector media companies.

Will the CBC ever return to the days of 1960? It's not going to happen. But it seems to me there is more to the CBC than simply prime time programming; there is local reflection. Even in a city as large as Vancouver, its local newscast budgets have been cut to the point where, while I was constantly a CBC watcher, I really am not any more. That is a reflection of the fact that the content has suffered that much. If you go to smaller centres than Vancouver or Toronto you will find they have been hurt even more. They were smaller to begin with, so as the chopping continues they have less and less to work with.

About Quebec, I would like to say I believe it is a different market. We did not come here today to talk about Quebec. We believe others within our union are much more qualified to do that, in Quebec. I think the job Radio-Canada does in Quebec is something for us to be extremely proud of, but it also flows somewhat from the language.

À (1015)

The Chair: I will allow one last question from Mr. Abbott and Ms. Lill, and then we will close.

Mr. Jim Abbott: I would really value your opinion about which is worse: the idea of there being only one or two reporters turning up from a conglomeration of media outlets--and therefore there being less of a voice, or less diversity of reporting--or politicians and bureaucrats dictating who can turn up to cover what events and how many could be there. Which of those two is worse, in your judgment?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: I would not choose between them. I think they are both equally bad.

If you are suggesting, though, that politicians have dictated to the CBC who shows up to news conferences or what stories are on the agenda, of course there is political influence. There is political influence at the CBC, just as there is influence with respect to private sector media companies. That influence comes from the media corporation itself or the big-time sponsors who put a lot of revenue into advertising on those television and radio stations.

I do not think either situation is good, but I don't believe you should throw the baby out with the bath water. I think you should do what you can to improve that situation.

There is no question that in the 1960s the CBC was extremely independent, and the government of the day was not very happy with some of the programming on CBC. Clearly political influence has been brought to bear, and the CBC does not produce the kind of programming it once did. But I don't think that is a reason to shut it down. What we have to do is strive for something that is better.

Mr. Jim Abbott: With respect, I wasn't going down the CBC track. I was thinking more in terms of a reporter turning up and doing all of the reporting for the radio or the television and for the newspaper. That was the scenario I was thinking of, in terms of private broadcasters.

I guess my question more directly would be, in your judgment should there be government intervention, political intervention, bureaucratic intervention with the people who are going out gathering news in Canada as to who can turn up to what event?

Ms. Joie Warnock: There have been two major inquiries into the growing media concentration in Canada. There was one in 1970 and there was one in 1980. We believe one way to deal with the pressures of ownership concentration is to set some limits. I think that is a proper role of our members of Parliament--to represent the best interests of all the public by setting some limits on ownership concentration.

Politicians seemed loath to take on this issue, because in 1980 when that suggestion was made, the major media players of the time really reacted with quite a bit of outrage and hysteria. In the print media they created industry-run press councils to push back the notion that there should be regulation. We say there should be regulation on the concentration of ownership.

The Chair: Mrs. Lill, I will close with you.

À (1020)

Ms. Wendy Lill: I think certainly the issue of ownership concentration is one that we are struggling with and will be throughout this hearing.

I'd like to know whether you can answer one question that seems central to the entire exercise. I've heard the minister of culture as recently as Friday say that Canadians are being served with a more diverse media than at any time in history, that they have choices coming out their ears. CanWest Global will say the same. There are a million pie charts out there showing how many different choices we all have now as Canadians in terms of voices and opinions. Clearly, I don't believe it. I don't feel it. I don't think Canadians feel it. But what exactly is your response to that? How do we combat that appearance of choice, which in fact feels quite minimal?

Mr. Arthur Simmonds: Let me say that nowhere have we said here that we are attempting to turn back the clock. We don't believe that's realistic. But I think what Joie has just said is that we can put limits on what's going to happen from this point forward. The only place we believe the clock should be turned back is in regard to the question of whether or not CanWest Global can own newspapers and television stations in the same market. We believe that was a mistake, and it's a mistake that ought to be rectified before it has gone too far in terms of the integration of those operations. They're not fully integrated, and I think the signal needs to be sent that this doesn't serve the citizens of this country.

To answer your question more directly, I agree that there is a perception or an appearance of diversity in that we have many more channels to watch but our message today is about local reflection. No matter how many digital channels the CRTC licenses, these are not local broadcasters. The only local broadcasters we have in this country are CTV, CHUM, CanWest--a very small group of broadcasters. They are the local broadcasters. They're also the ones who nationally produce programming as well that supposedly reflects our country back to itself, which many of us would argue doesn't. However, they're also the producers and responsible for local reflection. The Broadcasting Act says they are responsible for local reflection, and they've abdicated that responsibility with the consent of the CRTC.

I appreciate that it is a very difficult issue, and we're not suggesting that we turn back the clock, but we think that there are some things that can be done. I do not believe we have more choices. I agree that I can't tell there's much difference between CTV and Global's news presentation and the content of the newscasts. I know how cash poor CTV keeps what used to be called its affiliates. I know how cash poor they are; they don't have the resources. And you have to remember that a lot of CTV's content comes from the local stations. They feed it to the national.

It is the same with newspapers. The Vancouver Sun and the Province are part of Canadian Press, as other newspapers are across the country. They have to cover news to feed it to Canadian Press so they can send it to all the other newspapers across the country so we all will know what's going on in different parts of the country. But if you have fewer people in each market searching for news, then Vancouver will not be reflected in Toronto or Halifax the way it once was.

The Chair: We have to close now, but not before thanking you for a very thoughtful presentation, which certainly challenges us. Especially in the area of local broadcasting, I think your point was very clearly made and we appreciate your being here today. And as you could tell from the number of questions asked, people were extremely interested in what you had to say. We appreciate your presence very much. Thank you for coming.

We will now invite the Community Media Education Society, the Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians, and also the ATW Management Communications Inc. to appear before us.

Ms. Shyla Dutt from ATW Management Communications has not arrived, so for the time being we will hear from the Community Media Education Society, represented by Mr. Richard Ward, the executive director. We will also hear from the Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians, represented by Mr. Sid Chow Tan, the vice-president, and Mr. Victor Wong, the executive director.

Before we give you the floor, I should mention to the members that we've been asked by these two groups to film our session so that it can be reproduced on the Internet this evening. The clerk has explained to the interveners that there are strict rules that the House of Commons imposes on all committees. First of all, they must be filming gavel to gavel or to a natural break, and there should be a fixed camera on speakers only and no reaction shots. And the committee needs a copy of the tape for its records. I understand they have agreed to these requirements. In this sense, then, I would like to get the committee's approval that this filming take place for showing on the web.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

À (1025)

The Chair: With this in mind, I would like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Ward and his colleagues.

Go ahead, Mr. Ward. You can take about 10 minutes or so for your presentation and likewise for your colleagues.

Mr. Richard Ward (Executive Director, Community Media Education Society): I think the hearings are an important national issue.

We've drawn a great deal of encouragement from Quebec, from André Desrochers in Châteauguay, and from the Independent Community Television Co-operative, which sets an example that we've been trying to bring to British Columbia, in my case, and to much of English Canada.

Imagine a movie villain with a bizarre scheme to rule the world. Globalization is contentious because it implies no escape from uniformity. In this case, the fear is that huge corporations, through cross-media ownership, will supersede not just small governments but all governments.

The Internet may be available to anyone, but it's been quickly dominated by the best-financed conglomerates. Small and medium-sized players are being bought out or moved to the fringes. People are afraid that globalization means privatized democracy.

What does this mean to Canada? We've never been a dominant country. Once we followed Britain's lead; today it's the United States' lead. Will it be so different adapting to Time Warner or Disney? I would say so. I believe Canada has established a distinctive culture that is recognized around the world. Our influence is greater than the size of our population.

We all joke that with hundreds of channels, there's nothing on. Studies show we usually choose among a dozen channels. The important thing is to have at least one of those channels encourage democratic debate and discussion of local issues.

Communication systems are crucial for Canada because of our geography. If our only image of success is a California apartment where no one works yet everyone is rich, where we fear that all strangers are criminals, then we have a problem.

The big issue for Canada is local content. We can't let all our media speak with one voice. To describe this country truthfully, we need to hear from each region, each neighbourhood.

Canada has chosen to have a cultural mosaic, where diversity is preserved. Multicultural television is encouraged to have strong local production, not just to replay shows from the old country. It's important for Canada's ethnic groups to have a local voice.

Similarly, community television has to be local and accessible.

The CRTC has proposed a new policy framework for community-based media, 2001-129. In this policy for local programming, citizen access, and diversity of voices, the CRTC includes a new broadcasting licence for community programming available to non-profit groups representative of the community at large; in particular, it specifies such licensees would be entitled to receive the applicable percentage of the cable company's gross revenues.

This is a dramatic idea that deserves everyone's support.

Community TV veterans have struggled for years to get an independent community channel. What makes community television attractive is that volunteers have control over the programs shown there. What's gone wrong with deregulation since 1998 is that the community channel has been turned into a promotional channel, staffed and controlled by cable company employees.

A lot of people are angry that the community channel has been commercialized. Volunteers have had award-winning shows cancelled, shows that were providing the only in-depth coverage of political and social issues, shows that were replaced by clones of commercial broadcasting.

In Vancouver's municipal election, Rogers cancelled coverage of candidates. ICTV, the Independent Community Television Co-operative, then covered all-candidates meetings voluntarily on Novus. Only after complaints from several municipal councils did Rogers allow candidates to come to their studios and speak for two minutes.

When a Vancouver city council meeting was interrupted by a protest about the transit strike, Shaw turned off the TV cameras. That's odd behaviour for any news organization, particularly when Vancouver councillor Fred Bass asked that taping continue.

Canada's private broadcasters aren't happy about the new commercial community channel. It takes advertising away from them. Community TV profits are growing faster than any other aspect of cable revenues.

Concentration of ownership creates structural problems in the free enterprise system. Competition ends once somebody wins. Heavily financed cross-media ownership prohibits new entrants. The problem with businesses so large that they have no real competition is that they begin to take on not just the authority but also the obligations of government. It creates ethical dilemmas. Investments turn into bribes.

À (1030)

We can't have strong businesses without strong governments. That means we need people who participate in democracy, who take it seriously and believe it can bring real change.

The problem with commercial television is that it depends on passive viewing. Community television encourages people to seek out events affecting their neighbourhoods. Action extends beyond the technicians and producers. Community organizers are surprised and delighted to be noticed. When their neighbours see the event, interest snowballs. That is how mass media are supposed to work. Make no mistake, by historical standards or Internet standards, community TV is a mass medium.

The community channel is the most accessible form of television, but it is not sufficient by itself as a representative of the public interest. The CBC represents Canada, not just at home but internationally, particularly with those Americans lucky enough to live near the border. Like the BBC, CBC quality and independence rely on public funding.

In Canada broadcast regulation the CRTC is responsible for social policy and economics. Industry Canada handles hardware and the broadcast spectrum. The division seems to work well. It is important for any system to have checks and balances.

There is fear that the Knowledge Network, B.C.'s educational channel, may face a private takeover. That has happened with ACCESS in Alberta. It is hard to provide public education using private ethics. Far too often there are social costs down the road. Timely regulation can save those costs.

Adapting to the Internet may be less of a shock for us than our grandparents experienced with the arrival of radio. The inventors of radio and television expected them to be used for education and public information, but today they are businesses first and foremost. The same is true of the Internet. Government doesn't need to regulate the Internet as long as government is willing to regulate business.

Arguably, digital television is the same as Internet access. It's easy for digital television to interact with the Internet. If television is regulated, the Internet need not be. There might be a presumption that programmers flee regulation, but in many cases the opposite is true, particularly when independent producers face established businesses so massive as to remove any likelihood of successful competition. Many, perhaps most, Canadians recognize that careful regulation can encourage the development of Canadian expression.

We now have a television industry that contributes significantly to employment. Canadian content regulations strike a reasonable balance between giving Canadian producers control over shows and, on the other hand, relinquishing that control and giving technicians a chance to work with Hollywood budgets under American creative control. In fact, it's been such a good compromise that a points system for participation in key production capacities might be a good measure of volunteer involvement for community television.

Community TV has to provide meaningful access to volunteers. Now they serve as unpaid labour for the cable company. As long as the cable company operates the community channel, the CRTC has to protect volunteers. Ideally, community television will soon be licensed independently.

Community TV volunteers have taken great encouragement from the interest shown by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Canada's federal government stands out among other nations for its willingness to go out and listen to citizens. Of course, there was a lot of optimism in 1988 with the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture. Parliamentarians back then recommended a separate licence for the community channel and funding to develop community television. It keeps coming up because it's a good idea.

Community television is a public benefit, not a business proposition, and its existence depends on the CRTC. The recent experiment in deregulation has failed dramatically, but to its credit, the CRTC has come back with a strong policy paper. If those proposals become fact, Canada will again be a leader in participatory public access television.

À (1035)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ward, for an excellent brief.

I would like then to turn over to Mr. Chow Tan, or Mr. Wong, or both.

Mr. Sid Chow Tan (Vice-President, Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians acknowledges these territories of the Coast Salish people on whose land we are convened for our business today.

The VACC--our preferred acronym--is an anti-racism, human rights, and social justice organization and a registered non-profit society in British Columbia. I am Sid Chow Tan, its vice-president, and this is Victor Wong, its executive director.

In many countries, citizen comments on what passes for public input imperil your existence, particularly if you disagree with the government. The VACC opposes the politics of privilege as often found in the corporate power that drives the Canadian broadcasting system. Thankfully, freedom of thought and expression are charter rights in Canada and encourage a public duty to be informed, participate, and build a better Canada. We participate in this examination with great thanks and with this spirit.

The VACC supports public models of national and community media. We were a first financial contributor and continue in this and other ways to assist CMES, Community Media Education Society, and ICTV, Independent Community Television Co-operative. Recently we participated in a national forum on race and media organized by the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, based in Montreal.

We need leadership from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to reverse the institutional inertia in addressing equal representation of people of colour in the broadcast industry, negative portrayal of people of colour on the airwaves, perceived racism in the news media, and minority content.

We ask that the committee recommend to the Minister of Canadian Heritage the creation of a new culturally sensitive entity with a peer jury process to encourage script development and help fund minority-owned productions.

We ask that the committee recommend to the minister, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, and funders such as Telefilm, National Film Board and the Canadian Television Fund to adopt an anti-racism and anti-discrimination lens in its policies, practices, and regulatory decisions. There must be strong sanctions for racism in the media and elsewhere in Canada.

We ask that the committee recommend the CRTC conduct a thorough and responsive quantitative analysis of the portrayal of immigrants, refugees, and people of colour communities in Canadian programming, including the news media and advertising.

We ask that the committee recommend the CRTC conduct a thorough quantitative review of the representation of people of colour in the broadcast industry. Concrete, measurable employment equity plans must be mandatory in every licence and licence renewal application. Poor results should lead to meaningful sanctions.

We support a community television freely open to public access for local expression. This reinforces local community development and public participation. Sadly, the dominant cable provider in Vancouver, Shaw Cablesystems, has virtually eliminated volunteer-based access programming from community groups like ICTV and the Slim Evans Society and its working TV program, which promote labour popular culture. Yet Shaw continues to collect all the cable levy money. We condemn this corporate arrogance in removing participatory community programming choices. Their dismissive and seemingly malicious treatment of community television volunteers is inexcusable.

We report that the VACC is one of 29 local chapters of the Chinese Canadian National Council, a national organization promoting the rights of all individuals and, in particular, encouraging Chinese Canadians to participate fully and equally in Canada. VACC is a local and national leader in redress for the Chinese head tax and exclusion as well as advocacy and aid to the landed Fujian boat migrants. The VACC executive director, Victor Wong, and I have never received a response or coverage on these files from Shaw TV despite our media advisories, which resulted in local and some regional, provincial, and national coverage.

We support community-based media licensed to the community and fully funded by broadcast distribution and cable levies. We ask the committee to investigate why no public hearings were held to review the Shaw decision to eliminate community-based programming. Shaw TV, on the cable community channel in Vancouver, appears to operate as a de facto commercial television station with no accompanying commercial licence.

À (1040)

We ask that the committee recommend Parliament pass Bill S-7. This bill will help community groups prepare and present their interventions before the CRTC.

We ask that the committee establish guidelines directing the broadcast and cable industry toward a composition of their boards of directors, senior decision-makers, and advisory boards that reflects the cultural diversity of their local community.

We ask that the committee recommend to the CRTC the necessity of clear conflict of interest guidelines, and that commissioners refrain from informal meetings with members of the broadcast industry.

This “doing lunch” continues the perception that industry has more influence on and access to decision-makers than the public. The committee should note that the only feedings I receive, monitoring and reporting these affairs, are self-paid at fundraisers for members of Parliament who support my ideas and their implementation.

English and French, Canada's official languages, have rightful public allocations and are well represented in the Canadian broadcasting system. It is time Chinese Canadians, and others of what I call heritage language communities, receive policy and financial support within the Canadian broadcasting system.

In Vancouver, policy and a complex expensive licence regime saw no community-based television option developed for multilingual communities prior to the approval of a commercial multilingual broadcast licence. This is telling about the current state of community broadcasting.

For assistance on these VACC files, I thank Libby Davies, MP; Jenny Kwan, MLA; councillors Fred Bass and Tim Louis of Vancouver; and Marguerite Vogel and staff at the CRTC. I am especially thankful to the volunteers at CMES, ICTV, VACC, CCNC and community groups across Canada and around the world.

We believe Canada is best represented by volunteers and people, especially politicians and civil servants, willing to act in the public interest for the common wealth. Canadian broadcasting must be driven by ideas of Canadians and Canada first, then Canadian broadcasting and cable companies. Policies and regulations must recognize and encourage public participation, a foundation of our democracy.

Please understand that our participation in and ideas for Canadian broadcasting express our vision, love and pride as Canadians.

I'd like to raise a point of order. First, we are working on a detailed written submission dealing with numbers and percentages of these issues that we talk about. We don't have it completed yet because we thought we had to make 30 copies, and as you know, both Victor and I are volunteers and we only have so much time. The timing of this, after the public notice 2001-129 call for comments ended on Friday, precluded our actually getting together. However, I've been told by the clerk we can send it in by e-mail, so we beg that indulgence.

I have also put in a comment there individually, and I hope I can send it on as well, because it is much more strident and descriptive.

Thank you very much.

À (1045)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Chow Tan.

First, you don't have to prepare the copies yourselves. If you wish to send one document to the clerk, it will be translated at the House of Commons, because that is the rule by which we operate. It will be duplicated there and sent to the members. So you can send it by e-mail, and we'll pick it up from there.

If you have an individual comment, send it, by all means. All comments are welcome, so feel very free to do that. The same procedure will apply. Just e-mail it and we'll pick it up, translate it, duplicate it and send it to the members.

Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Chow Tan.

Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you. I'll try to be brief. We have two excellent presentations here, and I thank both presenters.

I always like to establish where we have points of contact and where perhaps we don't. In the case of the CMES, point 15, if I could extract some words here, “...we need people who participate in democracy, who take it seriously and believe that it can bring real change”. I and my party are in absolute full agreement with that and share the vision you have of the value of the kind of community programming you are putting forward.

Where we have a fairly significant difference of opinion is perhaps on the first two points that you make relative to globalization, but we'll have that debate another time.

I think one of the difficulties we have in trying to bring information forward to people in a timely way is reflected in a choice I made last night in my hotel room. I arrived late and had the television on. I had a choice between W5 and Law & Order, and I chose Law & Order because I wanted to be entertained rather than informed. Isn't this part of the problem we have in terms of getting information out?

Also your points 7 and 8 are excellent information, and something of which I was unaware. I value that information very much.

My question to you, though, is this. This deals specifically with cable. How do you visualize what you are attempting to achieve and our mutual desire to see more participation working with the tremendous explosive growth of people accessing their entertainment via satellite?

À (1050)

Mr. Richard Ward: There are three distribution systems covered in 2001-129. Community channel on cable is the main one because it still draws the largest audience. The second one is neighbourhood low-power broadcasting, and then there is digital.

Digital actually will go over to satellite. Not only that, but in the call for comments leading up to 2001-129, the two satellite distribution companies--I think it was Bell ExpressVu and the other one--both said they would like to carry a community channel. Previously, they had been unwilling. But I believe what's needed is the opportunity to target it to rural communities so that you can get the channel into maybe just one household with a satellite dish, but it's reflective of that neighbourhood.

That has a broadcast component in that it's carried over the satellite, so I believe it could be regulated under those terms. And I think it's an advantage to regulate it, because it allows the community information to be carried.

I'm not in favour of governments micromanaging how this is done, but I am in favour of their saying that it's an important social policy.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

And to Mr. Sid Chow Tan, I would like to touch on what is perhaps common ground. I know, having been brought up in Vancouver, the contribution your community overall has made to the cultural mosaic of Vancouver, and the value it gives to our community.

There are a number of things in your presentation. Perhaps it's an issue of your making a presentation and our not having time to come to a full understanding, but I am having a little difficulty.

Probably the one that stands out the most is on page 2 of 5. I believe it's the fourth paragraph down. It says:

We ask that the Committee recommends the CRTC conduct a thorough quantitative review of the representation of people of colour in the broadcast industry. Concrete measurable employment equity plans must be mandatory in every licence and licence renewal application. Poor results should lead to meaningful sanctions.

What would you say to people who are a visible minority who have had tremendous success within the industry? What would you say, for example, to Ian Hanomansing, Ben Chin, Ron Charles, or Marcie Ian, that they should have their jobs because of the fact that they are visible minorities, or that they have their jobs as a result of being the best people in their field?

I am just wondering if this is what you are asking for. You know the old saying, we have to be careful what we ask for because we just might get it. I am just wondering if it might not end up depleting or taking away from the very valuable achievement of those people who have arrived in front of the cameras and are the conveyors of information to Canadians.

À (1055)

Mr. Sid Chow Tan: I would just like to state, Mr. Abbott, that just as I do not want to be discriminated against because I am Chinese, I as well do not want to be appreciated because I am Chinese. I mean to make that very clear.

From there, I would like to turn this over to Victor, whose file this is.

Mr. Victor Wong (Executive Director, Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians): Thank you, Mr. Abbott, for your question.

We do not want to take away from the individual achievements of the many talented people you've just named. I think it is more of a systemic issue in the broadcast industry. In fact, we understand that the broadcast industry is going to undertake some kind of study. Just anecdotally, we know that if you just walk through the CBC or the VTV newsrooms you will see the lack of diversity compared with what you will see if you walk down Robson Street in Vancouver.

That is where we are coming from. There should be a measurable employment equity plan. If you are going to value diversity and these plans are going to be part of your CRTC licensing renewal, if you don't measure up there should be some significant sanctions for not measuring up.

I go back to Canadian Heritage and their corporate objectives and vision, which are to have excellence in Canadian broadcasting and to enhance the capacity of the Canadian local broadcast industry. So if you want excellence, then you need to be inclusive, you need to strive to be more inclusive than you are already. If you want capacity, you need to include the talents from the visible minority communities as well, and that is what we are proposing here.

Mr. Jim Abbott: An organization attempts to attract viewers in order to sell its advertising and make money. My understanding is that English-speaking Canadians--and I'm not differentiating between people of colour and not, I'm just saying English-speaking Canadians--now in fact make up the minority of the linguistic group in Greater Vancouver. If the companies want to be attractive to the largest majority of viewers, why would they not be doing this by choice? Why would they not have people identify with them and make these choices so that the viewers would be able to identify with those people they see on television? Wouldn't it just happen naturally?

Mr. Victor Wong: There has been progress over the last few years. We see it in front of the camera, but as I said, systemically, from our anecdotal analysis, it isn't the case in the industry proper.

That is a good question. You should ask the broadcasters. I think there are market studies that suggest there is a huge purchasing power among the ethnocultural communities today. According to the last set of marketing figures, the visible minority communities across Canada are about 14% of the population and account for billions of dollars in purchasing power. So it's a good question to ask the broadcasters: wouldn't they make more money if they were more diverse?

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mrs. Gagnon

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ward, you raised the fact that the Corporation de télédiffusion du grand Châteauguay and other community stations were in themselves models for the Vancouver community as well as for the rest of Canada. I carefully read the memorandum they presented before the CRTC. These people seem to have a lot of complaints.

We know that the restructuring changes which took place as a result of the CRTC ruling left it to the discretion of the cable operators whether to support them financially has not been successful in some regions. I would like to know what about this model do you find so interesting.

Á (1100)

[English]

Mr. Richard Ward: I like the idea that in not just Châteauguay but the federation generally, the communities in Quebec are operating independently and that they have managed to keep community television going on that basis since the seventies, because I've been involved with it since then. But you say it hasn't been successful, that they have struggled with the cable company, particularly Videotron, and the takeover of Videotron.

I know that they've had a cutback. I believe they've gone from $21 million a year down to $18 million. But by our standards out here, where we operate entirely at the pleasure of the cable company, where the shows are controlled by the cable company, to lose an amount like that but still keep the amount that's there seems to me to be a dramatic success.

I would presume, although I haven't been in Châteauguay and I can't swear that this is true, that their local influence is great, because I know in the early days of community television in British Columbia the local influence was great. I remember specifically in Revelstoke that the Kootenay & Elk Railway was going to go through the United States and a community television program was influential in keeping it there.

I would assume that within Quebec the local coverage remains. I believe there's still programming, and that's the main thing. While money is required, I don't believe that the budget is the main issue. I believe you need enough to do the job, and my impression is that this is happening. If I'm wrong about that, I'd certainly like to find out.

I know they're very angry about the difficulties with the cable company, but I believe they have remained on the air. I certainly hope so.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: There are indeed complaints in the Federation's memorandum. For example, in Montreal, a lot of community stations had to close and there is now only one network that broadcasts to the entire Montreal community.So, the federation claims that there are six different zones to serve the population. For example, Laval would be one entity and Longueuil would be another. Within a metropolitan region, there are local particularities, and that is one of the complaints made by community television networks in the federation, the memorandum which I read last week. The federation is also unhappy about some aspects of programming.

That is something I wanted to add to my intervention, but I would like to ask you another question. You say that the cable operators' revenues should go to community television. I would like to believe you but those networks require a licence, an independent permit. How do you expect them to be autonomous if the cable operators give them money to operate. If we give them an independent community license, will we be assured that the cable operators will give them the money they need to survive?

[English]

Mr. Richard Ward: Yes, I believe that the model you're looking for is the common carrier, where the cable company carries the shows but does not bear the responsibility for them. I believe the reason that we have had the cable companies operating the community channel in British Columbia is so that any claim, for example, a libel claim, would be met by a company that could afford to pay it. What is needed is an organization where that is bonded.

I also believe that in paragraph 98--I believe it is--of 2001-129, where it says that the levy money that the cable company is currently using to operate the community channel here is also used the same in Quebec, that money would go to the independent operator. In other words, this remains a non-commercial station funded by the cable company, but at arm's length. Now, that budget for the Vancouver area is approximately $475,000 a month.

Á (1105)

Mr. John Harvard: A month.

Mr. Richard Ward: A month. That's what the cable company is currently using to operate its commercialized community channel. If that money were to go to a socially responsible and independently operated community channel, because that is where the budget of the $18 million comes from in Quebec where it has been independent, it's significant money.

The Chair: Mr. Harvard.

Mr. John Harvard: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to hear more about this local development with respect to community access programming here in Vancouver, because both of you have touched on it and you've indicated that Shaw has moved in on this community channel in the last two or three years. You've mentioned since 1998.

Mr. Ward, you mentioned in your brief that the community channel has been turned into a promotional channel staffed and controlled by cable company employees. You say that the community channel has been commercialized. Would you give me a little bit more detail on that, as to what actually has happened there and what we the committee can learn from it?

Mr. Richard Ward: Well, about a decade ago there were independent neighbourhood offices, each with a manager and a coordinator, and the idea was that these people would be community facilitators. Then there was some allowance for promotion of services by SuperChannel, that sort of thing. What happened with deregulation, which was allowed in 1997 and took effect on January 1, 1998, was that first of all there was no longer any requirement that a community channel be carried.

Mr. John Harvard: By the local cable operator?

Mr. Richard Ward: By any cable operator. But if a community channel was carried, it had to follow the rules from 1991, where it continued to cover issues in depth, be distinct from commercial broadcasting--have a distinctive style--be accessible to volunteers. Those were the primary reasons.

It also reiterated that the cable company could continue to use the channel to promote its services. This was about the time when digital services and data transfer services were really becoming dominant. You probably know that you get more money on a cable system by shipping the data over the vertical interval on the channels than you get from actually selling viewing programs to the public. What you wanted to do then is to start to promote digital services to the public. This is the dominant feature of Channel 4 in Vancouver today. About every 15 minutes you'll see a promotion for Shaw's Internet service.

Mr. John Harvard: Are these graphics? Are these voice-overs? What are these? Are these traditional commercial formats?

Mr. Richard Ward: These are pretty flashy commercials. These are good-looking commercials.

Mr. John Harvard: Do they last for 10 seconds, a minute, two minutes?

Mr. Richard Ward: Thirty seconds, I believe. They're typically 30 seconds. There's a two-minute break, usually three spots promoting other shows, and then one spot promoting the Internet.

Mr. John Harvard: Is that what you mean by commercializing the channel? You don't mean that they're carrying Campbell's soup commercials.

Mr. Richard Ward: No, they're not specifically carrying Campbell's soup commercials. Their commercials tend to be media-oriented, although Eaton's was being advertised pretty regularly as a sponsor for...I believe it was Urban Rush.

Mr. John Harvard: But is it more self-promotion--that is, self-Shaw-promotion--than it is commercials on behalf of advertisers out there in the community?

Á (1110)

Mr. Richard Ward: I would say it is more that, yes.

Mr. John Harvard: You also mentioned that they're controlled by staff.

Mr. Richard Ward: I did indeed.

Mr. John Harvard: Does that mean that volunteers to a great extent have been shunted aside?

Mr. Richard Ward: And that's certainly different from when I began. In fact, that's my primary objection to the change. The shows that were cut were the ones that did have an element of the potential for controversy, but that was far from exclusive. You had everything from the board of trade to the trade union meetings, from the lunatic fringe to the well-established people bringing their stories in detail to the community. You had half-hour interview shows. You had neighbourhood news shows typically with five-minute clips when you're probably used to the one-and-a-half-minute, or even 45-second, clip on commercial television. You had things in depth.

Mr. John Harvard: That's all gone now?

Mr. Richard Ward: That's all gone now.

Mr. John Harvard: Replaced with what?

Mr. Richard Ward: Replaced with what is called Shaw TV here, Rogers previously. It's a model encouraged by the Canadian Cable Television Association to give you a zippier look. You can drop in on it and drop out of it, and catch a little reminder that you're watching the local cable service. In Calgary it's a promotion across the bottom. You get to see a three-minute, generally happy news bit and then go back to the other channels that need the audience more, to justify, as I think you were pointing out, your advertising revenue.

Mr. John Harvard: How much of the content, though, is still in the hands of volunteers or volunteer organizations?

Mr. Richard Ward: I wouldn't say it's entirely gone. You'll occasionally get a clip where you'll see that the story has some personal interest for the reporter, but--

Mr. John Harvard: I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't have a lot of time. Are you suggesting that there are few blocks or few programs that are generated by the community, generated by volunteers, controlled by volunteers, designed by volunteers, produced by volunteers?

Mr. Richard Ward: I don't believe that exists any more.

Mr. John Harvard: That's all gone?

Mr. Richard Ward: I believe so.

Mr. John Harvard: Do you want to come in here on this?

The Chair: Mr. Harvard, I would like to get a comment from Mr. Chow Tan.

Mr. John Harvard: Yes, I'd like to hear from him.

The Chair: After that perhaps we'll go over to Mrs. Lill and come back to you, if there's time.

Mr. Chow Tan.

Mr. Sid Chow Tan: I should also mention that I am a founding director of Community Media Education Society and a founding member of ICTV, the Independent Community Television Co-operative. I consider this building bridges from the VACC, where I was involved before.

To answer succinctly the question you asked, in 1997, prior to public notice 1997-25, which allowed cable companies the option of having a community channel, there were eleven neighbourhood offices and three major studios in the Lower Mainland. Now there are three studios and no neighbourhood offices. That is the effect.

With regard to the advertising that you were talking about, I have seen commercial television promoting Shaw Internet services on the cable channel. You may notice that in public notice 2001-129 the CRTC very specifically said that this action should cease immediately.

It came out on December 21 last year. On January 1, just because it was a new year, at 15 minutes after midnight I sent in a complaint about three Shaw Internet commercials plus Peter Bissonette, the chief executive officer of Shaw--that is the large company--promoting Shaw Internet. During a two-week period--and all these are up on the CRTC web page-- I put in six complaints, which I wanted noted for the record for Shaw's licence renewal here.

To let you know, the first complaint was returned with a one-page “hand-job” letter. It said, oh, we're in support of community television, or whatever. It's quite clear the CRTC had ordered somebody from Shaw TV to respond to this.

My second complaint was about lack of access to programs I and others produce on a volunteer basis, and I also brought this issue up on the complaint.

The CRTC asked Shaw Cable to respond to that within three weeks, and I haven't received the response yet from Shaw. I should make that clear; this is the kind of stuff community activists have to deal with. I wanted the answers to some of the questions and what they were doing before I filed my comments. Clearly, I can give you the record that this should have been done but was not done, and today I still don't have the comment.

Also, in regard to the advertising Shaw is very clever. Shaw is very clever. It will put on a Jan Arden concert promotion--you know, “Phone in immediately and get two tickets to a Jan Arden concert”--and then right on it will appear: “Shaw high-speed Internet”. In essence, they use about five seconds of that--this is now, today--while they were told to cease and desist immediately for these things. This still goes on today; I just wanted to bring that up.

I don't know what the question was, but I wanted to touch on some of the other more personal and more basic things that are happening to people--for no particular reason except the public interest and common welfare involved in community television. I've been involved for 15 years--

Á (1115)

Mr. John Harvard: What you're saying is the whole community access, as we understood it to be, has been totally transformed by Shaw, at least in this market.

Mr. Sid Chow Tan: Not totally transformed, has been destroyed.

The Chair: Mr. Chow Tan, if by any chance you want to make some of this correspondence available to the committee, it would be really useful for the researchers and for the members.

Mr. Sid Chow Tan: I have a case ID file against Shaw at the CRTC. I think the easiest way would be to access that file. All the information is there. I've spent a considerable amount of time monitoring this. One of the reasons is that I knew this was still going on; it's a very detailed case.

The Chair: In the interest of time, I think we are going to allow one question to Mrs. Lill and one to Mr. McNally; then I have a brief question, and then we'll hear other witnesses.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Thank you.

This is just tremendous hearing from you, because just before you the Canadian Energy and Paperworkers Union talked about the fact that what's missing now in this incredible universe of choices is local reflection. Then you come here and tell us that community television as we know it has in fact been buffeted and almost destroyed, again by decisions that have been made by the CRTC quite recently. This is something we have been trying to get at, not too successfully until today, when we've actually heard from you.

We hear from the cable companies that they have a choice between putting their 5% of revenue into either the community or into the Canadian TV fund. I'm not sure exactly--and maybe you could help us--what the determinants are between whether they will put it into the television fund or into the cable station.

It would be wonderful if we could have some kind of content analysis showing the evolution in how the content of these community stations has been degraded and diverted to a different purpose. If you could do this, or if you have done the same kind of analysis of how your community stations have in fact been weakened as, say, the Friends of Public Broadcasting does of Canadian content in prime time--if you've ever seen those--the picture would mean a thousand words to us.

Just in terms of the whole issue around 2001-129, I guess I'd like to know specifically how that would look different from the situation now in terms of the relationships between cable companies. It's obviously cable money that would continue to go into supporting a true community station, but there would be an independence that doesn't exist presently and there would be the safeguards you would need.

Á (1120)

Mr. Richard Ward: The cable company is going to give 5% to somebody because that money goes to support Canadian television production. Originally, all that money went to the community channel. Then there was so much money that they moved a share of it to the Canadian Television Fund, and about 50% of the Canadian Television Fund supports the CBC, so that's a good thing.

The Canadian Television Fund would like to see all of the money go to commercial production because of the production quality, the quality of the style. I think it's better to share. I think it's better to keep a strong community component, which currently would get 2%, with the Canadian Television Fund getting 3%. That's in large urban areas. I believe that's sufficient in both cases.

The reason I think there should be a strong community television component is that many of the people in commercial television, if not most, have gone through community television. They have gotten their practical experience there. They go to school, they come to community television, and they get the real life experience, which is another reason I don't like the way it is now. They're not getting that real life experience that's going to match their news experience later.

So that's how I think the money should continue to go. I'm fairly happy with the CRTC doing that as long as they stick to their rules. If they did what they say they're going to do, that would be fine. I think that people--

The Chair: Mr. Ward, perhaps you can summarize.

Mr. Richard Ward: Okay. That's what I had to say.

The Chair: Briefly, Mrs. Lill.

Ms. Wendy Lill: First of all, I was just floored to hear that in 1998 there was a deregulation saying there was no longer a requirement for a cable company to carry a community station. I didn't know that and I don't see that as progress.

What has been the fallout of that? Have you been following that across the board? Are we in fact seeing community cable stations--

The Chair: Mr. Chow Tan.

Mr. Sid Chow Tan: In Vancouver, and I'm only speaking for Vancouver and my own personal experience, I have been a community television volunteer for 15 years. I got into it because I was a community activist and someone asked me to host, to just be the “on-air”. I thought it would be a gas so I did that. Within six months, I was producing my own shows that were going on air. It was very thrilling and very exciting. After a while I started picking up issues like head tax and migrants and many social issues for community television.

I submit that this couldn't be done today, because there are very few volunteers at Shaw TV now. In the letter I got they said they had 200. I can remember when there were thousands, way back. Secondly, it couldn't be done because now what produces Shaw TV is staff. It's a tough one to deal with. How do you deal with the idea that somebody is getting paid to do the job that volunteers once were doing, but on the other hand the volunteers got shut out?

It's tough. Everything is balance. It's hard to deal with that, but I submit that in 1997, before this disastrous policy, we had some kind of balance.

The Chair: Mr. McNally.

Oh, I'm sorry. Briefly, Mr. Wong.

Mr. Victor Wong: I just have one point. Perhaps the standing committee could be better resourced in order to be more engaged with the communities outside Ottawa, to come out more often. Then you will hear more from the community. I think it's an issue of resourcing. Also, if you can develop the sector relationship, then perhaps we can do a better job of reporting back to this standing committee so you're aware of these issues.

The Chair: Mr. Wong, if you only knew. Just to come here took us three, four or five months. We need to have three requests before parliamentarians can move out of the House of Commons; we need permission, approval by five committees. It's a nightmare. That is why we don't travel as much as we would like to. It's not for lack of willingness.

Mr. McNally.

Á (1125)

Mr. Grant McNally: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wonder, Mr. Ward, if you could take your recommendations and boil them down to the top three or five for us to study. That would help us focus on the good points you've made.

The VACC made some very forceful recommendations throughout their presentation. Good for you for including the accountability factor there. You have put this issue on the radar screen, and many of us weren't aware of what was going on.

I live in Mission, so I watch Channel 4 regularly. It may be somewhat different from the signal and programs covered in Vancouver proper.

As an MP, I have done cable report shows out of Abbotsford and Surrey in the past couple of years. I haven't been back shooting shows there locally for a while, so I wasn't aware of what was going on in terms of the volunteer base. The last time I was there it was managed by, directed by, and basically all handled by volunteers, so I wasn't aware that was going on.

Do you know if that's going on in all the locations?

Mr. Sid Chow Tan: I'm only speaking of Vancouver.

Mr. Grant McNally: Okay, well, that would be good for us to check. Maybe I'll check to see what's going on in Surrey. On the Abbotsford one, I don't think there's anything happening there anymore. That's maybe one of the 11 you talked about that's not there anymore.

Mr. Sid Chow Tan: It is interesting to note there are no community television neighbourhood offices in Vancouver, and Shaw's only facility in Vancouver for this, of course, covers the politicians. It's their city hall office.

Mr. Grant McNally: That's a good point. I think the points you've raised on community programming are very important, and we will take them back with us to the bigger picture on how to fix the system.

What would be the best way to address that particular issue? It looks like you're saying it's not working now. How do we fix it?

Mr. Richard Ward: You asked me to sum up what I said in the top two or three. I'll just stick with one--paragraph 7. Ensure that the CRTC goes through with 2001-129 and actually makes it work.

I didn't answer the question about the differing neighbourhoods in Montreal and the community channel for each of them earlier, but Sid gave my answer when he talked about the neighbourhood offices here.

The first thing that would happen, if independent community television had a licence in Vancouver, is the neighbourhood offices would come back. You called us the grassroots, but the neighbourhoods are the grassroots.

The Chair: Just to close, I want to ask you one question, Mr. Ward.

In paragraph 12 you say it takes advertising away from them. You say Canada's private broadcasters are not happy about the new commercial community channels taking advertising away from them, and community TV profits are going faster than any other aspect of cable revenue.

Do you have any statistical evidence on that? We sort of had the impression it was exactly the reverse.

Mr. Richard Ward: I'm referring to two documents when I make this claim. The first one is a comment from Michael McCabe to 2001-19. I believe he was then director of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. He was intervening and saying to the CRTC, “Stick behind your rules; enforce your rules stringently. You're letting the cable companies advertise on the community channels”. So that's not from me; that's from the representative of Canada's private broadcasters.

The reason I say specifically “growing faster than other aspects of cable revenues” is that it was measuring advertising growth; “it” was a paper the CRTC did. It pointed out that while commercial advertising had gone down a little bit and revenue from cable sales had gone up a little bit, the part that had gone up the most--it had doubled in the period from 1995 to 1997--was community television revenues. I looked at it and said to myself, why are there community television revenues? There's just supposed to be contra advertising. So it's that CRTC document, but I would need to go back and dig around to get you a copy. I can try to do that.

Á (1130)

The Chair: Please, because we want to know if this is the case and how the case is built up. I think it's very important.

Some members have asked me to have one brief additional question. I don't mind as long as we are prepared to extend the time after. It is 11:30; we have two other groups to hear. If we're prepared to stay and postpone lunch for 15 or 20 minutes, that's fine with me; it's your choice. I am just going to the members who want to ask additional questions. If you do, we will have to sit longer this morning, which is all right with me if it's okay with you.

Is there any request? Mr. Harvard asked for additional time. Madame Gagnon? All right.

A brief question, Mr. Harvard.

Mr. John Harvard: You mentioned 11 offices that contributed to access programming. That obviously took resources. Now they are closed. Where did those funds go; into whose pocket?

Mr. Sid Chow Tan: I don't know where they went, but Shaw TV kept them.

Mr. John Harvard: They didn't go to any volunteer organization to support further--or a different kind of--access programming?

Mr. Richard Ward: To be fair, when the East Vancouver neighbourhood office was shut down and we formed Independent Community Television Co-operative, Rogers gave us $10,000 in cash, paid out the lease, which was for another year, and provided a further $10,000 in equipment maintenance and so on. So $20,000 and probably maybe $25,000 went there. Still, as a share of the total amount of money, it is not great.

Mr. John Harvard: So it reduced their overhead, this closing of...?

Mr. Richard Ward: Dramatically.

The Chair: Madame Gagnon.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I would like you to explain to me how the 5 percent we consider as revenue to support community television is evaluated. For example, in remote communitiess where there are fewer subscriptions, does that represent 5 percent of cable subscribers? Is that amount of 5 percent based on the regions or is it rather a central, national percentage established by the cable operators?

It says in the memorandum from the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec, that some regions have experienced a decline ranging from zero percent to 100 percent of their financial support, given that it is based on the number of subscribers. I would like you to explain that to me because I am trying to understand how that percentage is determined.

[English]

Mr. Richard Ward: The first part of that question is easy and the second part is very hard. The 5% is simply a levy on the gross revenues of the cable company. It is a very easy calculation.

As to your second point about remote communities, there the full 5% can go to the community channel. In major urban areas 2% may go to the community channel and 3% goes to the Canadian Television Fund.

Concerning the last point you made--what happens in remote communities where there is a cable service but they get no money--I'm not sure I understand that situation. I've heard of it, but I'm not sure I understand. You're saying the cable company still has gross revenues but the community channel gets no money?

All I can say is that there would have to be a similar situation to what we have here with Shaw. The cable company makes some other claim, but what they're doing as a community channel is taking the money from the independent community channel. I'm guessing, but that would be consistent with the complaints I've heard from the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec.

That's what I know about that. I do know, however, that here at Campbell River, a small cable service gets to keep the full 5% for its community channel.

Á (1135)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Ward, Mr. Chow Tan, and Mr. Wong. This morning has been extremely instructive to us, and it is good that your comments have been extremely forthright. You haven't pulled any punches, which is most interesting for all of us. Thank you very much for appearing today. We appreciate it.

Whatever information you have that you want to send to the clerk, you don't have to produce it in multicopies. Just send it and we'll look after it.

I will now call on Mr. Digby Peers and Mrs. Shyla Dutt. Mr. Digby Peers is appearing as an individual. I understand he is a broadcaster of long standing, with something like 30 years in the broadcast industry, if I heard right. We are most grateful for your presence. Mrs. Shyla Dutt is president of ATW Management Communications Inc.

I should mention to both of you that the more concise your presentations are, the more time there is for members to ask questions, which is the whole idea. I would ask you to be as concise as you can.

Mr. Peers.

Mr. Digby Peers (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The first thing I'd like to say is that as a single citizen here I feel privileged. I'm very impressed with this meeting. I'm pleased that there is a committee to look into these things and I hope it meets more frequently, maybe even every three years or four years at the most, to look into some of the things that I've been listening to this morning.

I'm impressed by the presentations. They have been thoughtful and reasonably succinct. They address the key issues that I as a single citizen am upset and angry about, such as public education--public education and bottom-line ethics.

I am concerned, as I have heard about the monopoly of too many tools of communication in too few hands. I would say that I would not be here if it were not for the fact that approximately two years ago I was inspired to watch more television, read more newspapers, and listen to more radio by the simple experience of being a subscriber to the National Post. When it was sold by Conrad Black to another organization and I saw and began to experience some of the shifts in emphasis on politics, on public affairs, on foreign policy, I said to myself, this is a wonderful way to get a daily dose of anger.

Because of not such a little bit of this new word, “convergence”, this new word that's now quite common in our English language, because of this convergence, I became more interested in the other media of communications. As I've been listening, watching, and reading, I have made up my mind that the only real commitment we should make as Canadians is that there should be a new CBC. Its mandate should be broadened, its funding should be increased, and the funding should be increased until they do the job properly.

When I say that, it reminds me of the story of the great Italian tenor who was singing one night at La Scala and was not in good voice. Every time he sang an aria the audience would clap and cheer and stand up. Eventually, he realized that something was wrong. What was wrong? This voice came out from the audience: “You're going to sing it until you get it right.”

Now, there are also a couple of other things. Having had for a long time the immense privilege and honour of being a staff producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I have long felt that it is the position of the president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to set a particular tone in Canada. This tone I have not felt since the days I joined as a young producer, a young staff producer with Davidson Dunton. I remember that I was frequently impressed by the CBC because there was an image that the CBC was given by this young president, who eventually became the president of Carleton University, as we all know.

There should be a different way of choosing a president, a different manner, a different method. Maybe you should even experiment in different ways.

Á (1140)

I also think there should be a different means by which talent is attracted to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. My idea is that the CBC should spend some of its funding on educating and encouraging smaller communities on how to set up a local community radio station or a local television station staffed by operators and want-to-be CBC broadcasters. This would not take a lot of money, but that is how they could start feeding in a stream. One of the things I have also noticed since I am quasi-retired and listen mainly to the CBC--I am now listening to a lot of other radio stations and spend a lot of time in fact doing so--is that there is not a quick enough turnover in order to keep up to date with the dynamics of a rapidly changing society.

The chairman, or I believe somebody else, said that English is the minority language in this city--in Vancouver. It is not the dominant language.

I believe that the CRTC has done some wonderful things and I am very happy that the government of this country sees fit to set up this Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

I am going to close now, Mr. Chairman, and I would be happy to answer any questions I can in the hope that this standing committee remains and becomes maybe a bit more of a watchdog, or maybe it will be a spin-off from the CRTC to see what actually is going on, because although I may be saying it here in public, I am sure you know that there is a growing control and monopoly of communications and the communications media. How can you have balanced public opinion if that is the case?

So I am going to leave it there. Again, I am so pleased to have been accepted as a single citizen to be listened to by this committee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Á (1145)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Peers, for taking the time and trouble to write to us and for wanting to appear. We appreciate it very much.

Ms. Dutt, you have a fairly long brief, and I was wondering if you would be agreeable to summarizing the recommendations. I think you have six or seven recommendations. If you could just summarize the key points of them instead of reading the brief, which is eight or nine pages long, I think it would help to give us time to question you.

Ms. Shyla Dutt (President, ATW Management Communications Inc.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Honourable chair and members of the committee, I am Shyla Dutt, president of ATW Management Communications. My passion and interest in the issues that are of concern to this committee come from years of experience. Just briefly, I used to work at the CRTC and have been consultant to broadcasters as well as community organizations.

I too would like to express my appreciation of having this privilege after all these years. I used to live in Ottawa, and now that I have moved here I realize I don't have the access that I took for granted. I wanted to say that, with your indulgence, Mr. Chair, because it is a privilege to be able to do this. So thank you.

I am sorry if I am repeating some of the things I believe others have raised, but it just goes to show you that these are the trends that have happened in broadcasting.

As to my suggestion about the concentration of media--forgive me if it is kind of hard to paraphrase on the air, if you will--media concentration diminishes opportunities for us, especially in the regions. I would like to suggest that, if local programming is so important, it really in fact should be a priority for the CRTC when it actually does hand out decisions.

As the very capable presenters before me mentioned, some of those regulations that we need are already in place, but it is a question of enforcement.

The regulatory actions are usually taken in Ottawa and far away from us in the regions. The CRTC does this without the benefit of the research branch and the funding it once had. In spite of the fact that it collects a lot of revenue through licensing fees and so forth, this is not returned to the CRTC.

So my first recommendation is that the CRTC be funded so it can do its own independent market research, as opposed to relying on people who appear before it or who have privileged access to it.

I applaud the passage of Bill S-7 by the Senate, and respectfully suggest your committee recommend this be adopted.

Á (1150)

Mr. Clifford Lincoln: There's a sponsor here.

Ms. Shyla Dutt: I am pleased. But of course it has to pass through the House. I think some strenuous pressure from this committee would really help it a long way, because it would level the playing field for a lot of us who can't go to Ottawa or Toronto to appear before the hearings.

I went through the list of those who are appearing before you today, and I was quite amazed to see that no broadcasters or representatives of the cable industry have chosen to appear here. They know where it's important to be, and that's in Ottawa.

I really can't underscore the importance of this enough. As I said, there were many times when I was so tempted to go to Ottawa to represent not just our views but those of the people who appeared here before us. We simply don't have the resources to do that, nor do lots of players in broadcasting. Just because they are broadcasters or producers doesn't mean they have the resources that match those of the bigger players. So I would really stress that be adopted by the House.

Something else very important that we go through all the time is the effort we have to make to educate members of bodies such as the CRTC, the National Film Board, or Telefilm, that govern the television production fund, to hear our voices back here. They don't have representation from British Columbia.

If you look at the CRTC, for instance, it has one commissioner from British Columbia, one for Manitoba and Saskatchewan combined, and nine from central Canada, out of 13 commissioners. I printed the membership of these from the web. They are accessible to you, too. If you take a look, you will see that Telefilm and the National Film Board also follow this pattern, with some worse than others. So this is very key for us because we constantly have to interpret our position to them.

Another very important offshoot of this access is the conflict of interest that arises. I realize this is a kind of tricky thing. How do you balance appointing people to the regulatory body who have industry experience? Otherwise, the others are susceptible to hearsay and who has the most resources to impress certain viewpoints on them. But at the same time, we have seen very blatant conflicts of interest, and I know you are probably aware of the coverage in the media on that.

So I suggest you recommend very strict conflict of interest requirements, because guidelines haven't helped. Precisely, the decisions rendered by the regulatory body, the individual commissioners and members of Telefilm and the National Film Board should be examined in confidentiality, because these decisions are made behind the scenes and ought to be kept confidential.

So some independent confidential audit of the decisions should be made, at least before people are reappointed carte blanche, in order to see if they have been particularly biased, because they've either come from industry and have had many members of the industry as clients, or they might go back to work for them. Trust me, since I have worked in that field and have worked in the CRTC; it is a very big issue.

It is also difficult for any of us to wash our biases out of our minds if we have worked and have experience with certain people in certain industry sectors. I recognize the difficulty in balancing that.

I've talked about the contrast in the evolution of the control of broadcasting content versus distribution. In the U.S., for instance, those who originate content have acquired the means of distribution. Studios have bought television networks in order to secure a means for distributing their signals.

But in Canada we've gone the other way. It's surprising, because for us content has been an important pillar of the sovereignty of our nation. Yet we've gone the other way in terms of allowing those who distribute signals actually to acquire those that produce content. So content doesn't seem to be very important, which is probably why we don't see entertaining programs, as one of the honourable members mentioned. Perhaps if we were to provide the resources and place the emphasis more on the content, we Canadians would be able to produce entertaining programming, which is something we certainly know how to do.

Some of these very key decisions, such as the community channel requirements and allowing cable to own specialty channels, were made without regional consultations. Here in B.C. multiple ownership of channels was decided without a hearing. This is really amazing.

So I wonder if your committee could recommend that when policies that have a significant impact on the broadcasting system are dealt with, especially to ensure a diversity of voices, you insist it be mandatory that the CRTC hold hearings and that it should not be left to their discretion. Leaving it to their discretion means that those who have access to them in Ottawa and the resources to put together very detailed and impressive briefs get their way.

I want to talk about the fact that for us the concentration of ownership has meant that it has taken away from regional programming. I will summarize that by saying I'm sure you've seen media coverage of an editorial policy that CanWest recently announced. I highlight that not to single out CanWest, but to show that this is the trend. Of course, if I owned a number of Mac's Milk stores across the country, just to use a different example, I would tend to want to fill its shelves with the same product because I can have economies of scale. When you apply that to broadcasting, however, it is a very different matter, because it means a lack of cultural expression and diversity of voices, especially for us in the extremities of the country.

So my position is that this should be a significant pillar of the suggestions you make, and that in your recommendations on restructuring the system it's very important that this be emphasized to the regulator.

Next is ownership.This is something we've struggled with. I have been involved with trying to help the smaller players in the regions, certainly in British Columbia, to acquire ownership. Many of them do start on special programming channels. But in an era when the big players come in with their highly capitalized models of broadcasting, it just precludes smaller players from entering and ever having any diversity of ownership.

My suggestion there is that you look at some kind of venture capital fund. I know there are precedents in the United States. This can be done through a tax incentive, deferred capital gains or whatever, when there are M and As, mergers and acquisitions, and/or every time someone bulks up on media concentration by acquiring a different entity, they would be required to contribute a certain percentage of that acquisition deal and create a venture capital fund that can be accessed by smaller Canadian prospective owners. That would be my position.

Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chair.

Á (1155)

The Chair: Thank you very much for an excellent brief with many concrete suggestions, which is what we are about.

I should mention, Ms. Dutt, to be fair to all parties, in inviting people to appear, we deliberately chose to open this up to the grassroots, because the larger broadcasters have all kinds of opportunities to meet with us in Ottawa, Toronto,or Montreal, which are much closer to the scene. Here we chose, because of the short time we have, to concentrate more on the grassroots people who find it much more difficult to come to us. This was the idea. I thought I would just make that clear.

We will open to questions.

Mr. Abbott.

Â (1200)

Mr. Jim Abbott: Well, to both of you, thank you for coming. I agree particularly with your comment, Mr. Peers, about the fact that we do have a great privilege in Canada of being able to participate, not only in the overall democratic process at election time, but also between elections on issues like this. I thank you both very much for your participation.

I would say to Ms. Dutt that your point four here about the poor representation outside of central Canada on the CRTC is one that I was unaware of. It's certainly one I hope we would take note of as we take a look at where we want the CRTC to be going and how perhaps it could be reconstructed in a more helpful way, as was discussed earlier in the day.

I have one question, and we don't need to spend a lot of time on it. But, Mr. Peers, you're familiar with the old saying that if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, did it make a noise. I sometimes wonder if we were to increase the parliamentary appropriation to CBC, perhaps add 50%, perhaps double it, perhaps triple it, perhaps quadruple it, what in your opinion....

I realize that you and I are just laymen when it comes to this issue, but you must have some kind of an opinion. If we were to see a doubling in the parliamentary appropriation to the CBC, would we see the possibility of people like me, when it comes to watching television, making a choice between West Wing or something on the CBC or Law & Order or something on CTV or Global, or whatever the case may be? Would we actually see that shift? How many dollars, in your judgment, would we have to spend in order to actually attract people? We certainly can't legislate to say thou shalt watch CBC at 7 o'clock tonight. In your opinion, what kind of appropriation would we have to be making in order to get the change so that people would be voluntarily tuning in to that channel?

Mr. Digby Peers: What's your question? Well, I would have to believe that there are enough talented people in this country that if there was more money available and there was a different structure, they would be attracted to the corporation that would give the Canadian public a much broader insight into the opinions of various regions of the country.

I had such a wonderful time in public broadcasting, had such creative latitude, and was given so much opportunity to travel and learn about other cultures and produce programs in every province in this country. But I have to think that it's because of lack of resources, meaning money, which attracts people, that I find the CBC too timid these days. It's timid. It's timid in news, timid in public affairs, and it's narrow in the expression of our cultural diversity, just as has been mentioned here several times. There's just not enough money, which means that there's not the kind of rich imagination and deep intelligence that has drawn to the CBC in the past the kinds of people who will give this country the kind of public broadcasting they deserve and deeply desire. You people would not be here if it were not for that.

How do you put a figure on it? I don't know. Double it and see what happens.

The Chair: Madame Gagnon.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Regarding the interest that people have in the CBC, I don't really share the recommendation that we have to increase that budget. We probably need to increase it a little. If I only consider Radio-Canada, the Francophone section, it has its audience because Radio-Canada television reaches them. The CBC has a larger budget with which to act, but, in the end, fewer people who watch it.

I read a comparative analysis of public television networks outside Canada, which covered ten countries. It also said that it was mostly a matter of audience fragmentation.

You are speaking of the CBC we were familiar with during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s where public television took a share of the market. In other countries, they reach up to 40 percent or 45 percent of the audiences because there are fewer private networks in relationship to the population. So, it is also a question of the audience. Even if we create a network X, there won't be any more people who are going to watch it, because they are solicited elsewhere.

I agree with you that we must maintain a public television network that reaches a certain percentage of people. I think that when we stop saying that we need 50 percent of the public television audience, that that is the goal to reach... We also have this notion of accessibility for both audience ratings, but at the same time, we wonder if public television, for example, will present entertainment shows.

I also watch Radio-Canada in French. I think that there are entertainment shows that have no business being on Radio-Canada and which could be shifted to the private sector. We can continue to present documentaries without necessarily wanting to absolutely increase the audience ratings.

Today, there is also a fragmentation. The population finds shows on other channels. There are speciality channels in addition to the CBC and Radio-Canada. I do not know how you perceive this universe where there is not just Radio-Canada, where there are now other networks which have been added. In the Quebec region, there are four. It is the fact that there are other choices which exist which leads to there being perhaps fewer people watching CBC or Radio-Canada.

I agree with you that we have to maintain a certain programming quality but because we want to increase the viewing audience, there are pressures being put on... We have programming which offers, for example, televised entertainment shows. I asked some people at Radio-Canada to explain to me why this type of show was part of Radio-Canada's programming. They told me that their mandate was to entertain the public. Does including a certain type of show X, mean they have achieved their goal of entertaining the public?

We perhaps need to look at the mission of public television in today's context and not in the context of the 1950s or 1960s or 1970s, where we watched the little Indian and we waited for our two or three shows to appear because that was the only network available.

Â (1205)

The Chair: Were you asking the question of Mr. Peers or of Mrs. [Editor's note: Inaudible]?

[English]

Mr. Digby Peers: Can I...?

In part, Madam Gagnon, you yourself have already answered the question. One of the things I found quite disappointing as we drew through the middle of the seventies and toward the eighties was the fact that all of sudden it became quite important to the program directors at the CBC that we must have a bigger audience; that we have to start taking polls to see how many people are listening to this program and that one, listening to that subject and this one; and that if we don't have a certain percentage of the population listening to these programs, then we're going to have to make them more popular. To me, that was way out of whack with the mandate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The thing to do is strike a balance. When you're accused by some of becoming an elitist broadcasting corporation that's not reaching enough of the public, now that we have this explosion in new means of communication, it may be necessary for the CBC....

Thanks to the CBC, I had the privilege of also producing at the BBC. I was sent over there to do some observing and then I stayed and produced a couple of series for them. The BBC has Radio One, Radio Two, Radio Three, Radio Four, and Radio Five.

There are different levels of intellectual demand, of emotional demand, of economic understanding demand, of educational demand. The CBC has been kind of floundering around trying to figure out how they are going to meet all these constituencies, never mind the differences in languages, cultures and ethnicities, but I can't see another institution in this huge country of ours that has such distances if not the CBC. Without the CBC, God help us.

There have to be means found, whether it's through the CRTC or whether it's through committees like this that go from province to province and city to city to listen. Maybe out of your listening you'll find some kind of definition of a new structure or the definition of a way to use much bigger funding without wasting it.

When I was saying to maybe double the funding and let's see what happens, I didn't mean just double the funding and back off. I mean double the funding and then, as the money is spent, there is a way to see whether it is cost-effective. There are ways to see if this money is cost-effective.

That's partly the responsibility of pollsters, pollsters who are trusted.

The Chair: Could you conclude, Mr. Peers?

Mr. Digby Peers: Thank you very much again, Mr. Chair.

Â (1210)

The Chair: Do you have any other questions, Mrs. Gagnon? Can you ask them briefly?

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I'll come back to it later. We'll be going around the table and I'll come back to it. Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Harvard.

Mr. John Harvard: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Peers, I spent many years with the CBC as well. I agree with you that the CBC should not be a slave to ratings. I think the CBC should have a strong cadre of journalists, producers, and directors, people who understand local needs, regional needs, and national needs, and do their best job in serving this country.

I think the CBC is analogous to a good local library. A library is not judged by the fact that perhaps some books are seldom taken out over a period of a year or so or that perhaps only a certain segment of the community goes to the local library. It is used for a broad range of reasons and that's how a library is rated or judged.

Let me go back to something else. As I listen to the presentations this morning--and this is to both of you--I think a theme is emerging from these hearings this morning. That theme is that it is the little guy against the big guy. It is local programming against media concentration and media convergence, and I think we as a committee have a dilemma. How can we change the system to provide more local programming when it's not in the interests of convergence or in the interests of more concentration? How do we get CanWest Global, or CTV, or Bell Globalmedia to change so that they provide more local programming? I think it's virtually impossible.

I don't know whether we can recreate the days of the late 19th century or the early 20th century when the Americans were able to break up the Rockefeller interests into 11 different corporations and create competition and a different milieu. I don't know whether we can do that today. That is why, perhaps, I go back to what I was saying earlier or at least referencing, and that is that we make some kind of end run around these large corporations that are in the business of creating mass appeal programs, then we build a stronger CBC, and somehow or other we build, through CRTC regulations or whatever, stronger local access programming.

Do you agree or not agree, Mr. Peers?

Mr. Digby Peers: I do agree. You keep repeating what the substance of these meetings is all about and I am very happy to hear that.

I should say that when I left the CBC, I was invited by community radio to give them some workshops on radio production because I was a radio producer. I was both amazed and appalled at how much they could get done on how little money and how good their technicians were at putting together old pieces of equipment, some of which came from the CBC. I think it was put out in the back for garbage. They'd take it and they'd put it together again and they'd put band-aids and wires on it.

If the CBC is restructured to do the job properly, I don't think there's a heck of a lot of money involved in having part of their funding and part of their mandate, with specific criteria that's researched, to go out into some of these towns that would have to service a certain group or a certain large population or a little population, and just give them a little coaching from time to time. It doesn't have to be all done at the same time.

Â (1215)

The Chair: Ms. Dutt.

Ms. Shyla Dutt: Thank you, honourable chair. I think we seem to have bargained with a convergence model without doing any market study. I have here an article written about this. In the U.S. right now, we have MNAs that are actually going the other way. They are actually splintering up into their own parts. I believe AT&T has recently been going that route.

I don't know why we tend to blindly follow a model and then ask questions afterwards and then again put them back together after the United States has demonstrated.... Yet on the other hand, we don't seem to have their strong anti-trust legislation and enforcement in this country, so maybe we should look at that. We have a greater vested interest in it.

Mr. John Harvard: But even if these larger entities were to break up on their own, for whatever reason, I'm not too sure what that's going to do for local programming, whether it's at the access channel level or at the CBC level. These people are selling audiences, and I don't say this in a pejorative sense.

Mr. Asper once said several years ago, in an exchange with his own employees in Australia, that he's in the business of selling soap. I don't denigrate him for that, but I think we simply have to understand what he's doing in his interests. It's also in the interests of the economy to some extent. Then we have to ask ourselves what we are going to do if he can't do the job for local communities, through either access programming or the CBC.

Ms. Shyla Dutt: Sir, I'd like to come back and answer one of the questions I was asked earlier. We seem to assume that Mr. Asper is infallible. In fact, the industry has known that they've gone ahead and done it and then had to retrench from their own decisions. Why, for instance, do they look at the Vancouver market, which is so dominated by other languages, and yet none of the broadcasters seem to be aware or want to take advantage of that? So we're sort of assuming they will do that.

I'd like to submit that they perhaps also learn like the rest of us. They acquire because bulking up is the way to go right now. Then they discover that this isn't bringing them back what they want, and they divest. Yet we as regional audiences get dragged through this. Canadian audiences get dragged through decision-making that may not be accurate. I know, who am I to challenge or question CanWest Global? But I've seen this happen.

Ms. Wendy Lill: I want to thank you very much for coming before us. Obviously both of you have a real passion for the idea of the Canadian broadcasting system and the importance of public balance, public reporting and opinion. I guess I'd just like you both to give me your reflections on this dilemma we face here.

We have the private broadcasters, through their association, the CAB, having us believe that they are the most effective method of producing Canadian programming and that in fact they have replaced the CBC in terms of effectiveness. There's no question that over the last decade we've seen deep cuts to the CBC, and we've seen changes in licensing. There have been blows to the CBC.

So we have the CAB and the privates saying that they are the way to go. We even have a minister and that whole private broadcasting sector who say we have ultimate diversity out there right now, that Canadians are being served better than ever in terms of diversity of opinion. So those two forces are working against a very strong public broadcasting sector. I'd just like your responses to that.

Â (1220)

Ms. Shyla Dutt: In all fairness, the CBC has not had the security of funding. I would submit that in the past few years if the CBC has fallen behind it is because it wasn't assured, whether it was large or small, a stable source of funding. I don't think it's fair at this point to be judging the CBC in terms of its mandate.

I've also wondered whether it isn't burdened by, let's say, non-economic kinds of responsibilities as a publicly funded broadcaster, to provide distribution and programming to remote communities--something, by the way, that ethnic broadcasters also carry even though they are private. They have to subsidize less economical aspects. So I'm not sure you can actually hold that against the CBC.

As for the access in terms of multiple choices, this is a mirage. As I said in my written speaking notes, we have endless repetition. We don't have diversity of programming. We see the same programs at the same time slots.

If you turn on the private channels while you're in the city, you'll notice that you can watch Seinfeld or Frasier on three channels at the very same time slot. I remember doing that. I was just amazed. Who's regulating this and how do they allocate channels?

We really don't have diversity of voices or choices unless we are very affluent, in which case you can have your satellite or any number of pay channels. I tried to watch a very interesting hockey game the other night. I had my popcorn all ready and I found that the game wasn't carried. It had been shunted over to pay-per-view. I'm sorry, this is what happens to choice.

Mr. Digby Peers: To follow that up, and in the same vein, the CBC has been nervous recently. The senior officers have been nervous. They've been timid. They're not sure where they stand with government or the people. I don't think some of your senior people are convinced of exactly what they should be doing.

I know it's a huge task. But there is so much enthusiasm and I think people across the land are waiting for an overhaul of the CBC, with new blood and inspiration. With all due respect to Mr. Rabinovitch, he ain't no inspirer to public communications. He may be an inspiration to the bottom line, but he is certainly not an inspiration to communications.

Thank you.

The Chair: I'm sure he'll be interested in reading the transcript here.

Mr. McNally.

Mr. Grant McNally: That's a hard act to follow, but I'll try.

Mr. Harvard mentioned there's a theme, big guy versus little guy. I would agree that is going on, and another theme that is emerging is the one you've just touched on, and that's the role of the CBC. You seem to be indicating that. You made the comment that they're timid in a couple of cases, and it seems to be that we're getting lots of input about the CBC through this process and what the role of it should be, including from those who are in management at the CBC when we were there visiting, going through some of these same kinds of questions too.

Another theme seems to be emerging and that's the CRTC. You have both touched on that and have had experience with the CRTC. I appreciate your comments.

Mr. Peers, I think you mentioned that we need a different process for getting a president of the CBC, not the CRTC.

Ms. Dutt, I want to ask about conflict of interest. I think it was your point five. The way you put that together reminded a little of the whole Olympic judging process we've just gone through, about who has access to the decision-makers and how that impacts the decisions that are made. I would then ask you about the decision process, because I believe you said you thought those decisions of the CRTC should be still kept behind closed doors.

We had a suggestion when we were in Ottawa--I believe it was last week--about actually making the decisions of the CRTC public in the same regard as decisions by the Supreme Court are made, in that justices must either agree with the majority decision or file a minority decision themselves. In our judicial system, that procedure adds to some more accountability so that we know where individuals stand. Do you think that would be a good process to do for CRTC decisions? All these things are going on behind closed doors and we don't know who's deciding what. Might this be a process that would improve the accountability for the CRTC?

Â (1225)

Ms. Shyla Dutt: I commend you for your comments. I guess I was trying to soften the blow, if you will. You remind me that it is a quasi-judicial court, as we are reminded when we appear before the CRTC. I noticed that recently it has been very fashionable for some of the commissioners to write dissenting opinions. Since they themselves have, by virtue of writing dissenting opinions, revealed who made what choice, yes, the CRTC seems to be following that road.

Mr. Grant McNally: In the interests of time, Mr. Chair, I conclude by saying that I certainly agree with much of what both of you have said in terms of the accountability measures that need to be put back into place where they are somewhat lacking, both with the CRTC and with the kinds of things, Mr. Peers, you mentioned with the CBC and what needs to happen in regard to the future. I think the CBC provides a service that's necessary, but one that perhaps is floundering a bit right now and needs to be refocused.

This is an opportunity for you to give us your last messages as to what needs to happen. Do you have one point that you would like to emphasize once again, or would you like to say what would be the most important issue in terms of where we need to go with the CBC?

Mr. Digby Peers: Mr. Chairman, the one point that I would re-emphasize is that there should be a new method to choose the president of the most important communications system in this country. There has to be a new method, and it has to be a person who has a colourful, educational, and entertaining sense of communication.

The Chair: Mrs. Hinton.

Mrs. Betty Hinton: Most of the comments that I would have made have been made by my colleagues, but there are a few that are worth touching on.

I found it very interesting, by the way, that there were--I didn't realize the numbers, I must admit--nine from central Canada and only two really from western Canada on the CRTC. I think that's an imbalance we're going to have to do something about, as a committee.

I appreciate that we're here at the western side of the country today as well--my end of the world. I do agree with you that there is probably a distinct advantage in being able to lobby in Ottawa. So it's nice that we can hear from regular people today too.

I found some of your comments very interesting, Mr. Peers, and I've heard them repeated in other hearings that we've had as well.

We pay as taxpayers just shy of $1 billion in grants. I have difficulty with that in the economic times we're in now and with the issues we face as a country. In my own area, softwood lumber is a major issue. I would have a great deal of difficulty convincing my constituents that we should increase funding when we're already spending a billion in grants. They would like very much for us to cut back. I know they would.

One of the comments you made that I found the most interesting was something I've raised in other hearings. It's about the appointment of the chairman, the CEO. Do you believe that there may be some sort of conflict of interest if you are appointed by the Prime Minister and you are in charge of this particular portfolio?

Mr. Digby Peers: I really didn't ask this lady to ask me that question. I was hoping that what I suggested earlier wouldn't.... I don't like bringing up the term “conflict of interest” really. It's such a cold phrase, in a sense. There are so many good communicators in the universities and high schools and business. There are whole departments of communications and public relations and marketing. Surely we can come up with a new way to appoint the most important communicator in this country, and that is the president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

To take that one step further, the same should be done with the board of directors. Yes, perhaps the politicians and the government of the day will appoint the chairman of the board and the directors, but the methodology is what I would like to see revisited, so those people who are up for appointment or in the stream for a possible appointment to the board of directors of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have a new set of criteria and a new set of guidelines and can look in the mirror and say to themselves, “I would make a good director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation”--because we're almost always disappointed by the board of directors of the CBC.

Â (1230)

The Chair: Let's conclude; otherwise we'll go without lunch.

A brief question from Mr. Abbott and Mr. Harvard.

Mr. John Harvard: I have just one comment and then, really, one question.

My comment is on the CBC president. I think we're attaching too much importance to that position. What the CBC needs is a strong, well-funded team of creators. If you've got good creators, good producers, good journalists, and good writers, then as long as the CBC is well funded and is given a mandate to unleash the forces of creativity, it'll happen. Naturally, the president has to understand that. You want a strong president, of course, but I think we're overrating the position.

Let me ask Mrs. Dutt this question: do you not think perhaps the time has come to switch the focus of this debate?

It is so fashionable in this debate, among other things, to attack the private operators, the commercial interests. What perhaps we should be thinking about is co-existence. We used that word “co-existence” back during the days of the Cold War. We have two distinct systems. We have commercial operators on one side and public broadcasters--and you may want to throw the access operators in there, too--on the other side.

I think it's just foolish and a waste of time to ask some of these commercial broadcasters to do things we would like to see them do in the public broadcast field. They don't want to do it; they have no interest in it. It's really against their mandate from their investors, their shareholders. So let's stop that fight. We need them both, as far as I'm concerned. Let's learn how to co-exist and build the public broadcast system as well as we can.

What do you think?

Ms. Shyla Dutt: Totally. I'm sorry if I gave you the impression I was saying the private broadcasters shouldn't.... I myself am from the private--

Mr. John Harvard: I didn't draw that from you.

Ms. Shyla Dutt: I totally agree. I think the only way we've had diversity of voices--certainly as someone from a “multicultural” community--is through the proliferation of private broadcasting; indeed, niche marketing or niche broadcasting.

My point entirely has been that the roads have been blocked by grouping big conglomerates, usually grown from the Toronto hub, that are preventing more and more diverse private operators. Quite the contrary, to me the CBC has a separate role.

Maybe we should look at public broadcasting in some of these other niche communities that cannot access it through revenue-producing...or they don't have a revenue base. I have no quarrel with that.

If I may just comment on conflict of interest, recently we had a decision--and this is addressing a different aspect of conflict of interest--for licensing, made just last week in Vancouver, for a “multicultural” channel. A few years ago the CRTC had decided, looking at this market, that the market could not bear another television station--quite correctly, I felt. But tremendous pressure was mounted by a cable company and various others, and the CRTC, amazingly, said, “We have had such political pressure that we are going to license one”. To me that was quite amazing.

Since then, we've had the softwood lumber debacle in this very same market. We've had incredible budget cutbacks in the government. Yet this is what I mean when I ask why are decisions being made based on politics rather than on the needs of the market and the audiences in this market? As a result of this, many of the small players in this market who are engaged in broadcasting are going to be wiped out.

Â (1235)

The Chair: Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: I have a general difference of opinion, particularly with Mr. Peers, relative to Mr. Rabinovitch. I'm sure he is a very forceful, managerial type of individual who can stand on his own. He doesn't need me to do it for him. But between him and the chair, Carole Taylor, I think to a very great extent they are carrying out their perception of the mandate from the present government.

You are aware that I am in the opposition, so you can expect that I have some differences of opinion with the government, but if Mr. Rabinovitch is driving to a bottom line, I believe that's because the government wants him to drive to a bottom line. I believe he and Ms. Taylor are working through a process managerially and with their board where they're working through various labour practices that have accrued over a period of time at the corporation that no longer meet the reality of the marketplace today. I think that was right at the core of the recent battle between labour and management at the CBC.

So as I say--if we can have a general difference of opinion--I think it's more a case that once we have gone through this process as a committee, whether we have a unanimous report or some dissent in the report, whatever the case may be, it will give some direction to the government. The government will then make up its mind. The choice of the people at the top of the heap will be the choice that is most appropriate then. But quite frankly, I don't feel uncomfortable with either of those two people.

The Chair: Just before we close, I should tell members we've extended our time. We have lunch provided just across the road for the members. Just follow Christine and you'll see where it is.

We're supposed to come back at one o'clock, which doesn't leave much time. We'll try to postpone it for a little while.

I'll just mention that we offered to Mr. Sylvain Aumont of the Conseil culturel et artistique francophone de la Colombie-Britannique, which was to appear this morning, to postpone it to this afternoon, but he has just come back from Quebec where he spent some time, and he's exhausted. He had no time to prepare a brief, so he's going to send us a brief, but won't be able to appear.

This afternoon we have three groups appearing before us: Mr. Darrel Reid, the president of Focus on the Family; the Raging Grannies; and CKVU Vancouver. We are supposed to start at one o'clock. We are going to try to postpone the first witness a little longer so we can have time for lunch.

So the meeting will be adjourned for this morning, but not before I thank you, Mr. Peers and Ms. Dutt, very sincerely for your appearance and your comments, which have been extremely worthwhile and appreciated. Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.