The Association canadienne-française de l'Ontario, Temiskaming Region, would like to thank the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for accepting our brief regarding CBC/Radio-Canada's mandate and funding.
The ACFO Temiskaming Region represents the 7,345 Francophones and many Francophiles in southern Temiskaming, in Northern Ontario.
The ACFO Temiskaming Region is a non-profit organization that encourages and promotes the development and vitality of Franco-Ontarians in Temiskaming in social, cultural, religious, and educational spheres
Let's talk about the CBC/Radio-Canada's Role in Ensuring the Survival of Francophone Communities. For Francophones in Temiskaming, CBC/Radio-Canada plays an essential role in guaranteeing our survival.
As the public broadcaster, it shares information about what is going on in other minority communities in Ontario and across the country.
It also broadcasts information about what is going on in Quebec. Without CBC/Radio-Canada, it would be impossible for Francophone communities in Canada to showcase their culture, diversity, dynamism and socio-economic development, as there would be nothing drawing these communities together.
CBC/Radio-Canada must be given enough funding to accomplish its role as a Canadian Crown corporation. We have an opportunity to identify as Canadians through access to media.
In the Ontarian Temiskaming region, there are no established Francophone radio stations or newspapers. Over the years, three different newspapers have been launched by ACFO-Temiskaming, but all of them have gone under because there is not a large enough population base to sustain a French-language newspaper.
Therefore, if we want to read news in French, our only option is the French-language newspaper called Le Reflet témiscamien, based in the Quebec Témiscamingue region. While this newspaper occasionally covers events that occur on the Ontario side, it understandably focuses on events and issues that affect its target audience, that is, Quebeckers in the Témiscamingue region.
Our region receives radio signals from the Quebec Ville-Marie station CKVM, an independent station that caters to its target audience, that is, local Quebeckers.
We also receive CBC/Radio-Canada's CBON station, which is based in Sudbury and covers all of Northern Ontario. While its mandate is to serve us, reception is very poor in certain areas of Temiskaming, which causes many Francophones to turn to the Quebec CKVM station or to English-language radio stations for their news.
One of the reasons that CBON reception is so poor is CBC/Radio-Canada's lack of funding. How can we create a sense of belonging among Francophones when we are beyond the reach of our media?
It is important for us to have access to CBC/Radio-Canada radio and television stations so that we can receive the news in our own language.
If CBON does not receive adequate funding, Temiskaming runs the risk of having even poorer French-language media coverage of local events.
Our only other alternative for local news is the English-language radio station CJIT, which is based in New Liskeard.
The same can be said of local television. If CBC/Radio-Canada received more funding, we could have a local journalist that would tell us about local activities in our own language.
Francophone and Anglophone media do not report on the same aspects of a situation or the same realities. Therefore, it is essential that we have access to media services that understand our issues, our challenges and our aspirations.
Franco-Ontarians are fiercely proud of their Francophone culture and language and they are fighting to protect them.
It is important that we have access to adequate and professional French-language news. This creates a sense of belonging and unites us with the larger Francophone family across the country.
CBC/Radio-Canada can be the one to spark this pride and ensure our vitality. We, as Francophones, represent one of the founding peoples of Canada, but we are living in a minority situation. If Franco-Ontarians do not have a model or something to rally around, it becomes nearly impossible to ensure our survival.
The Association canadienne-française de l'Ontario (ACFO), Temiskaming Region believes that CBC/Radio-Canada is an essential service for minority Francophone communities in Canada.
The government must provide adequate funding in order to ensure the long-term survival and financial security of the national public broadcaster.
It is wrong to believe that we can drain more and more funding from CBC/Radio-Canada and think that some other broadcaster will be able to unite Francophones established across our beautiful country.
Thank you.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Carrière.
I would like to tell you about my experience. Before I became the Liberal critic for La Francophonie, I was the Liberal critic for official languages. At that time, I travelled from one end of Canada to the other to meet with francophones from Canada, and obviously anglophones from Quebec. Two things struck me and I was told them over and over. The first is the old story of the abolition of the Court Challenges Program of Canada. Then the government restored it, in a way, but that caused great harm to French-speaking and English-speaking minority communities across Canada.
I am sitting on this committee for the day. I see an institution that I respect enormously, for a number of reasons, and that is maybe also going to lose a lot of blood and have its wings clipped. I think that institution has created a Canadian spirit for anglophones from sea to sea. It has also created a francophone spirit, a minority spirit, certainly, but francophone nonetheless, in all of Canada.
Mr. Carrière, what I am hearing from you makes me very afraid. I am afraid when I hear what you are saying about an isolated community in Northern Ontario, where the young people are already suffering a phenomenon called "language loss", which amounts to culture loss. It is inevitable when they listen to radio and watch television in English. Our generation does the same thing, but it's worse for young people. Once they have lost their language, it is almost lost forever.
I know the CBC is not run by the government. We all know it, but we also know that what the CBC can do also depends on the budgets it is allocated by the government, is that right?
The last time I was at a parliamentary committee it was your committee. It was just another committee.
[Translation]
Mr. Chair and members of the Committee, thanks for inviting Friends of Canadian Broadcasting to appear today.
[English]
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is an independent watchdog for Canadian programming on radio, television, and new media. We're supported by 150,000 Canadians. Friends is not affiliated with any broadcaster or political party.
You are studying the mandate and funding of the CBC, a subject dear to Canadians' hearts. Since early in the 1990s, Friends has periodically commissioned public opinion research on broadcasting issues. You can find it in the resources section of our website, friends.ca.
I want to take a moment to summarize a recent survey we commissioned from Pollara on Canadian attitudes and expectations towards public broadcasting: 88% of Canadians believe that as Canada's economic ties with the U.S. increase, it's becoming more important to strengthen Canadian culture and identity; 78% tune in to some form of CBC programming each week; 81% believe that the CBC is one of the things that helps distinguish Canada from the United States; and 74% would like to see CBC strengthened in their part of Canada.
Finally, here is a question that might interest a group of parliamentarians: “Assume for a moment that your federal MP asked for your advice about an upcoming vote in the House of Commons on what to do about CBC funding. Which of the following three options would you advise him or her to vote for? Decrease funding, maintain funding at current levels, increase funding?” The data were: 9%, decrease; 31%, maintain; and 47%, increase. There's a message here: CBC is popular with Canadians of all political persuasions.
Friends has appeared before this committee on several occasions to underline our strong support for the CBC's mandate, as expressed in section 3 of the Broadcasting Act. In our view, a key point is the large gap between Parliament's intentions and what CBC actually delivers daily to Canadians, particularly the mandate to reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions. Also making up this gap is the English television network's failure to be predominantly and distinctively Canadian, especially in prime time.
This committee has been a source of valuable and comprehensive information about public broadcasting. For example, there is the graphic on page 178 of the Lincoln report comparing public investment in public broadcasting in western democracies as a share of GDP. These data show that CBC funding is near the basement, like the Ottawa Senators, with only Portugal, Poland, New Zealand, and the United States investing less than Canada in public broadcasting. So there's a disconnect between public sentiment and government investment, and this disconnect has become more severe in recent years.
Friends routinely tracks CBC's parliamentary grant, factored for inflation, in order to identify changes in CBC's purchasing power. On friends.ca, we have graphed these data over the past 21 years. Under each of the Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin, and Harper governments, CBC has lost financial capacity. Canadians can hear and see this gap every day. Regional programming is weaker and its reach is declining. More foreign content is televised in prime time, and repetition of programs is increasing. Ten years ago in prime time, CBC's English television network broadcast 27 hours of Canadian programs and only one hour of foreign programs each week. Last year, seven hours of foreign programs appeared in prime time, 25% of CBC's prime time schedule. I want to explain: that's seven to 11, times seven days a week. This comes after a recommendation from your committee that CBC television should be 100% Canadian in prime time. Each of you will probably have your own anecdotes on the results of underfunding.
Earlier this year, New Brunswick residents learned that CBC proposed to end over-the-air television transmission in Moncton and Saint John next September, leading to a storm of protest at the CRTC.
A few years ago, residents of the Comox Valley lost their over-the-air CBC television signal after an antenna fire, and it has not been replaced.
CBC seems to be backing out of affiliate agreements in several communities, including Peterborough and Kingston. Examples abound of parts of the country that are denied CBC services, all because of the shortage of money.
Friends welcomes this committee's recent recommendation that “CBC/Radio-Canada's core funding be increased to an amount equivalent to at least $40 per capita.” This would be a good first step in addressing the funding gap, raising Canada's per capita support for its national public broadcaster to half the OECD average.
Your recommendation is popular with Canadians. Pollara found that 54% of Canadians support this committee's recommendation that CBC funding be raised to $40 per Canadian; 20% of Canadians believe that your $40 recommendation is too low; and the balance, 26% of Canadians, believe that your recommendation is too high.
In our watchdog role, we keep close track of politicians' statements about broadcasting and cultural sovereignty. Our website is full of examples from years gone by—Liberal years—but today I want to focus on the current government.
Prime Minister Harper came up strongly on our radar when, as opposition leader in May 2004, he said, and I'm quoting literally:
I've suggested that government subsidies in support of CBC's services should be to those things that...do not have commercial alternatives.
He then added:
...when you look at things like main English-language television and probably to a lesser degree Radio Two, you could look there at putting those on a commercial basis.
In seeming contradiction, a few months later Harper said:
...we would seek to reduce the CBC's dependence on advertising revenue and its competition with the private sector for these valuable dollars, especially for non-sports programming.
In office, the Prime Minister has gone silent on this file, at least in public.
But troubling signs have emerged from Conservative Party fundraising letters, where public broadcasting has been featured. For example in September 2008, on the eve of the general election, Doug Finley, writing as the campaign director of the Conservative Party, sent donors a 2008 national critical issues survey, and promised, “I will personally share the overall results and any comments with the Prime Minister.”
Question 5 read: “The CBC costs taxpayers over $1.1 billion per year. Do you think this is: a good use of taxpayer dollars; a bad use of taxpayer dollars”.
This context might help you understand our concern when we read the transcript of your November 23 meeting, with the following question from Mr. Del Mastro to a Corus executive, and I'm quoting from a part of the question. The question is about 300 words long.
...maybe it's time we get out of the broadcasting business and get into investing more money in content?
And:
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. The $1.1 billion, plus a whole bunch of other stuff that we're investing into the public broadcaster: should we look at reorganizing that in some fashion so we could put more money into content?
Getting out of the broadcasting business—do you want me to stop, Mr. Chair?
:
Okay. I'm going to have to cut a quote from the late Dalton Camp.
Getting out of the broadcasting business sounds a lot like killing CBC Radio, CBC Television, CBC News Network, cbc.ca, and their French language counterparts. This disturbing comment was coming from the mouth of a parliamentary secretary who has a seat at the table beside the Minister of Canadian Heritage.
We also noted that twice in question period Minister Moore was invited to dissociate himself from Mr. Del Mastro's comments and he failed to do so.
As you know, last month.... I'll forget about Jason Kenney saying what he said.
Eighty years ago, a Conservative Prime Minister introduced public broadcasting to Canada. I would like to conclude by quoting another prominent Conservative, the late Dalton Camp:
Owning one national communication facility, such as the CBC, which owes nothing to Mitsubishi or General Dynamics or Krupp, is surely worth keeping. What we know about the CBC, in a world in which economics is power and so much power is out of our hands, is that the CBC would never wilfully betray our national interest or sell off our Canadian heritage. And we are its only shareholders.
When you hear people talk about reducing the role of the CBC, or selling off its assets, look closely at who's talking—it won't be a voice speaking for the people of Canada, but for the shareholders of another kind of corporation.
Merci, monsieur le président.
:
We think there are two really big problems. One of them I had time to refer to in my brief remarks, and that is the gap between its mandate and its resources. The evidence of CBC dealing with that gap is visible for all to see.
But I'll take a moment to refer to the other problem with the CBC, and that is a problem that goes back to the beginning. The president and the board of directors of the CBC are appointed by political patronage. This has yielded some good and some bad appointments. The problem is that on average, the person who is in charge of the CBC is not a person who is experienced in broadcasting.
The current president, for example, is, as you know--he's been here--a very affable and professional person with legal experience in mergers and acquisitions law. He's never run a company. He's never run a broadcasting company. He has no experience with radio or television, marketing, production, or anything else.
We think the board of directors of the CBC--and by the way, this has been covered in past reports of this committee--should be chosen from among the best and brightest Canadians, and we believe that the board of directors should have the power to hire and fire the president. We believe this accountability is lacking right now, effectively.
I remember when Mr. Angus asked Mr. Rabinovitch once, when he was here, who Mr. Rabinovitch considered to be his boss. It took Mr. Rabinovitch a few seconds before he said that it was the people of Canada and this committee. To my amusement, Mr. Angus said, “You mean I'm your boss.”
The CBC president is not accountable to anyone.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I did not cut the witness off when he had his time to make his statement. That's his time, uninterrupted, to make whatever statement he likes. I did ask him a direct question, which is why he removes the first sentence off that says, “This is not government policy”.
Obviously he doesn't want to say that, because he wrote a six-page diatribe, which he went out and fundraised from. Apparently, for as little as $3 a month, he's going to save the CBC. He's going to save the CBC with $3 a month. So I thought, “Wow, this is interesting. I'm going to write to the CBC and find out how this $3 a month is saving the CBC.”
So I received this letter back from Shaun Poulter, the senior director of government relations, and he wrote:
...there is no relationship. Ian Morrison and “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” are in no way related to CBC/Radio Canada, nor does the public broadcaster cooperate in any way with the group. In fact, much of the “Friends” activities consist of letters and statements criticizing CBC/Radio-Canada and its activities.
“Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” uses mass mailings and other activities to generate contributions from Canadians. None of that money benefits CBC/Radio-Canada nor contributes to the Canadian programming services we provide. I do not know what Ian Morrison might mean by his claim that the funds he solicits “are directed to 'assisting' the CBC”.
I'll repeat:
I do not know what Ian Morrison might mean by his claim that the funds he solicits “are directed to 'assisting' the CBC”. As you know, CBC/Radio-Canada receives vital support from Canadians through its Parliamentary Appropriation; it does not accept direct payment from citizens to fund its activities.
Over the years, a number of Canadians have contacted us, confused about the possible linkage between the two organizations. CBC/Radio-Canada has written to Ian Morrison several times; we have asked him to clearly state on his website and fundraising literature that there is no linkage between his organization, its fundraising activities, and CBC/Radio-Canada.
But you haven't done that. This doesn't say that you're in no way affiliated with them. In fact, sir, what you say is, for as little as $3 a month, you're going to save the CBC. You're a fraud, sir. How would you respond to that?
I have to back up and say something else, and that is that what we do, Ms. Crombie, is watch the entire Canadian audiovisual system. As I said at the outset of my remarks, we're a watchdog for Canadian programming. We watch public broadcasting. That includes such organizations as the Knowledge Network of British Columbia, or TVOntario, for example. We watch the entire private broadcasting system as well, television and radio. We keep an eye on the CRTC. We keep an eye on the very big and powerful cable and satellite distributors—the Rogers, the Shaws, etc. And we keep an eye on the federal government.
I did a recent analysis for our steering committee about how we spend our time. We found, if this is an indication, that we made 15 public presentations or filings of a brief or a submission in 2010. Two of them were to the Department of Industry, one was to the industry committee, of which Mr. Chong was the chair, and 12 were to the CRTC. In 2010, most of those were dealing with the agenda the CRTC had. The good majority of them had nothing to do with the CBC.
So I would say that on average, about a third of our resources go into watching and tracking, and as Mr.—I've forgotten his name, but the CBC guy whom Mr. Del Mastro just quoted—said, we are often critical of the management of the CBC.
:
Mr. Chair, Mr. Pomerleau said to me, informally before the meeting, where do you come from? And I said,
[Translation]
I'm a little guy from Toronto.
[English]
My role is that of spokesperson.
Your question is really a question about the governance of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. There is a board of directors that is known as the steering committee, and that steering committee contains people you probably wouldn't know because of the language divide.
The chair of my steering committee is the dean of graduate studies at Memorial University, for example. The famous actor, R. H. Thompson, is a member of my steering committee. If you were from Alberta, you would know the name Aritha van Herk, who is the historian of Alberta, and on and on.
Those people are the governance body. I am the spokesperson.
And Friends is a virtual organization in the sense that it has no office, it has no employees.
Someone once sent me a note, Mr. Pomerleau. It said, “We're not going to send you $3 a month”--or something like that--“unless you promise us that you're not wasting money on an expensive address on Bloor Street in Toronto.” I'd have to borrow, again, the letter to give you the address because I never go there--it's a post box. I wrote back and I said, “I can't promise you that. It's 6 inches tall, it's 12 inches wide, and it's 18 inches deep.” So we are a virtual organization. We have a series of people with expertise in a variety of subjects: broadcasting, research, communications, fundraising, etc.
My role is the coordination and the expression of the Friends positions.
:
Myself, I think you play your role very well. I would like to ask you a question.
I am a sovereignist, which in reality means I want to bring about the independence of Quebec. It may seem odd, but I am absolutely convinced that if Canada doesn't invest money, resources and an lot of work in protecting its culture, exactly the same thing is going to happen to it as what is going to happen to us, it is going to be assimilated by the Americans. It's written in the sky. So the need to invest more in culture, in the CBC, and so on, seems obvious to me.
Based on your experience, I would like you to tell me why it is, in your opinion, that the government, which is in fact made of up intelligent people, doesn't understand that and is not investing a little more money in this area, as the people at the OECD are.
In fact, we commissioned research on this topic from Canadian Media Research Inc. What I would say to you is that when Canadians are asked if they could only receive one channel, what would that channel be and what would they be watching, they say local news is their very top priority. Their second priority is national news. There may be a difference in what they mean by national. Their third priority is international news. After that, it's sports, Hollywood, and things like that. Canadians care about that local programming.
CBC at one point abandoned that role in its television work and it's gradually coming back to it. But I point out to you, and I'll say this briefly, that to do that well is expensive. There are 30 or 40 places in Canada that are like Peterborough and the Kawarthas. It costs more. You have to have cameras, staff, people, and amortize the cost over a small audience, rather than national programming, where you amortize it, in the English Canadian sense, over 26 million people. That is a very high priority.
I'd like to move my motion that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage examine the role of Sports Canada and amateur sports associations in addressing the rising incidence rates of traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries in amateur and youth athletics.
By way of bringing forward this motion, we do, within this committee, have the twin roles of culture and sports programs. We have not tended to look at them because it hasn't come up. I think many Canadians are concerned about the rising level of injuries. There is certainly a perception, whether it's true or not, that Mr. Bettman and the NHL have not shown leadership on this.
When I'm in my riding, what I'm hearing from people is the concern on how it's affecting amateur sports. What do we need to know about this? What steps are being taken? I think we could look at this in a thorough but also a positive role and say, let's hear from the experts. Let's see what we're doing to make sure that for hockey, and for other sports as well, if they're involved, when young people go out to play, they're going out to play and have fun and not to get hurt. If there need to be steps taken to ensure that, then that is I think within the purview of this committee.
I support the intent of the motion. I don't want to start a trend, but I have an amendment to propose as well. It's a very minor amendment, I believe, but one that addresses a couple of small concerns I have.
I simply want to state, first off, that I support the intent of the motion. We have witnessed, as Mr. Del Mastro and others have mentioned, a number of hits recently that really show a lack of respect for fellow hockey players on the ice. It's in particular in hockey; I know it's not the only sport in which we see some of these issues.
Going back to my days as a young guy playing hockey, I can recall seeing teammates suffer from what clearly now we would know to be a concussion, but back in those days, it was, “He had his bell rung.” The trainer would ask, “How many fingers am I holding up?” He'd say, “Uhh, two?” “Okay, then get back out on the ice.”
Now you would clearly not see that kind of thing happening. That's obviously a good thing. It's a good idea that we're looking at studying this.
But I wonder about a couple of words in this motion, and only because I think we're prejudging the facts before we study something. That is, we talk, in the middle of this, about “addressing the rising incidence rates of traumatic” etc. I would like to see the words “rising” and “rates” removed so that it just reads, “in addressing the incidence of traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries”. It's only because I wonder whether we're prejudging what we would find in a study. I really struggle with making a prejudgment on what we would find. I support the intent, but this is my concern.
I would propose the amendment that we remove the words “rising” and “rates” that are book-ending the word “incidence”.
:
First of all, I want to congratulate Mr. Angus. I think this is a very worthy study for us to take on right now. I want to comment, though.
Most of the comments we've made around the table have referred to hockey, because that is what's in the press right now. But I have played and coached many sports for about 34 years now, some at the national level, and concussions and injuries are things that take place in many sports. I'm very pleased to see that we're going to study all sports. Everybody watches Hockey Night in Canada; Canada is a hockey country. But we have youth being put at risk on a daily basis in many, many sports.
In the sport that I still coach this year, basketball, I can tell you that we're having more and more concussions happen simply because of the size, strength, and speed of the athletes today, and the human brain is no thicker than it ever was—in some cases. But the size of the athletes and their physical development is increasing.
I think we'll hear from many experts, if we bring the right experts in. We'll hear some good recommendations on how we as a government can support our sports associations in dealing with these changes in human physiology. I think that's the direction we should go in.
Hockey is not my sport, but I want to say that this is a factor in all sports, or most contact or collision sports. It's not just a hockey problem; it's a problem in all youth sports.