:
Good morning, and welcome to meeting number 11.
Before we go to our witnesses, I want to remind the committee that we have committee business to deal with. At some point, we'll thank the witnesses and proceed to committee business. We have a couple of items of committee business.
I want to welcome our guests.
I understand Mr. Laurin is on his way. There were more traffic delays today.
We're going to start with Mr. Morrison.
Before we start, I'll remind people that you have 10 minutes to present. I will be very strict on the time because we want to give the maximum time to members to ask questions. When we get to the question and answer round, the initial round will be seven minutes. The seven minutes include the member's time to pose a question and your time to respond.
Mr. Morrison, for ten minutes, please.
[Translation]
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.
[English]
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is an independent watchdog for Canadian programming on radio, television, and new media. We are supported by 150,000 Canadians, and we are not affiliated with any broadcaster or political party.
Your committee is studying a matter that is close to our hearts: the transparency and accountability of our national public broadcaster. Canadians share with citizens in other western democracies profound respect for public broadcasting. A recent Pollara poll commissioned by Friends indicates that 83% of Canadians use CBC each week; 83% believe that CBC is important in protecting Canadian identity and culture; 76% rate CBC's performance as excellent, very good, or good; and 78% would advise their member of Parliament to maintain or increase CBC's funding.
Before commenting on the CBC's performance under the Access to Information Act, I thought you might welcome an external reference. On Tuesday, the Information Commissioner provided you with an outline of the access regimes in several countries, including the United Kingdom. Through the clerk I have provided you with some links to document the British Broadcasting Corporation's performance under the United Kingdom's Freedom of Information Act.
The main BBC freedom of information website, to which the clerk has the link, indicates that “As a publicly funded organisation, the BBC is fully committed to meeting both the spirit and the letter of the Act.” It contains a series of helpful links, such as disclosure logs. The link includes files on bonuses paid in 2010-11 and tenders awarded in 2010. Members of the committee might consider surfing through the various links to gain an insight into the compliance policies and practices of another national public broadcaster--information that we find both instructive and impressive.
I would like to share with you a few examples of our own experience with access to information and the CBC. In November 2009, Friends submitted a series of questions to the CBC under the Access to Information Act. These included a request for all correspondence among the CBC's senior management mentioning “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” or “Ian Morrison”, and the dollar value of all contracts in recent years between the CBC and a United States company known as Frank R. Magid Associates.
Eleven weeks later we received a response refusing to disclose the financial information, claiming exemption under section 68.1. After six months and the transfer of a few hundred dollars in payments, in response to our other request—that's the Friends and the Ian Morrison part—we received a series of blanked out files containing almost no useful information.
We would like to provide your committee with our take on the root problem and offer a policy suggestion to address it.
Unlike the BBC and other national public broadcasters in most other western democracies, the CBC's governance and senior management structure suffer from an accountability deficit that is built into section 36 of the Broadcasting Act. The Governor in Council appoints CBC's president, chair, and 10 other members of the corporation's board of directors. As a result--unlike the standard practice in the private sector or that of most national public broadcasters in democratic countries--the CBC's chief executive officer is effectively accountable to no one.
Section 52 of the act correctly requires the corporation to program independently from government interference, which means that the government cannot intervene in the president's decisions. The CBC's board lacks the authority that almost all other boards have to hire and fire the CEO.
In common with his immediate predecessors, the current CBC president was appointed without previous management or broadcast management experience, including production or scheduling experience. He is a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, a very talented one, whose previous broadcasting governance experience was confined to the board of Télémédia as its legal adviser, at a time when that family controlled corporation was actively seeking to sell its broadcasting assets. As a practising lawyer, however, the current president entered his present job with a sophisticated understanding of legislation and therefore could be presumed to be able to comprehend the requirements of the Access to Information Act and also evaluate the advice to his subordinates thereon.
We therefore find it shocking that he has endorsed and has continued the disclosure avoidance practice inherited from his predecessor, presumably with the approval of CBC's board of directors.
The CBC access to information issue is subsidiary to a larger CBC accountability issue. The solution is to be found in a suggestion of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage made eight years ago. I'm quoting from page 567 of the report called “Our Cultural Sovereignty”, chaired by Clifford Lincoln, one of your former colleagues.
[I]n the interests of fuller accountability and arm's-length from government, nominations to the CBC board should be made by a number of sources, and the CBC President should be hired by and be responsible to the Board.
A CBC board of directors, chosen at arm's length from patronage and mandated to represent the public interest, with the power to recruit, evaluate, and if necessary terminate its president, would introduce accountability on the part of the national public broadcaster's most senior management. One of the board's duties, on behalf of its 34 million shareholders, would be to ensure compliance with relevant statutes, including the Access to Information Act. This would bring the standard of governance of Canada's national public broadcaster up to par with the standard of governance of public broadcasters in other democratic countries while addressing the issue of compliance with the Access to Information Act.
Such a reform proposal is popular with Canadians. Pollara found that 86% of Canadians favour a non-political appointment process for CBC's board of directors, and 87% favour a non-political appointment of CBC's president.
I would like to conclude, Madam Chair, with the following brief comment. On the morning following the recent general election, Canada's Heritage Minister, said: “We believe in the national public broadcaster. We have said that we will maintain or increase support for the CBC. That is our platform and we have said that before and we will commit to that.”
Yet, just ten weeks later, in conversation with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio One's talk show, Q, Moore changed his tune: “The CBC has to do its part. The idea that the CBC can't find five per cent efficiencies within the CBC to give back to the broader economic framework is silly.... Of course the CBC will be part of this overall process.”
I want to draw the committee's attention to the following fact. In 1996, CBC's annual appropriation from the Government of Canada represented 92¢ out of every $100 of federal program spending, net of debt servicing. This year, the federal government's investment in our national public broadcaster is 51¢ out of every $100 of federal program spending. It is clear that CBC has more than prepaid its contribution to deficit reduction.
As a watchdog for Canadian programming, Friends is often critical of broadcasters, certainly including CBC's senior management. We also critique the performance of cable monopolies and satellite television distributors, the CRTC, and sometimes the federal government. But in keeping with the vast majority of Canadians, including a substantial] majority of supporters of each federal political party, Friends strongly supports CBC's talented employees who actually make the programming Canadians watch daily.
[Translation]
We wish you well in your deliberations.
Did I stay within my 10 minutes, Madam Chair?
:
Thank you. I don't think I'll take 10 minutes. I apologize for blasting in late like that. Bridges closed between Gatineau and Ottawa are never helpful.
Good morning.
[Translation]
My name is Marc-Philippe Laurin. I am the President of the Canadian Media Guild's CBC Branch.
The guild represents 5,000 members working for public broadcasters across Canada, except Quebec.
Joining me today is my colleague Karen Wirsig, the guild's Communications Coordinator.
The guild members work in the area of information.
[English]
Our members are among the most experienced users of access to information in the country and have broken important stories in the public interest.
[Translation]
Therefore, we are in favour of a strong and clear piece of legislation on access to information that ensures that information from government departments, agencies and institutions is accessible to Canadians.
[English]
In her recent annual report, Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault writes that there has been a steady decline over the last two decades in two important measures of access to government information: timeliness and disclosure. Only a little more than half of all information requests are answered within 30 days, and worse, fewer than one-fifth of all requests are fully answered.
The report makes it clear that it is not a single federal institution that is at the root of the problem of access to information. The Information Commissioner has expressed concern about the amount of information that gets caught up in exemptions within the variety of federal departments, agencies, and institutions. We also note that according to CBC, government departments and ministers have gone to court with the Information Commissioner some 46 times to clarify issues.
We would respectfully submit that the strength and clarity of the act must be improved if Parliament is indeed interested in ensuring Canadians have meaningful access to government information.
Karen.
:
In our view, this should be a pressing priority for Parliament and indeed this committee. We are therefore both surprised and dismayed that so much committee time has been taken up to examine a single institution, CBC/Radio-Canada.
It is not that we believe CBC is above the law--far from it--but we do question the singular focus of the current study and can only conclude that the committee has been drawn into a dirty war against the public broadcaster. It is a war being waged by Quebecor, a private media company that has what we believe should be obvious to everyone: a private commercial interest in diminishing the role and presence of its main competitor, CBC/Radio-Canada, especially in the province of Quebec.
Quebecor has been running stories about the CBC and ATI for years in its newspapers and on TV. One series runs under the bombastic title of “CBC Money Drain”, implying public funds are wasted on public broadcasting.
A search on the Toronto Sun website found 60 posts connected to the series since 2008. More than one-third of the pieces have run since September of this year. They have titles such as “CBC refuses to reveal its secrets”, “CBC's loopholes and bonuses”, “CBC singled out for bad behaviour”.
University of Ottawa journalism ethics professor Marc-François Bernier has called Quebecor's approach to reporting on CBC a “propaganda campaign”. It is troubling to find that the very same narrow focus of Quebecor's concern about access to information, which seems to relate only to CBC/Radio-Canada, is being reproduced in this hearing.
:
We will close with a few words about how our own relationship with CBC has evolved since 2008 because we believe it relates to the broader issue of access to information.
You may recall there was a time when we were barely speaking with senior management. In fact, for some time too, many conversations happened across locked doors. We obviously had a role to play in that. As the old saying says, it takes two to tango. But suffice to say that getting information at that time from CBC in order to better serve our members was difficult, if not impossible.
I can tell you today that this has changed tremendously. It has been our experience over the past three years that the current senior management is committed to working with employees, and the public, to strengthen public broadcasting in these challenging times.
There has been a sea change in how we communicate with each other. That has given rise to an open and honest exchange of information and ideas. We firmly believe that CBC management is making similar efforts with its other stakeholders, including Parliament and, more importantly, the public it serves, by being more transparent than ever before.
We urge you to consider Canada's public broadcaster as a partner in improving Canadians' access to information. Our members are on the front lines, and they are proud of the work they do to inform and enlighten Canadians.
We will close by saying thank you for the attention. We will be pleased to take your questions.
[Translation]
Thank you. We are now ready to answer your questions.
:
Tremendously so, actually.
When we entered the round of bargaining in 2008—I arrived as national president about a year before, and Monsieur Lacroix arrived a year later—we had an opportunity to sit down and talk about the relationship. We talked about stopping being enemies within the corporation. We actually had a goal, and we all had the same love for the public broadcaster. We shared that, and we decided we wanted to be partners in public broadcasting and to start cleaning up our own mess. If we were constantly saying we were the best-placed people to fix our own problems, instead of going out to law firms and arbitrators, etc., then we would clean up our own mess.
I can tell you today that we sit at more tables and have more conversations with CBC management folks, senior management, than ever before. If I make a phone call, I actually get a phone call back. Before that, it was good luck even getting an e-mail recognizing that you had tried to contact them.
So it's changed unbelievably, and a lot for the better—for the better of our members and for the better of the public broadcaster as a whole.
:
That's very good to hear, because there was a period when I think we were all very frustrated. I mean, we pay for programming, we want good programming, and we value the importance. For example, I live in a region larger than Great Britain. CBC/Radio-Canada is the only link, especially in our francophone communities. So the fact that now we have a good working relationship is something that I think Canadians want to hear.
Now, you've been tracking the Quebecor dirty war against CBC and the increase. Mr. Del Mastro and I were on the heritage committee together, and I remember when, on November 23, 2010, he asked a private broadcaster, “...do you think it's time that the Canadian government...says...we [should] get out of the broadcasting business and get into investing more money into content?” He said, as well, that the private sector would not only make use of it but has done so already.
It seemed to me that a message was sent to private broadcasters--namely, if we increase the pressure on CBC, maybe we could divert some of the public appropriations that are going to CBC into their private competitors.
Is it just me, or do you think that in the period after Mr. Del Mastro's comments the war on CBC by Quebecor started to reach higher and higher, with more extreme language?
:
Thank you, and my thanks to our witnesses.
Mr. Laurin, there's an important distinction that you're not making in your comments. First of all, according to the Access to Information Act, CBC is required to provide access to information. I don't think they're measuring up to the spirit of that act, and that's why we're here today.
You mention that private broadcasters don't have to provide access to information. True, but they're not receiving $1.1 billion from taxpayers. They're not subject to the Access to Information Act. They're not the largest crown corporation. They are not telling Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and virtually anyone else that sends in access to information requests that they don't have to answer the questions. They're not in court with the Information Commissioner. They are not dismissing requests before even pulling documentation to see whether the section 68.1 exemptions apply.
You said you've broken stories based on access to information, and that it's important. But I would argue that when the CBC breaks stories based on access to information, it's doing so from an awfully high hill of hypocrisy. It's not actually providing any access or transparency on its own actions, yet it is prepared to criticize. We can think of many stories in the last couple of years where CBC has broken stories based on access, has gone after the government or others on access, while they have been sending letters out with substantial redactions or simply dismissing requests out of hand, as though they should not even have to respond to requests for access to information.
Don't you see a problem with that?
:
I think it's a fair statement. The issue centres on what kind of information is being requested. When that information falls under the scope of what the CBC calls and what we describe as “journalistic information”, looking for access to information of a journalistic nature, which, in its essence, is competitive, then the CBC has an issue.
The CBC is in a competitive world. It's been put there by successive governments and CRTC rulings. For the last 20 years, it has increasingly had to generate its own revenue. All this puts the CBC in a precarious situation. As a public broadcaster and as an entity, the CBC needs to put circles around the information that competitors may ask of it. It's a crown corporation, it's arm's length, and it's also operating in a competitive world. It's a bit of a mishmash. It's not there of its own choosing. It's there because of the rulings and decisions that have been made by past governments. It's there because of downsizing in budgets. Mr. Morrison was talking about funding issues. It ties into that also. In the last 11 to 15 years, government budgets have increased by 80%, departmental budgets have increased by 83%, but the CBC's allocation has increased by only 8%.
We're not in the same boat. We operate in an industry that is very competitive. When a competitor comes after you looking for information about all sorts of stuff, and drowns you in over 1,000 requests, it's trying to get at stuff that, as a competitor, it shouldn't have access to.
Maybe Karen has something she would like to add.
:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Finally, this morning, Mr. Del Mastro has admitted that this is an ideological war between the CBC and Quebecor. It's interesting, because that's exactly what's going on in here today, in this committee study--an ideological war between the Conservative Party and their beef against the CBC.
My first question will go to you, Mr. Morrison, because you suggested in your statement, about Mr. Moore's comments regarding funding of the CBC, that they've changed tune, that they now have a majority government and they seem to do what they wish.
Where do you see this going, with this ideological war that's going on with the Conservative Party and the CBC?
:
Let me just give one comment as well.
I think improvement can be made. There's no doubt that there are some issues here with CBC and section 68.1. Improvements can be made.
I want to talk to the folks from the Media Guild about how our study is too narrow, but I have one more question for Mr. Morrison.
You obviously, being with Friends of CBC, are quite familiar with the CBC website, and I assume with everything on the website. They do have a pretty good proactive disclosure, where any request that has come before them they have posted on the website. They are one of two government agencies that do so.
Have you had an opportunity to look through some of those disclosures? You mentioned earlier that a lot of that stuff is redacted--and some of the stuff that's disclosed on the website.
Can you just give us your analysis of that?
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
And good morning to our witnesses.
As I've listened to the weeks of testimony from the various witnesses, it strikes me that on the face of the access requests, the true picture of this really revolves around transparency on financial disclosure. We had one witness, for example, who said there are multiple fiefdoms and empires within CBC and that no good manager at the top of the ladder would be able to really get control or an understanding of what goes on within those areas and manage their dollars.
So when I look at the $1.16 billion and the increases in funding that have come forward in the last five years annually, to Mr. Morrison's comments earlier about five-year stable funding, it strikes me that this government has been very solid in providing stable, consistent financing: however it's come, it's been there.
So for our taxpayers, as we're elected officials, I feel my job is to ensure that the people I'm working with and have access to should be prepared to disclose the transparency on the financial management and accountability of what they are doing. So this issue, to me, would be settled very quickly if we could get to that point and specifically if we refer to section 68.1.
Section 68.1 talks about journalistic programming and creative activities. Mr. Morrison, you mentioned you don't take Quebecor and, I presume, Mr. Péladeau seriously, but he was here the other day and he said he fully endorses the support of those particular values.
This is about other issues, and, specifically, my question to each of you would be about internal documents on travel, meals, and hospitality. How do those affect those three core values, and if those were released—as Mr. Péladeau said, that's all he's requested—would this issue not be resolved and begin to unload the hidden content that we're all so concerned about?
Mr. Morrison.
Forgive me if I speak in my preferred official language.
First, you're talking about the board of directors of the respective organizations. Of course, every country is different, but one thing that most of them have in common is that the board of directors selects the CEO on a competitive merit basis, and can terminate him.
Some of you may remember that in British public affairs, the governors of the BBC did fire their director general five or six years ago. His name was Greg Dyke, and he was terminated. I know that's the case in Denmark.
Rather than my occupying the time of the committee about it anecdotally, it is something you could get the Library of Parliament—and I would cooperate with them—to pull a little report together for you. They would be looking at the northern European countries: the Danes, the Swedes, the Finns, the Norwegians, the French, the Dutch, and the Germans. They'd look at Australia, and they would look at Japan, and that would be a good sample.
I think some work was done on this, by the way, by the committee that Mr. Angus referred to when he and Mr. Del Mastro were studying.... Certainly, the Lincoln report had some information on it, but it's all 10 years old at this point.
I just give you my overview. We are the outrider. We are the exception among democratic countries.
:
Thanks very much, Madam Chair.
And thanks to each of our presenters here this morning. Certainly it's appreciated that you've taken the time to come out and share your thoughts with the committee.
My first question is going to be to Mr. Laurin, please. I want to be really clear that we're here today to talk about the access of information and the responsibility of the CBC to share that with the Information Commissioner. That's what this study is all about. It's not about Quebecor. I understand that's coming into the conversation on and off, but that's really not what this study is about at all.
We know that we've got section 68.1 in place within the Access to Information Act. We know that CBC only came under this act in 2007. So it hasn't been under it for a long time, but I feel it should be abiding by it, like all crown corporations. We also know that there was an initial court ruling that the Information Commissioner, not the CBC, should decide what falls under section 68.1.
I would like you to comment on that. Do you think that more information would be released if the CBC were not left policing itself, if it were left up to the Information Commissioner?
Another thing I want you to comment on is one of the statements you made in your presentation. You indicated that private companies are asking for information under ATIP that is harmful to CBC. We've heard that statement from other presenters. My question to you is this. Have you seen those requests, and how do you know they're harmful to CBC? How do you know what those requests are? And should it be up to you or CBC to make that determination, or should it be up to the Information Commissioner, who is the person appointed by Parliament to be responsible for this?
Could you comment on those two things, please?
I also want to thank the three witnesses who are with us today.
[English]
I just really want to clarify everything.
The CBC is funded by the Canadian taxpayers, so it is subject to the Access to Information Act. When the CBC was subject to the Access to Information Act, they were bombarded by, you would say, mostly one source, another business, which we seem to believe is Quebecor. They're having a lot of trouble with Quebecor in the media. There have been so many slurs and campaigns against the CBC.
Would you think, ethically, that this is an issue, a problem, because the CBC is a publicly funded company and Quebecor is private? Could you comment on that, Mr. Morrison?
:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you all for being here this morning.
I want to get this back on track, because I think we're skating around a whole bunch of stuff. This is about the CBC, in its infinite wisdom, deciding that it doesn't trust, I suppose, the Information Commissioner to appropriately vet whether section 68.1 applies in the case of a number of access to information requests. That's going to be my line of questioning. I want to keep us on that because that is why we are here.
I was quite shocked, Monsieur Laurin, when you said that we should be considering who is making these requests. Any Canadian can make a request for access to information. I don't think it matters whether it's Quebecor or Mr. Andrews or anybody else. We all have the right to these kinds of things. CBC is a crown corporation that gets $1 billion of taxpayers' money every year; it has a responsibility to disclose.
Of all the crown corporations we have, the Information Commission red-flagged two—CBC and Canada Post—as having very poor track records of compliance with the act. Many others she praised. AECL and VIA Rail got very high marks from the Information Commissioner when she was here.
So we know we have a problem with the CBC. I want to ask you again, both Mr. Morrison and our friends from the Canadian Media Guild that want to answer: do you not believe that the Information Commissioner, as an independent officer of Parliament, is the right person to determine whether section 68.1 applies or not?
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I was entertained by the last round of questioning from my good friend, Mr. Butt, who said that he was offended by the fact that taxpayers' money is being wasted, challenging the Information Commissioner. Yet I believe it was the Conservative government that took the Information Commissioner all the way up to the Supreme Court to protect the political rear ends of ministers so that they didn't have to release any documents. They were certainly willing to waste money then.
The Conservative government, and I find it particularly offensive, didn't get the court rulings they wanted on the in and out scandal, and they're going to go all the way, spending as much money as they can to cover themselves off. There's certainly a political war being waged here.
I want to follow up on the mistaken impressions Mr. Butt has had about what is actually going on in the court case. We had Mr. von Finckenstein here just recently, former Federal Court judge, head of the CRTC, who said that he thought it seemed fairly straightforward that you would go to court to clarify what 68.1 meant. We see that the Conservatives jumped all over this before we had a court hearing, so we're wasting taxpayers' money right here. It would seem that once we have clarification, we will know whether CBC is in the right or in the wrong, and we can take steps from there.
Mr. Laurin, do you think it's a reasonable thing to go to court to get clarification?
:
It is fairly straightforward.
Again, I was impressed with Mr. von Finckenstein's interpretation that you would look at the act and say this needs to be clarified, because we're hearing many different opinions, and if we get a court opinion, we'll certainly know.
Mr. Morrison, I wanted to ask you...again, there seems to be this mistaken impression from some of my new colleagues on the Conservative side that there's this money being spent on public broadcasters while the plucky privates are having to go out and struggle to raise their own money. Yet we know there are hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into private broadcasting. These aren't independent entities. They're actually constructions of the state because we give them special tax benefits, we give them access to media funds, and we set up all manner of funding in order to get them to meet their base requirements. In exchange for a broadcast licence, they're supposed to have a little bit of Canadian content and a little bit of local content. And yet, when we go to the CRTC to find out if any of these private broadcasters are meeting any of their obligations under any of their licences, they routinely tell the CRTC that they're not giving out any of that information, and the CRTC rejects every single access to information request on whether any of these broadcasters are meeting their obligations, which they owe the taxpayer because we support them.
Do you think, Mr. Morrison, that we need a better system of accountability to ensure, with these private entities who are receiving public funds and public subsidies, that the taxpayer should be able to know whether they're actually meeting their obligations for Canadian content and for local television?
:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Welcome to our guests.
If we take a look at the romantic idea of reporters who are on the beat and the types of things they would do, we have to make the distinction between the type of activity we believe reporters do and being able then to go out and put on the Ritz and be in the penthouses and bring people in. What people are starting to say is “How much money do they spend on the way in which they go out to gather the news?”
I'll just give an anecdotal situation that occurred in Alberta, where I'm from. There was a news report that something was happening in Fort McMurray, and it had something to do with the provincial government; there was a speech taking place. So two competitors came up with a van. They were up there in the day and they went back, and yet CBC came in and brought all of whatever it takes to get their reporters there to get all of these things done, and they stayed for days. People look at the magnitude of it and say, these are our dollars being spent that way, and yet the reports, the information that came out, was exactly the same. So you get this feeling that the public is saying there is too much of that type of waste.
Then people--even people like you--say, “Well, what about this $10 million for dealing with this company down in the States? Where is that money being spent? If we knew where that $10 million was being spent, we could make some decisions on that, or maybe that $10 million won't be spent next time and it can go into some other types of operational funding.”
A lot of the people we have heard from in this last little while have been saying exactly the same thing. We know money is being spent there. If you want to improve the situation, you have to get rid of that and spend that money in the proper areas. We've had discussions before about the different silos that were being put up such that dollars were being spent and no one part of the department knew what was happening in the others. I think that is really one of the major concerns.
To go beyond that to what you mentioned when you talked about journalistic ability to work under section 68.1 of the Access to Information Act and their creativity, I think there are opportunities here to change legislation.
Mr. Morrison, when you came, you mentioned that we should be looking at policy suggestions, and I know you presented some of them in your discussion.
When it comes to the Information Commissioner, do you have any suggestions for being able to have her view some of these access to information requests through a competitive lens? That's my first question.
There were also some comments having to do with the board and sanctions if they don't deal with the access to information, so if you're looking, are you looking at penalties for crown corporations that don't respond? Is there something that could be done to the board? Taking money away from a group you've already given funding to seems sort of counterproductive.
Could you comment on those?
Not knowing how my time might be, Mr. Morrison, you had also indicated that CBC's management suffers from an accountability crisis. I wonder if you could perhaps comment on that as well.
:
That is 12 seconds per issue.
On the waste issue, your comment to me was like a time warp. In the 1980s I used to hear that kind of story. Now I hear more stories about “I wish we could afford paper clips. I wish I didn't have to spend time emptying my own garbage can. I wish I were allowed to have a taxi to get across town.” It's that kind of thing. There is a cutting to the bone that relates back to.... That's more than 12 seconds.
On the competitive lens, that would take too long.
On sanctions, we need clear rules that everybody has to obey. Maybe we'd go to a court to order the CBC to obey something if necessary, but with respect to the accountability issue, I would stick with my introductory comments. The president and CEO of the CBC is effectively not accountable to anyone.
By the way, I read a Canadian Press report this morning in the Winnipeg Free Press about this very issue, which had the CBC spokesman saying that the board was consulted about this access to information matter, but, he thought, they hadn't made any decision about it.
:
Thank you very much, Ms. Chair.
Mr. Laurin, you gave a very good analysis of court proceedings in this country. It is imperative that we keep reminding the Conservatives how they like to talk about how this is a waste of money. Mr. Butt refers to it several times, about why they are appealing this decision. That's our court case, that's our system of government, those are the fundamentals: that an individual or group has a right to exhaust its levels of appeal, and I thought you did a very good job on that as well.
Also, I think Mr. Butt needs to be educated about the competitive nature of some of the requests. We had the head of Quebecor come in here, and he gave us two examples of some of the requests they require from the CBC, wondering about their outdoor advertising and information around a magazine production they were involved in. So there are two exact examples of how Quebecor is trying to get a competitive advantage--that's really the crux of this--and how we use section 68.1 to protect the competitive advantage. I don't think you mentioned it, and if you said it, I'll apologize, but I'm reading it here in your brief that you sent. It's the same as Fedex or UPS using ATIP requests to find the competitor information about Canada Post. That's exactly why we are here, and this is why this Quebecor media campaign is based...they may be looking for 20% legitimate freedom of information types of requests, but it is modelled on this competitive advantage.
Mr. Laurin, I know, mentioned it a little earlier. Let's just talk about section 68.1 and the competitive advantage and how we can protect the CBC, Canada Post, and other crown corporations from being attacked over competitive information so that we can educate those members across the way.
:
This is something we've discussed among ourselves, and Karen spoke earlier about having more debate, having a group of folks look into how this could happen. I don't have an answer for you; I wish I did. I think it's part of the problem. It's why we're here today. The confusion around section 68.1 and the clarity, or lack of clarity, is bringing up all these questions.
It behooves us as a country to have a discussion about it and try to put some parameters, put some fences around some of the questions that will be deliberated at that time. The crown corporation I work for is a journalistic enterprise; it works in a very competitive industry. It requires, I believe, some kind of...I don't want to say protections, but it needs to be able to defend its competitive edge. I guess that's the best answer I can give you. It needs to be able to keep its arm's-length relationship with government, and at the same time keep the competitors at bay when it is making decisions, whether it's a decision about programming or whether it's a decision about how many people you send to a certain location.
I can't answer the question because I don't have the details of that specific case. Programming decisions are made on a daily basis, based on a whole set of criteria that are particular to that specific event, so it's impossible for us to speak to any singular event here today.
The question has to be asked and the debate has to be had. As Mr. Morrison talked about, who's responsible? Who do they answer to? The CBC has on its website a whole list of government agencies that it answers to, that it's accountable to. Is that accountability enough? I guess that's for Parliament and the Canadian public to decide. It is a question that has been hanging out there for.... I've been at CBC now for 36 years, and we've been talking about this for at least 25.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I certainly would never imply motive. I said it pretty much straight up and I meant it. I have watched some of these members over here day after day on a crusade against CBC.
The issue of accountability is important for our committee. This is fundamental to our work. The fact of access to information is fundamental to our work. When I see people sitting around making jokes about resembling the remarks about dismantling the CBC, and then expecting to use this committee as a forum for them to examine documents, unredacted documents, so that they can then decide...or--and I think this would be more interesting--put themselves in a position where CBC would probably say, “We're not going to make that request because of the issues of journalistic integrity and because of the issues of the exclusion”, which would then allow the Conservatives to do what they would really like, which is to come in and call CBC in contempt of Parliament.
I think this is part of a definitive strategy to undermine the CBC. We've seen it again and again and again. We have enough evidence here for Mr. Del Mastro's kangaroo court to continue. He was unable to bring a judge before this committee; he thought he had the right to bring a judge before this committee, and yet we had to see the Ottawa Citizen have a big headline to remind Mr. Del Mastro that he was completely usurping the rules, the distinction between state, court, and parliamentary committee.
So now we see that Mr. Del Mastro gets to be the decider of what documents should be released and what shouldn't be released. This is a kangaroo court. The rest of us are dragged along for the ride because this government's idea of a majority is to break whatever rules it wants. But I think it is extremely inappropriate. It's showing the level of farce that this government is willing to descend to in its attack on the CBC.
I would respectfully say that we could have a situation where we review the testimony. We know what the conclusions of this government, as we know it, are going to be. But given the fact that the members have sat there and made jokes and continual attacks on the public broadcaster, for them to be given the documents to examine, to make political hay with, is completely out of line.
:
I'm trying to help my colleagues understand the larger implications of what we're dealing with here.
Madame Chair, they are hot under the collar to get at this stuff. The boys are off the chain.
I'm saying, in terms of our ask to suspend, that this is about taking the step back that's needed to seek legal advice, so that my honourable colleague Mr. Del Mastro, who's now suddenly seized with the obligation that he's going to be the new Information Commissioner of Canada.... I have not seen that sort of legalist, step-back, think-it-through attitude by Mr. Del Mastro yet.
I'm actually looking out for his best interest, and that of my good friend Mr. Butt there. I wouldn't want them stepping over the line on this.
This issue of suspending is important. We need to suspend so we can step back for a few minutes and talk to people who know about the legal obligations. What are the legal protections? This has been raised. Again, it was section 68.1. This is now before the courts. This issue is before the courts right now to get an interpretation.
What we've seen is an effort by the Conservative Party to undermine the independence of the judiciary. We know that. That's been a long-standing warhorse of theirs.
At this point in this committee it would be absolutely irresponsible for us to continue for one more minute or two more minutes or three more minutes without recognizing the importance of suspending. Once we suspend, we will then get the legal counsel necessary so we can understand the implications of demanding unredacted documents that may be kept under a section 68.1 exclusion, while—