Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 4 - Evidence for December 14, 2004 (afternoon meeting)
TORONTO, Tuesday, December 14, 2004
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 12:55 p.m. to examine the current state of Canadian media industries; emerging trends and developments in these industries; the medias' role, rights, and responsibilities in Canadian society; and current and appropriate future policies relating thereto.
Senator Joan Fraser (Chairman) in the Chair.
[Translation]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we are resuming our hearing. We are continuing our inquiry into the state of Canadian news media. Our subject is the state's role in helping media remain strong, independent and diversified in an environment marked by upheaval in recent years, specifically by globalization, technological change, convergence and concentration of ownership.
We are in Toronto where we are pleased to welcome many very interesting witnesses. We now welcome Ms. June Callwood.
[English]
Honourable senators, June Callwood is surely one of the most famous and most impressive journalists in Canada. We are very pleased to welcome her to our committee.
The floor is yours, Ms. Callwood.
Ms. June Callwood, as an individual: I have paid great attention to the questions that you want to address, however, I did not hear one that met my requirements, so I will respond to a question that you did not ask.
I have been a journalist for a very long time, in fact, more than 60 years, in this country. During that time I had occasion to write a book on the history of Canada. While researching that book, I came across the reason I was journalist. It turns out that this country was built by journalists.
William Lyon Mackenzie tried very hard to institute responsible government. Joseph Howe, in Ottawa, Messrs. Bédard, Taschereau and others in Quebec, and a man named Amor de Cosmos, who started one of the first newspapers in Victoria, all struggled against vested interests, and became the voice of public unrest.
There were no riots. A dialogue was started and committees of investigation, for which we are famous, were set up. Those became the building blocks of this country.
In the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s, I developed, as did most members of the media, a degree of expertise in investigative reporting that had not been there before. High-pitched yelling had been the norm before that.
Later, the Freedom of Information Act was a great help. Certain things that members of the government and other powerful people in industry and commerce were doing that they would rather not be known, were falling under the scrutiny of journalists.
However, journalism is not a well-paid profession, and a freelance journalist can, I assure you, not afford to do a lot of research. A journalist has to have a day job. That led to the question of whether the owners of newspapers and other media were willing to invest enough money so that their staff could do a proper job. That is what I see beginning to disappear.
I can remember when The Toronto Star published many long, investigative stories on, for example, racism or police behaviour. They had to do that in a very careful way, so they would assign their best people to the stories. Their salaries and expenses would be paid for as long as it took to properly write the story. They may do that again.
The highlight for me was some years ago when The Kingston Whig-Standard assigned two reporters, for three months, to investigate the life of a singular woman, Marlene Moore, who killed herself in Kingston Penitentiary. She was a friend of mine. It was thought that it would take two weeks to complete an investigative report on her life, but the reporters found it so interesting to discover how a person can fall through the cracks in this country, a person from an abusive home who ends up in prison that it too more than two months to complete their report. Finally, three months later, The Kingston Whig-Standard got its story, which was turned it into a book. It has since been made into a play. In fact, as a television play, it won an award. That was one small newspaper, which was then privately owned, investing in something that they thought was important to understand.
With the kind of newspaper ownership we have now, I would bet any amount of money — if I had any amount of money — that never again will a small newspaper devote two reporters for three months to cover an important story. Such a story would not be researched properly, if it is researched at all, and the findings will not shed much light in a dark corner.
The resources for the news side of newspapers are increasingly shrinking. That is because the ownership is not invested with a sense of social responsibility — and I think that is true of many of the conglomerates who are owners now — but with of a sense that news is an object like any other that should produce enough money for the shareholders and for themselves. When the ethic is profit, the newsroom is squeezed, and the newsroom cannot do what it needs to do when it investigates a complicated story.
The environmental stories are hugely complicated, so newspapers are not touching them, if you have noticed, and certainly television and radio do not consider reporting a story as complicated as our environmental problem.
As a result, we have newspapers that are pleasant, entertaining and have some shock value. They may report that young people stab one another, but they do not look at the causes. They do not look deeper into stories. The reporters cannot do it.
If a tractor trailer rolls over while manoeuvring a certain curve on Highway 400, and that situation has happened several times before, the reporters who are assigned to that story for the morning will find out who drove the truck, whether anybody was hurt, and they may write a story about this being a dangerous curve. Can they write a story about whether the truck was loaded properly, whether the driver had had enough rest, whether the grade of the clover- leaf curve is adequate? The answer is no, because they have another assignment that afternoon, and city desk is now increasingly assessing productive writers to be superior to those who take more time to do the job.
I do not think this is a small loss to this country. I do not know where the opposition to this is any more. Despite the budgets that they all have for researchers, very few are turning up indiscretions and pointing out the bad judgments that are being made such as faulty building codes. Who is doing that? I think this trend will continue into another generation, if it is run by people who just want to make money.
Some months ago, there was a change of leadership at The Toronto Star and it was all about a collision of principles, I would say. The person who left thought it was fine for The Toronto Star to make a 20 per cent profit, and the person who ousted him thinks The Toronto Star can make a 30 per cent profit.
I hope you see that this is a sinister trend. I do not know how it can be reversed. It underlines some of these questions that you would like to have answered, but I do not have that answer. I just know that the trivialization of the media is a tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes.
The Chairman: We now want to ask you some questions.
Ms. Callwood: I would love you to answer mine.
The Chairman: That may come later.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Chair, colleagues and distinguished guests, perhaps we can debate one of the statements our witness made about sensational stories not being followed up. As a physician, I have a great interest in certain subjects. I am sure we all have a main core of interest.
Perhaps you would comment on what might be a good side to this recent story. I am referring to the tragic death of a mother, a father and one child, with one other child being injured and another one unhurt. It seems to me that the newspapers I read quickly followed up on that story with an in-depth look at post-partum depression.
Ms. Callwood: That is right.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Another example of that kind of story coverage is the Rena Virk tragedy in B.C., which led to many articles about teenage violence, and the fact that one must acknowledge the role of girls in this.
Since I have followed family issues closely for a long while, I would mention the Family Matters series in The Globe and Mail, which was extended for quite a long time.
Do the examples that I cite offer, perhaps, some reason to be hopeful? How can we as a Senate committee, ultimately, in our report or as senators in our speeches and in our work do anything to make this kind of ``good thing,'' which is how I see it, happen more often?
Ms. Callwood: You are absolutely right. You have mentioned what would have been my examples of good things. Andre Picard of The Globe and Mail is an extraordinary medical writer. He does a lot of penetrating work, and that is not to be discounted.
You mentioned the series, Family Matters. By way of example, I would mention that I am co-chair of a committee called ``Campaign against Child Poverty.'' It has taken six or seven years for this committee — not to mention how many years it took to establish Campaign 2000, that is, since the unanimous vote in the House of Commons to end child poverty by the year 2000 — to get the media to care about child poverty. It was not seen to be an interesting topic.
Had a child died of starvation on the street, there would have been follow-up stories. However, if a child is being hurt by bad nutrition and, as a result, is unable to do well in school and faces a horrible future, that is not a story. It is labour-intensive to write a story about that.
Finally, a kind of critical mass was achieved, in some part because we kept meeting with Paul Martin, and we met with John Manley when he was Finance Minister. All of us kept at it, and, suddenly, child poverty can be seen. However, I have yet to see anyone analyze why a country as wealthy as this has over a million children living in poverty. I have not seen any reasonable in-depth look at why this tragedy is happening.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do you think that the work of Senator Ermine Cohen, received a suitable amount of attention?
Ms. Callwood: It comes and goes.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Your name is most associated with this issue.
Ms. Callwood: Senator Landon Pearson, who is also concerned with children's issue, can certainly command a day of attention. However, I am thinking of the way we used to solve problems, which was to air them and go at them with the kind of will that can only come from an informed public.
When we first met with Paul Martin, he said, ``Don't mention childcare. The caucus would never want to listen to a word of it.'' Now they do. Suddenly the issue got attention.
However, the media did not do much. They told us, ``We hear from our constituents about old age pensions, but we never hear about the need for childcare.'' That is exactly the point. They do not hear it from constituents, because constituents are not presented with the consequences of bad childcare.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Yesterday, a presenter told us they did not want to hear any more about national childcare, that there was far too much in the media already. It was pretty pointed.
Ms. Callwood: What an enlightened person.
Senator Munson: You talked about a sinister trend, and the fact that you no longer know where the opposition is.
I was at CTV for 25 years before Newsnet, 24-hour news, came along, which sort of goes along the lines you talked about.
When I first joined CTV, all the reporters were given three or four days by our bosses, Don Cameron or Bruce Phillips, to investigate stories and present them on television. That was a rarity. Of course with 24-hour news coverage, you are responsible for a twelve o'clock newscast, a four o'clock newscast, a six o'clock newscast, and then Lloyd Robertson wants it all wrapped up in bunting for the evening edition, and you are operating from a pod surrounded by high technology.
I would like to get your views about newspapers and television converging. Is this good for democracy? Is it good for the media to have a single entity owning newspapers and television and radio stations?
Ms. Callwood: There is a lot of concern among reporters about the bicycling of one person's work into a news item on radio or on television, so you are swamped with whatever degree of skill one person brought to the story. You get the same story on the radio, on television, in the major newspapers, and in the small newspapers.
We have seen this happen in the United States, in the way that vote went to do with the rise of the evangelical right. A lot of it comes from media. When I drive south, I go through four states where I do not turn my radio on at all, because it is a Bible belt. It is a matter of choice. I am not saying that it is not a wonderful thing to be evangelical, though I might, my concern is the concentration of one idea which overwhelms people who are being raised not to be sceptical of an idea. If they hear it often enough, as Hitler discovered — and I am certainly not making a comparison with that — they will believe it. Anybody who is promulgating a bad idea only has to keep on doing it often enough before it will be accepted.
I see little social conscience respecting ownership. The city room is doing its best, but with meagre resources, which are diminishing.
Senator Munson: We heard from Ken Alexander of The Walrus magazine who talked about media concentration.
Ms. Callwood: Jack Shapiro?
Senator Munson: Yes. We he suggested that government should be able to step in to regulate to some degree, which I found surprising, because normally the last thing the media wants is more government regulation.
Do you have any views on government regulation?
Ms. Callwood: I would be strongly opposed to that. I think that is a publisher's point of view. I think a publisher might well think that the government would be on their side and not want pesky people saying annoying things, but to have government intervention in the media is the beginning of the end for a democracy.
However, what we have is the equivalent. What we have is powerful people intervening in the media, and that is amounting to the same thing.
Senator Munson: Very shortly, how do we turn back the clock?
Ms. Callwood: We cannot allow the conglomerates to have all the power. All the media is in the hands of about four people in this country. I long for the days of the 1960s, when those impudent newspapers, street newspapers, were being sold, because that was a reminder of the days when cheek was accepted. It was very cheeky, but it got us to where we are as a country.
Senator Merchant: People read less and less, and the kind of television that people watch is not news television, they watch sensational programming.
How can we engage young people to become interested in problems such as child poverty and the environment? I recognize that sometimes young people are more in tune with and concerned about these things than we think, but they do not necessarily get their information from the written word.
Many sources of media are available to them. We have what I might call a multi-channel universe and young people may be more interested in what is happening in the world than in Canada.
What can we do to engage young people so that they will be more interested in issues such as the political system and that kind of thing?
Ms. Callwood: The answer probably lies in the schools. Print media could be introduced into schools. Few of my grandchildren are big readers, and, although they do have huge social consciences, what they care about is the environment. They firmly believe the world will be saved if we eat organic radishes and, to my despair, that is something the media just adores.
David Suzuki has done a marvellous job of reaching young people and convincing them that this is the most important issue in the country. I ask them, ``How can you see a homeless man and still believe that running an organic farm is what you want to do with your life?''
The media does very little except that, occasionally, they have these blitzes around homelessness, poverty, mental illness, addictions, and the issues pertaining to the bottom of our structure where people suffer terribly. It is as though they lived in some other country.
Senator Merchant: Is part of the problem the fact that many of these issues are very technical, and perhaps reporters are not always equipped to delve into every situation?
David Suzuki has had a lifetime of exploring issues which interest him, and he presents issues in a most interesting way. I watch him, and I learn things all the time — things that are interesting to me. I do not know if they are of interest to others.
Ms. Callwood: Yes, his views are interesting.
Senator Merchant: Journalists, however, are not always equipped to handle some of these complex situations, including medical issues.
Ms. Callwood: A big newspaper has enough staff to have reporters dedicated to a topic. I think of Andre Picard, for example, or Marina Strauss and Kirk Makin. You can see that I read The Globe and Mail all the time. Certain reporters deal with justice issues and they become experts. They know what they are looking for, and they know how to find the material they need.
However, not many journalists would be environmental experts. In fact, I cannot think of one in the country whose beat it is to deal with environmental issues.
When I wrote a column in The Globe and Mail I encountered the gracious publisher in the hall one day, who asked me, ``Why do you always write about such sad things?' I told him, ``Because nobody else is writing about sad things in your paper. Why don't you have a dedicated reporter on the poverty beat, who will learn about cause and effect? Then I wouldn't have to write about poverty all the time.'' That resulted in a stalemate. We did not hear one another.
The problem lies in a lack of expert reporters. When I speak to students in journalism schools, I suggest that they get a degree in history, science or medicine and then become journalists. There are some good doctors writing for The New York Times. However, that is a long road.
Senator Merchant: There seems to be no problem with writing about business, money ventures.
Ms. Callwood: No. I wonder why.
Senator Merchant: There seem to be experts in that area and they can sell papers to people who are interested in business, but perhaps the poor people are not reading the papers.
Ms. Callwood: That is very astute, and that is exactly what is happening.
Senator Di Nino: Thank you for coming Ms. Callwood. You are obviously, a much admired national icon.
You have identified what is at issue. I am not sure I want to call it a problem, but it is an issue. The only reason for running any business is to make money. Sometimes people get too greedy, but, if that happens, they will not succeed for long. That has been proven many times over. We will have a gentleman speaking to us later who will probably be much more eloquent on that subject than I am.
Without talking about specific issues — because I would have some difficulty accepting all of your comments — are you suggesting that there is no role for the public sector in the media, that it should all be public sector, so that it can be funded in such a way that the issues can be identified and resources made available to deal with those issues? Is this really what the answer would be, in your opinion?
Ms. Callwood: No, what is happening worldwide is mergers because they are expected to be a more profitable way of running an organization than a standalone, and so it is not surprising that it has hit the media as well.
However, the difference is that we are not a tin mine in Brazil. Vital to a democracy is a healthy and varied media. I would just prevent, as much as possible, the conglomeration of the media.
Senator Di Nino: You mean convergence.
Ms. Callwood: Yes. I supported The Toronto Star in its application for a broadcast licence before the CRTC. They made a disastrous decision. The reason was that The Toronto Star, at that time, was promising social-causes content, and I believe they would have delivered. I am contradicting myself. I am saying that if you have a good heart, I do not mind you being a conglomerate, but I do not want you being a conglomerate if you want 30 per cent profit.
Senator Di Nino: My understanding is that most publications are having trouble making money.
Ms. Callwood: That applies especially to magazines.
Senator Di Nino: Magazines particularly, but it also applies to newspapers.
Ms. Callwood: And to books.
Senator Di Nino: Of course, we are talking about the National Post. It is public information. However, I am told that even The Globe and Mail has trouble making money.
To me it seems that convergence is keeping these publications alive, and if that were not happening, the publication would disappear naturally by being unable to continue because of all of the other competing factors. Is that not a factor in what is happening in the industry?
Ms. Callwood: Senator Merchant said that people are not reading, and that is true, that the tabloids are not doing badly compared to the broadsheets. When I was on the Bradford Expositor, back in World War II, it was a privately- owned newspaper; it was genteel; and it made a nice little profit. The Prestons were the biggest family in Brantford. Salaries were small and ambitions were small. I could weep with nostalgia thinking of our innocence, but people far and wide read it. I no longer know what the Brantford Expositor is doing. It is part of a chain, and better papers can be brought in. We get The New York Times every morning.
I am sorry that that was a long, wandering answer. I am just glad that you are here looking for solutions, and I look forward to you resolving these issues. A critical one issue, however, is that young people do not read newspapers.
Senator Di Nino: You have so much experience, and you are so highly respected in this country and I would ask you if you have any idea what the answer should be. Can you share with us any pearls of wisdom that we may be able to use to effect public policy?
Ms. Callwood: There is never one answer. I would think that, at a certain point of critical mass of ownership, the owner has to try to make a profit with whatever pile of outlets the person has assembled and not to be allowed into the market further. However, you cannot do any reining in.
Another answer lies in the schools encouraging children to read newspapers. Some teachers ask their kids, ``What was in the paper today?'' The kids respond to that. That can help.
Another answer might be that publishers have a forum where they can get together and talk about their goals. It would be very difficult for them to talk about their goals for their outlets without having to confront the selfishness that might exist if they were to be brought together with concerned reporters where there is a dialogue, and reporters say, ``We can't do these stories. You won't even give me a streetcar fare, let alone an overnight in a hotel to investigate a story.'' There should be somewhat more dialogue were going on, because it we have a polarized situation with the people on the beats, frustrated, angry, wanting to quit their jobs, talking about the meanness of the publishers all time, and the publishers who think that these people are interchangeable cogs. They are not. These are idealistic and talented people, and they went into journalism out of idealism.
Senator Di Nino: Do you believe that there is a difference between the public broadcaster and the private broadcaster? Is one doing a better job than the other?
Ms. Callwood: I believe in the public broadcaster.
Senator Di Nino: In your opinion, is one is doing a better job than the other?
Ms. Callwood: Yes. The CBC is doing a better job. They have more in-depth looks than the private broadcasters.
A few weeks ago on a private station I mentioned Adrienne Clarkson. As soon as he went to a commercial, which he was doing every few minutes, the man who was interviewing me said, ``Oh, don't ever mention her name. My audience hates her.'' I do not think the CBC puts up a position that would lead audiences to be rabid about the Governor General who, I think, is quite splendid. I think many people do.
[Translation]
Senator Chaput: It is a privilege for me to hear what you have to say today. Through your vast experience, you are the perfect person to assist us in our search for solutions to the problems we are facing.
Your description of the situation of Canadian media is not a very cheerful one. The fact that children are reading less, that companies are becoming more and more important, that profits and economic issues are becoming more and more significant, are these not global trends? Could we not learn from the experiences of other countries to help us reverse these trends in Canada?
[English]
Ms. Callwood: One of the ways that it works in other countries is when the country's language is isolated. For example, for the children in Finland, nobody else is writing in Finnish, so they are reading what is printed in their own language. Our English language is somewhat more widespread than Finnish.
You will see this in Quebec, where the Quebec media are hugely popular. I think most of them are doing rather better than those in other provinces. It has to do with the isolation of the language. When you belong to a big family of language like English, you are vulnerable to all kinds of other kinds of forces.
Senator Chaput: However, that is the reality. The English language is everywhere, so what can we do, apart from what you have said?
Ms. Callwood: My answer was: That is the reason. Our media are imperilled because there are very good newspapers published England. There are also very bad ones — The Manchester Guardian, for example. There are some very good ones in the States.
We have to fight in a market. The English-language market is huge, which does not answer the really important question Senator Merchant raised which is: Why are kids not reading? That is a big question. They are not reading. It is all visual.
The Chairman: Ms. Callwood, forgive me if I do not have the precise details of the contractual nature of your employment, but my impression is that for much of your career you have been a freelancer.
Ms. Callwood: The last job I had was when I was 20 years old, and I am now 80. That was with The Globe and Mail. They paid me $25 a week.
The Chairman: It is a race to the bottom. I thought I was poor when I started. Senator Munson was poorer when he started.
Ms. Callwood: At the Brantford Expositor it was $7.50.
The Chairman: You are the best yet.
I wanted to ask you about the effect of convergence on freelancers — to some extent, the concentration of ownership. What has been effect of the proliferation of the various kinds of media we now have? Can you talk about that for us, please?
Ms. Callwood: That is a good question. We freelancers have been having a very difficult time, because the newspapers and magazines on which we depend — because you cannot make money on books, unless you are privileged to be Margaret Atwood — are depending more on their staff. It is cheaper to hire a freelancer than it is to hire staff, because there are no benefits and, for all the obvious reasons, it is the easiest job to cut.
The CBC is making a tremendous number of cuts. I do not know whether you all know, but a great many people left last week as a result of severe cuts. One man I talked to, who was on contract, and who has been at the CBC for four years, was let go, because they are cutting by seniority. They are cutting from the bottom. They are cutting out the young. The CBC relies a lot on contract people, and they can fire them with a phone call. That is how they fired Pierre Berton from Front Page Challenge. It is precarious, and it is difficult to make a living as a freelance writer.
The Chairman: What about the question of contracts involving reproduction rights, reuse rights? We have been hearing submissions about that. Can you tell us about that?
Ms. Callwood: I was part of TERLA, The Electronic Rights Licensing Agency, and I went several times to Ottawa with Andre, who is head of photographers, in order to get copyright for photographers. Thanks to Alan Rock, that finally has happened. We were invincible, the old English woman and the handsome young French man. We were perfect, but we could not succeed.
I am also part of the class action lawsuit against The Globe and Mail, with Heather Robertson, and that has been dragging through the courts for five years. The Globe and Mail appeals every time there is a verdict that is favourable to the writers.
I was about to get a Time magazine assignment a week or so ago, and I said I would like to be paid for electronic rights, and they said they would try to work something out, but it turned out to be impossible. You cannot be paid for electronic rights. It is not going to work.
We are being overwhelmed, because there are so many freelancers. If you are going to be the one who is holding out, you will not get the work. I am in a position to hold out, because I am not broke, but the freelancer who is broke will sign the terrible contract The Globe and Mail has, where the freelancer gives The Globe and Mail all the rights to an article in perpetuity, including the moral rights, which I thought meant that you were not to propose something immoral, but it does not. It means they can rewrite your piece and leave your name on it. You sign that away, and if you do not want to sign it, you do not work there.
Senator Tkachuk: Is it a case of convergence, or is it just a case of, there are too many writers in the marketplace?
Ms. Callwood: There are a lot of really good writers out there now, all of them about a third my age. Yes, there are a lot of writers. We tried to boycott the Montreal Gazette. It was ridiculous idea. The strategy was totally wrongheaded, because there were enough freelance writers that they just replaced everybody. Joe Fiorito got to Toronto because he was trying to observe the boycott, and he could not make a living if he did.
As well, the publishers are standing together on this. Some publishers, like Harrowsmith Country Life magazine and Explorer, I think, pay electronic rights, but they are wildcat operations compared to the big ones.
Senator Di Nino: I agree with you that not as many children are reading, but I do think a lot of it has to do with the inspiration of the parents. I made a commitment that all four of my grandchildren, two francophone and two anglophone, would have a library before they were 21. On every occasion, whether it is Christmas or birthdays, I give them a gift of at least one book. It is marvellous. I am saying this in case you want to use it. Every one of them — some to a lesser degree — reads. I have a 13-year-old grandson who reads two books a month. I am going broke buying him books. I just wanted to relate that to you.
Ms. Callwood: That is good. I congratulate you. My grandchildren would just as soon have socks as a book.
Senator Di Nino: Now they are hooked.
The Chairman: Ms. Callwood, thank you very much indeed.
Ms. Callwood: Thank you for inviting me.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, our next witness is Mr. Terence Corcoran, one of Canada's leading business journalists and editors, who never admitted a mushy opinion in his life, and I expect he will give us lots of unmushy opinions.
Welcome. I am sure this is not a conflict of interest, but there was a period many years ago when we worked briefly for the same newspaper.
Mr. Terence Corcoran, As an individual: I do not think it is a conflict.
The Chairman: Welcome to the committee.
Did I say that Mr. Corcoran is with the National Post?
Mr. Corcoran: That is correct.
I must say, you cover a broad range of subjects. You never know what subject is going to pop up so I am shuffling my mind around to make sure I have my little index cards set for any possible issue. It is very unusual for a journalist to be in this position, so as I stumble through my presentation, I hope you will forgive me.
I should stress again that on any subject, everything I say represents my personal views and is no reflection of the views of the newspaper I work for, or CanWest Global Communications. They do not consult me on anything, and I do not consult them on anything either.
By way of background, I have been a newspaper editor and writer, mostly about business and economic policy, for more than 35 years, mostly as a columnist at the Ottawa Journal, the Toronto Star, The Canadian Press, The Gazette, the Financial Times of Canada, The Globe and Mail, where I wrote a column for 10 years, and for the past six years at the National Post. I am what you might call a newspaper person, above all, and will likely continue to be one until somebody decides to throw me out the door, much in the same way one of your former colleagues, Senator LaPierre, was mandated out of his job.
One thing is certain, though, the newspaper business will outlive me and all of us in this room. I mentioned Senator LaPierre because he, too, expressed some confidence about the long-run appeal of newspapers.
Last year, during one of your earlier sessions, he made the observation that one of the difficulties of reading a newspaper on the Internet is that it is difficult to curl up with your laptop. I could not agree more.
Of course, we heard the news last week that curling up with a laptop has even greater risks, and according to news reports, the heat from a laptop has adverse impacts on male reproductive capacity. It is a little bit like global warming, except in this case with real personal consequences.
I will be happy to try to answer any questions you might have on any subject. Mainly, in the time I have, I am going to rush through a bit of a presentation on some of the larger issues and the big principles that I think are at stake as you go about your exploration of the major themes on your agenda. I thank you for this opportunity to present those views.
I would like to go back to the opening session in April of 2003, to the appearance before you of Mr. Tom Kent. As you know, Mr. Kent has some extraordinary views on freedom of the press and the role of media in society.
It is my view that Mr. Kent's theories of the media are totally incompatible with the principles of press freedom that are at the heart of our Canadian democracy. Mr. Kent articulated his views of press freedom in the famous quotation that was the official opening statement of the 1981 Kent commission: ``Freedom of the press is not a property right of owners.''
That opening sentence should have been outrageous at the time, in 1981. It was not seen that way, and it is still not seen as a basic affront to principles I think all Canadians hold dear.
To this day, some of Canada's leading media gurus continue to use the Kent definition as a guiding principle, and many of those people have appeared before you.
If freedom of the press is not a property right, then what kind of a right is it, and whose right is it? The Kent commission provided the answer. It said: Freedom of the press is a ``right of the people.''
There are only two ways that the people exercise any rights. One is in the marketplace, as individual buyers and owners of property and production. The second way for people to exercise their rights is collectively, through government. The government is the people acting in the called public interest.
It follows that the logical end point of the Kent commission is the following: ``Freedom of the press belongs to the government.''
That is really the Kent royal commission's basic premise, camouflaged in a haze of verbiage. Even so, the Kent report is today, as I said, cited regularly as an authoritative reference.
That we should call on government to intervene as part of the definition of press freedom is an extraordinary leap into the hands of political power and government control. It is part of a growing disdain for freedom of speech in the media, a disdain that has been around for some time. We see it in the United States today, for example, in the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, as the FCC goes about censoring various broadcasters.
Senator Fraser might remember Mark Farrell. He was publisher of The Gazette when I was there in the 1970s. Mr. Farrell, who tended to lean to the left a little bit and support the NDP, once said somewhat blasphemously, I thought, that freedom of the press is an old whore that should be retired. It was an odd thing to say.
That idea, that freedom of the press is passé, out of date, an out-of-date concept, was also at the heart of the Davey committee report back in the early 1970s.
Its view was that private business cannot be trusted to own and control the media. We need government involvement in the newspaper industry, just as we have government control over electronic media.
Much of the underlying intellectual infrastructure for denying the rights of owners stems from the evolution of media theory. You have covered some of this background material in your interim report.
There is a very good book on the subject, which I will refer to, written back in 1963 by three professors, Theodore Peterson, Fredrick Siebert, and Wilbur Schramm. It is a famous book, a seminal one, on press theory, and it is called Four Theories of the Press.
The original concept of press freedom, which they describe as, in their words, the libertarian theory, is based on the principles of a capital system of free, competitive enterprise. As one of the authors put it: ``Press freedom in a libertarian system forbids the state any right to interfere with the press.''
Another noted that the libertarian idea is based on the understanding that, and I quote here: ``Government is the chief foe of liberty, and the press must be free to serve as a guardian against government encroachments on individual liberty.''
Two other theories of the press, the fascist Authoritarian model and the Soviet Communist model, place all control over the media to varying degrees in government hands, and we need not explore the obvious objections to these models.
The fourth model explored in the book, the Social Responsibility theory — and again, you explored this theory in your interim report — is the foundation for the model advocated by Mr. Kent and the Davey committee and many of the witnesses before you over the last year or so.
Under this theory, instead of protecting citizens from government, a free press is supposedly to be structured so that government protects citizens from other citizens and from business and corporations.
The argument gets turned on its head. The free press, originally seen as guardians and protectors of the people against abuse from government, has been converted into the government as guardian and protector of the people against the free press.
What an unfathomable restatement of one of the greatest principles of a free society. Under this model, freedom of the press becomes a government-granted right that must be monitored and controlled by the state.
In this I agree with Professor Jamie Cameron, who appeared before you, who said that you cannot have it both ways. The only question we come to is, how far should the government go in exercising its control over the media to protect the people from the media?
Unfortunately, once you adopt the premise that the freedom of the media belongs to the government, there is not a whole lot left to debate on the principles to determining when to limit government control. There are no formal limits.
The only limit is political and political convention, which means whatever governments can get away with politically, and they have been getting away with a lot. You said as much in your interim report, it depends on what at any given time is acceptable.
Government involvement in the electronic media, radio and television, has been lurching forward for years, and in television and radio, the Kent commission view on property rights has always been true.
The original reason for giving government control over electronic media was based on the conclusion that the supply of airwaves was limited. We simply could not let the airwaves become private property.
We first began to give up on the principle of freedom of the press back in the 1920s, when Ottawa nationalized the airwaves and declared them to be public property, and Ottawa set up the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, CRBC, the duel-headed forerunner of the CBC and the CRTC.
One of the major champions of that nationalization was the editor of the Ottawa Citizen at the time, a man named Charles Bowman. He became one of the first chairmen of the CRBC, co-chairman, after claiming that private interests must not be allowed to become established as owners of a new public service. Broadcasting, he wrote in the Ottawa Citizen, ``by its very nature can only be satisfactorily operated for the public benefit in the public interest.''
That was 80 years ago. It was bad policy then, and it is worse policy now. Aside from the principles which have been crushed, I believe this nationalized control is the main reason Canadians are often under-served in their broadcast services.
CRTC regulations and decisions limit competition, favour U.S. programming, and stifle Canadian debate and content.
Just as an example — I pose this as a question — how is it that Fox News makes it on to the system in Canada, when Canadians have long been denied the right to create competing news services or networks?
The premise behind government control over electronic media has been obsolete for three decades, if the premise was ever true. Governments continue to find new excuses to expand state control over media property rights.
There have been many past attempts to extend the broadcast idea to newspapers. The Kent commission called on Ottawa to take away the rights of newspaper owners and to use legislative power to restructure the industry.
More than a decade earlier, the Davey committee proposed a press ownership review board. The board would function as a kind of CRTC over newspapers.
So far the CRTC has not really been able to get its hands on the newspaper industry, but it is not for lack of trying or pressure from some quarters. The CRTC itself, which has no jurisdiction over print, has managed to extract codes of newsroom conduct that limit the relationship between television newsrooms and newspaper newsrooms when cross- ownership occurs.
Mr. Kent, when he appeared before you, read out some of the earlier agreements extracted by the government from the Canadian Daily Newspaper Publishers Association, CDNPA, as it was back in the 1980s.
It is an embarrassing document, in which newspaper owners concede that they operate their newspapers as a public trust above all else, but they do not. Owners operate newspapers as business enterprises and as a matter of fundamental rights, cornerstones of freedom of the press. These are property rights.
However, property rights should yield to democracy, said Mr. Kent. No they should not. Mr. Kent and others before you have called on government to break the longstanding taboo against government meddling in the newspaper business.
I believe this new attempt to get governments into the newsroom of the nation's newspapers is a dangerous extension of the Kent commission's Marxist conclusion that the owners of the means of production are the problem and should not be allowed to act as owners.
We did not do it in 1981, and we should not do it now. It flies in the face of the history of free expression and freedom of the press. It is an assault on common law and constitutional principles.
We should be moving, in fact, in the other direction. We should be removing government from control over the other media, not expanding it to newspapers. Radio, television and the airwaves should be turned over to private ownership. There is no justification for government involvement.
The original reason for government control over the airwaves was an alleged scarcity of airwaves. No such scarcity existed then, and with new technology today, the argument for keeping government involved does not make sense.
It is my hope that your committee will seize this opportunity to begin a reversal of this long-standing affront to the principles of freedom of the press. I know from reading the transcripts of your earlier sessions that many of you have a strong appreciation of the role of markets, individual choice, property rights, and preserving and protecting freedom of the press.
However, we have long ago passed the limits of government involvement in the media. It is time to start scaling back that involvement and move forward.
If you have any questions, I will be happy to try to answer them.
Senator Tkachuk: I am of the same view as you, that we should decommission the CRTC in many of its aspects and allow the market to flourish. However, should there be a role for, say, the Competition Bureau, where monopolies might tend to form?
Mr. Corcoran: I suppose there might be a role for the Competition Bureau, although the instances in which monopolies are formed are extremely rare in the areas of the economy that the Competition Bureau now exercises its jurisdiction over. It is largely reduced to picking away at different forms of corporate behaviour, and occasionally intervening in a minor way with mergers and acquisitions.
Generally, the market works fine on its own. I certainly do not think there would be any need to give the Competition Bureau special powers to begin to look at the media as something different and apart from any other industry.
Senator Tkachuk: We had heard, and we have had testimony, about the question of convergence. You work for a newspaper that also owns television. I think I know the answer to this, but I do want to get the testimony down.
Do you think this is a dangerous thing? Should there be any regulations or laws forbidding this to happen? Should there be some kind of a Chinese wall, that is, a real Chinese wall, rather than one that a lot of people here do not think exists?
Mr. Corcoran: As you might expect, I would be opposed to trying to block that type of convergence from happening. There are two different kinds of convergence, by the way. One is the attempt, as a business matter, for different media to converge — television and newspapers being two media, and the Internet might be another. Then there are the carriers. There was once — and Bell fell into this — a theory around that there would be a convergence between the carriers and the media that they carried.
That particular model certainly seems suspect, to put it mildly. I think the jury is still out on the other forms of convergence as well, between, say, a television station and a newspaper in any one market, nationally or locally.
It is a business theory that there is something to be had out of merging these two operations. However, any of us who have worked in either television or newspapers can sense right away that there are a number of fundamental differences between the two media.
It seems to me that it is unlikely that that type of convergence will become a major issue, except as a theoretical one.
Should perchance a television station and a newspaper, or a network and newspaper entities, converge in a way that is hugely successful, where they are practically merged into one unit, I still do not think it would be much of a reason to get involved.
There are all kinds of different market developments that can take place to thwart the best conversion strategies. Suddenly a converged company might look to be a little top-heavy, and somebody else can come in and provide a competitive product, either as a broadcaster or whatever.
There is also plenty of competition now to overcome the convergence, so it is all part of a dynamic market process.
Senator Munson: You say in your report, we should remove government from control over the other media, not expand it to newspapers. Do you see the elimination of the CRTC? Do you see elimination of all these regulatory bodies, and it is a best-person-can-win marketplace?
Mr. Corcoran: In an ideal world I might say that. There obviously would be a need. The best way to approach it, perhaps, is if we think of any particular broadcasting — leaving aside cable — creating a whole different added dynamic.
If a particular airwave were a private property, there might be a need for somebody to delineate that property and say, ``This particular broadcasting megahertz'' — whatever they are called — ``belongs to'' — whoever the registered owner is. If it is CTV, that is CTV's property.
Beyond that, I do not know what the CRTC involvement need be. We have a whole structure built up in Canada. It would be very difficult to pull the plug on it overnight.
However, given the nature of the markets, of the technology today, there is no need to maintain this pretence that we need to protect this rare resource because it is not rare at all.
The answer, I guess, is, yes, in an ideal world you could look toward removing all these regulatory constraints, because they are not really necessary.
Senator Munson: In one of your columns, ``Media Circus III,'' April 29, you include a quote from Joan Fraser, Chair of the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications: ``Except in the very rarest of circumstances, the state has no business in the newsrooms of the nation.'' You go on to say:
If Senator Joan Fraser actually believes the above, then why is her committee about to embark on a year-long investigation that can head in only one direction, toward greater government meddling in the newsrooms of the nation?
Now you are appearing before us as a witness. Were you peering into a crystal ball? You are assuming these things are going to happen —
Mr. Corcoran: No, I think if you read down that column —
Senator Munson: There are a lot of columns. I was trying to go through —
Mr. Corcoran: If you read down that particular column, I was basing it on the outline of what the agenda was for the committee, or what some of the ideas were. The only reason for holding the hearings, as I understood it, was because there was a lot of agitation for more government involvement. Perhaps I jumped to a conclusion, and —
Senator Munson: You are obviously worried as well about a lot of your colleagues or buddies in the news business.
Mr. Corcoran: Sorry, I missed the opening —
Senator Munson: You talk about Russell Mills and others. You cannot quite believe what some newspaper people are saying. You seem to say that they are advocating for more government intervention, and that is obviously a worry for you. You feel that more newspaper people are in bed with the government, or see some value with that?
Mr. Corcoran: I do not follow.
Senator Munson: You have worked with Russ Mills here before.
Mr. Corcoran: Right. That was at a conference at McGill.
Senator Munson: I see. You wrote in your remarks at the 2003 McGill University conference, ``Who Controls Canada's Media?'':
Along this line, I was quite surprised this morning to hear Russ Mills — whom I've admired greatly over the years — call for even more aggressive government involvement in the newspaper business.
There is some worry with you, with him —
Mr. Corcoran: I was puzzled by Mr. Mills' position on the media at that conference and by his subsequent comments. On the one hand, he says the government has no particular role in the newspaper business, but on the other hand, he seems to be suggesting some kind of a role.
I cannot remember off the top of my head what his suggestion was, but he had a four-point plan, I think, of what the government should be doing. It involved some government intervention in, if I remember correctly, the ownership breakdown of the media.
Senator Munson: A simple question: I know there are a lot of questions here today, and I notice you talk about the Marxist Kent commission. That is a bit of a stretch, is not it? That is my own observation. What is your view on freedom of the press?
Mr. Corcoran: Freedom of the press is that the people who want to start up individual medium of communication should be free to do so — and own them, should be free to do with them what they think is in the best interests of their shareholders, in the best interests of their readers, and in the best interests of whatever drives the individual owner, and whoever he or she delegates to run these particular media.
Beyond that, it is difficult to make judgments, because then you get into having to prescribe what it is that the media should be doing. We all have different ideas. I write critical columns about what other newspapers are doing, what my own newspaper is doing.
We all have our idea of what the media should be doing, and some are good, some are bad, some are right and wrong. It is a market. It is like dictating what should be produced by any particular producer. It is hard to say.
The nature of the media should be driven by the entrepreneurial and imaginative content of the people who run and own the media. What we think it should be today will be different from what it will be ten years from now.
Senator Di Nino: I must confess that I lean more on your side of the fence in having less government involvement than more government involvement. It should not come as a surprise that as a Conservative I feel that way.
However, we need some sort of a body to act as an arbiter in disputes. In your field, in the newspaper field, we have a body called the press council, the Ontario Press Council being the example.
We heard today that there is a press council in every province except Saskatchewan? Press councils have been accused of being ineffective. First, I would like your opinion on that, and then I want to follow up.
Mr. Corcoran: I would like to answer, but I know very little about the press council. I have no sense of it at all.
Senator Di Nino: Fair enough.
Mr. Corcoran: It does not come up that often. I have been a business reporter for the vast majority of my years, and it never comes up in my area. I see the stories in the newspapers now and then about a complaint that has or has not been upheld, but beyond that I do not...
Senator Di Nino: You do agree, though, if you have fewer rules, which come from governments, whether they be federal or provincial, you still need some opportunity, right or wrong, if you felt there was a wrong committed against you. How would you do that?
Mr. Corcoran: Those are really tough things to deal with.
Senator Di Nino: You cannot have it both ways. You said that.
Mr. Corcoran: Speaking personally, and not knowing enough about what the press council does in any province, I have never been overly enthusiastic about them. However, there are issues related to people treated unfairly by the media, and they were, I guess, being treated unfairly before the existence of the press councils across the country. I really have not given this a lot of thought.
Senator Di Nino: Well, that is fair enough. I hope you are not copping out on me, that is all, because you are not that kind of guy.
Mr. Corcoran: I hope not.
Senator Di Nino: You certainly do not indicate that.
Mr. Corcoran: I have not thought about everything.
Senator Di Nino: Let me switch gears then for a moment or so. The question that has arisen in many of the witnesses' comments is that too few people now control the media. First, do you agree with that?
Mr. Corcoran: No, but it would be nice to have more, I suppose. Maybe if the regulatory structure was different at the CRTC, we might have more players in the media, although it is hard to be certain one way or another.
If you look at the Davey committee report, at the Kent commission report, whatever analysis they came up with — in terms of the structure, ownership breakdowns, pie charts, and the history of what it was in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 — if we take it up to the present, any of these particular snapshots has been wrong, in terms of their assessment of what the actual structure of the media was, and certainly they were wrong looking forward.
They never had a clue that the Internet was coming, that cable would develop in the way it would develop, and of specialty channels. There is no way to foresee how any particular technology is going to emerge, what the business plans are going to be, what business mistakes are going to be made along the way, or what entrepreneurial genius is going to come along with a new concept. There is no way to understand that or foresee it. It is a dynamic, changing thing.
If you look at today's situation, it seems to me much more competitive in terms of the availability of information to the individual Canadian. The sources are vast.
We are more competitive than we were in 1981. We are more competitive than we were in 1991. I venture in 2012, 2014 or whatever, there will be even more, in terms of sources of information available.
Even ownership does not necessarily tell you much. Thompson Newspapers used to be a big force in one part of the business. Now, it owns all kinds of information. It is not Thompson Newspapers, but the Thompson Corporation. It owns all kinds of information distribution methods, health-care distribution and medical stuff. It is all over the place.
My point about Thompson is that you can have one big company, but it provides slices of information that are diverse, complicated. It is not necessarily ideological, but it offers sources of information nonetheless on myriad different subjects.
[Translation]
Senator Chaput: Of course, my question deals with freedom of the press. If I understood what you said, the private sector is in a better position to deal with freedom of the press than the organizations we currently have?
Mr. Corcoran: Yes.
Senator Chaput: Could you explain to me, using concrete examples, what would happen if we moved from one scenario to another? My second question is the following: How could we change the CRTC in order to better meet existing needs?
Mr. Corcoran: I will answer in English, because I am afraid I have lost my French over the years.
[English]
A good example perhaps is the regulation that exists in Canada that limits, as I see it, the private development of competitive news and information broadcasting. I am talking about across the country.
I wrote a column about this a while ago. I think it was at the beginning of the advertising agency issue in Ottawa. One night, I was flicking through television, and I was looking for exchanges of opinion on what was happening, who was right, who was wrong, what was being said and what are the facts. If you go to the U.S. media, on any one night you can flick through four or five channels, and you will get MSNBC, CNBC, CNN and Fox, plus some of the big networks. There is a constant churning of ideas. It is all private. Then throw in PBS, and there is one little public slice.
The debate is intense, and it is on all sides. You may not like all sides, but it is on all sides, and you cannot deny that it is on all sides.
Flick back to Canada and look for a debate on an issue, and there is nothing. On any night, you hit the CBC National News at nine o'clock, and at the end of it you will get Andrew Coyne, Chantal Hébert, and Allan Gregg , and they will be back and forth. You get a bit of a debate.
Flip over to Newsworld. They do not do news at the same time or any kind of public programming at the same time. There is nothing on CTV. CTV Newsnet is locked into this regulated format, where it cannot compete, or it cannot provide debate and conflict, which is part of the political process.
I think that is regulatory-driven. The CRTC always intervenes, because they want to protect somebody somewhere. They are protecting the CBC, they are protecting another broadcaster, or they are protecting a segment. They just will not open it up, to let all kinds of private initiative come along, to enhance debate and to further debate.
That is why I mentioned Fox. We are going to let Fox in Canada before we have a Fox Canada. I do not mean Fox Canada, but before we have a comparable competing network, which strikes me as bizarre.
Senator Chaput: We are far from being as big as the States. Even if we opened up, you would not find everything, even if it is the private sector.
Mr. Corcoran: That is true. Maybe it is possible, or maybe it is impossible in Canada but I do not think so, somehow.
After I wrote a column about that, I got a call from CPAC, which said, ``We are starting up a little bit of a political debating show that comes on around at nine o'clock, ten o'clock or eleven o'clock at night,'' and they are doing something, but it is very low-key. It does not get any attention and the production values are kind of flat.
It is hard to compete against the razzmatazz of some of the American networks. However, at least they have debate because it is more wide open. I think we could have more public discussion by freeing up the regulatory process, making it all private and letting people sort out how they are going to deal with it and make money.
Senator Di Nino: Or lose money.
Mr. Corcoran: Yes.
Senator Merchant: I think about watching the American television channels, which are good and enlightening. When you talk about PBS, the public broadcaster, that is altogether different to me than our public broadcaster, the CBC, because PBS is viewer-driven. It is viewer-supported. I wonder what would happen in this country if the CBC was viewer-supported?
Mr. Corcoran: This is an excellent question. It does seem, as a principle, somewhat odd that the CBC should be so advertising-driven in much of its operations. Personally, I do not have a great deal of problem with the government running a broadcasting station or two, especially nowadays. It is not such a big part of the market. There is much more information available.
Whether it needs to run the broadcasting station in the way that the CBC is run is another matter. The CBC is a very strange amalgam of public and business, and advertising and public service, which creates problems in the market, because it draws a lot of advertising revenue out of the private sector. It draws a certain amount of talent away from the private sector, using government money.
It is just a very odd structure, and the public broadcasting model in the United States might be one that would be more attractive, although I have not looked at that in great detail. I am sorry.
Senator Merchant: I guess it is an issue, because it is supported with public money, and people pay taxes, and people are not watching it. They have a very small audience. There comes a point where you have to question what kind of value we are getting for the money that we are investing. I think they have some very good programming, but people do not seem to watch it. There is a small audience, but they produce some very good programs.
Mr. Corcoran: I do think Canadians want Canadian content, especially in their news and public affairs. That shows up in the ratings. If you add up all the ratings for all the Canadian news shows, you are getting a lot of viewers. I think there is a larger appetite than for what we are getting, because it is in limited supply at the moment.
Senator Merchant: I have a question about the CRTC. That too I find interesting, because the CRTC is a government regulator. Often, the commissioners, while they are appointed by the government of the day, come from the media. Quite a few of them have had some involvement with the media. Frequently when they leave the CRTC, they find employment again with the media.
The media seem to be able to use them to their advantage. Do you have some observations about that? Is there something that is —
Mr. Corcoran: It is the nature of the beast. Obviously, if someone serves for a long time with a regulator, they develop a lot of expertise, industry knowledge, and contacts. The problem is, you cannot prevent that from happening. It is the nature of the structure. The structure is a problem.
The Chairman: I would like to come back to the whole thorny question of freedom of the press. If it is just a property right, then why is it in the constitution, not only of Canada, but of various other countries, for example, the United States? What makes freedom of the press different from freedom of the fast-food industry, freedom of the pulp-and- paper industry, freedom of the prostitution industry, I do not know. Why, historically, have so many countries thought it important to put freedom of the press into the constitution? What were they driving at when they did that?
Mr. Corcoran: That is a good question. I do not know that I know the answer to it. I guess freedom of the press is tied up with freedom of speech, which in some way you do not need to own any property to be able to do that. The property right became an attachment by virtue of the fact that you needed physical assets to produce the press.
There is something more concrete, it seems to me, about the property right as it relates to freedom of the press. There is the connection there, in the sense that you cannot have one without the other.
You cannot have freedom of speech, beyond the individual speaking, without having a coexisting property right to run the presses. A lot of constitutions of a lot of countries pay lip service to freedom of the press but they never had it. The Soviet Union had freedom of the press, but if you do not have the property right to go with it, it is senseless. It is just words on a page.
There is a relationship there. That would be my quick answer.
The Chairman: I may be putting words or thoughts into your mouth here, but it seems to me you are trying hard to avoid any concept of the public interest, but constitutions tend to be about the public interest, do they not?
Mr. Corcoran: Yes, I suppose they do. I am trying to downplay the notion of the public interest, because it is an indefinable thing. It is arbitrary, and nobody, to my knowledge, has ever defined it. It is not defined in any law, in any regulation. You find it often in regulation, but in an arbitrary kind of way, usually by way of specifics. There is no definition.
To me it is just pursuing a public interest, something that cannot be defined. As you noted in your report, it becomes whatever happens to be the current fashion, style and tenor of the time.
The Chairman: On the matter of regulation, clearly — I hope I have interpreted you accurately — I take from what you have said that regulation is best which regulates least, in your view. You suggested it was time to pull back but how far are we talking about pulling back?
Are you saying that things like minimum wage laws should not apply to the media, or can you be a little more precise about what you would like to see rolled back? Where realistically do you think we can live with what we have, or a variation thereof?
Mr. Corcoran: By pulling back, I am talking within the context of the regulation of the electronic media, and the attempt by the CRTC — and I do not understand much about this — to get into the Internet regulation business. I think this kind of thing should be rolled back.
Certainly, we should not roll forward on the newspaper business, but in the regulation of the electronic media, the airwaves, the cable channels and the specialty channels, it is just something that just does not need to be there.
The Chairman: At all?
Mr. Corcoran: At all.
The Chairman: If one removed all kinds of regulation of broadcasting, other than perhaps the delineation of frequencies where necessary, is there any danger at all that Canada's media either would be taken over rapidly by foreign nationals, foreign media and large foreign media operations, or the broadcast market in particular would be swamped by spillover?
Fox, for example, can do an awful lot of commercial damage to some of the Canadian networks just by being there, because Canada would be like a larger state of Maine, from their point of view; no effort from their point of view to cover us. Perhaps I am stating this in an extreme way because I want to get your reaction to the prospect of completely untrammelled entry for non-Canadian competitors.
Mr. Corcoran: In some ways it is a bit of a bogeyman to throw up. First of all, we do not know the degree to which any foreign broadcaster is interested in any particular Canadian network, channels or whatever. We do not know if somebody did take over a network, what they would do with it. They would still have to appeal to Canadians. I am not arguing for it here. I am just exploring the idea.
Whatever, it still has to appeal to the audience that they are buying. It would be senseless for NBC to buy out CTV, it seems to me, because they would have to run around refashioning a whole bunch of programming to suit a Canadian audience.
It has been a troubling issue throughout all of Canadian history, and there is no easy way around it. Here I may sound like I am copping out a bit, and I do have a little bit of lingering sympathy with foreign ownership restrictions.
They only go so far, mainly because it is an untested idea. It is a theory that foreigners are all going to come up here and buy us up, just as our retailers are all bought up by Americans. Maybe that would happen. I do not know.
I do have a bit of sympathy for restrictions. I hate to admit this, and if Andrew Coyne were here he would jump all over me.
The Chairman: We will never tell.
Senator Di Nino: He will read the transcripts.
Mr. Corcoran: Yes, but what made me think about this foreign ownership issue is this idea that we should allow BCE, Rogers and the carriers to be taken over by foreign companies, which strikes me as particularly bizarre, especially when it comes to the satellite services. If you look at it from the point of view of the satellite subscriber, I am not allowed to buy a U.S. satellite service; I have to buy a Canadian satellite service or Canadian cable service.
However, BCE is going to sell my Canadian service that I am forced to subscribe to, to an American, so that the American owns what I am not allowed to buy directly from the American. It is so bizarre. As long as you have a regulated industry of some kind, I think it is difficult to allow foreign ownership as a matter of principle.
I would not rule out the desirability of having some form of foreign ownership restrictions, so long as it is not a free market.
Senator Tkachuk: We are here talking about protecting those who need the least protection, the people who have the licences. Once you have a licence you want to be protected from those potential catalysts who may go into competition with you. Everybody is in the free market until they get a licence, and then, ``Whoops, gee whiz.'' I always say that because it is so true
We had the advertisers coming to us today saying they need more stations because, on the local markets, which surprised me, Mississauga does not have a TV station. That blew me away. We have one in Yorkton and Swift Current. How can this all happen, if not by government regulations?
Then on top of it, to the ordinary person, what do I care if it is Rupert Murdoch or Izzy Asper? It has no effect on my life. It has no affect on my dad's life or my kid's life. They are unaffected whatsoever. The only two people affected are Izzy Asper and Rupert Murdoch, right? To me, there is no one else.
CBC is another. It is all about software and programming. That is what the public policy issue is. I do not even think that is a good thing.
Nonetheless, do you think we could sell all the hardware for CBC, such as all the buildings? What do we need all the buildings for? We just need one place to send out programming, and people can buy it on cable if they want it. If they do not want it, they are not forced to listen to it.
Mr. Corcoran: Those are business decisions on the part of the CBC or whoever would own the assets if it were sold. I do not know that there is anybody who could answer that question, as to how the CBC should operate in the most efficient way.
Senator Tkachuk: Do we need a CBC? Maybe we needed one 50, 60 or 70 years ago, but do we need it now?
Mr. Corcoran: I do not know what you mean by ``need.'' I think having Canadian broadcasters is a good, solid objective. It is a very difficult question to deal with. It is easier to write about this in the confines of a newsroom than to come here and state it in public.
I listen to the CBC practically all the time. I listen to CBC Radio and watch CBC news. My back goes up on a constant basis over their positions and the way they handle their broadcasting. If they were not there, I do not know what I would listen to.
However, whether they have to be there, I do not think so. All kinds of other opportunities exist there. The radio system is as structured and rigid as television is, if not more so, although it is about to get hit with competitive pressures that they have not seen before.
As I said earlier, there is big demand for Canadian content on radio, television, and in print. We have a rigid anti- competitive structure that prevents the development of Canadian programming, Canadian development, and focuses money on the existing players, including, especially, the CBC.
Senator Tkachuk: I buy the argument that by over-regulation we weaken our companies and our businesses, therefore making it more difficult for them to withstand competition when it finally arrives, because it always is there in today's world, or will be, no matter how many laws we place.
Do you think that is true of the media business? Because we regulate and protect television, radio, and the networks themselves, we in actuality have weakened them to withstand competition from the Americans, Europeans or whoever may enter the marketplace?
Mr. Corcoran: Yes. I do not know what else I could say on the subject. I want to explore that, what the nature of what that weakness is. The more they are prevented from facing competition, the more difficult it becomes to introduce competition, the longer the structure is kept in place.
It is a myth that is perpetrated by every industry in existence in Canada that all we need is to get just a little bit bigger. We need to be protected just until we get to be a certain size. Then we will be able to compete. Then we will be able to open the doors. However, it never happens.
It has not happened in any of the regulated industries, except for the airline industry and maybe one or two others. The airline industry would be one where we have opened the doors but Air Canada is still a struggling airline, and the industry is still subject to regulation to prevent foreign competition from coming in.
We are back at Air Canada with the same problem. We just need to get big enough. We will expand internationally, because that is where we will be able to grow, and then we will be okay. However, it does not work that way because the longer regulation is in place, the more entrenched the system becomes.
Senator Tkachuk: That is it.
The Chairman: We have a very few minutes left, and Senator Di Nino also has a second-round question.
Senator Di Nino: Between yourself and Senator Tkachuk, you covered pretty well most of it. CBC is a public corporation. The question I would put to you is, should we put all that money into CBC, for it to be able to survive and do what it does? Does Canada need that? Do we need the CBC? Does Canada need to make that kind of investment on an annual basis, and are we getting value for it?
Mr. Corcoran: I have never done a study of the CBC, in terms of how it operates, what its budget is, how it spends money, and whether there is value for money, out of the total amount of money it gets and spends.
What I see is the programming that I watch. It is difficult to complain about the CBC's lack of balance because I do not really think that should be the focus of the issue, since I do not really think any particular medium should be balanced. It is a dynamic process.
I would not want CBC to be balanced because I do not think it necessarily should be, nor do I think Fox or CNN should be balanced. It should be all part of the process. People flick around.
The problem with the CBC is that it gets a big bunch of government money to be unbalanced. That is the difference. I have no problem with its lack of balance. It is just: Why does it get this money to be unbalanced?
I am sure the CBC would disagree with my view that it is not balanced.
Senator Di Nino: Go to another station.
Mr. Corcoran: P.J. O'Rourke said of public broadcasting in the United States recently, you get up every morning, and the overall drift of the story is, ``World to end, poor and minorities to suffer most.''
Senator Di Nino: I do not think I will ask my last question. Let us leave it at that.
The Chairman: Thanks very much for being here today. It has been extremely interesting.
The committee adjourned.