Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 15 - Evidence - Afternoon meeting
HALIFAX, Tuesday, April 19, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 1:06 p.m. to examine the current state of Canadian media industries; emerging trends and developments in these industries; the media's role, rights and responsibilities in Canadian society; and current and appropriate future policies relating thereto.
Senator Joan Fraser (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable colleagues, we resume the sessions of the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications meeting this day in Halifax as part of our study of the Canadian news media. We are fortunate to be able to welcome Mr. Tony Seed, editor and publisher of Shunpiking Magazine. He is joined by Mr. Gary Zatzman.
We welcome you both and we thank you very much for being with us today. Please proceed.
Mr. Tony Seed, Editor and Publisher, Shunpiking Magazine: Madam Chair, members of the Senate committee, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nova Scotia.
Your invitation to present our views and exchange our experiences with you is somewhat an ironic vindication of four decades on the path of truth and integrity in the service of people.
I have a professional background in communications and for the past 40 years I have been a journalist, publisher, author and professional graphic designer. I have also been involved in producing CBC Radio and Vision TV documentaries such as ``No Harbour for War'' and ``Fishing on the Brink.'' I established the so-called underground newspaper The Canadian Free Press in 1967 and during that time I was arrested twice by the RCMP on trumped-up charges.
As a feature writer for The Globe and Mail I was nominated for a national newspaper award in February 1971. I was summarily and unjustly fired nine days later and blacklisted across Canada for my views through a confidential letter system. Nevertheless, I have continued to write and report in newspapers such as the Boston Globe and the London Telegraph, amongst other newspapers.
I have covered war conflict and other major issues abroad in Scotland, the Balkans, India, and most recently in Sri Lanka where during the year 2000 civil war I was one of only three out of 180 journalists to report from within the war zones.
I am a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists and past professional member of the Society of Graphic Designers.
In 1986 I established New Media Services Incorporated in Halifax to assist in the development of an independent media in the service of the Canadian people through which we have assisted scores of community, non-profit, amateur sports and business enterprises to develop their own media and their own voice from newsletters to four-colour tabloids.
With seven colleagues I established Shunpiking Magazine, which celebrates its tenth anniversary in December 2005. Shunpiking means shunning the turnpike, getting off the main highway, and seeing the countryside on your own. The word has a historical origin that dates back some 200 years with the development of toll highways and the first development of the privatization of roads.
As you know, toll highways and turnpikes were developed to go from one developing area to another and by-pass all scores of towns and villages along the way. These towns and villages rebelled and built paths into their villages on one side of the toll booth and out the other side and they called these paths shunpikes. In both New England and Upper Canada you will find roads called shunpikes.
Every Mothers Day The London Free Press organizes a shunpiking spring mystery tour. As many as 3,000 people turn out to travel on the back roads of southern Ontario.
We call Shunpiking Magazine a discovery magazine by which we mean that discovery necessitates the involvement of the individual in the act of finding out. In terms of journalism, it necessarily means a new journalism based on the scientific method. It is a publication for the thinking Canadian. We publish 25,000 copies of our print edition and it is circulated from Yarmouth to Bay St. Lawrence, and the distribution division is approximately 50 per cent urban and 50 per cent rural. It is circulated in some 840 towns and other locations. We also publish a separate Internet edition called Shunpiking Online.
We are part of the global explosion of new and independent media as a voice to address people's rights and concerns. Over 600 people voluntarily contributed to Shunpiking Magazine and I want to emphasize that all our work, including mine, is freely given.
We are submitting a PDF file to your clerk with a comprehensive selection of editorials and articles from our magazine elaborating our views, aims and practice on independent media, publishing and journalism, the movement for enlightenment, as well as related material. It will also be published on our website where we have also uploaded your interim report. We hope that it will be of particular interest to all those concerned about the state of the media and the quality of information, and the massive disinformation and wrecking of public opinion which is being used to deprive people of their ability to think, find their bearings, and solve problems by setting their own agenda.
Our magazine came into being on December 3, 1995, ``due to a concern with the state of the media journalism and culture,'' we wrote. The media are mired in a crisis of credibility. The media crisis has been fuelled by further monopolization, vicious inter-monopoly competition, as well as the gutting of the CBC. Across Canada, print advertising is decreasing, staffs are slashed, journalism is being contracted out on a freelance basis, and newspapers fill their pages with stock photography. The interest and well-being of people and the environment are incidental to the media, and as a consequence, their content is increasingly in disrepute.
As creators and communicators we had to choose: Either complain about these symptoms of a monopolized media, or create a serious publication of interest and enlightenment to the readership and ourselves with its own independent editorial agenda and policy. This was the first step, but this step could not and cannot be taken in the old way. Our views and our work are vividly elaborated and are available on our PDF file.
Shunpiking Magazine has taken the initiative to develop annual supplements on First Nations and the Mi'kmaq, Black history, and Gaelic language. We publish science information posters of Maritime whales, spring plants of the Maritimes, and the lifecycle of the Atlantic lobster, to name but a few. Our science publications include rare coastal flora, Gaelic place names in Nova Scotia, and the original 48 historic Black communities of Nova Scotia. These are printed in our centrefold, and we off-print them and laminate them and we sell them for $5. Unfortunately, we are sold out; otherwise, I would be quite happy to give you one as a gift.
We also publish a free 96-page outdoor resource directory. We publish in-depth dossiers on questions of concern to humanity such as the dossier on Palestine which I have submitted to you as an example. Although never mentioned in the Canadian press, that dossier is world acclaimed. We printed 20,000 copies and sales are approximately 15,000 puts it in the best-seller category.
We are also involved in a 15-minute weekly program on CFR radio in Vancouver called Shunpiking Nova Scotia.
We sponsor forums and symposiums such as the ``Halifax Political Forum'' at the outset of the Iraqi war as a commons. In July of last year we initiated the Halifax International Symposium on Media and Disinformation. Two of the most important resolutions in the symposium are disinformation as a war crime against humanity, and the deliberate targeting of journalists by occupation armed forces. As you are no doubt aware, more journalists have been killed in Iraq in the last two years than in the entire Vietnam War, and five more have been killed in the past four days.
We sincerely invite you and your research staff to the forthcoming symposium this summer, July 1-4, which will be held at Dalhousie University. You will find it not only informative, but perhaps even eye-opening.
Through this written submission we hope to acquaint you with our trials and tribulations, and encourage others to participate with us or to take up the path of independent journalism and media.
We reviewed your interim report of April 2004 with its deliberations and numerous submissions. Since April 2004, the unprecedented monopolization of the media, the means of production and the source of information continues unabated, especially by Transcontinental Publishing and the Irving Group in our region. This means that in Nova Scotia the independent publisher has recourse to but two web offset printing presses. This, for us, is a life and death question.
In my view and experience, the relationship between the monopoly media and the independent media is not a laissez-faire relationship, but precisely a life and death struggle in which the freedom of one necessitates the suppression, monopolization, cartelisation or marginalization of the other. The saying that ``freedom of the press belongs to those who own one'', a famous expression of A.J. Liebling, the American journalist, is today devoid of any practicality to virtually all those except such a few powerful monopolies.
We endorse the demand of the Canadian Federation of University Women that monopolization and monopoly right be restricted, and by this I mean private right, as well as the demands restricting foreign ownership which have been submitted to you by various interest groups. However, in our view, the situation facing Canadians is not merely an intensification of monopolization as a result of a neo-liberal agenda; it is disinformation on a massive scale. This disinformation is involving Canadians in war reaction and wrecking public opinion in the service of the integration of Canada into the United States, and a neo-liberal assault on conscience and enlightenment.
We thus would like to advance a new recommendation that this Senate committee actively conduct an objective inquiry into disinformation, this modus operandi, in different spheres. By this, we mean that disinformation is not a question of bias, of professional incompetence, ignorance or misinformation. We mean that disinformation is actually the act of disinforming that is composed of the prefix ``dis'' and the word ``informing.'' It is actually to — how would you say?
Mr. Gary Zatzman, Shunpiking Magazine: Make it impossible to respond.
Mr. Seed: Yes.
We also do not think it is a question of self-censorship of journalists which is also well known, or the disappearance of distinct voices as Senator Jim Munson has queried. We must go further. We have to deal with the pervasiveness of disinformation and the act of collaboration of the monopoly media in crimes against humanity that have been committed and are being committed on a daily basis, whether it is against the people of Iraq, Palestine, Haiti or other nations and peoples, or against the polity of our nation.
In our opinion, news organizations, global news organizations, and the Canadian media must be held accountable for the role they play in informing and misinforming public opinion. Media monopolies have further reduced the question of freedom of the press to freedom from government. The disinformation is such that far from news organizations operating independently of government, they are actively facilitating the achievement of both foreign and domestic government strategies of what is called ``information dominance.'' Such an inquiry by the Senate would make a contribution to the sovereign and democratic rights of Canadians and other peoples and nations to information. The monopoly media, in our view, does not serve Canadians and even acts as a barrier to dealing with the pressing issues they face. This is an urgent request for action.
In December 1998 the following conclusion was drawn about the role of a tiny and private minority utilizing the media to set the political agenda in a self-serving interest:
Proponents of proprietary rights tend to attribute all the problems of the fishery to its common property nature; however, the evidence placed before us suggests that individual quotas are certainly not the panacea for which government, fishery managers, certain newspaper columnists and editorial commentators and many economists had hoped. Although their most fervent advocates claim they can be designed to overcome every criticism, private quotas have very serious shortcomings and bring new problems. In many cases, the Committee was advised that the property rights-based approach had proven to be disastrous with respect to conserving fish stocks and the fishing communities dependent on these stocks.
And further in the document:
Lastly, the discussion over individual quotas has thus far been confined to academic circles, government officials, those who speak on behalf of the fishing industry, and certain newspaper columnists and editorialists. The Canadian public should be made more aware of the matter. Taxpayers, in particular, should be wary of trite clichés and the rhetorical claims of the more zealous proponents of privatized fisheries. In the end, it is the taxpayer who will have to foot the bill if small fishing communities are left high and dry.
These statements were made by the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries on the Privatization and Quota Licensing in Canada's Fisheries under which a sea change was brought about in the fisheries. This process was carried out under an administrative or executive process under the Minister of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans without even reference to Parliament.
What the Senate is referring to is disinformation. Objective, accepted facts were systematically falsified or distorted and this process was facilitated by the monopoly media.
Over the past 15 years Atlantic Canadians have been victims of the most irrational, completely false picture that was elaborated in the national and regional media on the disinformation that the problem in the fisheries was too many fishermen chasing too few fish.
The Senate conclusions, like your own hearings, have been marginalized by the media. We did a Google search in terms of finding newspaper accounts of the hearings that you have had across Canada and they are either nonexistent or extremely hard to find. As an example, the submission of Transcontinental Publications, for example, is on its own website, but nowhere in the Transcontinental newspapers did I read of their presentation to your committee.
Senator Tkachuk: We are used to that.
Mr. Seed: Surely you cannot just laugh. I mean you must speak out against this. I know that you have written several articles in rebuttal to different allegations that have been made.
When we correlate the corporate and editorial links between the National Post, The Globe and Mail, two so-called think tanks, The Fraser Institute and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, and the major fish monopolies such as Clearwater Fisheries, we see a secret web of deceit that emerges from the shadows. Clearwater is only one among many questions in this society which has been the target of such media disinformation.
Reprehensible attempts have been made to divide the polity of Canada, including the Maritimes, according to ethnicity, religious, and other beliefs of national origin, thereby endangering the unity and sovereignty of the Canadian people.
Nine months after the Senate issued its report came the Marshall decision, following which a series of events unfolded which gives the clearest picture possible how media coverage was orchestrated to divide Maritimers on a racial basis to isolate, marginalise, and deny the rights of fishermen of different national origins to make them the target of law and order under the guise of so-called conservation. I would like to quote:
Two trends were unfolding representing conflicting opposite forces. These two trends contrast dramatically. Firstly, the mass media spread disinformation by focusing exclusively on one trend. In the main scenario, every inflammatory statement and act of vandalism or conflict was faithfully reproduced and highlighted.
Here are but two typical examples. In New Brunswick, on September 22, five days after the Marshall decision was released on September 17, editorialist Philip Lee evoked a spectre of `anarchy and violence' from Mi'kmaq in the Irving owned Telegraph Journal. On September 23, another headline in the same paper read ``Maritimes in Civil War over Native Fishing.'' At this time no incidents had occurred. Ten days before the well-known troubles in Burnt Church on CBC TV's First Edition and on Newsworld Tom Murphy, quoted a fisherman as saying ``War, I'd say civil war; something's going to happen.'' He honestly reported that ``Natives sleep armed near their catch.''
No mention is made of the two years of ongoing dialogue between Mi'kmaq chiefs and licensed fishermen over the native food fishery in St. Mary's Bay. St. Mary's Bay is by Digby. In other words, the direct experience of the people is simply negated.
Throughout this entire period we were the sole publication in Atlantic Canada to create a space for the Mi'kmaq and small fishermen to present their experience and views to the mainstream society. This issue is not a lack of diversity in the media, but the question of a tsunami of disinformation in which only the opinions of those who held power were given credence.
Disinformation also uses staged events and fake encounters in which the government is directly or indirectly involved. I quote:
The major media portrays native and non-native fishers at each others throats as spontaneous, racially motivated so-called mob actions.
On October 17 and October 18 just after my visit to Barrington, as lobster fishermen blockaded native boats in Yarmouth Harbour and destroyed their traps, unfounded claims abound that natives in retaliation had burned a fisherman's house in nearby Rockwell. Neither The Chronicle-Herald nor CBC, both of whom maintain bureaus in Yarmouth, identified the alleged arsonist. The local RCMP detachment, which reportedly allowed the destruction of native lobster traps and failed to arrest those responsible, were forced to state that the two incidents were not connected.
In Burnt Church, a similar situation of taking the law into ones own hands occurred and criminal charges were not laid until October 12. The Globe and Mail, evoking Hollywood stereotypes, referred to ``renegade Mi'kmaq fishermen'' in one report.
So the objective conflict, and I am not saying there is not a conflict, is portrayed as a racial conflict. The truth is that there were only 40 native boats out of 2,893 lobster license holders in the Scotia Fundy region at the time.
Politically, this problem was created by the federal government; it violated the original treaties. From the Prime Minister of Canada on down, the government presented the recognition of Aboriginal rights as the problem, as though the First Nations are responsible for the problems the small fishermen are facing. They played the race card.
Jean Chrétien, the former Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, insisted that the Mi'kmaq abandon the right to fish lobster as a ``temporary measure'' to sort out conservation regulations. This was the high-sounding propaganda of the fisheries cartel. ``The Supreme Court ruling should be suspended for six months,'' he demanded, ``and the First Nations forced to submit to the regime of the DFO.'' It incited the first trend.
The then Fisheries Minister Dhaliwal reinforced the signal when he walked out in the midst of an address by the Grand Chief of the Mi'kmaq in Halifax. In both Burnt Church and Yarmouth the RCMP stood by and allowed the destruction of native traps to proceed.
Thus, anarchy and violence followed disinformation and this is to illustrate that this is not merely an ideological question, but the consequences of harm that comes to Canadians as a result of it.
The Chairman: Mr. Seed, I hope you are going to leave us a copy of your full presentation, but I did say that if I had to cut you off I would. And if we are going to have the chance to ask you any questions at all, I think we are at that point in time. I will give you one more minute if you want to do a summation or signal out one more key point and then we will go to questions.
Mr. Seed: There are many questions I could have addressed in a small period of time. However, I want to focus on this problem that comes up on every front.
I would like to discuss your report concerning the war in Iraq. We also have the example of Haiti. We have Canada's involvement in the Iraq war. We have the recent question of the U.S. dropping a missile on Hibernia in which the whole issue was presented as a question of Hibernia and no one wrote that there are actually fishermen in the Grand Banks and that this is part of the sovereignty of Canada. It was reduced to a question of technical safety and a million to one chance.
I think that your committee really cannot deal with the phenomenon of monopolization of the mass media and the problems that Canadians see with the content and quality of this media without taking out for examination the question of disinformation.
Senator Tkachuk: Thank you very much for your presentation. I have a few questions about your magazine in which you sum up a lot of the frustrations that people feel about the media, although in stronger terms than I have heard to date.
Do you publish monthly or weekly?
Mr. Seed: The magazine comes out six times a year. We publish monthly on the Internet.
Senator Tkachuk: I notice the Black history supplement and the dossier on Palestine. Are these yearly or monthly supplements?
Mr. Seed: Yes. No, the Black history supplement, and what we call the Mac-talla. Mac-talla is the other one.
Senator Tkachuk: This one here?
Mr. Seed: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: All right.
Mr. Seed: Mac-Talla was the first Gaelic publication in Nova Scotia; it was in circulation from 1898 to 1902. It was the largest Gaelic publication in the world at that time. We have revived that name, and it means echo.
The dossier on Palestine is a one-time publication.
Senator Tkachuk: It comes out once a year or at one time?
Mr. Seed: It was only once, although the demand is such that we will be producing a second one with updated material.
We have also started to publish in-depth dossiers on the Internet so that a whole variety of in-depth material on a particular topic is brought together on one question. We publish a regular section on the Internet called Media Culpa, for example.
Senator Tkachuk: What were the views that got you blacklisted?
Mr. Seed: The Globe and Mail had a series of editorials arguing that people who had been arrested for political offences could only be deemed petty criminals because they had been convicted under the Criminal Code of Canada. Now, within the newsroom the editor at that time was Clark Davey, with whom you are familiar. I voiced my disagreement. I said that these people had political beliefs on the basis of which they had taken this action for which they had been arrested. I was warned and told that my views were not consistent with The Globe and Mail views.
Senator Tkachuk: Were they violent views or just disagreements?
When you say action, do you mean political action?
Mr. Seed: This was the 1970-1971 period, and there was a high tide of protest in Canada. Canadians were protesting against the war in Vietnam, the Americanization of Canada, and so forth. Different people had been arrested in demonstrations, for example.
Now, I am not contesting that the evidence was wrong. The point was that people, who on the basis of their conscience had taken a stand, had been arrested, tried and convicted. The issue is that you then cannot editorially call them nothing more than a petty criminal. This is in violation of the right of conscience and also of freedom of assembly.
I was asked not to attend any political activity, meeting, demonstration or anything where it might be known that I was a reporter for The Globe and Mail. The ironic thing was that this was nine days after they had nominated me for a national journalism award for features writing for a series I had done on the centralization of the Unemployment Insurance commission in Toronto. I told them that I could not do that and that I had not done anything to bring The Globe and Mail into disrepute in any way. Obviously, there was no question about the quality of my journalism, but could not agree with their terms. I mentioned my rights as a Canadian. Their response was to tell me to clean out my desk and get out of the office by the next day.
Senator Tkachuk: You talk about disinformation almost as if there was a conspiracy, which as conservative I often think the same thing.
In Nova Scotia, in the Halifax area, who would be part of this conspiracy? Would The Chronicle-Herald be part of it? Would Global be part of it? Would CBC be part of it? Would CTV be part of it? Who would be part of this process of disinformation?
Mr. Seed: If I can give a bit of an extended answer. First of all, as a conservative, you are well aware of the treatment that was accorded to John Diefenbaker during the Night of the Long Knives. You will remember the role of the Americans from President Kennedy down to the American Embassy in Ottawa and the meetings that were held in the basement of the U.S. Embassy. During those meeting the major players in the Canadian media began the whole disinformation campaign that John Diefenbaker was violating Canada's NATO commitments by refusing to situate nuclear tipped Bomarc missiles in Canada. You will remember the anger that the Americans had for his refusal to join the maritime blockade of Cuba and so forth. So it is not I who has come up with this phenomenon.
Senator Tkachuk: I am not saying you did. I am just asking.
Mr. Seed: It is well documented that it is operated within Canada against our sovereignty, as well as on the international plane.
In 2000, the U.S. media group called FAIR disclosed that the U.S. army had a psychological warfare unit of five people working within CNN newsroom offices in Atlanta. Six months after the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein the U.S. revealed that act was performed by a U.S. army psychological operations unit. It was never reported in Canada.
The Chairman: Sir, you have to tighten up a bit. I am so sorry.
Mr. Seed: I do not implicate the ordinary journalists, except at the level of what is called ``self-censorship'' and the case of Stephen Kimber is fairly well-known. He had to resign as a columnist from The Daily News after they would not print a column in which he had criticized Izzy Asper. He admitted he carried out self-censorship in terms of not speaking out on questions in which the Aspers and CanWest had vested interests.
The disinformation comes on key questions and it comes on the phenomenon. So, on the question of coverage of the fisheries, I implicate CBC, The Chronicle-Herald, The Daily News, The Globe and Mail and especially the Irving Group in New Brunswick because that is where Burnt Church is located.
Senator Munson: I want to follow up on the implications with regard to the mainstream media. What we are hearing here is the truth within your publications. If your publication is independent you are not beholding to anybody except the way that you see the world turn. Is it all about your perception of what you see?
Mr. Seed: No.
Senator Munson: Then what is it?
Mr. Seed: We also make mistakes. Independent publications are not a guarantee that truth or news will be reported on an objective and scientific basis. This is our aim and we have developed our work to where we think we have upheld that aim.
The question of truth itself, viewed philosophically for example, exists independently of how you or I look at it. You have a phenomenon called ``objective reality.'' Objective journalism is not reporting what is constructed as or conceived as by both sides of the story. It seeks the truth from facts and reflects those facts in your writing. Now, my problem with many journalists is not an issue of competence or bias, but too many journalists these days simply do not do their homework on particular issues. I can give you numerous examples such as the Stojko controversy, and so forth.
Senator Munson: Are you saying that they do not do their homework because of this whole new big ownership game that gives them too little time to be independent in their investigations?
Mr. Seed: That is one aspect of it, and another is the journalism schools themselves. You can discuss that with Bruce Wark when he presents his submission.
There is a culture which has affected many journalists to simply take what is said and recycle it. It is purely stenography. At the same, there are extreme objective pressures. There was a very good example given to your committee by Professor Thompson in terms of the closing down of foreign bureaus and the lack of Canadian reporters deployed to Africa. That is another aspect of the problem. Now we do not have any bureaus in Africa either. We are taking measures to send out independent journalists to different places to find out for ourselves what is taking place. However, we have printed information on Africa, so it is a question of the editorial decisions that are taken. This is what I really want to look at in terms of how the media actually does intersect with the state or government strategies on different questions.
The number of journalists is a problem, and decreasing numbers of journalists is a problem. The pressures on the journalists are a problem. Many of them are sincere, well-meaning journalists. Many of them become extremely disillusioned and frustrated and leave the industry. Some of them wind up teaching in journalism schools, and I do not mean that in a derogatory way. And others just bomb out.
Senator Munson: The main paragraph of our mandate states:
We are studying the appropriate role of public policy in helping to ensure that Canada's news media remains healthy, independent and diverse.
Well, it seems to me from your testimony that the news media are hardly healthy, independent or diverse.
I understand your political philosophy, which is independent and diverse, and I suppose it is healthy in a way.
How do you view the mainstream media in general terms?
I think that individual journalists try to do the things to be healthy, independent and diverse, and I guess they face the roadblocks to which you refer.
I lived in China for five years and the Chinese government would call me in and say, ``Mr. Munson, you must learn to seek truth through facts.'' I am still thinking about that. Whose facts? What truth?
In this very independent world we have the ability to read your political philosophy or the philosophy of those who write for your organization, or we have the choice of picking up mainstream news media and taking that and coming to an opinion on how we view the world.
Mr. Seed: I cannot speak for the Chinese government. I have known a lot of journalists, both from working within the mainstream media as well as lecturing in seven journalism schools. Many journalists attend our symposiums on media and disinformation. We want to build links with these journalists. We want them to take a stand within this culture of self-censorship.
You may be familiar with Michael Klare's film on his revisiting Vietnam. He documents how during the 1960s he himself censored his own reports on the war in Vietnam, and he was one of the most acknowledged and distinguished correspondents at that time.
In theory and principle we have a choice. Your Senate committee is here in Halifax and I am here to exchange my experiences with you. In reality, this question of choice is very problematic. What resources do you have such that you can make your views known?
For example, the Internet is now given as the alternative example to the homogenization of the media, to the lack of diversity. So, we have the Internet and people can log on and find all kinds of information. At the same time, it is argued that the growth of the media monopolies themselves is a barrier against homogenization because they have the ability to tailor these publications to this interest and that interest. Twenty per cent of all Americans, I do not know what the figure is in Canada, log onto one Internet provider, AOL Time Warner. Now, what I understand is that Canada is the most heavily monopolized country in the Western world in terms of the media.
We can only do this publication because it is done on a voluntary basis. The reason we have it is because it has touched Nova Scotians as well as we send 400 copies to Scotland and Ireland and our Black history supplement goes to Afro-American communities in Africa, and so forth. There is no way we can ship this publication outside our province, apart from Moncton, New Brunswick.
In reality the Canadian, outside our immediate locale, has no option to choose our publication and to become acquainted with our views. The marketing we do is based solely on our work and word of mouth and the same applies to the Internet. Now, we are very happy because the Internet is the World Wide Web and our hits or visits have increased 600 per cent in the last year. Thirty per cent of the visits are from outside North America. This shows that there is an interest in in-depth material which is well edited, hopefully well written, and well researched. We can determine the interest of our readership by the number of visits we have in a year.
I am always puzzled by the number of professional writers like Donald Cameron, who are interested in writing for our publication at no cost. I believe that he and other professional and non-professional writers are disillusioned with the media-savvy people.
How many independent publications have lasted 10 years that have not been commercialized or monopolized?
In the United States the Alternative Press is now part of The New York Times monopoly.
Senator Munson: You seem to be making the argument that there is complicity between the government and journalists and disinformation.
Mr. Seed: Yes.
Senator Munson: Well, as a former journalist, I may have received some pretty crappy information, but I never felt that I was ever part of a campaign or a program to sell a government line. I remained an individual reporter in mainstream media trying to find balance with all of my reports. If I received disinformation then I guess I would have to go back and try to find the source of that disinformation.
I would argue with you that if reporters are part of it they do not know they are really part of it because they take what they get and they put it all together and they try to come out with a report that is informative.
I get a bit offended that I am characterized, or I was in my old job and others today, as a person who is willingly carrying on that kind of what you describe as disinformation.
The Chairman: May I step in here with a supplementary before I let you comment?
It seems to me that in a sense it is almost irrelevant, from the point of view of the public at large, whether it is disinformation or simply conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom plays a powerful role in journalism as everywhere else in life.
You are on the World Wide Web. You do have links that go significantly beyond Nova Scotia. Back when I was a journalist, one of the things that always fascinated me was the influence of small, unconventional media. You go back almost as far as I do, Mr. Seed.
You remember I.F. Stone who was one human being sitting in a basement with a bunch of paper. He had an enormous influence on a lot of people, although he never got rich.
I wonder if what you are talking about, and this is perhaps designed to irritate you a little bit, is not just part of the natural scheme of things. In the natural scheme of things there is always and everywhere a received body, a received world view that determines what most people think about most things and what most people, including most journalists, think is important. Beating on the doors always and beating on the windows and putting sticks between the spokes of the wheels are the dissenters, the people like you. Dissenters go through their lives being furious because they think that not enough people pay attention but they have a bigger influence than in their moments of black depression, they think they have.
Mr. Seed: I am not sure that people are not paying attention. I am quite happy when I meet somebody and they say they like my article and I ask them why. In my office we call that a ``Tony question.''
In my view, our publication is unique in North America. I came to a revelation at one of the trade shows when a man told me that he loved the magazine. We all know that it is difficult for a man to say ``I love.''
Senator Munson: Especially with a whole bunch of guys around.
Mr. Seed: Yes. I do not have this problem of living an isolated life in the attic or a basement like the anarchists.
Senator, I am not implicating you in either your position as a journalist or your position in the PMO because I have not done an analysis on your work. With due respect, there are facts and these facts have become so abundant that they are unassailable, they cannot be denied.
There is a film called, Above the Law — Part 2 which is aired on Aboriginal People's Television Network. Without going into the whole story, the film includes six minutes of an internal RCMP training film which talks about how the RCMP will ``use smear and disinformation campaigns,'' to embroil the media and if they do not the media will come up with their own version of the events. The aim was to justify the Canadian military involvement in the Gustafson Lake standoff. Its aim was to produce a credible explanation to the Prime Minister's office, and the federal cabinet, to deploy the Canadian armed forces to that location.
I did not get into the CCIS role in fomenting this process of incitement in the wake of the Marshall decision. It is also documented and in part CBC did it. They used the Freedom of Information Act to come out with two reports.
So, I do not say the media is complicit. I say that the media has a common set of interests, and in this I am not including the salaried employees. I am talking about the vested interest. In terms of kind of an internal struggle of those who stand for enlightenment or think they stand for reason, science and progress, yes, that unfolds. The situation around the world and within Canada has changed dramatically, and I give to you the change in coverage of wars from the time of the Vietnam War to the Iraq war. During that time the military have managed to place restrictions on the mainstream media.
Senator Munson: I have never liked that word ``imbedded.''
Mr. Seed: Yes.
The Chairman: Well, we did not do that in this country. We did not go imbedded.
The Chairman: Soldiers did not but the Germans did.
Mr. Seed: No, it is not true that Canada did not go. Five days before Jean Chrétien announced that Canada would not participate in the war the U.S. air force was flying 25 flights a day with 5,000 soldiers through Gander, Stephenville and St. John's, Newfoundland. There are three photos for this on the Gander CBC website. To their credit, they put the photo on the website. There was not a single national story on this subject. I wrote the only story, but it was in an independent publication. Paul Cellucci, our friend from down south, hailed Canada for providing the fourth largest military contribution to the war effort. All the major Canadian dailies supported the war against Iraq. Where is the conventional wisdom in a war that is based on lies, falsification and fallacy? This has become well-known, the so-called weapons of mass destruction.
The war itself, under the United Nations Charter and international law was illegal, but in Canada it was reduced to a question of going on a multilateral basis or a unilateral basis, or whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and so forth. Whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, the war was illegal. It was a war to invade and occupy an independent nation and people. Many irrational arguments for the war included the idea that we were protecting human security. Canada's navy was involved and 30 Canadian military personnel were in the region. Canada as a whole did not decide to join what was called the ``coalition of the willing.'' In Canada at that time the public opinion poll was 60 per cent against, and in Quebec I think it was 72 per cent against the war. The demonstration against the war in Iraq in Montreal was larger than the demonstrations in New York City.
There is a disconnect between the editorial policy of the Canadian print media and the Canadian people. Hence, you have what I call a ``crisis of credibility.'' It cannot be looked at that media follows conventional wisdom and so forth. There was nothing conventional about the wisdom of George Bush and Tony Blair to fabricate falsifications to justify going to war, to occupy Afghanistan.
Senator Tkachuk: I do not want to get into an argument here about whether they should go to Iraq, but you cannot have it both ways. I mean you cannot have newspapers being independent and then say they did not follow public opinion, which is what you just said.
Mr. Seed: No, what I am saying there is that they were not independent.
Senator Tkachuk: Well, obviously they did not follow the opinion of the Canadian public. The Canadian public did not want to go war. The newspapers were saying we should go to war. If it had been the reverse, they would have been independent. Being the way they were, they are not independent. So, I do not get it.
The Chairman: We have two assertions of viewpoint here, both eloquently expressed. We have time for one more question and Senator Trenholme Counsell has been waiting patiently.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I have been listening and reading at the same time. I love this magazine and it appeals to my Scottish blood. I am going to keep this magazine as it is a wonderful resource.
Mr. Seed: Well, thank you.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: We are here to learn and to maybe be able to take examples across the land. Having said I love this, I want to ask you a couple of what I think are rather honest and direct questions.
First of all, I see at one point, free. Is that because it is a free supplement and then I see membership, I see forms to pay, to subscribe?
Mr. Seed: Well, I thought you were going to ask for a subscription after your remarks.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I might. It depends on how I feel at the end of this session.
Mr. Seed: The magazine is distributed free through 840 locations. At the same time people can subscribe to the magazine.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do they subscribe to the magazine in order to support it?
Mr. Seed: If they want to support it or ensure that they get the magazine when it comes out because it goes very quickly.
We have subscriptions in 30 U.S. states, all the Canadian provinces, but the majority of our subscriptions are in Nova Scotia and the majority of those are in Halifax.
When the magazine comes out it flies off the rack, so to speak.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Has that produced a conflict in terms of having piles of it free and at the same time putting in opportunities to subscribe?
Mr. Seed: Well, let me answer that because this actually further illustrates my answer to Senator Munson's question about choice and Canadian's have choice.
The store owner, the small entrepreneur, the chain store does not earn any money from the magazine. They provide us with free shelf space and we stack those shelves. We visit each of the 840 locations and set up our own distribution network. We teach the owners about our magazine, how to pronounce the name and what the name means. We include the owners in our list of readers. The owners pass on the information and so it goes. The stores find the magazine to be an asset to their business. They call it ``value-added.''
We do have distribution problems. The metal newspaper boxes cost several hundred dollars, and in places like Toronto there are 10 or 15 of them outside of the subways.
The Chairman: And then they get vandalized.
Mr. Seed: Does that answer your question?
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Yes. Volume 7, number 41, was written in 2002 and this one was written in 2004. I get a very, very different reaction looking at the two different magazines.
In your introductory remarks you referred to media bias and balance. When I look at number 41 I really wonder about bias and balance because it is obviously very pro-Palestinian. I see that you contributed an article to that edition but did not contribute to the other 2004 edition.
I am not sure why you wrote in one and not the other. Was it because you wanted people to know your opinion on the Palestinian issue?
Let us say that you want to provide good journalism and balance. Would you write another article on the Palestinian-Israeli issue and take a different slant?
I ask because your article is very strong, and I am not criticizing you, I am just saying it is very strong on one side of the debate.
Mr. Seed: Well, actually I do have an article in the Gaelic edition, but there is a three-person team that puts it out and it was written by the three of us. It is about Gaelic disinformation in the provincial media.
The article on Palestine, in the first edition to which you are referring is actually the text of a speech I delivered.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Yes, it says that.
Mr. Seed: Every time there is a demonstration the media reports say ``There was a Jew,'' or ``There was an Arab,'' but they never report how a Canadian feels about the demonstration. So, for example, at this same demonstration the media focused on Mr. Gary Zatzman because he is Jewish, and then, to their astonishment they found out that he disagreed with the policies of the State of Israel towards the Palestinian people. So, his views were simply not reported. There is a type of ethnic stereotyping going on.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I do not want to get into that issue in particular.
I wonder if you are trying to be all things to many people. One of the magazines is a beautiful, cultural document on Nova Scotia, and the other is totally different in terms of your editorial content and story content on so many very important issues.
What is it your mandate to report, or is it wide open?
The Chairman: Please, give your answer in two sentences or less.
Mr. Seed: Well, in essence our mandate is a discovery magazine and that necessitates our voyage of discovery investigating relationships both in natural and social circumstances.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: You do say, culture, heritage, history, language, and politics.
Mr. Seed: The main thrust of the other publication is the Black history supplement. Both The Chronicle-Herald and The Daily News used to have Black history supplements, but at the present time we are the only publication of that kind, in Nova Scotia.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: That is very important.
Mr. Seed: These are editorials with a distinct Black history supplement. We also open up our space to other groups on the question of forestry.
I would not say that we are biased, but we do come to editorial conclusions. In that way we are partisan, we do have partisan views. We try and separate, if you like, our editorials from our journalism.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Thank you very much and I am going to keep this copy.
The Chairman: Nobody move because I understand you have a photographer here, Mr. Seed.
Mr. Seed: Did he actually come?
The Chairman: I understand he did and if he will rush up we will give him approximately 30 seconds.
I will observe that I have been amused that what I would call a tabloid newspaper is called a magazine. It reminds me of The Economist which is in a magazine format and yet, it calls itself a newspaper. I guess that means that freedom of expression goes all the way. You can call yourself whatever you want to call yourself. Were you ever in a magazine format or was it always this format?
Mr. Seed: It has always been published in this format.
The Chairman: Well, I spent a long time working on a very different tabloid newspaper and it is a wonderful format in which to work. You can do a lot with a tabloid.
Mr. Seed: Well, just by the by, in terms of aesthetics and typography and also for colour, it has had an influence in the media in the Maritimes.
The Chairman: I am sure it has.
Mr. Seed: The former president of Web Atlantic Limited said that we were the only people who were exploiting the potential of the web offset press to the maximum.
The Chairman: Yes. And you do it very nicely.
Mr. Seed: Yes, we have turned the pages sideways, and so forth. Now, of course, National Post with their avenue section has done interesting things as well.
The Chairman: I would really like to go on forever, but we cannot. Thank you both very much. I hope you will leave us a copy of your full presentation.
Mr. Seed: I will send a copy to the clerk. I have separate PDF file as well.
The Chairman: The PDF file is one thing, but your speaking notes were separate and we would really like to have them because I had to cut you off before you were finished.
Thank you very much indeed. We are very grateful.
If I were to produce $10 could I buy those posters?
Mr. Seed: Oh, this?
The Chairman: Yes. You said they were $5 each.
Mr. Seed: Actually, can I send this to you?
The Chairman: Yes. Thank you.
Mr. Seed: The whale poster is a particular keeper because it is one of a kind.
The Chairman: Senators, I will now ask our next witness to come forward. He is Professor Bruce Wark from University of King's College, the School of Journalism, I believe.
Mr. Bruce Wark, Associate Professor of Journalism, School of Journalism, University of King's College, as an individual: Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.
Years ago when I was producer at the CBC Radio program The House, I had the pleasure of interviewing Senator Eugene Forsey. Before the interview began, Senator Forsey asked if I was any relation to Senator Wark. Senator Wark? I thought he must be joking. I was born in Northern Ontario the late forties and my father and grandfather worked for the mines. My mother's family had been subsistence farmers and lumber camp workers here in Nova Scotia. So it seems strange to hear that a Wark had been a member of Canada's elite. Indeed Senator Forsey told me that the Honourable David Wark was summoned to the Senate in 1867 from Fredericton, New Brunswick, and he served until his death in 1905 at the tender age of 101. My mother always said, ``We should be proud of our working class roots'' so I assured Senator Forsey that the late great Senator Wark and I were neither kith nor kin.
I suppose that my working class roots made me conscious of power and what it was like not to have it, and as a consequence, during the two decades I worked at CBC Radio I thought a lot about media power. However, it was not until I moved to Nova Scotia in 1986 that I experienced what it was like to live in a part of the country where media power is not only concentrated in relatively few hands, but those hands often belong to strangers who do not think much about Atlantic Canada. I mean the Thomsons of the world, the Conrad Blacks or the Aspers. Okay, so we do have our own home-grown Irvings, but few would argue that Irving media domination has been good for New Brunswick. The Senate committee led by Keith Davey certainly did not think so.
Now, the thing about living in one of the smaller regions is that there are fewer media outlets and when the media landscape changes, the effects are immediately noticeable. For instance, when Conrad Black bought up a local newspaper and chopped half a million dollars out of its budget to help finance his new National Post we noticed. When chain-owned radio stations abandon the news business altogether, we notice. CBC Television virtually pulled out of the region, we noticed. When the chain-owned Global TV station buys Black's paper and a local columnist resigns because he is not allowed to criticize the Aspers or the Israeli government, we notice. When Nova Scotia's best journalist decides he can no longer make a decent living and goes into the PR business, we notice.
A few weeks ago, The Daily News columnist Bretton Loney wrote an excellent summary of how today's media landscape has affected news coverage.
When I started in the journalism business 21 years ago a news conference — almost any news conference in Halifax — attracted a dozen or more journalists from radio reporters from CHNS and CJCH, as well as CBC, and jostled with reporters from Halifax's two daily newspapers. Journalists from the National Broadcast and Print Wire Services came out in force as did ATV and CBC Television. But now, only one or two reporters may show up. The traditional media's coverage of your community is shrinking and that isn't a good thing.
Well, I agree with him. I think he is bang on.
It is not a good thing when there are fewer journalists covering local and regional news. Sure when big events happen nationally or internationally, people have a huge variety of reports to choose from, but when the story is closer to home, coverage is likely to be sparse or even nonexistent. It is worth noting that people here in Halifax are, as you heard this morning from The Chronicle-Herald people, relatively well off compared to other smaller cities and towns in the Maritime provinces. At least here we have two competing daily papers, one which is owned by a local family.
In August of 2000, I filed a formal complaint to the CRTC over CBC TV's decision to chop its provincial coverage to 22 minutes a day. That decision, made at head office in Ottawa, proved to be a disaster both for the CBC and for its viewers. The two privately owned TV networks cover all three provinces and cannot afford to spend a large amount of time or money on a provincial story. That was CBC's role, but for five years now the corporation has shirked that role.
I realize CBC is talking about getting back into regional TV news, but I am afraid it plans to do so ``on the cheap'' by combining all of its journalistic resources; a move that I predict will really hurt radio. Believe me; I know from past experience at CBC Radio how combined news staffs really affect radio coverage.
I would like your committee to recommend some positive steps that would have strong public support, and that would improve journalism in Atlantic Canada and offset the worst effects of media concentration.
I hope you will recommend, as the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage did, that the federal government provide stable multi-year funding for the CBC. Although international comparisons are tricky, with the use of 1999 figures, the committee found that Canada ranks below the OECD average when it comes to financing public broadcasting on a per capita basis. I am quoting from the heritage committee report:
Finland, Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom placed in the top four with public funding expenditures that were three to four times greater that what is spend in Canada on the CBC.
Reinvesting in CBC is of crucial importance given Canada's proximity to the U.S., and CBC needs money to fulfill the requirement in the 1991 Broadcasting Act that the public broadcaster,
Reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences while serving the special needs of those regions.
That requirement is of special importance to a small region such as ours.
It has been argued that private TV stations are doing a good job and that they are attracting large audiences for their news programs so that there is no real need for taxpayers to foot the bill for CBC coverage. In small regions such as ours CBC should provide a provincially-based alternative coverage that focuses on the more expensive investigative reporting. That is the kind of journalism we desperately need and CBC TV used to provide it but, unfortunately, no longer does and no other media outlet has really stepped in to fill the void. I was glad to hear The Chronicle-Herald people say this morning that they now have a two-person investigative unit.
CBC Radio needs money so that it can depend less on telephone journalism and more on the shoe leather kind of journalism. CBC Radio also faces another problem, which is a lack of local competition. The private broadcasters, as you heard this morning, do not have any reporters and do not generate any original news. This leaves CBC as the only game in town for audiences who want more than rip-and-read journalism. This lack of competition, combined with severe budget cuts, has made CBC bland. It is noteworthy that because of the lack of competition the staff is overworked and suffers from low morale.
I hope you recommend the re-regulation of private radio so that the commercial stations are required to provide at least some original journalism. In that respect, I was encouraged to read the following statement in the government's recent response to the heritage committee report. It reads:
The Government intends to use its powers to set out in section 7 of the Broadcasting Act to direct the CRTC to ensure that Canadians from communities of various sizes have access to an appropriate level of local and regional news and public affairs programming from a variety of sources.
And I was glad to see that phrase, ``from a variety of sources'' and not just in radio CBC.
We need to consider a shifting of media power to the regions. In a recent Globe and Mail article, Noreen Golfman, who teaches at Memorial University in Newfoundland, suggests that the CBC should establish a better balance between regional and network programs. She says the region should produce more prime-time programs with the style and content of programming varying widely, and reflecting local needs. While I agree this would be desirable, frankly I am pessimistic about persuading CBC bureaucrats in Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal that this should happen. All we have to do is recall how Brian Mulroney forced the CBC to regionalize Newsworld and how after Mulroney's departure, CBC bureaucrats gradually centralized it.
I think, therefore, that we need to look carefully at regional governance for CBC, with regional boards of directors instead of one national one board of directors.
I suggest that the federal government reinvest in CBC to improve provincial and regional journalism to offset the worst effects of media concentration. I am also advocating the re-regulation of privately owned radio stations to require them to produce original news and current affairs programming, and I would like to see careful consideration of shifting more media power to the regions perhaps by establishing regional CBC boards of directors.
Senator Eyton: Thank you for your presentation. I have a long association with the University of King's College, and because of that I have been asked to lead it off. I will be gentle.
Your observations and the recommendations referred to a lack of regional and local coverage and input. We have heard about the phenomena of small, low-power radio stations that I think could be important in the form of community broadcasting or local broadcasting. Communities and newspapers have come together largely with the efforts of volunteers, but with perhaps a subscriber base of some sort. There are some wonderful examples and some that I guess started ambitiously and did not work out as well as expected. It seems to me it is a good idea and something that could be encouraged.
Do you think that a movement of that sort amplified say ten times, might be able to respond to some of the weaknesses you see in the media coverage here in Canada?
Mr. Wark: On paper I think it looks promising, but, the reality is that there is not enough money to support such a venture. Here in Halifax, we have the campus community station CKDU, which is our largest community station. It is financed by the student's union at Dalhousie University. The University of King's College uses that station to broadcast our journalism programs. CKDU has only 50 watts. I mean I have light bulbs more powerful than that. It cannot be heard beyond downtown Halifax. It is chronically short of money and cannot hire many staff members.
Journalism, as I think The Chronicle-Herald people said this morning, is an expensive thing. It is a business cost. To do journalism well requires a fair amount of money, and I do not think that the community can do the quality of journalism or the breadth of journalism that say CBC could do in this region if it had a proper budget.
The community sector, while it is important as a third sector in radio, is not adequate. It is not up to the task of providing a full spectrum of news coverage.
Senator Eyton: I just thought it may be part of the answer. You talked about the cutbacks in the CBC funding and their lesser ability to provide local and even regional coverage. Seven or eight years ago, CBC news and information programs were head of the pack in Newfoundland, and NTV was way south. After the budget cuts NTV recovered and the lines crossed and NTV is progressing north and CBC seems to have settled at quite a low level.
It struck me that the marketplace filled in the space that the CBC vacated. So, in effect, Newfoundlanders apparently felt that they had an alternative service, they were making a choice, and presumably because one way or another were supporting it through advertisers and otherwise that there was no harm done in that exercise even though there was a cut in funding. This information was presented to us in the form of charts, yesterday, while we were in Newfoundland.
Do you not think that there are appropriate privately-owned responses? I do not believe bureaucracies and governments do these well in general terms, and so I look for reasons why they must do something where there is clearly a need that cannot be answered by the private sector.
I am not at all sure that I am persuaded. I would have to see clear evidence that there was a need that was not being fulfilled that could only be served by CBC, and I suspect that would be a pretty tough test.
Mr. Wark: Well, I think that comment that you make is a very fair one and it is a comment that I think the bureaucrats at CBC head office believed. Robert Rabinovitch believed that the CBC should be a strong national presence and he did not feel that there was a need to be rooted in the regions. He was wrong because CBC has lost much of its audience. The local CBC supper-hour show used to have a bigger audience than Peter Mansbridge and The National.
I think that the government response to the Lincoln committee has it right when they say that Canadians rank local news over national or international news.
You are correct that ATV, and to a lesser extent Global Television, have filled in the CBC void. ATV now provides two hours of news and current affairs a night. It is not well enough staffed, but it is professional, the ratings are excellent, and they somehow manage to combine the coverage of the three Maritime provinces.
What I am saying is even though ATV is doing a good job it is not enough given the problems with media concentration in the area. We need a publicly funded alternative. I am not suggesting that we bring in other regulations and forbid cross-ownership, or chain ownership, the market itself will look after those problems.
What I am saying is let the public broadcaster pull its weight as it is required to do under the 1991 Broadcasting Act. I suggest that the CBC live up to the licensing requirements imposed on it by the CRTC at the time of the present licence renewal in January 2000. I suggest that the CBC fulfil its own commitments and provide a broader alternative so that the citizens of Nova Scotia can get the coverage that they pay for as taxpayers. If the CBC fulfills its commitment it will supplement the coverage already provided by the two privately owned broadcasters.
Your comment about bureaucracy is fair, but I think there is a misperception. I worked at CBC for 19 years. I stayed out of the bureaucracy. I used to say I had more power than the president of the CBC because I actually put stuff right on the air. The reporters in the front lines, the producers, the editors, they are the people who are not bureaucrats or part of a bureaucracy but are actually covering the news.
I can say this about CBC; it gives you immense freedom to go out there without fear or favour to cover the events as a journalist, providing you adhere to CBC standards. A CBC journalist does not have to worry about commercial considerations or any other considerations, to do his or her work. The CBC is also heavily committed to training new personnel.
I hope I am persuading you that in a small region like ours where we only have two other TV stations, that there is a place for CBC. In Newfoundland the situation is even more extreme than it is here in Nova Scotia. No wonder people turned away from CBC as the Mandate Review Committee said in 1996 and Caplan-Sauvageau said in 1986, ``The CBC must be rooted in the regions'' and they were right.
Senator Eyton: Would you distinguish between CBC Radio and CBC Television, as I think most Canadians would?
Mr. Wark: I think CBC Radio has done an excellent job of promoting itself to the opinion leaders in the country. CBC Television has to cater to everybody, from the hockey fan to the Suzuki fan to the soap opera fan. CBC Television is not as well loved, although it has programs like Suzuki's, The Nature of Things, or Marketplace, or The Fifth Estate that you cannot get elsewhere.
I think CBC Television gets a bad rap, whereas CBC Radio since the radio revolution in the 1970s has been able to concentrate on intelligent talk and intelligent news coverage. CBC Radio is much loved by the opinion leaders and the elite. Peter Gzowski was mourned when he died. CBC Television is also doing an enormous amount of good service as a public broadcaster without necessarily getting the credit for it; The National is really a wonderful resource for this country.
Senator Munson: Well, there is conflict of interest everywhere with all my questions here I can tell you that. I mean, my son is going to go to King's in the fall. Michael Meighen is a great friend. Trevor Eyton is becoming a good friend. I taught at King's for a year, I think I was the only private sector person that ever taught there.
I like what you say about regional television. I come from the private sector and I really mean this, and I worked here from 1992-97 after my time in China. I wish the senators could see the brilliant documentary work that was done in Newfoundland. I forget the name of the program, but it won many awards.
Mr. Wark: Yes. I guess you are referring to Land and Sea.
Senator Munson: Land and Sea and another local program, Here and Now, and both of them have disappeared. What brain in Toronto would take away from Atlantic Canada and what person would ever think of ending that resource?
I will defend ATV and CTV to the hilt because I am from that area, but in terms of in-depth documentary programming, that is gone now. That debate is gone. I think it is a rotten shame that has been taken away, and I hope that in our deliberations we state the importance of regional programming. I mean everybody says all news is local; all news is regional as you said.
Mr. Wark: That is my take on diversity; ATV does Live at 5 and its news, and the CBC does its thing with the documentary work and with more investigative reporting. I think we can have diversity without having to pass regulations or intrude in newsrooms.
Senator Munson: Why did they just cut and cut?
Mr. Wark: To be fair, Mr. Rabinovitch faced a pretty bad crunch. About one-third of the budget was cut out of CBC over the period of the 1990s. Mr. Trudeau began the process in 1978. That is when the cuts first began, if you can believe it, and Prime Minister Mulroney continued to chip away at the CBC. If you believe in public broadcasting the Liberal red book reads like a dream. It was only when the Liberals came to power that they really began to swing the axe, and from 1993 on about one-third of the budget was cut.
In 1986 Caplan-Sauvageau said CBC Radio should not be cut any further, and that to do so would endanger the corporation. Our information morning program here on CBC Radio gets by on a fraction of the staff it once had, and you really hear it on the air. They still have their host and they still manage to keep it going, but it is really a very bad scene.
Senator Munson: The Liberal government made the cuts.
Mr. Wark: Yes, unfortunately. Paul Martin wrote the red book. There is an understanding of the need for public broadcasting in the red book, but unfortunately the CBC budget was cut. I suggest that we reinvest in the CBC.
Senator Munson: I also do not believe that the private sector will spend the money, maybe some places they will, regionally to fill that void. They will do some good work, but they will not do extensive week by week investigative f work.
Mr. Wark: The private sector regrets that CBC is pulling out because it weakens the market and allows them to be cut.
Senator Munson: Where do your students go after they have graduated?
Mr. Wark: That is a real story. What is happening is the older ones, like me, the more expensive ones, are getting out and taking buyouts and the students are coming in as casual temporary employees. These casual employees full entry- level positions that are like internships. Over the years, CBC has converted itself into a floating pool of journalists who have no real job security, and that is not good either.
Senator Munson: Can I get your view on cross-media ownership?
Mr. Wark: I do not like it, but if there was not the appetite to do something about it after the Royal Commission on Newspapers in 1981, then I do not think that appetite exists today. I think we have to do something else and that is strengthening the public sector to offset it and let the market decide.
Senator Munson: So there is no turning back the clock and all the things that we all talk about in nostalgic ways?
Mr. Wark: We could fight that battle, but I do not think it is worth the fight. I think we have moved on to a new environment and it is time to turn the page.
Senator Tkachuk: I have a couple of questions on the CBC. Senators will correct me if I am wrong, but we heard that NTV turned around their evening news with different content and style and increased the time to one hour.
I notice that you recommend more money. I am not sure how much more money they need to actually have an influence on a particular marketplace, but I have always thought CBC Radio was a pretty darn good news source.
The testimony that we heard was that the CBC news budget was larger than the budget of ATV and that CBC has more reporters. Even with a larger budget and more reporters NTV took over their market. I do not buy the idea that more money is necessary to produce better news, as you say CBC Television needs.
Mr. Wark: I say both need more money.
Senator Tkachuk: If we are behind Finland and Denmark and United Kingdom, are their public broadcasters better than ours?
Mr. Wark: Oh, yes.
Senator Tkachuk: Do those countries have a healthier news environment than we have?
Mr. Wark: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: Tell us about that, because I think we would like to hear about the differences.
Mr. Wark: There is some discussion of the differences in the heritage committee report.
I lived for a time in London, England, which is a media paradise, a news junkie's paradise. The British have the popular papers, the tabloid press and the quality papers such as The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, and so on. The quality of both BBC Television and BBC radio is really something to behold. The private broadcasters are better than our private broadcasters, and I believe that is because of the public service broadcasting tradition. As you know, private broadcasting was kept out of Britain until the mid 1950s and the BBC had never run a commercial. The idea of a public service broadcasting service is firmly rooted in Britain, whereas we have a mixed sort of hybrid of the British and American systems here in Canada. That idea, I think, has improved the quality, or maintained the quality of British journalism well above journalism anywhere in the northern part of North America.
Senator Tkachuk: It must be easier in Britain because they have 50 million people that you could place in a small corner of Saskatchewan.
Mr. Wark: They have advantages.
Senator Tkachuk: They do have advantages while it is extremely difficult and very expensive for us to provide a similar service.
Mr. Wark: They do have a tradition of public service broadcasting and it is firmly rooted in their political culture, whereas we do and do not have it here in Canada.
We have struggled for years to get it right. We had the Royal Commission on Radio, the Tory CRBC, the Liberal CBC, and all the Royal commissions. We have had various versions of the Broadcasting Act, and I think we finally got it right with the Broadcasting Act in 1991. I think that if we only lived up to that act a lot of our problems with diversity would be solved. We have that template and I am pleased to see the government reaffirming that in their response to the Lincoln Committee.
Senator Tkachuk: Not that long ago we only had two TV networks; we had CBC and CTV, and no one complained about diversity. Now we have three, we have Global, we have CTV, and we have CBC. We have more diversity than we ever had.
Mr. Wark: My point comes back to the region, or think of the Province of Saskatchewan. I do not deny that we have more diversity with the three networks, but it is here in Nova Scotia where CBC barely exists any longer. CBC gives us only 22 minutes per day, five days a week and that is not coverage, and as has happened in Newfoundland, nobody is watching it anymore.
Sure we have lots of media coverage and lots of news washing over us, but we need someone to cover the city council and the legislature and so on. There is only one video journalist for CBC and one journalist from The Globe and Mail. I call it ``Toronto's national paper,'' one journalist covering all four provinces, now that is a joke.
Senator Tkachuk: I think we have one in Edmonton and it is for the Prairies.
Mr. Wark: Yes.
Senator Munson: And there is no Maclean's magazine in Atlantic Canada.
Mr. Wark: That is correct.
Senator Munson: I hope the new publisher recognizes that they have reporters all across the country except Atlantic Canada.
Mr. Wark: That is a serious problem. That is where I see the lack of diversity.
Senator Tkachuk: I am going to turn to Senator Trenholme Counsell because I do not want her to get with me.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Thank you, professor. I agree with all these things you are saying about the CBC and CRTC. We did not get into much about the private radio stations and their ability to produce more local news.
As a professor of history of journalism and of ethics of journalism, what would you say would be the three greatest ethical challenges facing journalism today in this country?
Mr. Wark: Well, when I worked at CBC as a reporter I used to say that writing was the hard part of the job, but I came to understand that the presentation of the material was the difficult part because you had to be credible on the air. Then after a while I thought that the hardest part was getting the story right because there is always more you can do to research the story.
I think the biggest ethical question facing journalists today is the issue of research, of taking the time, and having the skills to get it right. Senator Munson, you know what it is like working against the clock. To bring it back to diversity and fewer journalists, there seems to be even less time than there used to be.
CBC was going through cutbacks in 1986 when I shifted here as a national reporter to cover all three Maritime provinces. I filed a story every other day but soon I filed a story every day. I think I spent a year and a half here, and I should not admit this, and I broke one story in all that time. It was a minor story. Really, all you can do is repackage announcements, statements, and the latest developments. That was an unfortunate situation because I think research is key to the ethics of reporting.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: You place the time to do the research as the number one priority. What do you consider the second and third priorities?
Mr. Wark: The top three priorities are research, research and research.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Wow! That is an easy answer.
Mr. Wark: I think that is a huge thing because journalists are not corrupt, I do not think they are apt to cut corners. I think they do take pride in their work, but I think that they get sloppy when they do not get the time to really look into things. Tony Seed referred to that awful pack mentality that sets in and I have to agree with his statement. I was a member of the Ottawa Press Gallery and the Queen's Park Press Gallery for six years and I understand that pack mentality.
A journalist without the time to really look into things, to maybe read a book and research the topic ends up putting out that terrible kind of flat coverage. I write for the alternative weekly The Coast and have written about the coverage of the Gomery inquiry which I think is very truncated in terms of history. We have had these problems since the Pacific scandal, but because I write every couple of weeks to actually I have the opportunity to research items such as the Pacific scandal, or the scandals in Nova Scotia in the 1970s and 1980s.
I teach the research component and I am a big believer in research. I say that we can talk about ethics, honesty, objectivity, and fairness, and balance, but they do not mean a thing if we do not get to the bottom of the story.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Since we are looking a lot convergence and huge ownership, is this a factor in ethics, journalist by journalist?
Mr. Wark: I am interested in the idea that you might have to work for several media at once, and journalists are not just filing for radio you are also filing for TV. This increases the pressure because now you have even less time, less time, less time all the time. I covered the Jamaica election in 1987. The plane landed and within an hour I was filing based on material I gathered off of Jamaican radio. I had never visited the country before, but the pressure was so great, and I was only serving one master, the radio.
I worry about having to serve many masters and having even less time. The time for research is dwindling rather than expanding. We are going the wrong way.
Senator Eyton we spent the 1970s building CBC Radio up with wonderful programs like This Country in the Morning, Morningside, Sunday Morning, and As it Happens. All of those programs which were well budgeted, and well staffed and then we spend the 1980s and 1990s tearing them down. I think that is a tragedy.
The Chairman: My interest is sparked by your anecdote about covering Jamaica in the style what I would call ``tourism journalism.''
Mr. Wark: Yes, ``parachute journalism.''
The Chairman: Yes, the type of journalism where you jump off the plane and look around and say ``I see palm trees.''
Mr. Wark: I spent a week covering a story that never happened. I am very ashamed of that now because I was there to report on the rising tensions that never materialized.
The Chairman: How serious is it that Canadian news media in general have been closing down foreign bureaus and relying more and more on flying journalists into the area when there is a problem?
You can see my own bias from the way I have phrased the question, but that does not stop you from pushing back.
Should we be concerned about that situation?
Mr. Wark: Yes, although that is not a new situation. Canada has relied on foreign sources for its coverage for a long time. We have never really been in the business of foreign coverage.
The Chairman: We used to have a lot more foreign bureaus than we do now.
Mr. Wark: We had more than we do today, but in terms of other countries of comparable size we have never ranked high. It just has not been a priority because we have the CNN and the AP wire.
The Chairman: Does it make any difference at all to the quality of information that Canadians receive?
Mr. Wark: Yes. How often do you hear or read anything about Africa except when there is some terrible crisis, or a massacre or something of that nature. Do you know that Africa if four times the size of Canada and all we hear is their news concerning crises?
Our view of the world is much attenuated and I do not think that is a good thing. If we believe that we are citizens of the world and in a globalized world we are increasingly interdependent, we must rid ourselves of the North American parochialism that we share with the Americans. It is that parochialism that makes a 9/11 so devastating because nobody saw it coming even though it was clear that an attack was imminent. You could see the steady rise in terrorist incidents, yet the Americans were concerned about Gary Condit and Chandra Levy in the days leading up to the terrorist attacks on the U.S.
Our media is better because we have a public service sector, but at the same time I think we share with the Americans a kind of isolationist view of the world and that is not a healthy view in a global world.
The Chairman: You said at some point that CBC TV has to be all things to all people. Where is it written that CBC TV has to be all things to all people?
There are various conflicting views about CBC TV. We hear complaints from the private broadcasters that CBC is trying to capture their market with mass-market movies, running after their advertising, and the ratings so as to get the advertising dollars that the private sector thinks it needs. On the other hand, you hear people saying, and I speak now as a diehard CBC fan, that the CBC is an essential strand of the country. The CBC says that if does not get the ratings and the ad dollars they cannot do all the rest.
Is it possible that there is a different model that we could follow?
Mr. Wark: When CBC began it was the only broadcaster capable of providing American programming to regions like this which could not get those programs. CBC was never commercial free and from the beginning has provided a service to advertisers. As CBC grew a culture and mentality grew up about having to have the largest possible audience.
I believe that while CBC grew so did the political expectation that if Parliament was funding CBC the network should cater to all the possible constituencies, from sports fans to opera fans, to drama fans. CBC TV has tried to appeal to mass audiences. In TV, of course, the success is always judged on the ratings. I agree with you that success measured by ratings is not a good system.
The Chairman: I am trying to figure out if there is another model that could be examined. You know that CBC goes head to head with the commercial networks for everything from hockey to the Olympics. I am not a sports fan, but while I am in England I watch BBC and enjoy watching horse racing and cricket and other sports that I have never heard of. I find that soccer is like hockey and I do not enjoy it, but I find that the BBC has a different approach to sports broadcasting that keeps me interested in watching.
Is the CBC stuck trying to do everything it always did just because it always did it?
Mr. Wark: I would hope not, but look at what happened when the hockey season was cancelled. Instead of women's hockey or amateur hockey, which I hoped they might try, they chose Movie Night in Canada. Women's and amateur hockey was too expensive for them to pick up. That kind of mentality grows out of budget restrictions, and so, CBC chose movies over women's hockey because hockey did not guarantee the advertising revenue that the CBC needs that accounts for one-third of its budget.
I think we are stuck with the mentality and the model as long as we have a commercially based system in which the politicians want CBC to be all things to all people. I would like to see another model.
The Chairman: We are all part of the political system. So you are throwing the challenge back at us.
Senator Tkachuk: Is it possible that the CBC does not understand Canadian culture?
Part of the CBC mandate is to reflect Canadian culture, yet TSN telecasts college hockey, curling, and women's hockey. Junior and college hockey is a major part of our culture. Culture does not mean only opera and symphonies and poets.
Is it possible they just do not understand our culture?
Mr. Wark: I think CBC got in bed with the National Hockey League for commercial reasons, beginning with Foster Hewitt for God's sake. The commercial imperative is very strong in CBC Television.
Who are the great Canadians? Don Cherry is on CBC and so is David Suzuki. I would say maybe you are a bit too pessimistic when you say they do not understand the culture.
Senator Tkachuk: I think Don Cherry was a total accident. I do not think they ever wanted him there.
Mr. Wark: You get all those kinds of different strands at CBC. It is a big tent. You can see I am a CBC public broadcasting supporter, even though I am very critical of what they do. CBC needs improvement and it needs, I think, some commitment from the politicians of this country.
Senator Munson: I am a news junkie too, and I am pleased to announce that I have some news to relate to the committee. My little BlackBerry tells me that Cardinal Ratzinger is the new Pope Benedict XVI. So there we are. I just had to tell somebody because I was a reporter for 35 years and I am just like you, when I get a bit of information I want to share it. I did not research it so I hope it is right. I did not double source the information.
The Chairman: Professor Wark, thank you very much indeed.
We continue our hearings with a portion where members of the public are invited to come forward.
Our first invitees, Mr. Kevin Cox and Ms. Racquel Reid from Allnovascotia.com, are only semi-volunteers, as they had their arms slightly twisted to come forward. Please try to tell your story in five or six minutes and then we will ask you questions.
Mr. Kevin Cox, Allnovascotia.com, as an individual: I will start by saying that this was a last minute thing we put together. The last time I appeared before a Royal commission was in 1981 during the Kent commission. At that time, we were worried about Southam and Thomson dominating the empire, if we had any idea of what was going to come next.
I spent 23 and one-half years with The Globe and Mail, and five years with the Hamilton Spectator, and I have spent, with Ms. Reid, all of about six weeks with Allnovascotia.com, so if I do not have the detailed information you want, I apologize.
To clarify, our owner is in Great Britain, and we do not have his permission to come forward and speak today as representatives of the corporation, small as it is.
I understand that you are looking at the competitive situation and the media concentration and possible solutions to those problems. Certainly, as you have heard, the media landscape here in Nova Scotia is dominated by The Chronicle- Herald. I lived through that through 16 years as the Atlantic correspondent for The Globe and Mail. They are, basically, the agenda setters and the news leaders. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a style of news that they present and there is a style in which they present it.
There is a need in this province for an alternative media and there is a need for dissident voices. There is a need for people to criticize the institutions of this province and to analyse the goings-on in the province. The Daily News is in a different situation and does not provide, in my view, substantial competition to The Chronicle-Herald.
My apologies to any of The Daily News people who are in the room today. They are not of a significance size for writing competition. The national media does not provide competition, nor does it attempt to, they do not need to because they have their own audiences.
What we do at Allnovascotia.com, and Ms. Reid can contradict me if I am wrong, is publish an electronic newspaper, one of the few in North America that actually makes a profit. Do not ask me how it makes a profit because that is Ms. Reid's department.
Allnovascotia.com is the creation of David Bentley, the founder of The Daily News. This is what it looks like in paper form except we are not supposed to have paper forms because it is an all electronic newspaper. Allnovascotia.com is published daily and is sent via email. Each day, three and sometimes four reporters generate eight business stories for publication. The stories do not come off the wire services, they are unique. Sometimes they are prompted by press releases, but most of the time they are prompted by our own people making calls. We do not believe in news wires. We criticize business and sometimes we criticize the same people who buy our subscriptions. We had an interesting story on Aliant's bonuses today, the bonuses paid to their executives, and whether or not that was warranted in the year in which their share prices plunged and the profits were significantly below what had been anticipated, and they went through a five and half months strike. That is the kind of news that we cover.
We cover a lot of micro business. Who is building what? Who is buying what? In my view, and again am I new to it, I think it is a model for the alternative media. It is a low cost production. It does not have large overhead. It does not need printing presses. It is not a blog. Professional journalists put this publication together. I come from The Globe and Mail tradition, and I am learning that Allnovascotia.com lives by the same rules as the people who work for The Chronicle-Herald or The Globe and Mail. We have strict ethical considerations, same off the record considerations, and we put out as professional a product as possible.
Allnovascotia.com was not started with any government contributions; Mr. Bentley put his own money into it and continues to do so to this day. People have called us a niche publication, but I am not sure whether that is an appropriate description.
People have also asked us whether it would ever become a full-blown electronic newspaper sports and all the rest. That is really not something we cannot even look at because we are a small publication.
Ms. Racquel Reid, Alnovascotia.com, as an individual: We are very specialized so I do not think you would ever see us turn into a full-blown newspaper.
The cost is $23 a month for a daily paper and our subscribership is all over the world. Our subscriber base is about 1,000 and growing very slowly but surely.
The Chairman: We have questions.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you supplement your costs with advertisement?
Ms. Reid: We actually have just started selling advertising.
Senator Tkachuk: Are you making your money on subscriptions alone?
Ms. Reid: Up until a few months ago we did not earn revenues from advertising. In the beginning we earned our money from subscriptions.
Senator Tkachuk: When you say subscriptions all over the world, would most of them be here in this province?
Ms. Reid: A very high percentage, possibly 85 per cent, of our subscriber base is from Nova Scotia.
Senator Tkachuk: And is it targeted to a business reader?
Ms. Reid: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: It is a business magazine?
Ms. Reid: Yes.
Senator Munson: It is targeted to business people. Do you write it the same way you would write in The Globe and Mail or does it contain a ``point of view'' kind of journalism?
Mr. Cox: We do more analysis that I did at The Globe and Mail. As a journalist, I rather enjoy that, Senator Munson, as you can certainly appreciate. It is true we do more commentary. We do more analysis. We are moving towards editorials.
Senator Munson: What is the attraction for your 1,000 subscribers? Is it the quick accessibility to business news instead of finding the business page of The Chronicle-Herald or The Globe and Mail?
How did your subscribers find out about Allnovascotia.com?
Ms. Reid: A subscriber receives daily notification as to what we are covering and a link that takes them to that coverage. We are trying to get the word out to prospective subscribers.
Mr. Cox: We provide a unique perspective, and cover items that do not appear in other publications. We do not cover a lot of press conferences because we try to cover the story our own way. I know that sounds self-righteous, but it is true. We want to cover the story in our own way so our readers get a perspective they would not get anywhere else. Obviously, the readership is happy and the subscriber base is growing.
Senator Tkachuk: The new media is part of our study and this type of publication is very important to our findings. This is the first that I have heard of this kind of format, at least since I have been on the committee.
The Chairman: This model is unlike any other that we have heard of in this committee.
Mr. Cox: There is a publication called Business Edge that is on the Internet. The problem with their service ours is that they are paid subscriptions, so it is hard to really get a good look at them, but I think we could arrange for a sample subscription for Senator Munson for a couple of weeks.
Senator Munson: I will hand it around.
Mr. Cox: We could, or we will get in trouble.
Senator Munson: Did you do say it is a model which will appear in the future?
Mr. Cox: That is my opinion. I may be wrong. From the limited view that I have, I see it is the only way that somebody is going to make money off the Internet.
I know from my experience at The Globe and Mail that they do not put the resources that they need to into the dot- com service. Their main resources are put into your newspaper.
The fellow from Transcontinental was at the journalism school at King's, and he pointed out that all we want to do on the Internet is point towards products in order to make a purchase. They are not trying to provide a full service to you; they want you to buy something.
We publish everything you need to know about business in Nova Scotia today. I envision people saying that they need to know about sports in Ontario or the arts in B.C., and new publications springing up to fill those needs. This is reality and this model is the model that works.
Senator Eyton: Well, it is intriguing and thank you for coming.
Where did Mr. Bentley get the idea? It seems like an unusual idea because I can get lots of business information in the news from the time I get up at 6 o'clock in the morning until the time I go to bed at midnight. Now, clearly David Bentley thought there was a gap and he wanted to fill it, but what was his inspiration? I am curious.
Mr. Cox: Unfortunately, only Mr. Bentley can answer that question and he is not here today.
As to your point about there being so much business news, the problem in smaller provinces is that there is not as much down-home coverage. There is little in-depth coverage. In Ontario, you can find out pretty well anything that is going in your business community. I know from working at The Globe and Mail that you can, but it is not the same situation in Nova Scotia, even with The Chronicle-Herald and The Daily News coverage.
Ms. Reid: Some of the information is available but difficult to find.
Mr. Cox: Let me give you an example of our type of story. The other day, another liquid natural gas terminal was voted down in the Northeastern United States. With information like that we turn it around and ask what will happen to the Port Hawkesbury and Saint John proposals?
We look at the stories in a local way. During my time at The Globe and Mail we turned local stories into national stories.
Senator Eyton: That is great. Where do you plan to be next year? You have a unique approach, but no business is static. What are your plans for the future of your business?
Ms. Reid: We are going to keep growing.
Mr. Cox: Our goal is to grow and add editorial staff to our business. I must admit that we are hard pressed at the moment. Last Friday, I was the only reporter. A reporters' originality suffers when he or she is overworked, not that they ever did that at CTV, Senator Munson.
Senator Munson: No, no, but Kevin, you have always been a worker.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Mr. Cox, and Ms. Reid, it is nice to see you here today. I am enjoying your very interesting presentation.
I think our young people would make good use of your publication even though the subscription is prohibitive. Perhaps, Allnovascotia.com could make the publication available as a public service to our young people.
As a suggestion, you could do tonight's story on the new pope and whether he is hip or not. You could reach our young people, which is a concern of this committee.
Has anyone thought of giving this service to young people?
Mr. Cox: There is a very similar model.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Is anything happening in that regard?
Mr. Cox: No, and as far as I am aware there is nothing like that in the U.S. either.
This email market can flash five headlines at any specific age group or specific interest group. If any group is looking for independent reporting I believe it will be found via email. That is the way of the future.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: That might be great projects for our schools of journalism.
Mr. Cox: It would indeed, yes.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: To your knowledge is there such a service for the young readers?
Mr. Cox: No, although I agree that the schools of journalism could involve themselves in projects that include this model. It would be an intriguing prospect.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Well, maybe I can be the mother of the idea.
Mr. Cox: Yes.
The Chairman: Senator Trenholme Counsell's point about the subscription being prohibited does strike me as a reality for the elaboration of a network of niche publications, if you will. I can see that in business, yes, there is a market of people who can afford to pay $23 a month for the publication. There would probably be a market for lawyers who want to read about what is going in the courts of Nova Scotia. What about the arts, education, and community organizations that need access to the news but might not afford to pay for it. Am I wrong?
Mr. Cox: No, you are wrong at all. I think that the whole financial question will come into it. What I think will happen is it may not be independent publications who provide that service.
I think if newspapers just caught on to the notion that the Internet is here for real, which I am not sure they have, that the dot-com versions could have writing staff to do just as Senator Trenholme Counsell has suggested. Tailor- made subscriptions could be available for people under 25 years of age, and so on.
Ms. Reid: The New York Times offers that type of service. It will send you only the type of information that you require.
The Chairman: Trust the New York Times.
Mr. Cox: Yes. It is sad to say that Canadian publications trail their U.S. counterparts in this area. Canadian publishers have not caught on to the dot-com revolution.
The Chairman: Somebody said to us yesterday that even those companies that have tried to do it just do not get how to do it properly. They have not decided what to do with this big investment they are making in their big dot-com sites. I take it you agree with that statement?
Mr. Cox: Yes. I think you have to be smaller to understand your market. I have learned that in the brief time I have been with these people. They understand their market, and they understand how to serve that market. The larger you get, the less understanding you have to the point where you have no understanding whatsoever.
It is one of the problems with mass media, is it not?
The Chairman: Senator Eyton has another question. You have a total staff of, if I understood it, four or five. Where is your office and how big is it? Is your office as big as this table?
Ms. Reid: Our office is about the size of this room. We have six full-time staff and one part-time employee.
Senator Eyton: I guess if you want to prostitute yourself a little bit, I have a good suggestion for you. You could have one column everyday with a ``tip of the day'' and peddle stock. I used to publish something called Money Letter which was quite well known across the country. I sold it a few years ago, but it was popular and it had a big price because in fact we recommended. So your daily format would work nicely. You may not want to do it, but on the other hand there would be a lot of interest in sort of thing.
Ms. Reid: Yes.
The Chairman: Thank you both very much. It was fascinating.
Now I would ask Mr. Philip Bruce McLean to come forward.
Please tell us who you are and then take about five minutes to tell your story, Mr. McLean, following which we will ask you some questions.
Mr. Philip Bruce McLean, as an individual: I am a 53-year-old person and I am a news junkie. I do not represent anyone or any organization, but I just thought I would share two or three thoughts with you people.
I am sort of interested in the religious or spiritual aspects of life in the electronic and the print media. I find when there is coverage there is not much coverage of it, but when there is coverage it is usually negative. I can understand why people enjoy negative news. Unfortunately, myself, I enjoy reading whether it is secular or religious; to a certain extent we all enjoy a good scandal. I wish that the media would present religious issues a little more positively than they do. Also, I wish they would cover not only alternative issues but traditional issues as well; religious issues whether you are for same sex or against same sex marriage or whatever, it might abortion or so on.
My other comment is the lack of follow up on important news stories. I subscribe to the cable networks and CBC Newsworld, which I really appreciate, and I like their documentaries. I wish that some of those documentaries would go to the regular networks CBC, but so far they do not seem to be going to the regular network. I will just mention a few like Rough Cuts and The Passionate Eye. I notice that those programs are segregated and they do not seem to move on to the regular networks. I think we are losing a lot because I find these documentaries very interesting. They talk about travel and culture, and political things, and even religious things sometimes. I enjoy watching Vision TV.
I agreed with Professor Wark that there is less coverage of the Maritimes on the CBC. I think that is very unfortunate. I am from Cape Breton originally, and I used to watch the local news there and I miss it. We have local news here but not as much as is Cape Breton.
I believe that is all I had to say. I know I said too much probably.
The Chairman: No, you covered a lot of ground in a short space of time.
Mr. McLean: I did, yes.
Senator Tkachuk: Yesterday in St. John's we had a presenter who voiced some of the same concerns, particularly on social and religious issues. A lot of these issues are quite controversial.
Mr. McLean: Exactly.
Senator Tkachuk: I had some sympathy with what he said, and I have some sympathy with what you say because I am not sure how well they are covered or whether they are covered fairly.
Do you think that the coverage of issues like abortion, and same sex marriage is diverse or one-sided?
Mr. McLean: I think they have been diverse, but I think for the most part, and especially CBC is on the liberal side. They have sided with the liberals and I am not saying that is a bad thing, but I am not saying it is a good thing.
To answer your question, they have given a certain amount of balance, but not as much as I would like. In other words, they have been more on the liberal side on issues such as same sex marriage and abortion. Maybe that is just human nature, I am not sure, but I suppose it is. I have just noticed that lately and at times it bothers me and other times it does not. It is just sometimes it bothers me.
The Chairman: When you said you thought they were more on the liberal side, did you mean that in a small ``l'' liberal or in the capital ``L'' partisan way?
Mr. McLean: I am not sure I understand your question.
The Chairman: Then I am going to take it that you meant it in the non-partisan way. I tend to agree that if there is a bias in the mainstream media, mainstream broadcasters do come in on the small ``l'' liberal side, sort of big cities, small ``l'' liberal ``progressive'' values, many of which I share but that does not mean I do not recognize them when they are presented to me rather than in the partisan sense.
Mr. McLean: I think I would mean in the progressive sense like the small ``l'' liberal.
Senator Munson: We see many types of reporters: health reporters, science reporter and legal reporters to name a few.
Do you think the mainstream media; CBC or CTV should have religious reporters?
Mr. McLean: Yes. Yes, and it should also be a reporter not only for one religion but for the whole spectrum of religions.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I am from New Brunswick. I am not going to talk about national media now because I think it is a different issue, although I think the point that Senator Munson just brought up is a good one.
I do believe that two or three of our daily newspapers run a religion section on Saturday.
How do you suggest we address a religion article in our country that is so multicultural?
We have such a diverse scope of religion, how can we possibly discuss any aspect of it without causing problems with other religious faiths?
If you think of the most immediate example, there has been an enormous amount of coverage of the life and death of Pope Jean Paul II. I doubt any religion would criticise any newspapers for that coverage, but please would you tell us more about your idea.
Mr. McLean: Sure. First of all, I read the religion section every Saturday in The Chronicle-Herald.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: It is in there, too?
Mr. McLean: Yes. I find that they speak not only about Christian or Protestant and Catholic religions, but they also speak about the Jewish and Muslim religions, and so forth.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do they?
Mr. McLean: Yes. Maybe 20 years ago it was only Christians, but now it includes almost all faiths. It might still predominantly be Christian, but they do represent the other faiths as well, which is a good thing.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I wonder how common this dedicated coverage is across Canada.
Mr. McLean: I also read the Calgary Herald's religion section, and they also give coverage of various faiths. I find it very educational, as it also includes the Muslim, Jewish and Zoroastrian faiths.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I do not believe that our national newspapers carry that type of coverage, do they chair?
They have a health section, a career section, and a high-tech section, but I do not think that the national papers have a religious section.
Mr. McLean: No.
The Chairman: The Toronto Star has traditionally had a religious reporter, and The Globe and Mail has a religious reporter once in a while.
Mr. McLean CBC had a program hosted by Roy Bonisteel. Do you remember that program?
Mr. McLean: I think I do vaguely, yes.
The Chairman: He used to explore issues of concern, sometimes as philosophical as purely religious, but would that be the kind of thing you would like to see?
Mr. McLean: Yes. A couple of years ago CBC Radio had a good evening religious program. I forget the name of it, but it was quite comprehensive. I think that program is off the air now.
The Chairman: CBC Radio does something on Sunday afternoon called Tapestry. It is quite an interesting program, so you might listen in.
Mr. McLean: I have to confess that I am not a radio-listener. I gave it up listening when they switched AM to FM and it got me a little confused.
The Chairman: They lost you. Well, you might want to take a Sunday afternoon when it is raining and you do not have anything else to do, and check out Tapestry. Yes, yes or if it is foggy or whatever. Thank you very much, Mr. McLean.
Mr. McLean: You are welcome and thank you.
The Chairman: It has been very interesting.
Our next presenter is Mr. Shalom Mandaville.
Welcome to the Committee, sir. If you would tell us who you are and give us about five minutes of statement that would be terrific.
Mr. Shalmon Mandaville, Soil and Water Conservation Society, Metro Halifax, as an individual: I am a scientist specializing in the study of lakes. I am head of a volunteer scientific group of about 400 members, from Nova Scotia, Ontario and four states in the U.S.
I have been in consultation with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, as well as many volunteer groups in British Columbia. The Chronicle-Herald The Mail Star, as well as The Daily News, have given us very good local publicity. We are extremely grateful to have been on the front page of these newspapers.
Three of the Senators know me by the way, Senators Buchanan, Forrestall and Oliver, and even Senator Forrestall knows me personally. In fact, he used to be involved with us when he was an MP, so we are very grateful.
My beef is the national media like The Globe and Mail and even CBC National does not follow local news. I have sent them many emails, for which I am well known. If you ask His Worship Mayor Kelly, he knows me personally, he will tell you of the raft of emails that I have sent. Some are short; some are with attachments. My beef is that the national media does not follow local news, whereas, the American newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, follows our work. I do not understand why our national media has not interviewed me while an American newspaper has taken an interest to do so.
I am a Canadian citizen. I have been here since September 19, 1966 when I emigrated from Holland. Except for me and another person from Bangladesh, the rest of our group is made up of local people. In fact, we have some very wealthy people like surgeons and medical specialists because the kind of things we do attracts them to our group. At Dalhousie University, about 150 students have used our data and scientific findings to further their education. If you were to put a dollar value on our volunteer work it would be over $1.25 million without question, because each of our studies costs around $40,000 to $50,000. In spite of all the work we do we are not recognized by the national media and I have a beef with that.
My second beef is the coverage of car accidents. We are not interested in car accidents or anything like that.
Third, I have a beef with the attacks on politicians. I like politicians of all backgrounds, and they treat me as a VIP, especially Mayor Kelly. I do not want them to be attacked personally. We are not interested if somebody has 13 girlfriends.
Is there a way to get the media to be kind to professionals like us?
I have only used 3 minutes 14 seconds of my time, but I will stop. Thank you.
Senator Tkachuk: Well, you got my interest when you said that you do not like people who attack politicians.
Mr. Mandaville: No.
Senator Tkachuk: You said you studied lakes?
Mr. Mandaville: It is called limnology. I am an applied limnologist, which means I am a practical limnologist. I am one of but a few international limnologists.
Senator Tkachuk: What is the study of limnology?
Mr. Mandaville: Limnology tells you the chemistry and the biology of the lakes.
Senator Tkachuk: What is your profession?
Mr. Mandaville: I do both. I used to be in a different field, but I am a consultant. I do some work for the United States mostly. I do not work here any longer. Sometimes I get contracts from the Halifax Regional Municipality, but mostly I do it as a volunteer. I am in my sixties.
Senator Tkachuk: Do people hire you to study a lake?
Mr. Mandaville: Just to be fair, I am not here on behalf of myself. I am here on behalf of the group called Soil and Water Conservation Society of Metro Halifax. I am here to discuss volunteer research.
Our volunteer work is at the same level as consultant work because we deal with the same people.
Senator Tkachuk: Right. Well perhaps you being here will help you get some of that national media attention. I do not know if it will or not, but there are a lot of people who have the same problem.
So with that, thanks very much.
Mr. Mandaville: I just want to add something, Madam Chairman. I do not know anything about Saskatchewan; I believe Senator Tkachuk is from Saskatchewan.
Senator Tkachuk: Yes, I am.
Mr. Mandaville: I know quite a bit about Ontario and Manitoba.
Senator Munson: Sir, you talked about the national media and sending these emails. What kind of response did you get after complaining about not getting enough coverage?
Mr. Mandaville: First of all, I do not get the time of the day at all. No response, nothing.
Senator Munson: Nothing?
Mr. Mandaville: I have tried one-line emails because some councillors complained that my emails are too long. I have sent five-line emails.
Senator Munson: Well, thank you. I just wanted to know if you get any response at all.
Mr. Mandaville: No.
The Chairman: Is your beef, to use your word, with the national media that they do not cover your organization or that they do not draw on your expertise when they are covering Canada's problems with fresh water lakes?
Mr. Mandaville: First of all, they have never covered our local issues, never. I read all the media on a regular basis. Like the previous gentleman, I am also a media junkie; you have to be when you are an activist. I am not here to talk about myself because as a consultant I am not allowed to reveal my clients. That is called client confidentiality.
I am her to talk about my activity as a volunteer. I should have made that clear, I apologize.
The Chairman: No, no, you did. I am just trying to understand whether what you want is coverage of your volunteer association, or whether you want to be used as an expert to provide expert knowledge when they cover a broader story. Do you see the distinction I am trying to make?
Mr. Mandaville: Yes, I understand. I did not come here with a personal agenda, no. It is just that I feel they should cover our work since we have done 1,500 lakes; that is a huge number. We have done adjoining counties as well.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: You said you do not want to read about another car accident, and then I immediately thought, well I think many of us share the same feeling that it is the sensational things, the tragic items that often take the major part of the news telecast.
How does one balance the sensational with the substantial?
Not that a car accident is not of some substance, and I think people do want to know about a car accident because it has happened in their community. They want to know because it is a story. It is a story for that community and for the people in that family.
Mr. Mandaville: One of my ex-girlfriends was a reporter and told me that the media likes sensationalism. I was young and single then and I did date different people. I am being honest. I am an older person now and I can say that.
Yes, the media likes sensationalism; I am fully aware of that, but they do not have to overdo it.
For example, my bigger beef is attacking politicians. We elect the people, so if you attack politicians you are attacking us, right? I was a very strong supporter of Senator Forrestall when he was an MP.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: So if I may, you feel that the media fails to achieve a balance?
Mr. Mandaville: I cannot answer that because I have to be careful with such subjects.
Senator Eyton: You have piqued my curiosity. You did mention 1,500 lakes, was that the right number?
Mr. Mandaville: That is what we have been studying in Nova Scotia, mostly in the HRM, but adjoining counties as well.
The Chairman: HRM is the Halifax Regional Municipality?
Mr. Mandaville: Yes, and within that one hectare area there are 1,300 lakes and ponds. There are is 6,600 lakes and ponds in Nova Scotia, whereas Ontario has 300,000 lakes.
Senator Eyton: You have a lot of work to do. I heard a number in your remarks of a 1.25 million.
Mr. Mandaville: Our volunteer studies are worth $1.25 million.
Senator Eyton: Is that the value of the work as a volunteer group up to now, or is that an annual number?
Mr. Mandaville: That is the number up to the present time.
Senator Eyton: Does that number cover a period of a few years?
Mr. Mandaville: That number is the total of our work since 1991.
Senator Eyton: Oh, 1991, okay.
Mr. Mandaville: We publish a lot of our work in journals.
Senator Eyton: I guess your beef is that your work has not been given much coverage and it is a worthwhile story. How would additional coverage, more notoriety, how would that help you in your work? Would it be useful?
Mr. Mandaville: I do not know the word ``notoriety,'' but we would like other people to know about our work because we believe that we should all work together. By the way, we are not radicals that oppose developments. We have a strong policy.
It is just that we got more publicity in Washington, D.C., and in New York than we got in Ottawa. Of course we got publicity in Halifax, but I am talking about national coverage.
The Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Mr. Mandaville: Thank you, senators. We have a very good Senate.
The Chairman: Thank you.
I would now invite Ms. Alison Tofflemire to come forward.
Welcome to the committee. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and give us about five minutes of whatever it is you want to tell us and then we will ask you some questions.
Ms. Alison Tofflemire, as an individual: I am a 32-year-old enthusiastic radio listener, or I try to be. First of all, I would just like to say, I have made a lot of notes here, and I do apologize for probably some of these are going to be rather disjointed because considering all the media that we have, I only heard about this hearing this morning on a local call-in show. It was just mentioned once; nobody else on CBC TV or ATV news or anything mentioned it. Like nobody else mentioned this thing. So I just had to scribble frantically.
What I would really like to talk about is the local radio market, as to what is going on there and what needs to be done. So just bear with me on this. This goes all over the place.
Our local market is stagnated. We do not really have very much variety in radio anymore. For example, we have four stations that pretty well play nothing but oldies. There is one of them that I do not qualify as an oldies station because you might get one new song an hour. We have two country stations, and one station that plays some new stuff but could be confused with the country stations sometimes because they play some of the same stuff. We do have one alternative station, but it is very difficult to pick up its signal. You have to be almost on top of it or have a super strong radio to get it. We have CBC Two which is all classical, and CBC One which is what I listen to most of all because I like to pick up information. Unfortunately, CBC One sort of duplicates stuff too.
I find that radio is the best medium to pick up stuff when you are out because you can take a radio wherever you go. Anybody can have a radio. I have one in my pocket right and as soon I leave here I am going to flipping on to Live at 5 and listen on the way home on the bus.
I notice that there is a total dearth of local news on CBC on the weekends except for maybe two or three minutes from New Brunswick. What it would be really great to see is the cute fiddle program moved over to CBC Two. That fiddle program should be replaced with a one-half hour local newscast. It is an advantage to know exactly what is going on in our local community. After the one-half hour local news program I think we should have a one-half hour across Canada news program. I mean something like Live at 5 although better.
There are a couple stories that CBC Radio picked up and mentioned once, and then nobody else picked them up. So I would love to see that happen. I would love to see the duplications on CBC One and CBC Two taken care of especially on Saturday and Sunday nights because you get oldies and you get classical. Just for an example, what would be nice to do is the program The House. It would be great if they rebroadcast that on Saturday or Sunday evening because that is on at nine o'clock in the morning on a Saturday morning. How many people are up to listen to that? Sometimes I miss part of it and that is a really great show to listen to because you pick up a lot of interesting stuff.
What I would like to see on Sunday evening would be to dump the classical and maybe get a call-in show, like just something we just call-in and talk about any topic. It does not even have to be a topic. We only have one call-in show so we only get three hours of democracy a day, basically, to discuss things. It would be nice to see that change.
We were supposed to be getting the talk station here, and like maybe an urban dance station. I will believe it when I see it.
I would like to see more variety. When I was in Boston last year I could find anything on the dial. Unfortunately, I stuck mostly to the talk stations because it is getting close to election time and I wanted to hear what was going on.
I find radio is, as I said, the easiest media. Theoretically, you should be able to get all your information on the radio without having to go home and pick up the six o'clock news. You should be able to get different types of music on the radio. I mean get rid two of the oldies stations and turn them into some new music because I have noticed, especially on Sunday morning between eight o'clock and noon there is not one station, not one, where you can hear any new music. C100 is the only station that has a reasonably strong signal. We do not get enough variety. Sometimes it will put me to sleep. Honest to God. We need more call-in shows, and more variety on existing stations.
Just a couple of good examples of what radio could and used to be. Q104 was great when it first started it out. You got rock and roll; you got metal, stuff that nobody else would play. They actually promoted local bands. I do not know how many people are even familiar with the band Haywire. If it was not for Q104, they probably would not have existed, or they would taken a longer time to become famous. They practically built that band. They are a local band. They had a contest to promote local bands and Haywire got a contract. They actually managed to produce a lot of singles.
There is also the time with the angry DJ who was mad that the Rush cross-Canada tour stopped at Montreal. The DJ decided to do something about it. This is like one of those great radio moments where he decided to get a campaign to bring Rush down to Halifax. I was one of the people who ran around with petitions. Now it is, basically, ``Fly two people to Toronto to see Elton John.''
The Chairman: So did Rush come to Halifax?
Ms. Tofflemire: They did.
The Chairman: Good.
Ms. Tofflemire: It worked. We have complaints that we do not get enough concerts here in Halifax. We need a bigger stadium. We can bring medium-sized concerts here but we cannot have large concerts. If I was a concert promoter, I would be looking around at the market because there is nobody that is going to able to promote it because they are not playing the music for a lot of these bands that are out there.
The Chairman: As you may know, our main mandate is news not music, but news about music is news. Anyway, we are nearly out of time so I really want to go to questions. Senator Tkachuk.
Senator Tkachuk: I have one beef. You were very good, by the way.
Ms. Tofflemire: I would just like to say to you that I did not know about the music because like I said I did not even get very much information, I just got here like at three o'clock.
The Chairman: We are very glad you came.
Senator Tkachuk: Yes, very glad you came.
Ms. Tofflemire: I am glad I heard about this because I like to get my two cents in. Maybe I can get some results sometimes from my ranting this time and not kicked off.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you feel that you get most of your news from radio?
Ms. Tofflemire: Well, it is a variety. If I am home, I will catch the news sometimes. I find ATV news is the most balanced sometimes. I can give you two examples right now of stories that CBC Radio covered but the other news did not. It is two stories around affordable housing and homelessness. There is one thing, I think it is in B.C., they are going to start going after homeless people who had shopping carts and arrest them like it is going against the law to have a shopping cart. That was mentioned once on Live at 5.
I think it was last weekend, there was a fire in New Brunswick at a rooming house and, basically, it is just like okay ... no this it was not a fire, it just like it was the building code or something and the residents were told that they had 24 hours to get out of the building. They were talking to this one woman on social assistance. She was saying that she could not move in with her friends because they were on social assistance and that is not allowed.
We actually got to hear a couple of these stories about the problems with tenants, and the landlord just wanted more time for his tenants. He was trying to fix up the building, but it is just that nobody else was covering this story.
You can go more into depth on a radio show. I can give Hurricane Juan as a good example. Basically, Peter Kelly, our mayor gave a press conference and we actually got most of the press conference on the radio.
TV and the Internet are useless anyway when your power is out. It is just like radio. You would have gotten like a sound bite on the news because TV news is visual; radio you can do long interviews; you can have long conversations, and things like that. You can really get into something because you have more time to get into it because you are not relying on the visual. You are relying on the audio. You are listening. You are focussing on what the person is saying. I think I would like to see more of that, more information, more news.
I do like a lot of the stuff that is covered. For example, the overnight stuff that they do is great. They broadcast Radio Netherlands, and the Voice of Russia and all that. That is absolutely wonderful. I quote that all the time when I am getting into conversations with people because I find a lot of their issues are the same type of issues that we face like unemployment and the cutting of social programs. So it is just quote that to people and say, ``Yes, this is happening here, yes, et cetera.''
I would like to see more of that and less cute fiddle music. Leave the fiddle music to CBC Two. I would like to see less duplication because we do not have very many outlets down here. We lost our talk radio station. First, it went all sports, in their infinite wisdom, and then we gained another oldies station which we already had three of. I did not know about talk radio until it was almost about a year before its unfortunate demise. But I was glued to it and I found a lot of things absolutely fascinating to listen to, the talk shows in the States, the locals. What I like is that they actually simulcast the ATV news on the radio, which I thought was absolutely terrific because if I was heading out to some place and I had to be there at 7 o'clock, I would be walking with my headphones on and listening to the news.
Senator Munson: I agree with you that The House, and the night programs should be rebroadcast on the CBC. I also think that group called Haywire maybe should come to Ottawa and sort of start proceedings off in the Senate before the Senate starts so we can get all motivated and involved in our work.
The idea of a cross-country checkup, we have that. You are talking about across Nova Scotia kind of thing, right?
Ms. Tofflemire: Yes. I would like to see something in the evenings because in the evenings after a while you just have music. It is the same stuff that you can get on CBC Two.
I would like to see more call-in shows here because we do not have enough of them. I think Cross Country Checkup is pretty terrific, and I am pretty well glued to it most of the time. We need local stuff. I would love to see more local news and more in-depth coverage. With radio you can do that.
Senator Munson: So can I ask you this one final question e because I have to get this on the record? What do you think of Don Connolly's show at 90.5, the CBC morning show? I ask this because Don Connolly is my best friend.
Ms. Tofflemire: You mean The Whole World?
Senator Munson: What do you think of his morning show? I just have to have this on for the public record.
Ms. Tofflemire: Well, I actually do like it for the most part because they go into depth.
Senator Munson: Good.
Ms. Tofflemire: Like this morning they were talking about this ... I find they actually get into things. They go into depth which is really nice. They were talking about this real estate company this morning, and how they were starting up and they really went in details, the really talked to guys like that. It is amazing just to listen. I was appalled. Like, oh my God, they are taking over. But it is just like, where else are you going to be able to get something like that where you can actually get shows like that where you can really get into, you know ...
Senator Munson: So you are saying that Halifax is more of that kind of interaction with the —
Ms. Tofflemire: Exactly. Like stuff like issues on homelessness and something like that. Instead of like ranting on and on about the VLTs forever, which is what is going on right now, we really need to deal with important issues like homelessness, affordable housing, the politics behind that, why it is not getting done, et cetera. I would like to see more of that type of thing being done, like more investigative reporting behind some of the political decisions that are being made. Why are they getting these big raises when there are people dying on the streets? I would like to see that brought back to the radio and television too.
Like I say, with radio it is something I can take with me and listen to wherever I am. And it is the medium I find is the most available to people. I mean I do not have a computer or the Internet because I cannot afford them. Television, you have to be at home to watch it. Newspapers, they are kind of difficult to read on the bus and that can get expensive after a while. But if have $20 you can go and buy yourself a radio, boom, you are set. Even a couple dollars you can get an old cheap radio. You can be homeless on the street and have a radio and still have your information. So the ideal situation would be to get all your information on the radio. You do not even have to worry about getting home for the 6 o'clock on the television. That would be my dream situation. I would love to be able to tune into CBC from morning till night and just be glued to it because there is so much great stuff that I am personally interested in.
The Chairman: Ms. Tofflemire, you have been terrific. Thank you very much. We are very glad you heard about us.
Ms. Tofflemire: Thanks for listening to me.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I am glad you did not prepare because you would not have been nearly as interesting.
The Chairman: Yes, really. You made a lovely end to our day.
Senators, this very interesting day now comes to a close. We will hold our next meeting tomorrow at 9 a.m. in this room. I thank all senators, all staff and all members of the public. It has been a great day.
The committee adjourned.