Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 9 - Evidence, October 28, 2014
TORONTO, Tuesday, October 28, 2014
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 10:30 a.m. to examine the challenges faced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in relation to the changing environment of broadcasting and communications.
Senator Dennis Dawson (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, today, we are continuing our study into the challenges faced by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation in relation to the changing environment of broadcasting and communications.
Our witness this morning is Peter S. Grant, who had the pleasure of preparing this sizable document for us that we will have to read, and there will be questions asked at the end of the meeting.
All joking aside, Mr. Grant, we have your document, but we would like to listen to your presentation.
Peter S. Grant, Counsel, McCarthy Tétrault: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. My name is Peter Grant. I am counsel to the law firm McCarthy Tétrault LLP here in Toronto. I specialize in communications law, and I have practised in this area since 1969.
Over the 45 years of my career I have acted on a transactional basis at one time or another for essentially all the major companies in the broadcasting field in Canada. This includes the commercial over-the-air broadcasters like CTV and Global, the CBC, and many of the pay and specialty services.
I have the licence for Family Channel, History Television, Showcase and First Choice, now known as the Movie Network. I have also acted for interveners like the Writers and Directors Guilds, provincial governments and so forth. I have also acted on occasion for the CRTC itself in the courts.
I am also the broadcasting arbitrator for Canada under the Canada Elections Act and in this role I adjudicate disputes between the political parties and the broadcasters over paid and free time election ads. I have performed this role for 21 years.
Today I am very pleased to appear before you to respond to any questions you may have about the Broadcasting Act and how it applies to the issues before you.
I have provided members of the committee with a copy of the most recent edition of the Canadian Broadcasting Regulatory Handbook which is published every two years by my law firm. Now in its 12th edition, this handbook includes an annotated copy of the Broadcasting Act and many other CRTC documents that may be useful to you.
I should tell you that my comments today reflect only my own personal views. They will not necessarily reflect the views of my law firm or any of its present or former clients, many of whom will have views across the map and many may have views opposed to each other.
With that caveat I welcome your questions. Thank you.
Senator Plett: Thank you for being here, Mr. Grant. Since you have provided the caveat at the end that these would be your personal opinions and your personal comments let me ask you a question as a legal person or as a legal individual. We have had some issues getting some information from CBC that we have been wanting to get, i.e. some of their salaries and so on and so forth.
When we go to a public broadcaster like BBC we can go on a website and get all the information that we want about their entire operation. CBC has been less than forthcoming with some information that we have tried to get, i.e. salaries, bonuses, and so on and so forth.
When we asked in a letter to get that through our Chair, first of all of course we got stonewalled by saying this is all private information and they don't need to release that.
When we pushed a little harder eventually we got a package that was sent to us in such a convoluted order that we couldn't figure out who was getting what. When we kept on pushing then all of a sudden our Chair gets a letter that says, "Oh, it is on the website. Why don't you look?" They had posted it on the website two days earlier and now they are trying to pretend that while we could have gone to the website to look.
I would like your comment first of all on your belief of a public broadcaster and the transparency that there should be in as far as taxpayers having the right to know. Certainly for us as public servants it is well documented what we make, what we get for travel, and so on and so forth. CBC makes a great hullabaloo about reporting that many times. Yet when we want that information we don't get it. Do you have an opinion on that?
Mr. Grant: Thank you for the question.
I am familiar with the BBC. I was over in London three weeks ago. There the BBC does supply to the public, I think it was upon request of their trust which supervises the BBC, the salary ranges for its on-air announcers. I don't think they give the precise salary but they give the range.
I am not familiar with how much detail the CBC has provided to you whether in confidence or otherwise. I am sympathetic to the need for transparency, absolutely, particularly for a publicly financed broadcaster with a national mandate and so forth. I can understand the CBC's concern that they don't want the disclosure of information if it is public to interfere with their commercial relations. They are in the marketplace purchasing programming, paying licence fees in competition with others, and concerned about that being interfered with if all of their details were made public.
As for your right as a committee to obtain that information from the CBC, I am not familiar actually with the legislation governing this Senate committee.
Senator Plett: I am familiar with our rights as a Senate committee.
Mr. Grant: I would have thought you would have had the power to compel this.
Senator Plett: My question is more my rights as a taxpayer.
Mr. Grant: Yes. I think your right as a taxpayer would really be funnelled through bodies like parliament, like the Senate, like the House of Commons, committees and of course through the CRTC, because the CRTC is after all the independent regulatory body that has been assigned the task of supervising and regulating the corporation.
That is interesting because over in Britain the regulator doesn't regulate the BBC. Ofcom only regulates the private sector. In the early days, in my recollection back to the 1968 Broadcasting Act, the CBC wasn't happy to suddenly be regulated by the CRTC but of course they are.
Senator Plett: Then again I am asking you for opinions on something and they aren't necessarily legal. You are here testifying and clearly you have your own opinions on issues.
We have heard that CBC has overstepped their mandate by much of the things they are involved in. We have heard that CBC should maybe just become a newscaster again as opposed to a broadcaster. Would you have any opinion on that? Should they focus more on news, and I guess documentaries might be a form of news, and get out of the issue of producing movies and different television shows?
Mr. Grant: I have had occasion to study and give lectures on the role of public broadcasting around the world. I have appeared in conferences in Africa and Europe on that subject so I am quite familiar with what is seen as the general role of public broadcasting.
The CBC was cast in the model of the BBC in the thirties. It has what I would call a conventional view of what public broadcasting is, which is a broad view that would include mainstream programing, not just news but certainly including news. The general concept that public broadcasting has had around the world is to focus on broadcasting and programming intended for people in their role as citizens, not just as consumers. So it shouldn't be necessarily focused on advertising supported material.
Two of the public broadcasters, the Australian one and the British one, in fact don't have advertising. Many people think the fact that the CBC does sell advertising, which frankly started as soon as TV started in the fifties, was somehow a pact with the devil because it did mean that their programming costs and structure started to become very similar to that of the commercial broadcasters. I don't think we can go back and revisit that frankly, unless the government was prepared to substitute more government funding for the loss of advertising revenue.
Turning to your main question, is it appropriate for the CBC to get into programming like movies, prime time drama and so on, I think it should. One of the reasons is even if you have the private sector doing some of that they only do it because they are required to do it, to be honest. The public sector wants to do it but the problem is do they have the money to do it. Those program categories like prime time drama, to a certain extent children's programming, and certainly long form documentaries are expensive forms of programming that the market would not normally supply in a small market like Canada, so I think it is important for the CBC to be there.
They should be focusing on the types of those programs that I would say are pushing the envelope. It would not be necessarily police procedurals aping the American model. They would be things a bit experimental, interesting, newly emerging talent and that sort of thing. It is an area we know the private sector will not be into so there is a role for the CBC that would make it appropriate in my view.
Senator Plett: This is more of a legal question. What is your opinion on broadcasters in general, news media in general? Obviously sensationalism is something people want to watch and hear and that at times is unfortunate.
When broadcasters report things on an individual, and especially public figures, that are blatantly false on "The National," on Global, on their news program, to the detriment of somebody's reputation, they admit they are at fault and they do a mild retraction on the bottom right-hand corner or bottom left-hand corner of page 48 or they do a mild retraction on their online story somewhere and they say, "Well we admitted our mistake."
What is your opinion of broadcasters that clearly hurt the reputation of an individual because of their sensational broadcasting? What obligation do they have to that individual and indeed to the general public in saying we made a mistake here, what we said was false? Whether they apologize they at least admit their error.
Mr. Grant: I am with you on that, senator. First of all, even if they apologize and it is late in the day that doesn't necessarily limit their damages in an action for defamation. We have acted in fact for the CBC on defamation cases, my law firm has. We have acted for people suing broadcasters and it is an expensive proposition. That is the main reason why it is difficult.
Of course prudent broadcasters are clearly liable if they are caught out and they discover that one of their stories was in fact inaccurate. There is no issue about that. The question is how can they limit the damages and the first thing they will want to do is to apologize and so forth.
I think it is an interesting question. The apology should be placed in as equal prominence to the original story. That is the general principle. It seems to me if they do not do that they would still under the law be potentially liable for damages because they wouldn't have corrected the problem sufficiently.
Broadcasters also are subject to codes which are imposed by the CRTC. The journalistic code is the best example and the act itself, the broadcasting regulations, prohibits false news. There has never been a prosecution under those sections because the CRTC doesn't have the time or the resources to go after it, but they will deal with complaints on programing.
In a different handbook that we publish there is a list in chronological order of all the complaints against the CBC on programs over the years.
Senator Plett: Would you supply that document to our clerk?
Mr. Grant: Yes, I would be pleased to do so. It just takes up a single page. I think about 12 different programs over the year have been the subject of complaints. Some have been upheld. In some cases the CBC has been upheld. It is a mix.
Senator Plett: I am very interested in seeing it.
Senator Unger: Thank you, Mr. Grant. My question is a bit different but it definitely involves the CBC. I read an interesting article in Maclean's and from other news sources as well as sourced by two Toronto university professors.
The CBC had approached the other networks. This was done through a series of emails and they were all secret. The idea was to form a consortium to collude, to agree to decline advertising from political parties, especially leading up to an election and during the writ period.
Apparently what started this was the fact that the Conservative Party — I will name names here — used a clip from CBC where Mr. Mansbridge was interviewing Mr. Trudeau. This upset the CBC so this was their course of action. I didn't bring the information with me but there was a letter that was written by someone senior. Are you aware of this?
Mr. Grant: I am very aware of it.
Senator Unger: Would you comment? Is this contravening any particular law or regulation?
Mr. Grant: I guess I can tell you some significant facts because I am familiar with this under my role as the broadcasting arbitrator in federal elections.
I have seen the letter jointly signed by the news people of the five networks. I understand that there was some suggestion that maybe an amendment to the Copyright Act might be brought forward to allow in particular clips from newscasts to be part of political ads.
I will tell you that as an arbitrator I have the power to require a station to drop a Procter & Gamble ad and insert a political ad during the four-week election period because that is the way the act works. There is a certain amount of time each station is required to provide at the lowest appropriate rate to any party that has followed the notice procedures.
In my view the station is not permitted to censor the ad. The only grounds upon which an ad can be refused in my view is if it breaches the regulations, which is if it is obscene. But if it is for example misleading, that is not a ground for the station to refuse it.
In 2004 I guess it was Mr. Martin who was in that election. The Conservative Party did put an ad over to CTV which included a small clip of Peter Mansbridge interviewing Mr. Martin. I think it was on CBC Newsworld.
The CBC immediately complained and these ads first of all go to the Telecaster Committee, which is a committee organized by the broadcasters. The CBC said, "How can they steal our clip from that program and put it in a Conservative ad?" That sounds like the CBC is somehow supporting the Conservatives.
The Telecaster Committee referred the matter to me as broadcasting arbitrator. I looked at the situation and I came to the conclusion that the length of the clip was not substantial enough to constitute a copyright infringement.
I told the Telecaster Committee in my view the ad should run. The Telecaster Committee agreed with me and accepted my advice and the ad did run on CTV. The CBC of course, I should tell you, was very angry with my view but in my view it is not a basis for declining an ad if there is a short clip that is insubstantial because under the Copyright Act in order to breach copyright you have to have a substantial taking of the work. In my view a few seconds from a program of an hour long is not substantial.
That is the story. I don't think I have been asked by anybody to speak about this before, but to my recollection that is how it played out.
Senator Unger: I have one additional point about the Fair Trading Act that I believe also covers the ability. I mean everyone now is using everyone else's stories without asking permission. That is impossible now. As you stated and as I understand, if it is just a small clip it doesn't represent a violation. That Fair Trading Act goes back a long time, does it not?
Mr. Grant: Are you referring to the Copyright Act here? I don't understand the reference to the Fair Trading Act.
Senator Unger: Technically it is the Copyright Act.
Mr. Grant: The Copyright Act I would think is the issue. That was certainly what the CBC was arguing to me, the Copyright Act. They own the clip. This was an appropriation of their property. "This is" their quote "unfair."
Apart from being a communications lawyer I also do a lot of copyright work. I am quite familiar with the act and it does allow people to use short, insubstantial parts of works.
Senator Unger: The issue here is the collusion. That contravenes another act. You can't get together with all your competitors and agree that you are going to do this, and that letter that you referenced is talking about that: "We will all agree not to accept."
Mr. Grant: Actually the letter was not signed by one of the broadcasters and that is Quebecor, so they were not a part of the group.
Senator Unger: Yes, that is right.
Mr. Grant: I have no idea whether they were approached or not, but I think also just to be blunt about it that once the election period starts the Canada Elections Act governs and that letter is useless. I can order those broadcasters to run an ad.
Senator Unger: So the need for secrecy in all of these 181 emails —
Mr. Grant: It wasn't very secret. The letter had been signed by everybody. I have seen a copy. All the political parties received it, of course.
Senator Unger: Yes.
Mr. Grant: It is not as if it is under wraps or anything. They have been quite public about it.
Senator Housakos: Thank you for being with us this morning.
In your opinion does the CBC Radio-Canada of today, 2014, respect the spirit of the federal Broadcasting Act?
Mr. Grant: Oh, that is a tough question.
Senator Housakos: Yes, but you can answer it both from the legal perspective and as a taxpayer.
Mr. Grant: The proper forum for deciding one way or the other is really the CRTC. As you may know the corporation's last renewal hearing, which took weeks of hearing, ended up in a decision issued on May 28, 2013. It is only a year and a half ago that they have been renewed. Interestingly they renewed for only a three-year period in certain respects so they would come back and report on various things.
I have to beg off on being able to state whether the CBC is complying or not. I am not in a position to judge that but I would just refer you to the CRTC decision which is quite lengthy. It is 69 pages long, and that is just the English version. There were a lot of licensee conditions added to the CBC's mandate obviously to respond to issues that had been raised by intervenors. For example, they have obligations now relating to local news in the smaller markets. Many hours a week have to be done even though that is very expensive to pull off with the small audiences involved, but that is the sort of thing that the CRTC has been looking at.
Senator Housakos: I did read their condition for licensing, and it was quite intriguing actually. Can you also shed some light because we haven't had the opportunity of having the CRTC before us? Why did it take so long for them to renew their licence? They did take a long period of time from the time when it lapsed to the time they actually renewed it. Do you have an opinion on that?
Mr. Grant: The act allows the commission to issue licences up to seven years in length. Frankly, with the workload in front of the commission they tend to prefer to have long licences so that people don't have to keep coming back.
Actually I misspoke. It is a five-year renewal that they got from September 1, 2013 to August 31, 2018. That is the current thing.
The commission received and considered more than 8,000 interventions regarding the application. You can see it is a major effort to do a renewal hearing with respect to the public broadcaster, there are so many issues and so many intervenors that want to be heard. I am quite respectful of the CRTC for pulling this together, having a public hearing and putting all of the interventions on its website and so forth.
Senator Housakos: I would also like your opinion regarding the system with the ombudsman that the CBC has. Private sector broadcasting corporations are governed under the national broadcasters' council. That is the forum where citizens have the opportunity to take their claims to. The CBC has a francophone and anglophone ombudsman to deal with complaints.
Can you share your thoughts with us on how they compare vis-à-vis the ombudsman process that the CBC has with the private sector's process?
Mr. Grant: I have to beg off of that, senator. I am not familiar with how the ombudsman has played out. I can understand why the CBC would want to have its own structure for this. I would bet you they get a lot more complaints and issues before them than the private broadcasters may.
The private broadcasters, you are right, have basically referred this to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council which they themselves created and which the CRTC has now empowered to take charge of these complaints, but I am just not familiar with how the ombudsman's role has played out.
Senator Housakos: Can you tell us, because you have had a vast experience doing both private and public broadcasters in this country, what would be the most obvious difference between the two in terms of a philosophical approach?
Mr. Grant: There is a striking difference. The private sector, to make no bones about it, has its first obligation to the shareholders. As a result, in the absence of regulation in a small country like Canada the private broadcasters would focus essentially on news and sports that are categories in which they have nothing to fear from Hollywood.
They would not be doing long form documentaries. They would do no drama whatever. They would do possibly some magazine shows if they had a quota to fill. This was proved in the sixties and seventies when CTV, which was our only private national network then, had not a single drama show. It took the CRTC in 1979 to finally order the CTV network to come up with at least one hour of drama per week.
That was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. My law firm acted for the CRTC and in the end the Supreme Court supported the commission's requirement that the CTV network do at least an hour or two of drama. With that jurisdictional support it has basically meant that the whole private sector, Global and CTV, were required to do drama. They would never have done it otherwise because they can get American drama at a fraction of the cost. It would make perfect financial sense for them to keep away from Canadian drama. It is an expensive proposition.
In the mid-eighties, once that decision came out in 1982, the government also created what we know now as the Canada Media Fund. With the stick of the decision and the carrot of the fund the private broadcasters had to get into the issue of drama.
My view is that the independent production sector in this country, which didn't exist prior to 1985 roughly, grew like Topsy. It is now a multi-billion dollar industry but it is all due to the combination of the carrot and the stick.
The CBC is not an institution that has shareholders. Rather its mandate comes from the government. It comes from the Broadcasting Act. As a result they march to a different drummer and they would love to do more drama.
Their problem is funding, because we all concede that to do a good hour of Canadian drama now costs maybe $1.5 million an hour to produce. Some of the more expensive programs, particularly if they have a U.S. presale, are north of $2 million.
I think the "Saving Hope" program on CTV is now around $2.8 million an hour. For those kinds of costs the CBC really doesn't have the funding to be able to do as much as they would like to do. It is a funding issue for them.
The Chair: It is far from me to want to correct my deputy chair, but the CRTC director of broadcasting did appear in front of us on March 5, 2014.
Senator Housakos: I was mistaken.
The Chair: I wouldn't have said it but my clerk gave me a piece of paper.
Senator MacDonald: Mr. Grant, thank you for being here today. I have to say you have a perfect voice for broadcasting. You would be great on the radio. It is highly ironic that you are involved with this stuff.
The Chair: I wonder if they have an opening at CBC.
Senator MacDonald: Yes. I want to go back to the CRTC for a second, if I may. I want your thoughts on the role of the CRTC today. With the changes in technology obviously impacting the media do you think the CRTC should change and if so, how?
Mr. Grant: I have appeared in front of every chairman of the CRTC since 1968 and of course, as you know, 1991 is the current version of the act.
The act is pretty robust, to be honest. Some people in front of you, I gather, may have argued that it needs to be amended to deal with the over-the-top services. In fact it does deal with them. There is no question that a service like Netflix falls under the act and but for the exemption order that was issued by the commission it would have to go in and get a licence.
As to whether the commission's powers are sufficient, they have powers that are unexercised but if they chose to use them they could be quite effective. There are certain areas that I think do require amendment, not so much the Broadcasting Act but for example the Income Tax Act because we have a service like Amazon sending electronic books to Canadians. If they send them from the States they don't have to pay HST. It is the same with Netflix. Since it doesn't have an office or a phone in Canada they manage to send their service to however million Canadians without them required to pay HST. That to me is basically unfair to Canadian services that would like to compete.
This has nothing to do with requiring Canadian content programming. This is really just being non-discriminatory in the tax system. If I was trying to focus on what should be done about over-the-top services that is one discriminatory problem I would try to address.
Back to your question as to whether the act needs to be amended, I think it is useful every so many years to have a mini royal commission or a policy review task force to look at that. The last full-ranging study of the Broadcasting Act, as you know, was the Lincoln report back in May 2003. That is 11 years ago and a lot has changed in 11 years. I think it would be quite timely to have a task force or a policy review committee or something in the order of a royal commission that could study this in the next few years.
Senator MacDonald: You mentioned that the CBC in the fifties started aping the American networks by making a choice to carry commercials. On the websites now the CBC is generating a lot of revenue from ads. Normally I wouldn't care too much about this but the national newspapers in this country are suffering and operating on their websites behind paywalls trying to raise some revenue and trying to protect content.
I just want your opinion on the CBC acting like a private newspaper online and the effect on the market for online news ads.
Mr. Grant: It is an interesting question. Frankly I see it as fairly important to see our public broadcaster with a very vibrant and widely accessed website with news. I don't think I would go along with the principle that they must bow and not launch such a service for fear of competing too broadly with newspapers.
The newspapers have their own problems. I do agree that they are all in great difficulty as they enter the digital age. It is obvious for most people observing that sector that unless you are very local or you have a national brand you are probably in deep trouble. For Canadians there are a few newspapers with a national brand. There are some local papers but I think that is an area that is a real problem. I don't think the solution is to keep the CBC out of the market.
The Chair: Mr. Grant, you talked about the Lincoln report, but as you know nothing followed the report in the sense that there were no amendments to the Broadcasting Act. There was no modernization.
Going back to 1991 and let's say we do ask for a royal commission study, do you believe that it should be modernized? Do you believe in the application of the act as it stands on issues? You mentioned Netflix but Internet in general did not exist at that time, that whole over the net kind of coverage. Should we as a committee address the issue of the modernization of the Broadcasting Act?
Mr. Grant: As I say, my view is that the act already covers the Internet fairly well. Now there was of course a Supreme Court decision in the ISP reference which takes Internet service providers out of the act. Some regretted that because they were thinking that frankly Internet service providers were not dissimilar from broadcasting distribution undertakings like cable and satellite.
Since the cable and satellite people have to support the Canada Media Fund maybe the ISPs should support the media fund. There was that argument. That now cannot happen unless the act were to be amended, because the Supreme Court has ruled that ISPs, because they have no control over content at all, do not fall under the act and the CRTC cannot regulate them as broadcasting undertakings or require them to do things under the Broadcasting Act.
That is an area that I think would be worth revisiting because a number of countries are focused now on the role of the ISPs. They are focused on network neutrality and issues like that. You would want to see them in some respects brought under the Broadcasting Act but that would require legislative change.
The Chair: It would cover telecommunications in general, cellphone service.
Mr. Grant: Yes. As a telecom provider ISPs are subject to the Telecommunications Act. This is only the Broadcasting Act issues. In fact ISPs, as you know, are treated under the Telecommunications Act as carriers. They are deregulated so their rates aren't regulated, but the CRTC does have jurisdiction over them under that act.
The issue I raise is: Are there some aspects of what ISPs do that should bring them under the Broadcasting Act so that they can contribute as all the other players do to the creation of Canadian content, distribution, et cetera?
The Chair: When as Canadians we travel we sometimes don't have access to Canadian content because the ISPs are based in Canada and we are travelling in another country. Is it the Broadcasting Act that stops them from sending it over there or is it those countries' regulations that stop us from getting it?
Mr. Grant: There you go to the issue of gated sites. Of course it is in the interests of the program production industry to maintain geographic boarders so they can maintain discriminatory licence fees between countries. That is why unless you have an anonymous proxy server you can't get into American services where they have only cleared the American program rights.
In my view we would want to have gated systems because they are central to the financing of expensive programming. As a result when Netflix does come into Canada, even though they are entirely located outside the country, they are obliged to adhere to our Copyright Act. That means every single program on the Canadian service must be cleared and paid for in Canada to the Canadian copyright owner of the program.
Similarly when you are in the United States you cannot access the Canadian version of Netflix because it has been gated and there are certain programs on that list of programs in their repertoire they may not have bought American rights for. As I understand it, most of the time Netflix is buying globally, so they are trying to buy for every country, but the point remains it is central to the financing of production programing that there be borders.
Senator Plett: Senator Housakos asked a question that I wanted to ask about ombudsman. I am sorry that you couldn't give us an opinion on that because I was indeed interested in some of the dealings of the ombudsman as well.
Nevertheless you suggested or said, Mr. Grant, that you had travelled around the world talking about and meeting with public broadcasters. You also inferred that Canada was a small country and it is in population but clearly not in geography. It is a large country and probably the largest one that has a public broadcaster, save Russia possibly. Other than that we are the largest country geographically with a public broadcaster.
How does CBC compare with other public broadcasters? You have shared the BBC but clearly other countries have public broadcasters. Is CBC in line? Is it the Cadillac or the Volkswagen of public broadcasters? What is it?
Mr. Grant: I have actually acted for both the BBC bringing BBC Canada to Canada, and I have acted for Rai, the Italian public broadcaster when they wanted to come into Canada. I acted for them to figure out how to do that, so I am familiar with the broadcasters.
First of all, just to go to the question of funding, when you actually examine the per capita funding of the public broadcasters around the world you discover that Canada and its support for the CBC are fairly low on the list. The highest supporters would be Britain and Germany and some of the Nordic countries. Typically they are funding their public broadcaster to the tune of about $1.30 to $1.40 sometimes. Certainly in the British case it is about $1.20 per person per year to support the public broadcaster.
The number for the CBC used to be in the low thirties. I think it has now dropped to about 27 cents per person. It is only about a third or even less of the money that you see going to public broadcasters in Germany with ZDF and ARD or Britain with BBC.
There is another group of countries of which France is an example where their support is around 80 cents. Again it is more than double what the Canadian number is but not as high as Germany or Britain and recall that Germany and Britain have bigger populations than Canada. When you multiply these numbers out, the budget for the BBC is around $4.6 billion to $4.7 billion Canadian. The budget for the CBC is about $1.1 billion in parliamentary appropriation and $250 million maybe in ad revenue and add another $50 million or $60 million from subscription fees for CBC Newsnet. We are talking maybe $1.5 billion or $1.6 billion compared with the BBC which has $4.5 billion. It doesn't have five time zones or two official languages.
I am very sympathetic to the CBC when it says, "Gee, considering the funding we get we do a pretty good job." I think Nordicity does a study of those every few years. The CBC, I am sure, would be able to provide it to you. They can give you the hard numbers on that, but the bottom line in terms of comparisons, the CBC has less funding per capita than most other public broadcasters.
Senator Plett: Should there be any correlation between ratings and subsidies if they can't get their ratings up and they are third? We just came from CBC and I was actually appalled at one of the answers we got when we spoke about "The National" and their being third out of the top three in ratings. We are told, "Yes, but Mansbridge has got to go up against some American movie. If he was in a different time slot his ratings would compare with Lisa LaFlamme's."
"My goodness, you are in charge of the time slot." "Yes, but we kind of like this time slot so we want to keep him there." That is kind of the impression I got from them.
When a program has terrible ratings a television broadcaster including CBC drops the program. When a person is out there doing something they think is offensive, they fire him, maybe rightfully so. I guess that will come out in the wash, but should there be a connection between their ratings and the amount of money they get?
Before you answer I want to make one more comment. I think my colleague, Senator Housakos, said that Greece had dropped their public broadcaster and people didn't seem to even know they had done that. I am wondering, not every country is that fond of public broadcasters. My colleague next to me here, her province I am being told has about a 2 per cent listening audience in the province of Alberta. Where do we go? Do you have any comments or ideas?
Mr. Grant: This problem is whether a public broadcaster should focus on ratings or on other aims. It is a very difficult row they have to hoe. Clearly at some point if the ratings aren't there it is pointless to have the program.
On the other hand one can appreciate there are types of programs that Canadians need as citizens. Even if not everybody wants to watch them they should be available to them. That aspect of public broadcasting which is to make available minority programing niches, programming that wouldn't otherwise be available in the system, even though there may be a relatively small but intense audience, could be viewed as an important element in the mandate of a public broadcaster.
I don't have an easy answer to your question, senator. I can understand why the CBC would want to have higher ratings across the board, but if they also want to accomplish the objects of the act which would specified types of programing that not a lot of Canadians may want but a few want desperately and won't get from the private sector, then I can appreciate their conundrum.
Senator Plett: What is a few? In Halifax a week ago I asked the question what constitutes, I think the word was, a significant audience when we were talking about French language broadcasting in that particular hearing.
I got two different answers. One was that if there is a school in the area that constitutes a significant audience. Another answer I got is if there is more than one francophone in the area that constitutes a significant audience. That is more as a comment as opposed to needing an answer.
Mr. Grant: Yes, I understand.
The Chair: I have two lines of questioning. You mentioned the trust for BBC. What is the trust? Is it the board of governors? Are they the governing body? What is the legal structure?
Mr. Grant: Yes. The BBC governance in Britain, as I understand it, has changed over the years. It is currently regulated, if you will, by a trust that is created by the government but then handed to this group of appointed people to the trust who in effect operate like the board of governors to review the funding and so forth.
A key element of the BBC system, though, which we do not have in Canada, is that its funding does not come through parliamentary appropriation and is not reviewed annually by parliament in that regard. Instead it comes from a licence fee charged to all households in Britain that have a television set. It is collected, as I understand it, through the post office and remitted directly to the BBC and that is, therefore, predictable and fairly level funding.
The amount of the licence fee is set by the government but once it has been set then that is how the BBC is funded. There are a few other countries that have that system as well but, as you know, Canada works entirely through a parliamentary appropriation.
Interestingly prior to 1953 we had the British system. We had a licence fee for radio licences and it supported CBC radio. That was eliminated in the early fifties and ever since then the CBC has been entirely dependent on a parliamentary appropriation.
The Chair: On another line of questioning on virtual private networks that Canadians establish with an American address and the fact that if you have an Apple TV 2 you can jailbreak it to be able to access streaming, what is the legal status of those networks? Would those two not be going against what you said about protecting broadcasting rights for Canadian content?
Mr. Grant: Absolutely.
The Chair: But legally who can prosecute?
Mr. Grant: It is interesting. A few years ago the Copyright Board was looking at a tariff for the performing rights organizations against Internet sites. The Copyright Board said, "You can deal with streaming if it is coming from a file server in Canada, but we don't know whether we have the jurisdiction to go after something that is completely outside the country and the stream is coming from a file server, say, in Buffalo or Bermuda."
That case went to the Supreme Court of Canada and the court ruled against the board and said, "No, no, you, a Canadian performing rights society, have every right to go after an offshore file server to collect royalties for its streaming activities if there is a significant connection with Canada." If they clear rights with Canada or they have subscribers in Canada, if it is a meaningful penetration of Canada then SOCAN, the rights organization, can go after these offshore sites. There is provision in the Copyright Act for service ex-juris so that you could in fact bring a lawsuit.
I talked to the counsel for SOCAN and asked them, "That is interesting. Do you actually get any money from these offshore sites? Why don't they just tell you to take a hike?" I am told that they have hundreds of offshore music sites paying, voluntarily as it were, the tariffs to be able to send their music into Canada.
There are many reasons why that would make sense for a company outside Canada coming into Canada. They would want to be seen as being legal. They would not want to be seen as a scofflaw. At least that is a good sign that the act is robust enough to be able to go after these people.
The Chair: What about individuals that give themselves an American address and sign up for a program by a virtual private network?
Mr. Grant: I guess what you are talking about is subscribers as opposed to somebody starting a network and clearing rights.
The Chair: They would be subscribing to the American system.
Mr. Grant: That is a different issue than copyright piracy. What you are talking about there is a situation of people who are outside the geographic borders that were cleared of copyright trying to come in by pretending they are in the country but they are not really.
That is a problem all over the world. If you go to Spain you see a lot of tourists there with illegal subscriptions to Sky TV from Britain even though they have not cleared the Spanish rights. That issue is a difficult one. It is an issue where the law is clear but the problem is: How do you go after these people?
The Chair: Even with their antenna to go to Florida for the winter.
Mr. Grant: Yes.
Senator MacDonald: I want to ask a question about independent production in Canada. In my experience from watching CBC when I see a drama in particular that I like it has often been produced by an independent producer that is backed by CBC. It is something I think I am more supportive of in general in terms of funding public funding.
You mentioned earlier about the carrot and stick approach that has helped launch the independent production industry in Canada. Is there anything that can be done to encourage us in regard to tax rebates or things of that nature? I am just wondering if there is something along those lines that you think would be useful to help encourage independent production in the country.
Mr. Grant: I think the system we have is complex and, as you say, includes the tax incentive side with tax write-offs or subsidies. You have the Canada Media Fund, which is a fund largely supported by a levy on cable and satellite distributors. You have a licence fee coming from the broadcasters which is higher than they would pay for a comparable American product but lower than the cost by a long shot.
You put all those together and hopefully you might have a distributor's guarantee based on a likelihood of some foreign sales. That is the model now that supports independent production. I can't think that we could tweak some of those, increase this and so forth. It is a model that has been highly successful. We really do have a vibrant independent production sector. Each of those legs of the stool is important for support and if any one of them was pulled away you could see a real reduction in the quantity and quality of independent production.
I can't think of any additional measures that would be called for. I think we have it right. The issue is really how to keep those in place so that the production industry is sustained.
Senator MacDonald: So there are enough legs on the stool.
Mr. Grant: Yes.
The Chair: Mr. Grant, thank you very much for your presentation and for your book. I think that is a very interesting debate for us to consider over the next few weeks.
Senators, our next witness is Mike Fegelman, Executive Director of HonestReporting.
Mr. Fegelman, the clerk informs me that you have six or seven minutes for your presentation. My colleagues will call me to order if I let you go on too long.
Mike Fegelman, Executive Director, HonestReporting Canada: You can keep me in check. I encourage you to do so.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and distinguished members of the committee. I would like to begin by thanking the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications for its important work in examining and reporting on the challenges faced by the CBC, specifically in relation to the changing environment of broadcasting and communications.
My organization, HonestReporting Canada, applauds this committee's efforts. We encourage its members to carefully consider the testimony before them and join together in exploring our recommendations to serve toward improve our public broadcaster.
I would like to begin by explaining our organization's genesis and values. HonestReporting Canada was founded in 2003 by a group of concerned Canadians who wanted to ensure fair and accurate Canadian media coverage of Israel. Frustrated by inaccuracies and unfairness of pan-Canadian media coverage of Israel post the second intifada, and specifically that of the CBC, HonestReporting was born. For example, when CBC "the National" featured reporting in 2004 which gave a platform to unfounded allegations that Israeli agents played a role in the abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu-Ghraib prison facility in Iraq, we were there.
This instance of journalistic malpractice prompted the CBC to issue an unprecedented two on-air clarifications on prime time television. A couple years later a CBC reporter sympathetically profiled a notorious Lebanese terrorist named Samir Qantar in an almost heroic light. This was a man who in cold blood murdered an Israeli father, his two-year-old daughter and two policemen.
During that brutal attack Qantar, who was then 16, dragged 32-year-old Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter, Einat, from their apartment to the nearby beach. Qantar killed Haran by shooting him in the back and then drowning him while Einat watched. According to forensic evidence and eyewitness court testimony Qantar then killed the girl by smashing her skull against the rocks with the butt of his rifle. Her mother, Smadar, hid the two-year-old Yael but accidentally smothered her to death while trying to silence the toddler's cries. This attack is considered perhaps the most brutal in Israel's history and it has been seared onto the collective Israeli consciousness.
Following CBC's sympathetic portrayal of this terrorist we complained to the CBC. At an in-person meeting the CBC conceded to us that they had dropped the ball and dispatched another journalist to do a follow-up piece that properly did profile Qantar's true legacy of terror.
Last year this seemingly anti-Israel trend continued with the CBC giving airtime to an individual who alleged that Israel had deployed chemical weapons on Palestinian children. It was a modern day blood libel, plain and simple.
As an independent grassroots organization HonestReporting works with our 30,000 subscribers and we promote balanced and contextualized Canadian media coverage of Israel and the Middle East at large. We monitor the media in both official languages, recognize excellence and expose inaccuracy in Canadian reporting in the region.
Accordingly we are dedicated to ensuring that news coverage, whether national, local, academic or alternative, conforms to the journalistic standards that news organizations claim to adhere to. When these standards are ignored or violated our staff and our grassroots supporters take action by contacting news agencies and drawing attention to errors and requesting changes. Media outlets, correspondents and news professionals are held accountable for problematic reporting and are made aware of the need for factual, impartial and fair reporting. Since 2003 our organization is proud to have prompted several thousand apologies, retractions and revisions from various different media outlets.
Today, though, our focus will specifically be on CBC's coverage of Israel and to a lesser degree its combined reporting of the Arab world and the broader Middle East, a region that traditionally dominates the headlines and commands immense news coverage. NBC News correspondent Martin Fletcher recently observed that Israel is the "most analyzed, yet least understood country in the world." But why, why is Israel in particular in the middle of a battle for public opinion?
The singling out of the state of Israel for disproportionate censure is a phenomenon that is part and parcel of a campaign of delegitimization by Israel's enemies who look to defeat Israel in the media battleground as they cannot defeat it through conventional warfare. This war is taking place in the court of public opinion and in the media, which is the prism for most people to understand the world. How else to explain the misnomer of Israel being demonized as an apartheid state, along with being the unique target of BDS campaigns? Those are boycott, divestment and sanction campaigns which are perpetrated by Israel's enemies.
Israel after all is a sole democracy in a region that is suffering from instability, tyranny and a basic lack of human rights. In Israel, although a nation that is far from perfect, everyone is equal before and under the law, whereas in the broader Middle East justice is often swift and done without a jury or judge but by an executioner.
During the Israel-Hamas conflict this past summer 700 journalists from over 40 countries covered the conflict and put a magnifying glass on Israel. That magnifying glass approach is fine and even to be applauded so long as that magnifying glass is also on the opposing side. However the power of dramatic headlines, photos, daily news reports and television footage is telling a story about Israel that is often told in an unfair manner and that is inaccurate in what has been termed "the media intifada."
Western mainstream news organizations like the CBC play a critical role in shaping public opinion and public policy. It is incumbent upon the CBC therefore to ensure that its news coverage especially that of the Middle East is scrupulously fair, balanced and accurate. The CBC can't be seen by default to be advocating a particular political point of view which might make it an unwitting accomplice to Israel's detractors and a narrative that vilifies Israel.
With so many threats facing Israel today from nuclear proliferation, terrorism, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, unstable neighbours, the ascendancy of ISIS and the stalled peace process, it is important to ensure that our business and political leaders and the public who influence those leaders receive accurate information about Israel.
This brings us back to the CBC who time and again has reports and reporters who hold Israel to an impossible standard and the broader Middle East to a lesser one.
The Chair: I am sorry. I was just given your statement. It is probably going to be longer than the seven minutes we allowed you so I would like you to maybe summarize it. It is not that I want to control the message but we did give instructions of introductions of seven minutes.
Mr. Fegelman: I understand. It is not a problem. If I can I will just give two quick examples and then I will move towards my recommendation.
During this summer's conflict CBC was quick to rush to indict Israel for the death of 16 Palestinians who were seeking refuge in a UN school in Beit Hanoun on July 24. I am just going to show you a diagram to illustrate CBC's reporting. They featured this report that headlined, "Gaza conflict: Israeli fire hits compound housing UN school, killing 15."
Instead of being investigative about the incident CBC took Palestinian allegations of Israeli culpability at face value, presumed Israel guilty of the incident despite a dearth of evidence and prior to the idea of releasing the findings of its investigation, Israeli officials had contended that there was a high chance and a very high probability the shell that hit the UN school was shot by Hamas, either intentionally or waywardly.
Following our intervention the CBC then changed the headline to reserve judgment. The headline then changed to: "Gaza conflict: UN school caught in crossfire killing 15," instead of laying blame exclusively on Israel.
This is just a snapshot of some of our important work in recent days. Historically I can tell you that about a third of our efforts revolve around the CBC's coverage and that we monitor the combined Canadian media coverage of Israel.
The Chair: You were going to make recommendations.
Mr. Fegelman: I am coming to the recommendations, yes.
We have issued approximately 1,000 complaints to the CBC and have received a 70 to 75 per cent success rate in terms of satisfaction of our concerns. I say that you shouldn't just take my word for granted.
The CBC itself has acknowledged its own shortcomings. For example, Radio Canada's ombudsman, Pierre Tourangeau who appeared before this committee, directed the CBC news department just this past year to be more vigilant in its reporting on Israel, in Radio Canada's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The ombudsman concluded that there exists "again this year, real problems in the coverage of the Arab-Israeli dispute about the Palestinian issue." "The problems," continued the ombudsman, merit a "change in attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
I will move towards my conclusion. To improve the CBC our public broadcaster must strive to shed a spotlight on underreported stories such as Palestinian corruption and cronyism where its leaders syphon billions of dollars intended for their populace into their own personal coffers. Reports must be produced to show how the Middle East is a black hole when it comes to human rights and how despotic countries like Qatar and Iran are bankrolling international terrorism, how Iranian women are hanged for killing their own rapists and how Saudi Arabian women are treated like chattel.
Just look to the gruesome deaths of millions in the Congo in recent years, a story that amazingly fails to gain traction by our western media outlets. We have to question the kinds of priorities of news coverage that is out there.
Ladies and gentlemen, the study you are undertaking is an important initiative in that while worthy of applause. It is only going to represent a meaningful initiative if it leads to substantive changes that see CBC standards and operating practices actually observed by the CBC.
In summary our recommendations are that an independent commission of inquiry be established to provide an external review of the CBC's Mideast reporting and that the role and mandate of the CBC's ombudsman should be expanded to equip the ombudsman with tools to actually enforce CBC news coverage. At present the CBC's ombudsman can only issue advisory rulings without any actual teeth and for some appear to be a form of window dressing.
While we have no problems with the current ombudsman, especially with the integrity of the ombudsman, we do believe that this position should be hired and employed from outside of the ranks of the CBC.
We believe that Middle East correspondents and journalists require more training to equip them with a clear understanding of the region and of the need for fair and balanced reporting.
Finally, traditionally underreported and omitted stories of the Middle East must see the light of day. I say for the record that we are not of the belief that the CBC has an animus or agenda against Israel, that it has an axe to grind with Israel, but we do believe and have the facts to prove the CBC itself acknowledges that it has many shortcomings. Actions can be anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent due to the cumulative effect of unfair, inaccurate and unbalanced media coverage of Israel.
If we are serious about improving the state of the CBC's journalism and fostering a greater sense of accountability, we must be true to our own values and enshrine the aforementioned policy recommendations into actual policies.
Mr. Chair and distinguished members of the committee, I thank you very much for the opportunity you have afforded me in addressing you. At this moment I welcome any questions you may have.
Senator Eggleton: I frankly don't know why you are here. It seems to me that if you have a complaint about journalism, the operation of the journalist within the CBC, you should be taking that to some other entity such as the CRTC or maybe some other body that exists out there. There are bodies I know that exist in the print media. I don't know about the electronic media.
This is a political body. Surely you are not suggesting that there should be political oversight on what journalists do.
Mr. Fegelman: I will tell you about the process. We handle this with respect to any of our interventions with any media outlet. If an error occurs we complain directly to that media. If there cannot be a satisfactory remedy then it could be taken to a relevant, whether it is the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council or the newspaper press councils for the print media. That is the protocol that we follow and we believe is best to be considered.
Senator Eggleton: That is a decent protocol. I am wondering why you are here because this is not the body to be doing that. Heaven forbid the government ever gets into journalistic oversight like they do in Russia and some other places. That is very contrary to our democratic understanding of separation between journalism and the political entity.
I am not saying you don't have a case. I am just saying I don't think this is the place to make the case. We are talking about the future of the CBC here.
Senator Plett: Is there a question?
Senator Eggleton: Yes. I am entitled to make comments. You do it all the time. In fact you spend an awful lot of time making comments. If I want to make comments I will do that, and it has led to a question.
I am not saying you don't have a case. I am just saying I don't see this as the body. We are talking about the future of the CBC, particularly in view of the changing dynamics of the broadcast world, the new digital platforms and all of that stuff. I would have thought you should continue on those other paths.
Mr. Fegelman: I will say, if I can answer your question, we will continue on those other paths but we do believe that CBC is exceptional in comparison to the other media outlets simply because public funds go to support Canadian broadcasting journalism. When that journalism, in our professional estimation and CBC acknowledges, is producing reporting that is systemically being problematic against Israel, we believe that there needs to be some oversight if it is not going to happen within.
Senator Eggleton: You think the government should interfere then.
Mr. Fegelman: We don't believe in government interference. We do believe that there should be some kind of an independent review. How that is comprised and appointed, that obviously would have to be carefully considered.
Senator Eggleton: You mentioned the CRTC and other possible appeal entities and you mentioned the ombudsman. Where do you think the appeal process breaks down? Where does there need to be a change in the appeal process?
Mr. Fegelman: Let me be clear. I don't believe that the appeal process has any fundamental flaws. In fact we have a very good constructive relationship with the CBC. I mentioned that we have secured approximately a70 per cent remedy of our concerns.
Our issues aren't necessarily with the ombudsman but we have seen that even if an ombudsman does agree that there were violations all they can do is say there were violations and nothing could follow from that. There is no enforceability. That is our major concern just with the role of the ombudsman's office but we are satisfied with existing standards and practices of the CBC.
Senator Housakos: Thank you, sir, for being here with us today.
Mr. Fegelman: It is my pleasure.
Senator Housakos: Unlike my colleague I do appreciate your testimony. I do want to remind colleagues around the table that the CBC and organizations like the CRTC not only get their funding from the Government of Canada but they get their mandate from the Parliament of Canada.
This is a committee that is reviewing a large, important Crown corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Indeed a part of our study will include governance of that organization and how they deal with complaints from the public.
Of course politicians and parliamentary committees have absolutely no place in determining the editorial content of journalists and by no means will this committee do that either, but we certainly have a responsibility to overview and to study their governance and their public appeals process. The CRTC certainly did it when they gave a licensing on the condition that they strengthen the role of the ombudsman to respond to public complaints. We have already had the ombudsman of CBC before this committee to discuss those specific issues.
This is just one step forward basically to evaluate what we heard from the ombudsman and what he hear now from an organization that has undertaken to promote certain interests. They can challenge the editorial content of the CBC. They have the right to do so. I am not going to agree or disagree with you.
My question now specifically is: Do you believe that the bias on the part of the CBC is unique to the CBC, or have you had similar types of difficulties with other broadcasting corporations? What has been your experience in dealing with getting those complaints being dealt with by private corporations vis-à-vis public corporations? I would hate to believe there is a systemic anti-Semitic reflex in our public broadcasting corporation.
Mr. Fegelman: Thank you for your question, Mr. Housakos. I am not of the belief that the CBC or its several thousand employees and reporters, journalists and editors wake up day in and day out with any intent to malign Israel. I think it is the byproduct of a lot of serious impediments to doing media coverage of the Middle East which is perhaps the most challenging and most difficult issue to cover in the field of journalism. It is an issue of access which from a very historical perspective is fraught with a lot of challenges about the education of journalists.
There is a challenge in terms of the lexicon that is often appropriated. I could go into many reasons. In fact I give a workshop that lasts about an hour and a half. The issues with respect to the CBC are not unique to the CBC. They appear in all news organizations, international and domestic as well.
For our monitoring of the Canadian media coverage of Israel, CBC produces the most media coverage of any other media outlet. It has great audience both in the French and English perspective. That is why we dedicate a lot of our resources to watching the CBC, but I don't believe that several thousand employees have a disdain against Israel.
Senator Housakos: Do you guys also work on any other issue or are you specifically focused on the cause in Israel?
Mr. Fegelman: If I am accused of a bias in any particular sense it is that my day in and day out focus is revolved around monitoring how the media report on Israel. I am not exclusively monitoring coverage of Qatari media by the Canadian media or Qatari issues by the Canadian media or Jordanian issues extensively.
Senator Housakos: Are there any other organizations in Canada or the United States that monitor media bias similar to what you? Obviously you are oriented to a specific issue but would there be other organizations in North America that would monitor media bias?
Mr. Fegelman: Absolutely. As we all know there are many hundreds of different special interest groups whether for women's rights and environmentalism or different political issues. The role of media watchdogs exists wide and far because they believe quite significantly that what is reported today oftentimes becomes foreign policy tomorrow. There are many, whether it is Greenpeace or some women's rights issue, whether they call themselves media watchdogs or have a segment of their activities actually engaging in media monitoring and activism.
Senator Housakos: I have recommended in the past that to strengthen the role and the independence of both the English and French ombudsman of the CBC it would be appropriate for the Parliament of Canada to consider giving them an independent budget and giving them more teeth. In that way they would not be liable to the wishes of the administration of the CBC. They wouldn't be accountable to the administration of the CBC. More specifically, they wouldn't also have to face sometimes unfair or unbalanced or inequitable cutbacks in their department as they have had recently as compression of the operating budget of the CBC goes on. Do you think that is a good idea?
Mr. Fegelman: I agree that there needs to be a strengthening of the enforceability of ombudsman edicts. I can't speak to the budget or resources of the ombudsman because I am just not privy to it, but I do think that the fact that the ombudsman's reports can be viewed by many as window dressing is a serious problem.
Senator Plett: My main question was also to be centred around how you felt other media outlets were conducting themselves. My colleague opposite said that I took a good time with my preamble so I will at least take a short one. He also suggested he didn't have any problem with your issue but whether or not you should be presenting that to us.
I also want to first of all thank you for being here and say I very much agree that your issues should be presented to this committee. We are studying the viability of CBC but we are studying CBC as a whole. We hear from individuals all the time that have whatever axe to grind. They have a right to come here and do so. We as a committee then determine what our observations and our recommendations will be. I think that once we have accepted a witness, that witness has the right to certainly express their opinion if that is not an opinion of hate.
We are all politicians around the table here. We hear over and over again how this media outlet is biased against us and how that media outlet is biased against us. Of course Conservatives believe that all media are left of centre and people opposite kind of think they are too middle of the road and so on and so forth.
Do you believe that journalists have a right to an opinion, or do they need to absolutely walk the middle ground? We discussed at lunch between two anchors, one having some political biases and another keeping her political biases out of it. I don't believe they do necessarily, but do you believe a journalist has the right to an opinion and to state it?
Mr. Fegelman: Yes and I think we should qualify the roles of journalists. We know that everybody has their own individual bias. To deny that we have our own thoughts and opinions on an issue would be grossly unfair.
I think it is the responsibility of a journalist to embargo and place that bias aside when they are doing a news report. I will just take it tangentially. If they are doing news coverage not about the Middle East but about local political issues, whether they are Conservative, Liberal or NDP they have to report in a factual, straightforward manner. They cannot allow that to bleed into their news coverage. Personal opinion oftentimes comes into their news coverage. It should be embargoed.
Senator Plett: I watch different news outlets. I watch CBC. I watch CTV. I watch Global. I watch Sun Media. Probably I am more sympathetic to Sun Media than some of the other media outlets. However without a doubt Sun Media also very clearly has their biases and when we hear Ezra Levant without a doubt his biases would probably be where mine and yours are for a good part, certainly on issues of Israel.
I guess more as a way of an observation, I don't believe many journalists entirely check their biases at the door. As my next observation or question the media also unfortunately have a duty, or at least they believe they do, to some degree sensationalize.
Taking last week's horrendous events in Ottawa as an example, if that had been reported without television coverage, without the shots of The Globe and Mail reporter taking what he did and so on and so forth, it wouldn't have attracted the attention and the people watching it.
I suppose it is a terrible reflection on all of us, but taking your issues into context more people will be horrified and more people will also watch if CBC or CNN or whoever shows one of the Israeli rockets going into a group of children even though those children are there as shields, people out there are using them as shields. That will create all the media attention and of course Israel will then be the bad guys because they killed all these civilians even though it has been very clearly orchestrated. If Palestine then sends one rocket over on to the Israeli side and one soldier dies, it is just not big media.
Mr. Fegelman: Right. I will say that last week CBC ombudsman Esther Enkin wrote a report — it is posted to the CBC website — which acknowledged that CBC reporting did have a lacking to a degree of images of Hamas firing rockets at Israel and of Hamas fighters dead or alive engaged in the conflict. That is an inherent challenge when you are dealing with asymmetrical warfare but it is huge challenge too.
To hearken back to your earlier comments about Ezra Levant, I think he himself would say he is more of a pundit and leads pretty unabashedly with his editorial line. I think there is a role for editorial comments in journalism. I think that is a role for columnists and pundits but Middle East bureau chiefs, chief correspondents and Parliament Hill reporters should strive to provide a balance of sources in their reports. They should use neutral language and they should try to avoid having what is often very sensationalized media coverage where terror is oftentimes is fuelling the 24-hour news cycle. Not to just isolate the CBC, that is a problem that is exclusive to the field of journalism.
Senator Plett: I do not disagree with you. However, if we take the issues that have happened in the Ukraine over the last year I think most of us in the room are happy with the biased reporting, if you will, or at least the blame is all being put toward Russia, and I believe rightfully so.
We would kind of agree with that kind of reporting. Because some of us at the very least are more supportive of Israel and some Canadians are entirely middle of the road, is there any correlation between that or is there not?
Mr. Fegelman: I can't speak to the CBC's reporting of the issue of Crimea and Russia's intervention there. What I can tell you, though, is I don't think news should be slanted on any issue where two-thirds of coverage is framed in a particular light. There should always be an effort to strive for that neutrality and balance. Otherwise how can we objectively form our judgments if we are not getting the full spectrum of debate and issue that should be heralded?
Senator Plett: I think you may have alluded to this but I will ask anyway. CBC did a more extensive coverage of the issues of Israel and Palestine than any other media outlet. Would you agree that they were more extensive than any of the other people?
Mr. Fegelman: And for possible reason. CBC has several Middle East correspondents. For English media they have a radio and television correspondent and oftentimes that come with a photographer and a videographer and hiring translators. They have a French version of that as well. In comparison to any other Canadian media outlet they are two to one in terms of the ratio but that is just of those reporters.
For whatever reason the priority that CBC choses to cover that issue more over other conflicts is an issue where based on editorial judgment we do believe that CBC should have that editorial independence, but we also think that it shouldn't specifically put a magnifying glass just on Israel simply because you have bureau chiefs who conveniently report out of Jerusalem because it is safe and has free press whereas to report from the broader Middle East is dangerous and hostile. Journalists are beheaded. It doesn't mean that they need to necessarily substitute coverage one way or the other, but it creates that dynamic where you have the disproportionate amount of coverage on anything Israel does.
If Israel tenders for building homes in Jerusalem headlines blare, but when the Palestinian authority in Hamas incite their local population to murder Israeli babies it doesn't get the attention in headlines that are rightly deserving. When nations are trying to wipe Israel from the map and that doesn't register in our headlines, that worries us.
Senator MacDonald: Mr. Fegelman, thank you for being here today. I commend you for all your good work. If the events of last week in Ottawa show us one thing, it reminds us what Israel has to put up on a daily basis.
You sort of answered the first question I was going to ask. You talked about the coverage of the casualties last year in Israel. The coverage of those casualties is an example of the form of bias that is being applied. I think we mentioned that it has been.
Netanyahu said that Israeli uses its missiles to protect people and Hamas uses people to protect its missiles. That is something I tend to agree with. I think the evidence backs that up. We are always told that things in the Middle East are complicated. I think things in the Middle East are fairly simple. They are not that complicated. We believe in freedom of speech, freedom of association, religious freedom, adherence to democratic institutions, and the rule of law. These are all things that we understand. How can we get the CBC to understand these metrics of adherence to democracy and the rule of law and use them as a measuring stick when we are dealing with the Middle East?
Mr. Fegelman: In our opinion there needs to be established a commission to determine the CBC's pan-reporting, whether it is on their online radio or television broadcasting so they can actually see, perhaps by mirror reflection, that their editorial decisions in the news coverage are not showing what I mentioned a little bit before.
According to the 2004 Arab Human Development Report, this region is simply a black hole when it comes to human rights where people are beheaded just on a whim. These are the kinds of stories that aren't being reported.
To take it out of the Middle East and go to the issue of the Congo, millions of people in the past decade or more have been murdered. Then again CBC journalists and editors tell us in regular meetings that they always have to weigh the existing resources they have and their ability to actually cover that story. They are also kind of considering their own audience. We also have to know that CBC has a business interest in making sure that people are constantly going to its website, reading its coverage, watching its news and listening to it, so it has to be attractive and palatable from a Canadian perspective.
It is not an easy job to be a CBC journalist. It is not an easy job to be in the field of journalism but it has to do better. It acknowledges that it has to do better. It sometimes maybe needs a little bit more tools and oversight to do so.
The Chair: Mr. Fegelman, thank you very much for your presentation.
Mr. Fegelman: Thank you.
The Chair: Colleagues, our next witness is Ken Stowar, Station Manager, University of Toronto Community Radio Inc.
We are here to hear your presentation, Mr. Stowar.
Ken Stowar, Station Manager, University of Toronto Community Radio Inc.: Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to appear. My name is Ken Stowar, and I am presently the University of Toronto Community Radio Station Manager and CEO.
By way of background, the University of Toronto Community Radio broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, serving a population base of roughly eight million people from Barrie to Buffalo, Kitchener to Cobourg. Firmly rooted in the University of Toronto community, CIUT's programming reaches and represents the community at large, and encompasses a wide panorama of styles and expressions. This has been the case since 1965.
CIUT-FM received charitable status in 2005 based on its role as an educator in the community, not through educational programming, but rather through our training and educating of students and community members in the values and principles of radio journalism.
Based on our mission statement, and I have attached a copy for you, CIUT provides an alternative to mainstream media, provides community access to the airwaves, and offers programming that reflects the diverse elements of the communities we serve.
The Chair: Sorry, you said you had a copy?
Mr. Stowar: I believe there was a copy of the mission statement attached.
The Chair: Continue. I am sorry to interrupt. We will try to find it.
Mr. Stowar: No problem.
Above all, CIUT exists to serve its listeners. We do our utmost to stimulate, educate, entertain and challenge our audiences, and to meet the needs of listeners that are not currently addressed by other broadcast media.
CIUT's roots go back more than 45 years to 1965. At that time, a group of students founded University of Toronto Radio as a voice for the University of Toronto community. Broadcasting was initially restricted to closed circuit lines in campus residences and cafeterias. Several years and technical leaps later, the renamed Radio Varsity could be also heard in the wider community on cable and through selective programming initiatives broadcast on CJRT-FM and CHUM-FM.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the radio station continued to gain momentum and changed its name to Input Radio, then UTR, then CJUT. An application to the CRTC for FM status was put forward in 1976 but did not succeed.
In 1986, a second team of campus and community radio fans made another application for a spot on the FM dial, pitching the CRTC on the station's unique role in representing news, music, arts and culture ignored by commercial radio. On January 15, 1987, the collective efforts of two decades worth of work and research by a host of passionate and like-minded radiophiles finally paid off as CIUT-FM launched with its stand alone and unique programming at 15,000 watts.
The next two decades were, to say the least, very interesting. There were many highs to be proud of, mostly programming, and painful lows to deal with, mostly administrative, reflecting both the vibrancy and the chaos of a growing organization. Regardless of any turmoil that unfolded behind the scenes, the volunteers of CIUT-FM continued to deliver broadcast, creative, innovative, and high-caliber programming, unlike any other found across the FM spectrum.
CIUT began to stream live on the Internet in the mid-1990s. In part, this allowed us to connect with an international audience. Since then, CIUT-FM has introduced additional platforms, including the Star Choice Satellite service, assigned channels on Rogers Digital Cable and Bell Fibe, iTunes Radio, TuneIn Radio, and other phone apps. CIUT-FM also provides audio archives and podcasts accessibility on its website. Yet, CIUT-FM remains steadfastly tied to our local roots, promoting a diverse range of Toronto-based cultural activities.
CIUT-FM can now boast that it has a long record of organizational stability. This has enabled the radio station to expand upon its day-to-day programming initiatives. As an example, we've increased our live broadcast initiatives into the community by broadcasting live from a diverse array of festivals and cultural events in Toronto, Guelph, Owen Sound, and elsewhere. At our broadcast studios located in Hart House, University of Toronto, we host many exclusive live performances by local, regional, national, and international artists.
Five decades have seen many changes, but the basic principles behind the University of Toronto Community Radio have remained constant. The radio station remains a forum for exposing non-commercial music and culture, groundbreaking research at the U of T, and views and opinions you will not necessarily hear expressed on mainstream radio.
Thank you for your time and patience. I am happy to answer any questions that you might have.
The Chair: Senator Eggleton?
Senator Eggleton: I just wondered if you have any thoughts about the CBC, since our basic study is about the CBC and public broadcasting in general in Canada.
Mr. Stowar: I strongly believe that it is an excellent service. It is possible that it could do a better job expressing the voices and the faces of the country, which is quite a task in itself.
We have had an ongoing relationship with the CBC. There are several CBC employees who sit on our board of directors. I can tell you a quick anecdote. In 2005, when the CBC was locked out, I received a call from a producer friend of mine at the CBC asking me what I thought of the idea of them bringing "Metro Morning" including Andy Barrie to our airwaves.
I thought it was a fantastic idea, so I rearranged our program schedule. They came to the station, did a weekday morning show, not "Metro Morning," but "CIUT Toronto Unlocked," it was called. All of the participants had to go through an orientation session and pay a membership fee before they were allowed on the air. That was the protocol.
But that month's experience, I can tell you, truly rejuvenated the majority of the CBC personnel who took part in that morning show that we hosted at the radio station. A lot of them were reminded of why they got into radio and broadcast journalism in the first place. There was a little bit of looseness, a little bit of fun, and they really enjoyed their stay. Ever since then, many of the CBC employees who took part in that radio show for the month keep close ties with the radio station and donate to it on an ongoing basis.
Senator Eggleton: Do you become a training ground, in effect, for people who go on to the CBC or into other forms of broadcasting or private enterprises?
Mr. Stowar: Yes. Over the years, we have had dozens of volunteers that come to us from institutions such as Ryerson, Humber, Mohawk, and so on. We have the vehicle in place where, if they are so inclined, they can continue to develop skill sets. But more than that, we offer them the opportunity to develop others, and there are literally dozens upon dozens who have moved on and are now working in other broadcast media.
Senator Eggleton: You mentioned in response to my first question that you thought some improvements were needed in terms of the CBC. Are there any particular areas you want to highlight?
Mr. Stowar: Again, the representation of the voices and faces of the country. This is something you have to do locally, that I face, and I have to state up front, under no circumstances can one radio operation serve every constituent that it is reaching. As an example, when it comes to music, I think there could be a broader range of representation of the cultural backgrounds of people in this country. I don't like the term "underrepresented," but I will use that for the sake of another one at this moment.
Senator Eggleton: You are specifically thinking of radio?
Mr. Stowar: Yes.
Senator Eggleton: Okay, thank you.
Senator Plett: I have two basic questions. In your key principles, you say, "We broadcast programs that are different in style and substance from other radio stations." Can you explain that?
Mr. Stowar: Sure. It is an expectation that comes with the broadcast licence that the CRTC issues to all campus media stations, not just CIUT. We are to stay away completely from the music that the private sector offers its listeners, and as well, we have to differ ourselves as much as possible from the CBC. So therefore, our challenge is to find all those voids and needs of one kind or another that are not being met through music or spoken word presentation.
Senator Plett: What kind of music does CBC not play that you would play?
Mr. Stowar: There would be an extremely long list.
Senator Plett: Well, there are only so many types of music.
Mr. Stowar: With CIUT, we go way beyond your standard — I don't know if you are familiar with the CRTC categories, category two which is —
Senator Plett: Give me three types, not songs, three types of music that you would play that CBC doesn't play.
Mr. Stowar: I would clarify by saying not just as tokenism, but continuously, we play Suk, music from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Benga music of Kenya, Cajun Zydeco music.
Senator Plett: That gives me an idea. So you would not play classical music? You would not play country music, rock music?
Mr. Stowar: We have a two-hour classical music program that steers completely away from the inventory, the music inventory you would hear on the existing classical broadcast services in Toronto.
Senator Plett: You are told by CRTC that you are not supposed to compete with CBC?
Mr. Stowar: Not compete. We are all competing for people's attention and time. We are not to duplicate content.
Senator Plett: My next and only other question, "We actively participate in and reflect the culture, social, political life of our listening communities." Can you be a little more specific in what is the social and political life of your listening communities?
Mr. Stowar: There are a lot of activists and advocates that we appeal to across the city of Toronto and so on. Culturally, we offer programming in Spanish, Punjab, French, Creole.
Senator Plett: Political? Even CBC gives the Marijuana Party some air time.
Mr. Stowar: Yes, they do.
Senator Plett: This is not a judgmental comment, but would that be the type of political groups?
Mr. Stowar: It could be, but part of the difference is where we offer at-length discussions, not three, four, five-minute discussions.
Senator Plett: Thank you.
Senator Unger: I assume you are totally listener funded?
Mr. Stowar: No.
Senator Unger: Where does your funding come from?
Mr. Stowar: Fifty per cent of our operating budget is covered by student fees. Listener funded, probably around 20 per cent of so. Advertising is the least, in the neighbourhood of 5 per cent, and then we have what are known as SCMOs. They are subcarrier channels that we lease out, and they make up the difference.
Senator Unger: You can manage quite nicely with those funding sources?
Mr. Stowar: At this point, we are a hand-to-mouth, week-to-week operation, but I am literally, I believe, the first radio station in Toronto that now has a hybrid digital transmitter that was borne out of the catastrophic event that happened last April where our tube-driven transmitter died, literally, and our listeners responded to the tune of $150,000 through a call-out, which allowed me to buy this transmitter. This hybrid digital transmitter is going to allow me now, potentially, to begin three more revenue sources on digital radio.
Senator Unger: Your principle, one of them is, "We endeavor to promote and maintain the highest level of journalistic and broadcasting excellence at all times." How would you describe the highest level of journalistic excellence?
Mr. Stowar: Just some quick background, if I went back to the radio station 20-plus years ago, it was the Wild West. There really wasn't any control on what was being presented. But now, going back 10 years ago, I was quite proactive. Initially, I was the program director, and I came in and realized that under no circumstances should anyone on our airwaves be attempting to sway any listener to any perspective or point of view.
However, at the same time, all perspectives and opinions and viewpoints were certainly allowed on the radio station. People who come in are trained to understand the code of ethics as it applies to journalism. That means their goal is to provide as much information as they possibly can to our listeners so the listeners are then put in a position of making up their own mind.
Senator Unger: Thank you.
Senator Housakos: What is your total operating budget?
Mr. Stowar: Our total operating budget is roughly $700,000.
Senator Housakos: How many people do you employ?
Mr. Stowar: There are six people. It is half of what it was four years ago.
Senator Housakos: CBC Radio, without a doubt, in testimony after testimony we have heard from people, is probably the most successful part of their business. They seem to have very good ratings across the country.
But out of the $1 billion yearly budget, give or take, of CBC Radio-Canada, $300 million goes into production of radio. That is a huge chunk of change. There are a number of radio stations like yours across the country that have different licensing criteria. They all seem to be operating with a small staff, small budget, and have carved out a niche market for themselves.
If the $300 million a year evaporated all of a sudden, of course, that would mean the end of Radio-Canada as we know it. Obviously, they rely on that $300 million. Do we have enough licensed radio outlets across the country that would be able to make up for this lack of service, provide what Radio-Canada is providing across the country?
Mr. Stowar: I am a firm believer that radio is a powerful tool that has been underutilized. It has never truly delivered what it potentially can. I work to deliver 24 hours a day of powerful, impactful radio, which we are not even close to doing, but that is our goal. That is what we attempt to do.
The one thing I also believe that has been lost with all the new high tech is that most of our radio that we produce, most of our content is done live. When I watched the CBC do the morning show at CBC, I saw firsthand how many people were involved in putting together the show, and it was roughly in the neighbourhood of 25, 30, and I automatically started adding up the dollars and cents.
From that experience, we generated our own morning show using volunteers who were passionate and deeply committed to do some of the most spectacular journalism I have ever heard. It was applauded by those from the CBC who were at the radio station with that "Toronto Unlocked" program.
But I feel that a lot of radio is best when it is immediate. So much of the programming that is offered on CBC radio is prerecorded. It is voice tracked. There is a lack of ability to reach out and to be communicative. We are in the business of communication. In essence, that is what we do. The ability to communicate to your audience minute by minute I think should be increased.
Senator Housakos: I still have the question on the table that I would like your opinion on. There are radio stations like your own across the country, and there are similar stations like yours around the country. Would they be able to fill the void if that $300-million subsidy to Radio-Canada was gone tomorrow morning?
Mr. Stowar: No.
Senator Housakos: Why not, and what would be the weak points?
Mr. Stowar: I think individually and collectively, the radio stations left would not have the financial resources and human resources to keep up. They could do a good job if they were local, but I still don't think that would make up for the loss of CBC.
Senator Housakos: Thank you.
Senator MacDonald: Thank you, Mr. Stowar, for being here today.
You run a small radio station. You know how to stretch a buck.
Mr. Stowar: Yes, indeed.
Senator MacDonald: I am sure you do.
You mentioned that CBC is perhaps not showing enough Canadian faces, not telling enough Canadian stories. The one thing technology has done is liberated and democratized the media. With an iPhone and a laptop you can produce a movie.
I just want your opinion on the CBC. Could the CBC not leverage its technology to increase its content? Can these stories not be told by more people now that everyone has access to such things as YouTube? I guess what I am asking is, could the CBC gather these resources and do what you do and get more value out of the money they receive by exploiting them?
Mr. Stowar: It is a good question and something I am dealing with on a day-to-day basis, even in our operation.
Initially, I was very hesitant in offering our listeners audio archives and podcasts of our programming. My belief was that those vehicles would pull people away from our primary, which was to listen to us live on the FM dial.
Eventually, I had to succumb. In fact, podcasts are now our largest growth area. I probably have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2,000 people a month downloading podcasts of programming from the radio station.
So to put that into context, our weekly cumulative audience for the radio station is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 150,000, then we have our 2,000 people a month taking podcasts, and there is another percentage that is listening to the audio archives.
I have instituted an exclusive online content radio station on our website. I have the Rotman Business School of Management, the Munk Centre, and other departments and faculties of the University of Toronto. They are going to be providing programming that is going to broaden what we offer as a radio station and open up, in this case, more time to the University of Toronto.
Senator MacDonald: I am increasingly of the opinion that CBC should take more resources out of television and put them into radio. CBC is always on in my house and has been since I was a kid. I am just wondering if they concentrate so much on television they forget about the great reach and the great value of radio.
Mr. Stowar: That is another good question. My daughter, who is under 30, doesn't have cable. They may not even have a television. If they do, they gravitate to such things, if you are familiar with it, as Google TV, which tends to be the big trend. You pay one flat fee and that is it. You've got anything and everything you want to watch. They don't watch television.
Radio, to me, at large is taken for granted, yet it is not taken for granted around the world. I just saw a recent study. In the small country of Bulgaria, five million people, 74 per cent of respondents stated that radio was still their number one place they went to for information, news and the like. Radio is still very important around the world. I still think it has the ability to be the most immediate medium, even more so than television when it gets down to it.
But to answer your question, I think radio is much more flexible, mobile, less costly to move around the country with.
Senator MacDonald: And you can do things while you listen to it.
Mr. Stowar: Yes. It may not necessarily be the primary. It tends to be the secondary when people are tuned in. I know some of the CBC radio producers of "Ideas" and so on. These are just magnificent shows. I really believe that they could do more. In fact, their budgets have been cut to the point where they can't even travel to do live interviews anymore. They are doing them by phone, which I think is unfortunate.
Senator MacDonald: I guess I am part of that generation that can still remember the joy of having a transistor radio.
Mr. Stowar: As do I.
Senator MacDonald: What a wonderful thing it was. Thank you.
Senator Plett: Why is it unfortunate that a radio reporter does interviews by telephone? Nobody can see them. If that saves money, can they not ask the same questions by telephone as they can in person?
Mr. Stowar: I am sure you have been interviewed by phone and in person. There is a huge difference between being interviewed over a phone and in person. I do my utmost not to do phone interviews. At the University of Toronto radio station, guests are expected to be in the studio. It gets even worse than that. Now, they are using Skype at times, which is just horrible to listen to. The production values are horrible.
Senator Plett: That, I agree with. I have done interviews all three ways: in person, by phone, and on Skype. Until they do something to make Skype better, it has to be the worst. I don't know, and again, I am not going to debate, that I agree that I wouldn't as soon be interviewed by telephone. I find it almost more relaxing than to have that mike stuck in my face. It is an opinion.
Mr. Stowar: There is a convenience to it, but where we can we like to do it live.
Senator Unger: Are you aware of CKUA in Edmonton?
Mr. Stowar: Yes, I am.
Senator Unger: They have been around for 100 years. I think they started at the U of A. That is a radio station I listen to a lot, and CBC is now feeding into that. I will hear CBC announcers coming through and programs coming through on CKUA.
Mr. Stowar: I don't believe CKUA has the same type of broadcast licence as we do, so they can tap into that source.
Senator Unger: What would be the difference between their licence and yours?
Mr. Stowar: I don't believe they are licensed as a campus radio station. I believe they have a different license.
Senator Unger: That could be true. I am not sure. Thank you.
The Chair: Mr. Stowar, thank you very much for your presentation.
Mr. Stowar: You are welcome.
The Chair: As you know, we will be continuing our study over the next few weeks and months. You can follow us on CPAC or on Twitter, but you will not be able to follow us on Skype because we will not be using it.
[Translation]
Today, we are continuing our study into the challenges faced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in relation to the changing environment of broadcasting and communications. Our witnesses today are Michel Cormier from Radio-Canada, and Jennifer McGuire from CBC.
The floor is yours.
[English]
Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: My name is Jennifer McGuire. I am the General Manager of CBC news. I am also the General Manager of Local Services and the Editor in Chief of the English side of CBC.
[Translation]
Michel Cormier, Executive Director, News and Current Affairs, French Services, Société Radio-Canada: I am Michel Cormier. I am the executive director of news and current affairs at Radio-Canada. We will be presenting our opening remarks jointly today.
[English]
Ms. McGuire: This is a new world for citizens and consumers of news. In the 1950s when the national news was launched on CBC, the idea of the evening news meant that you heard the news once, on television. By the late 1980s, CBC Newsworld brought a 24-hour news cycle to Canadian television, but now, TV is one of several screens that people can use for news and for information. At any time of the day, they have at their fingertips a smartphone, an iPad, or whatever device is invented next.
With the advent of social medial, the fragmentation of audiences, the appearance of new competitors, we now operate in an environment that is more complicated and more competitive. It is an environment where unconfirmed information can go viral, where opinions are an increasing part of the news business. It is an environment where anybody can be his or her own journalist and publish content to the web.
This poses both challenges and opportunities for CBC Radio-Canada. First of all, the explosion of the digital universe means the news cycle is constantly accelerating. Twenty-four/seven is already an outdated concept. We now have to report on the news at the moment it happens. Our journalists break news on Twitter and social media before going on the air on television and radio.
We also see in this era of choice that brand and values matter. Last week when the attack happened in Ottawa, Canadians turned to CBC Radio-Canada for reliable information. In fact, the CBC's coverage of the event itself became a news story in the U.S. press and was held as the standard to strive for on all platforms.
We are constantly evolving our digital strategies to make sure we are up to date with the changing ways people consume news. Still, television and radio remain big parts of what we do. We have to be as relevant on a 52-inch screen as we are on the two-inch screen of a smartphone. This means that our information offer has to be complimentary on all platforms and geared to the time of day and the audience expectations at that time of day.
We have to be quick to report breaking news on Twitter or television, and we have to offer in-depth news on the issues of the day in marquis programs. This is where the public broadcaster has value and relevance for Canadians, and increasingly, we have to do this in a challenging economic and financial environment.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: In this new, more competitive and complex environment, Radio-Canada/CBC has the obligation of remaining true to the journalistic values of a public broadcaster. Unlike private media, we do not answer to shareholders, but to the Canadian public.
Our Journalistic Standards and Practices guide is one of the most complete and detailed in the industry. The five main principles are: accuracy, fairness, balance, impartiality and integrity.
Our mission is to serve the public interest. In particular, that means informing, disclosing, contributing to the understanding of issues of public interest and encouraging Canadians to participate in our free and democratic society.
We are committed to reflecting diversity, to protecting our independence and to acting responsibly. We think that upholding these values is especially important for the public broadcaster now that we live in a world where social media is used to inundate the public sphere with rumour and opinion.
At first glance, you might think that this is a handicap for Radio-Canada/CBC because some of our competitors do, after all, add a lot of commentary and opinion to their coverage of events.
Our opinion is that this new environment justifies the existence of a strong public broadcaster. A sociologist recently wrote that Radio-Canada/CBC is an island of credibility in a sea of rumours and unverified information.
As much as the public enjoys expressing and sharing opinions on current events, especially on social media, they want and need credible sources of information that will be able to distinguish between fact and interpretation. That is what makes us stand out as a public broadcaster.
[English]
Ms. McGuire: I want to expand on what Michel was just saying. Canadians have a different relationship with the media than they did before. They have more options to get the kind of news that they want to hear. They have more ways to interact with journalists directly through social media. There are multiple avenues to express concerns that they might have about what we do and how we do it.
So CBC Radio-Canada makes an unparalleled effort to be accountable to the audience and to the public at large. At its heart is the Journalistic Standards and Practices guidelines. This is our public promise to Canadians, as Michel mentioned. This guide sets a framework for how we conduct ourselves and how we practice our journalism.
We are also the only broadcasters in the country to have ombudsmen — as you know, one in French and one in English — to represent the public when they think we have failed in our journalism. These ombudsmen use our standards and practices to hold us to account. We make a concerted effort to respond to people who raise issues with our journalism, most particularly if we have made an error.
When we make an error, we accept it, we acknowledge it, and we correct it. Nobody likes making mistakes, but we report on thousands of stories each week, and we realize there will be moments when mistakes happen. We believe in those moments that being transparent with our audience is the best we can do to build trust and show them the respect they deserve.
We have in recent years created a very thorough and proactive policy on corrections and clarifications. When there is a serious mistake made, we set the record straight as soon as possible, and on the same program or platform where the mistake took place. We also take every possible action to make sure a mistake is not repeated or magnified.
Beyond our regular programming, we engage with our audience and highlight the ways we work. I have a blog on our website that explores all sorts of issues around journalism. We draw attention to some of our internal debates, and we explain why we make some of the choices that we make.
CBC also has one of the most vibrant communities of commenters in the country. In this way, the public broadcaster is evolving into the most wildly populated public square for debate about issues across Canada. These actions are all integral to our identity at CBC news, serving Canadians with transparency, integrity, and accountability.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: So our major challenge in the coming years will be to provide Canadians with information programming that informs them about major current affairs issues, on the platform of their choice and at a time that suits them.
That means moving toward digital technologies without neglecting the successful aspects of our radio and television programming. And the principle that guides us in this great transformation, because we are still going through a revolution, is the very simple idea that we must be at the service of citizens.
Citizen is a richer and more demanding term than that of public or viewer. The citizen has rights and responsibilities, and to take care of those, citizens need information that will enable them to make informed choices. That is the public broadcaster's role.
To fulfill that role, we must provide programming that is independent, original and enlightening. Radio-Canada has done this by changing the mission of our major news broadcasts, particularly "Téléjournal" at 10 p.m. No longer is it a traditional newscast, but rather an information program that delves deeper into issues of the day.
We are also in the process of implementing a new national coverage strategy that focuses on telling the country's story. The idea is not to simply reflect the regions but to provide meaningful regional coverage of national issues that concern all our listeners.
The third aspect is maintaining our presence on the ground here and abroad. Our network of correspondents from Vancouver to Beirut, from Moncton to Beijing, is what allows us to provide distinctive reporting and to ensure that Canadians can have a look at their own world and a world that reflects their interests and concerns.
We are also expanding our information coverage through our public affairs programs, both at CBC and Radio-Canada. We have programs that are already popular and well-established, such as "The Fifth Estate," and on the French side, "Enquête," "Découverte," and "La facture" to name a few. And increasingly, these programs work with our news service to deepen our view of events.
For example, just two days after the attack in Ottawa last week, "Enquête" presented a full profile of young Canadian jihadists who go and fight in Syria. They were assisted by our Beirut correspondent, who followed the path of one of them, from Turkey. The program will also be shown on "The Fifth Estate" because we also share a lot of material that we film.
We appealed to our digital teams to complete what would be a global information service on multiple platforms. Our journalists are now working on all platforms, at all hours of the day. And the web journalists further post to Twitter and produce complements to our television and radio reports that allow us to take our coverage further.
[English]
Ms. McGuire: Moving forward we will meet the changing needs of Canadians and adapt to the changing reality in the news business while being financially sustainable. In news, we will continue our focus on integration. This is finding ways to centralize work flow across platforms so that multiple needs can be met with fewer resources. In the past ten years, we have successfully integrated radio and television news teams on both networks for a more consistent approach to news gathering.
Strategy 2020 will extend that position on both our news services, especially at the local level, to be digital first with a strong emphasis on mobile content. Our legacy platforms on TV and radio will still be important pillars, but increasingly will migrate resources and content to digital first, as that is where the opportunity now lies.
Digital first means a more tailored and customized service producing more on-demand content that can be delivered through the day, not only to predetermined programs and slots and television radio, but constantly. Digital first means innovation and storytelling and audience involvement. Social platforms will allow a more participatory two-way conversation and communication with Canadians.
Digital first also means a major retooling of how we work. We will examine everything we do, how we do it, and prioritize those things that add value and stop doing those things that do not.
In terms of our promise to Canadians locally, we are saying we are going to remain in the communities that we are in, but we are changing how we deliver information. On radio, we will stay basically the same. In communities where we have television, we are saying that we will guarantee at least 30 minutes of supper hour television to Canadians, and in some markets, maybe more. In all communities, we will grow our digital presence.
It is a big change, but the value promise of the public broadcaster remains the same. We will still produce accurate, relevant content that balances live and immediate breaking news with the context and the background that CBC Radio-Canada is known for.
We will continue to produce award-winning original journalism that is respected around the world and makes a difference to Canadians. We will also have a footprint in communities across the country and in the North, more than any other broadcaster, especially in underserved areas. Local is where we connect one on one with Canadians, and it is the lens into the greater CBC Radio-Canada for most Canadians.
Thank you. We would be happy to answer your questions.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you. This morning, I had the opportunity to run into Mr. Cormier. I told him that since we were on the record, since we were in Halifax and they were asking us questions about — because you just admitted that you had even made mistakes in the past, I told Mr. Cormier that I had told the people in Halifax and Moncton that I was going to ask a question about —
[English]
What happened when the CBC seemed to be missing the events that were happening in Moncton that are actually being judged in court today?
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: We had the opportunity to explain things to the notable Acadians at the time, with the event occurring in the evening and on RDI. Obviously, people would have expected it to be a live broadcast, a special program. We settled for providing regular updates, including during the lead story on television newscasts. But our bureau chief, who was on the program at the time, had not found all the resources needed to go live.
It is a mistake we acknowledged and apologized for. We apologized to Acadians because they expected to be supported by that time. Things resumed at 5 a.m. the next morning with a special broadcast that aired almost all day, and we also sent our anchor, Céline Galipeau, that same day to ensure that those events were given the importance they deserved.
We have since then reviewed our procedures. Clearly, that time of night is the most dangerous for us because that is when we have fewer staff, obviously. Teams have now been fortified. We reviewed what we call our code yellow of important events, and we are ensuring that we do not make that mistake again.
Last week, we had the opportunity to make up for this to a certain extent. The review of this procedure enabled us to quickly be on the events in Ottawa. I think we still did a decent job, and we apologized to the officials. We greatly regret having dropped the ball that day.
[English]
The Chair: While we were in Halifax, we were also told that there is a different structure and relationship between the regions and headquarters, that in French there is an additional level of "bureaucracy" between the people on the ground and the people managing the media. Ms. McGuire, would you care to comment?
Ms. McGuire: On the English side, I am the head of news, as Michel is the head of news on the French side, but I also manage all the local services, so the radio and TV online locally. It has always been a principle at CBC radio to respond to breaking those stories locally. As a matter of course, they just go with a coordinated structure in terms of the editorial decision making, and it also has allowed us to be quicker to get on the air in terms of the other platforms.
The Chair: I just wanted to clarify that because that was also on the record.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: Let me clarify. It is not that there is an additional level of bureaucracy. In fact, we have the same integrated structure for news gathering. Every day, the regions talk with management in Montreal. Patricia Pleszczynska is still the executive director and also takes care of the regional stations. She has appeared as a witness here several times.
There is a very specific reason for this: francophone regions outside Quebec each have their own distinctive characteristics. An audience in Ontario has very different tastes from audiences in Acadia or western Canada.
We have very specific obligations when it comes to licenses for French-speaking regions or francophone minorities.
To ensure that these communities receive full attention to development and programming, it was decided several years ago that they deserved to have someone to take care of that specifically.
The Chair: Thank you for your answers.
[English]
Senator Plett: Let me start off by congratulating you and CBC on the terrific announcement we heard at noon today about the Olympics in 2018 and 2020. I want to say that I watched more of the last Olympics than I think I ever did before. I think CBC needs to be commended for the coverage they gave. I think it is as a result of the coverage that I watched as much as I did.
Certainly, things are different now than they were when we had the Olympics in Vancouver. We have iPads now and we didn't then. So that certainly helped, but you did a marvelous job in the last ones, and I have every confidence that you will do an even better job in the next.
It has been said many times and was said again today that CBC doesn't have shareholders or stockholders. You are responsible to the Canadian public. The Canadian public, Canadian taxpayer in fact is a shareholder. So I think any time we say CBC doesn't have shareholders, we are incorrect in that, and you have an obligation to the Canadian shareholders and the Canadian public.
Ms. McGuire, you were quite explicit in your comments early on in your presentation about wanting to report the facts correctly, and if there are errors, to correct those errors. I asked the question of Mr. Peter Grant from McCarthy Tétrault this morning: How should somebody correct an error when they make an error?
It seems to me that when a blatant error gets printed on page 1 of the National Post, it gets corrected on page 48 in the bottom left-hand column. Since we are talking CBC, when they make a blatant error on "The National," they admit their error, and they correct the error in an online part of their web site. You can go online and you can see the correction.
Mr. Grant said that he was firmly of the opinion that if an error is made in the front page of a paper or on a national news program, the correction should be made equally prominent. How do you feel about that?
Ms. McGuire: At CBC, we have a corrections policy that actually colour codes levels of errors. In some cases, we will report a fact that gets changed during the day, and that is a different level of error than making a significant mistake in our journalism.
So the first thing to tell you is that there are different degrees of errors. They are not all the same. News in an ever moving environment shifts. We saw that in Ottawa last week. We had information that shifted, even information coming from the police, through the course of the day. There are different degrees of errors. That would be my first point.
My second point is we actually do try to correct what we call our red flag areas on the platform that they are happening on. So if "The National" has made a significant mistake that requires a correction, it will get corrected on "The National."
Senator Plett: If a person has been maligned on "The National" and he or she thinks they have been maligned on "The National" and CBC agrees that they did something wrong, you would decide whether or not that was a red flag issue?
Ms. McGuire: Yes. We have a whole process. We have a whole piece of CBC news that looks at accountability. Obviously, we are accountable to the ombudsman process, and that is quite a detailed and involved process. But any person who has issues with our coverage, the first response usually is contacting us.
Our first course of action is to review the content and respond in detail to the person. If they have a continued issue with our coverage, we encourage them to refer it to the ombudsman, which is an independent review process of our content, and from there, within 20 days, they will get a response and we take a course of actions.
In some cases, the ombudsman recommendations lead to changes in our process. For example, in the past, there was some feedback around our policy around using polls and reporting polls, so sometimes it changes process. Sometimes, it could lead to an apology, and other times, there are no errors found. It depends on the nature of the story and the course of action that is followed. But in any case, the public is entitled to an independent review.
Senator Plett: You believe the ombudsman is independent?
Ms. McGuire: Absolutely.
Senator Plett: But yet reports to the President of the CBC?
Ms. McGuire: I think that is for administrative purposes. In terms of the news organizations, they are completely separate and distinct from the news organizations.
Senator Plett: I will ask the question, and you may decide not to offer an opinion, since it is about the ombudsman.
I did ask the ombudsman a question a few weeks ago when she and the French ombudsman were before us. Like you said, there are levels of issues, and the ombudsman or some committee decides whether the ombudsman should even be dealing with a given issue. I asked her, "If you deal with an issue, or when you decide that this is obviously an issue for you, do you then give both parties, say a journalist and somebody else, the benefit of a hearing?" She said no. She would listen in many cases only to the journalist.
Ms. McGuire: I think the process is that, when an item is flagged to the ombudsman for review, they do a thorough review of the journalism and see if it stands up. That process is quite robust. They talk to everybody who touched the story. They go through scripts. They look at what went on air on the various platforms, and they make an independent assessment.
So I think what the ombudsman is, in every case, looking at our promise in terms of the standards we declare to live by and at whether or not the journalism measures up.
Senator Plett: Who appoints the ombudsman?
Ms. McGuire: The ombudsman is appointed through the board.
Senator Plett: So CBC appoints the ombudsman. She reports to the president, and you think she is independent?
Senator Eggleton: The Auditor General gets appointed by Parliament. In fact, a number of those positions do. They are accountable for their budgets to the Treasury Board, but they are independent. Nobody questions their independence.
Senator Plett: You could be the witness.
Senator Eggleton: Pardon?
Senator Plett: You should be the witness.
Senator Eggleton: No, I am just commenting on that point.
We comment on each other's points some of the time. If you don't think their ombudsman is independent, then you can't think the Auditor General is independent.
Anyway, when I arrived on Parliament Hill in 1993, I noted that there were a number of CBC journalists. There was one for French radio, one for English radio, another one for French television and another one for English television. There seemed to be crews all over the place.
I must say, though, that I have seen that change, and I particularly noted the change in our briefing this morning when we were with you and your colleagues at the broadcast centre, how much this has changed. You now have people who are covering different platforms, and some are bilingual and cover both English and French. The news is all gathered and evaluated in a much more efficient fashion. I was quite impressed with that.
I just wondered what further stages you might have in this reform process that you are going through.
Mr. Cormier: I can speak for the part I control. I was a correspondent for CBC Radio-Canada for a number of years abroad, Beijing, Moscow, one of the bilingual positions. I also worked for CBC independently in radio for a while.
[Translation]
I worked for Radio-Canada for many years and that is where I spent much of my career. But certainly, we work together in both languages as much as possible. However, this is a difficult time because we have to work for the web, for radio and for television. When we have both networks, that means six different platforms in one day.
What we are currently trying to do is have a much more flexible approach in that regard. And we work hard on each project.
Every time we have a major project overseas, Jennifer and I make sure that Radio-Canada and CBC are working as efficiently as possible.
Journalists sometimes work in both languages or we send two journalists with the same technical team to do the same reporting. Two teams may share the same equipment, even if they are working in two different regions. It is a much simpler and more flexible way of working.
As for multiplatform work, we have both made changes in recent years to merge the assignment of journalists, the news desk and copywriting, so that we can work on the three platforms. Therefore, we are avoiding a lot of duplication in our work.
[English]
Jennifer, do you want to add something?
Ms. McGuire: Yes. I would say we are very efficient at news gathering across platforms. Where we will see more integration is around digital, where we still have specialized skill sets. We need to embed that more through the news organizations. That piece is in the process of integration.
The other piece I would say is around technology. It is changing how we will gather news overall. This is John Northcott sending live hits from Ottawa into "The National" with a cell phone that he is shooting himself. That is a big change from how we have worked in the past. We are developing technology that will allow us to file and not have to sort of catch the information on the inside and translate it through our systems to publish. We are going to get much more efficient at closing that gap of catching it and getting it out, and technology will help us there.
Senator Eggleton: Great. Thank you.
Senator Unger: My question is for Mr. Cormier. You mentioned five points that you strive for. Tell me how you effectively promote and maintain the highest level of journalistic and broadcasting standards to ensure that stories are fair to both sides and presented accurately. Ms. McGuire, if you would reply as well.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: You are right to say that we are striving toward those goals. We remind ourselves of that every day.
When we make mistakes, we make amends quickly. That is what distinguishes us as a public broadcaster. That is our strength. If we were not credible with Canadians, we would no longer have a purpose because we would not have the confidence of Canadians. That is a commitment we must fulfill every day.
We make sure that every young journalist that joins Radio-Canada — Now, Jennifer and I, we have even recorded videos to make it easier. There is online training that even shows case studies. These are exercises where young journalists can really work on making the right decision.
I can assure you that everyone who is promoted to manager or bureau chief or who directs longstanding programs is a professional who has already made a mark in compliance with these standards and practices.
So the commitment is a sincere one. That is who we are. If we lose the public's confidence, we know that would be the end for us.
[English]
Ms. McGuire: I would add that sometimes people think that our journalists work in a vacuum, that they get to do whatever story they want and nobody else touches it before it is broadcast on air. In fact, there are many checks and balances through the editorial process, from being pitched to a story meeting to ending up on air at the end of the day. There are checks and balances in terms of idea pitches. There are many checks and balances in terms of the news gathering and fact checking and sourcing process. Everything gets put through a vetting process long before it goes on air.
In addition, around areas where we know that there will be sensitivities, we have a news wire that will give guidance to our journalists around language, around certain sensitivities in a story — for example, whether or not to contact a family or how we are going to coordinate chasing certain kinds of information. So we are much more coordinated today, I would say, than certainly in my past experience with CBC.
Then as the manager overall, we look at it from a higher view. Clearly, the ombudsman assesses our coverage and there is a report every year that we are accountable to the board to defend in terms of our journalism. We also measure things. For example, HonestReporting was up here before we were. The Middle East is an area that we will often do an independent content analysis on. We measure it in the day through our editorial processes, but we will look at it from a higher view and commission external research to look at our content and help us assess how we did on a particular story.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: I would just like to add a quick point that is still important. We do a lot of investigative journalism at CBC and Radio-Canada. I can tell you that our lawyers are very busy. We have a team that makes sure that every one of our texts, every one of our statements, is corroborated and passes the legal test. So we exercise great control, for the small stories and the big ones.
[English]
Ms. McGuire: I would add that CBC news and Radio-Canada do a significant amount of training. We train around our standards and practices. We train around the specific skills of journalism. We are actively involved in upping the skill level of our staff in a continuous way.
Senator Unger: This all sounds very robust, all of the guidelines and checks and balances that you deploy. Does it affect the timeliness of the news story getting out?
Ms. McGuire: No. It is a pretty efficient process. We have a story meeting in the morning where ideas are debated robustly, and then the various people who go off chasing stories throughout the day face checks and balances in a continual way. There are people who do that as their job.
Senator Unger: Thank you.
Mr. Cormier, I was trying to write down something you said and am not sure I wrote it down accurately. The question is about helping young Canadian jihadists who go to Syria to fight. Would you clarify what you said?
Mr. Cormier: What I said is on the day of the Ottawa attacks, we were already doing in-depth reporting on the menace of young Canadians who become jihadists and go to Syria to fight. So two days after the event we had on our flagship current affairs investigative reporting show "Enquete" a full report on who these people are, how they get indoctrinated. We even had our Beirut correspondent in Turkey tracking down one of these young men who had been injured and was in hospital.
When she got there, she learned that he had gone back to Syria to fight, and we lost track of him. But when he saw that there had been some attacks in Ottawa, he contacted her to say that he was still a jihadist, still committed to the cause and still fighting in Syria.
What I meant by what I said is that when we have breaking news, our breaking news machine is very efficient, and we also have a whole current affairs program to actually bring more depth to these issues as they occur. That was the reference. That is the example I used to describe how our coverage had more breadth, because we are also doing research on these issues constantly.
Senator Unger: Is that aired on English Canada as well in the West.
Mr. Cormier: I think "The Fifth Estate" is doing a version.
Ms. McGuire: Yes, "The Fifth Estate." Also, Adrienne Arsenault has been leading the way in terms of looking at this issue for CBC news.
Senator Unger: Thank you.
Mr. Cormier: We share stories all the time.
Senator Housakos: Welcome to both of you. Thank you for being here today and thank you for the warm hospitality this morning. It was a pleasant visit. It is always helpful when we go out in the field and we see what people are actually doing on the ground rather than just hearing about it at a committee hearing.
My line of questioning will deviate a little bit from editorial content. I think we have exhausted that aspect of your work. I want to look at ratings, which in your business is a form of currency. I want to look at technological platforms in terms of how you deliver the news.
I will focus my comments on news specifically because that is your domain, though our study encompasses all elements of the CBC. News has inevitably become the core business of what CBC Radio-Canada does. Recently, the president announced a new strategy going forward. Of course, we have seen a major hit because of compression in budget in terms of the production of other shows and other Canadian content.
Correct me if I am mistaken, but right now news probably makes up 40, 45 per cent, maybe more, of CBC Radio-Canada's budget. I have to say, it is something that you do very well. I am a Montrealer, a Quebecer, and I can tell you that Radio-Canada news information is second to none. It reflects in the ratings. It reflects its competitiveness. It might not be where you would like it to be, but it is competitive.
CBC English does also an outstanding job of coverage. We saw that with the unfortunate events in Ottawa last week. I am a news junkie and like everybody else I flip back and forth. The coverage was succinct. It was accurate as much as possible and in-depth. You saw the difference in terms of quality. However, when you look at the ratings on an ongoing basis, they just don't reflect the quality of the product.
I can't get my head around this trend. I guess there have been some logical explanations before this committee on why in French Canada, we consume news differently than they do in English Canada. We live in a different environment right now, but I can't believe that every Canadian wants a "fast food news meal," and they don't want to sit down and get detailed information.
I am sure this is a problem you are grappling with and trying to figure out, how you can continue to produce great news, great product, and get those ratings up.
Ms. McGuire: I will speak for the English side. Certainly, the markets are competitive. CBC does have the number one news channel. We are the market leader in digital news with CBCNews.ca. We are market leaders with morning radio current affair shows in most markets across the country. We have had less success in terms of local TV supper hour programs, but there has been a shift in strategy in terms of local supper hours over the years. Even so, we are the number one supper hour program in Winnipeg between five and six. We have a number one show between five and six in Charlottetown, and we are on the cusp in other markets in terms of being competitive.
Clearly, the English markets are competitive markets, and we know certainly for CBC news that people by and large — on the television side, anyway — still see us as a national brand, and convincing them that we are embedded locally and committed locally is still an exercise in awareness we can push further.
There are multiple factors, but I do hold up our product to anybody else, and I do say that when events happen, people do turn to us. We have seen that even with big breaking American news in terms of our news channel, and when we lead on original and enterprise journalism that CBC is generating and nobody else is doing, people do turn to us.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: In terms of the francophone market, we have a bit of a linguistic advantage. Our market is concentrated in one language and is somewhat distanced from anglophone competition, although not entirely because the arrival of Netflix has had an impact on us as well. But our newscasts are still in good health. We have very high ratings.
We have been experimenting since the early fall to make our reporting even more distinctive. We know that people are up to date with the day's news at 10 p.m. So we are trying to go deeper in our research and be original in our newscasts. And we have seen that our ratings are starting to climb.
It is a daily challenge for CBC and Radio-Canada to remain relevant and maintain our visibility, our impact, particularly in the news because there are so many things going around.
One thing we are doing at Radio-Canada is creating teachable moments on important topics that affect people from time to time. In early September, we had one on the old age pension crisis: Do people have enough money for retirement? We know that this issue affects all Canadians. Over a few days, we had complementary programming on the radio, on the web and on television.
And where it joins the new strategy I mentioned — is that we are trying to see the differences between the provinces when it comes to pension funds and so forth, what the different realities are, to ensure that, even if they are francophones in British Columbia, Alberta or Prince Edward Island, they feel involved in this discussion on issues that affect everyone.
So that is working, and over a few days, we take an issue, make it a priority and it becomes the news, if you like.
In the same way that we use the Internet as a tool now to enhance our news reporting.
Last year, the program "Enquête" investigated concussions in high school football and our investigative journalism revealed that the basic rules were not being followed in a lot of Quebec high schools.
At the same time, we had a whole scientific component on the effects of these hits on the brains of young people; all that was on the Internet because we would not have been able to provide so much coverage on television.
So over a week, we talked a lot about concussions; we did comparisons with the United States and the rest of Canada, and that led to regulatory changes in Quebec.
So that is one of the ways we are ensuring that our journalism has an impact, even though the ratings are good and we are setting ourselves apart with public interest issues that have an effect on people's lives.
[English]
Senator Housakos: My next question has to do with technology, and specifically with the digital strategy that CBC has tried to implement for quite a long while now. From what I understand, tens of millions of dollars have been spent. If you can just comment on what has been the impact of this digital strategy. Have you been able to in a tangible way measure the results, and what effect has it had on your delivery and production of news?
My other comment interrelated to technology is that I feel that the CBC and Radio-Canada have been at a huge disadvantage vis-à-vis the other competitors that are vertically integrated. I think you have done a good job trying to catch up, but nonetheless, you have been catching up.
Besides the digital strategy, are there other technological, innovative ideas that the CBC is working on that would get the CBC and Radio-Canada to the cutting edge of technology? I understand that is not your core business. A lot of the other guys have jumped into the media business — I call them "Johnny-come-latelys" — ended up developing the technology and said this is something we could utilize for our benefit.
Ms. McGuire: What I would say around technology, we primarily position ourselves as a content company, putting innovations and content against the technology. So when CBC news developed its new app with Apple, we did it in partnership with Apple to make sure that we were taking full advantage of the capacity of the technology, while also driving the opportunity through CBC news content.
I would say on the technology front, our biggest challenges remain in shifting our work flow. We have such strength in radio and television and we have to get the organization to think of digital first and think of the kinds of interactions, particularly around social media and community-based conversations that you have in the digital space. That is still where we are evolving, and not sort of fully there. But I believe around the rest, as technology evolves we can position our content by working in partnership with the people who are actually better adapted to all the spaces.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: That is a very good question. We can see very quickly that the information consumption landscape is changing at breakneck speed.
During the events in Ottawa, we had almost half a million people visit our website to experience those events on our web platforms.
They also turned to radio and television in equally large numbers. So it is not as if people were choosing one over the other, but people will often go to a second screen for the experience as well. They will go to digital platforms and television at the same time. However, this kind of impact did not exist a year or a year and a half ago.
So the audience is really changing and we need to react accordingly. We are doing everything we can to make sure that what we provide on digital platforms is both very powerful and fast and that it complements what we do on radio or television.
[English]
Ms. McGuire: Just to give you the context, we had 19 million page views of the Ottawa incident on CBCNews.ca on both our mobile and desktop, and 1.1 million live views of the news network streams through digital.
Senator Housakos: When you do investigative reporting or any kind of reporting, for example the story on the young football players, do you monitor the journalist's time and monetary investment of the organization in developing the story? Is there a point in time where you cap it, where you say to a journalist, "Put it together, square it up and get it on the air," or do they, depending on the interest of the story, just go with unlimited time and effort and the organization puts the necessary resources into it?
Ms. McGuire: Investigative journalism always costs more because you don't know where the road will lead. Certainly, at CBC news, I have been investing in the investigative capacity, both at the network level and in the regions. We have investigative units in the Maritimes now. We have one in Winnipeg, one in Edmonton.
I would say that they are not exclusively ever really doing one story until it is actually close to being put on air. To give you some context, when CBC broke the story about the Boy Scouts with the Los Angeles Times, that story took two years to do. It wasn't two years exclusively. It was two years in addition to other stories that the investigative unit was working on.
I would say they are always doing the short-term and the long-term cooking, but investigative journalism by definition costs more. When we cover a breaking news event, we know that that is going to be on the air at the end of the day. With investigative journalism you don't always know that. But we monitor it. We look at the costs per output, and I look at that as a deliverable, absolutely.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: That is definitely what defines our brand. With our show "Enquête," Radio-Canada is experiencing a golden age in investigative journalism.
As you know, our journalists' work led to the Charbonneau commission being set up. But we do much more than that, and for us it is a priority. Despite the cuts, we made sure that our investigative units were affected as little as possible. In our opinion, what makes us stand out as a public broadcaster is the comprehensiveness, so to speak, of our journalism.
[English]
Senator MacDonald: It is good to see both of you again. I have to confess that I am pleased to see a Maritimer as the head of French Services of Radio-Canada. Congratulations, Michel. Good to see you there.
I am going to drill down a bit to the journalistic side of this. We have had a lot of witnesses here who have not been from the CBC. I have been going back to the same topic a lot in regard to the brand that CBC has, and I can't help but go back to what happened with "Hockey Night in Canada" in terms of that brand. Not only did CBC lose the broadcast rights, but it appears they donated the brand itself to Rogers. Rogers uses the brand in its logo. There is great value in that brand and how we handle this stuff, and there is great value in that brand for journalists.
When I read how badly CBC handled that at the executive level, the hockey changes, I am reminded of The Globe and Mail story. It has been said that CBC doesn't necessarily understand the change in landscape. I don't think that is necessarily true. I think a lot of people do understand the changing landscape, and they are just trying to catch up and respond to it.
Should CBC be changing its approach away from content creation to something more like content curation? What I mean by that is, what is the CBC doing, not to create content but to gather and curate all the content Canadians can now create and provide to them?
Let me give you a couple of examples. I know this sounds simplistic, but wouldn't weather reporting be a good place to start for more citizen journalism? Even sports reporting at the university level, couldn't we use university productions of Canadian university sport, then give it your brand, integrate with it and try to build a viewership for this?
I guess these concepts could even include journalism itself. We have journalism schools in the country. I am just curious of your views on this.
Ms. McGuire: I think as part of the 2020 plan, Heather Conway, the English Services executive vice-president in announcing a move to an external production model around factual documentaries and drama is absolutely embracing a curation concept, as you suggest. So that is something we do, and certainly, we do locally.
We have associations with independent producers across the country, and those documentaries and shows connect to CBC. We do have associations with journalism schools around specific content initiatives but, by and large, the process of our journalism is done in-house to ensure that it measures up to the standards that we think it needs to. We are open to partnerships but that is the most efficient way to do it.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: Several years ago, we went through the same thing as the CBC. Radio-Canada lost hockey a number of years ago, which pushed us toward another type of programming that is working very well. We have also been accumulating content for many years. We no longer really have an in-house documentary department.
We have been working with private producers for a long time. We have had good results because we get another point of view on issues and this also allows people to be more widely promoted.
We regularly buy documentaries from the BBC and other major producers and we adapt them for television. People really appreciate that, and we also have an opportunity to expand our content with the perspectives of great professionals from abroad or our talented local people who are able to promote their works.
[English]
Senator MacDonald: Just one more question. Again, it gets back to stuff that we have been told, and I want to hear your response to it. I can't remember the number. I think it was $70 million dollars that was taken from radio last year and given to television production. Would that be correct?
Ms. McGuire: That does not sound correct to me.
Senator MacDonald: Well, there was some number. There was money taken from CBC Radio, though.
Ms. McGuire: Yes. During the last round of cuts, there were cuts across the board, but we don't actually look at it as organized by platform. My department, for example, is all platform, so I have as much radio programming as I have television programming in the news department. We look at it in an integrated way, but $70 million sounds way off.
Senator MacDonald: The number may be incorrect, and that is why I wasn't sure. I just want to ask your opinion. Wouldn't we be better off taking some of the money we put into costly in-house productions of drama in particular, that doesn't have a big viewership, very low numbers, and putting it instead into radio and expanding the use of radio?
Ms. McGuire: My own personal view is that CBC has to be holistic in its connection point to Canadians. We are incredibly popular on radio, and we have an incredibly loyal audience on radio, but it is of a demographic, and we need to be on digital to reach the next generation of Canadians.
Similarly, we know that a significant amount of Canadians still consume content on television. So the challenge for CBC as platforms explode is to multiply what we are doing and not sort of stop everything because the audience is migrating. We track it. We know that they migrate.
I think if you asked Heather Conway or Hubert Lacroix, they would say they see the public broadcaster as having obligations around democracy and promoting democracy, but also around promoting and ensuring the cultural life of Canada, and I think that would be the response to that.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: Of course, part of our mandate is also to entertain, not just inform. Our soap operas at Radio-Canada are very popular. Our ratings are very high, exceeding one million viewers, although they are just copies of American soap operas. We produce soap operas, and I may be speaking for my vice-president. I hope he will forgive me.
But our soap operas certainly have some social value as well, in the sense that, for instance, we have a daily show "30 Vies" that takes place in a high school in Quebec and, in a fictional situation, explores the challenges of teenagers in school.
However, we realize that, in Quebec, entire families still gather around the TV after dinner to explore those issues, which are sometimes difficult to talk about with young people.
Some people write to us and say, "That show makes it possible for us to talk to our teenagers, which is no easy task." So there is at least a will to produce TV shows that have some social value and that allow us to discover very different worlds.
"Unité 9" takes place in a prison for women and is very popular. I think it is the type of content that also helps us stand out and that brings viewers from our news and information programs. So we benefit from that as well.
[English]
Senator Plett: I have only one question. My friend Senator Housakos said we may have beaten the journalism issue to death. I think it is still breathing, so I will have another kick at it.
Senator Eggleton: Beat it a little more.
Senator Plett: Ms. McGuire, you did allude to HonestReporting Canada having been here earlier, and indeed they were. My question is around a little bit of their testimony. I watch CBC news almost exclusively when I watch the news. It is almost exclusively CBC.
The Chair: We could qualify you as a friend of CBC?
Senator Plett: You could qualify me as an acquaintance.
Ms. McGuire: Can I quote you?
Senator Plett: A friend, yes. You can quote me as a friend of CBC.
Senator MacDonald: Quotation marks.
Senator Plett: The question is based around HonestReporting. I believe that CBC — and I said this to our friend from HonestReporting and he, I think, agreed with it — that CBC probably does the best job of covering the Middle East, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and others. I always admire the people who are out there sticking their heads in the way of bombs and so on and so forth.
His concern was around journalists having opinions. My question pertains not just to CBC but to any broadcaster. You want fair reporting. Do you try to build into your journalists that they should be going out there and being entirely impartial, and that they should not have an opinion when they are on the air?
Ms. McGuire: We believe in balance, and we measure balance over time. As you can appreciate, covering the Middle East is a huge challenge. The stories are complex. You never can provide enough context, and supporters and various sorts of stakeholders have really strongly held beliefs.
When we are reporting a story, we are striving for balance. We do around certain subjects allow reporters to do analysis pieces that draw on their deep experience as a reporter to try to present some context on the situation. But it is always argued in fact. Unlike some of the American networks that are opinion for opinion, there is a vetting process to substantiate that everything is fact based.
So my answer to your question is people have opinions, and naturally we have editorial processes to make sure that we are balanced. We measure it. Certainly, with our coverage of Gaza, again, will look externally, and I will do a content analysis to make sure that we have done a good job. I think by and large, we do.
Senator Plett: So you would believe that on that particular issue, you have been balanced. Do you alone do that analysis?
Ms. McGuire: What I will say is every ombudsman report in recent memory — and HonestReporting, as an example, has made complaints to the ombudsman and had ombudsman reviews — but in our yearly reports around the ombudsman, we have been found to be balanced in the context of our coverage of the Middle East. It is not to say we don't make mistakes. When we make mistakes we correct them, but, by and large, we have been balanced.
Senator Plett: Thank you.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: I would just like to add a small comment because that concerns us as well. The Israeli-Palestinian question is highly emotional, sensitive and complicated. We have two interpretations of history that are often diametrically opposed. However, as in Jennifer's case at the CBC, we are working especially hard on this. We have been sending experienced journalists to Montreal to cover the issue.
The ombudsman sometimes finds inconsistencies in our coverage, which are often factual errors. Let me give you an example. One of our graphic designers put a Palestinian flag on a map from 1948, when the flag did not exist. Things like that sometimes offend sensibilities for good reason, but they are not really errors. They are all honest mistakes, if you will. We really try to minimize inaccuracies, but sometimes we deal with some difficult facts, and errors slip through. But we correct everything as soon as it happens.
[English]
Ms. McGuire: To give you a context on the CBC news side, the most complaints to the ombudsman last year for us were not about the Middle East. They were about Kevin O'Leary.
Senator Eggleton: I have a follow-up to the question or point that the chair made at the beginning about the coverage of the Moncton shootings in the French language and the judgment that was made there. Was this also a resource issue? Would you have had at one time the resources in the area to be able to cover that, or was that a factor?
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: That is a good question, Mr. Eggleton. We now work on every type of platform and our local coverage of the event was truly remarkable. The entire regional station mobilized to make sure that the information was up to date on the web. So we have to work on more than one platform without doing a comprehensive study. However, that does not detract from the fact that it was an error in judgment. We had the resources to cover that event. It was just a mistake in judgment and we do not want to make it again.
[English]
Senator Eggleton: My second question has to do with news and current affairs going abroad. We all know that CNN has their international outlets. So does the BBC. I don't anticipate we would but, still, there are other opportunities. For example, TV5 has the opportunity for French language programming through that system. I don't know whether there is anything equivalent contemplated in the English language that we can be a part of, but is there any way of getting more Canadian news abroad? People travel an awful lot now. Occasionally, I do see something, either on the BBC or CNN. They will tag something from a Canadian journalist. Radio Canada International used to be another way of getting news out there.
What are the plans at this point in time in terms of international public affairs and news programming getting abroad?
Ms. McGuire: We are still very much committed to international news and covering international news. We see it as a core part of our promise as the public broadcaster. We are moving to do it in different ways and to operate more from sort of a hub, deploy from a hub versus setting up bureaus in every country. Certainly, the bureau sizes are much smaller than they would have been in the past.
My short answer is, absolutely we are committed to doing it. We see international news or analysis of international issues as part of our mainstream coverage through news and current affairs shows versus separate shows that just do internationals, as dispatches would have done in the past, and that will continue. Adrienne Arsenault just got back from Liberia, and that was hugely complicated and expensive, but we felt it was important to do and we will continue to do that.
Senator Eggleton: I was talking about coverage abroad as opposed to news gathering. In other words, could Canadians travelling abroad, say I am in Europe and I want to look see "The National," will I be able to get it on my iPad?
Ms. McGuire: You can absolutely do it online.
Senator Unger: I was looking at your website recently, and there was a 2011 Deloitte study that was commissioned. The researcher highlighted the CBC's role as an innovator and a pioneer in new technologies. Can you give me two examples that would bear that out?
Ms. McGuire: I can. This comes from my radio days. I used to be the program director of CBC radio. We created an internally developed drag and drop technology to share radio content across the system. That was internal technology, and we have been early adopters. We were first to get into podcasting on the radio side. Certainly, in the digital space, we have been incredibly aggressive at positioning around the smart phones, and certainly, social media and setting up community teams. I think we are one of the first in Canada to go that route.
[Translation]
Mr. Cormier: There is also the fact of using existing technology to increase productivity. At Radio-Canada, we are changing the way we air our newscasts.
We are switching to an automated computerized system, which enables us to downsize our broadcast teams and to save money, which we can then invest in the program. Similarly, we have new broadcasting equipment available, a device called "Digiro," a type of big cellular device that we put on cameras and as a result, we no longer need to use a satellite truck.
You sometimes see trucks used in live coverage. Now, we can do it with just a camera. That is how productivity increases and how we can be on air pretty much anywhere with all these latest technologies. We can go live from northern Iraq with these satellite-based devices.
We are innovating inside our studios as well, but we also take advantage of all the technological developments to make our production more efficient.
[English]
Ms. McGuire: I should mention that we are in the process of developing a new app technology that will be used on iPhones. It will allow us to file directly to digital from the field, and that will be quite revolutionary for us, and potentially others.
The other piece I would mention is on the commercial side. As you know, CBC news operates in commercial environments as well. We developed a visual headline service internally that can now be seen in businesses. That didn't exist before we developed it.
The Chair: Mr. Cormier, Ms. McGuire, I want to thank you for your presentation and for the visit today. It was quite useful, quite practical, and we appreciate the support we are getting from CBC.
As you know, the study is continuing. Tomorrow, we will hear from Telefilm. They could be qualified as friends of CBC, members of the same club as Senator Plett and myself.
Next week we will be holding public hearings in Montreal. After that, we will be suspending our study for a while because legislation on security and transportation will be referred to the committee. We will also have budget implementation legislation to go through. But we do intend to continue. We will be holding meetings with our friends at the highest level of the CBC and other organizations. I appreciate your support. Keep following us. We are going to try to continue in the right direction. We are hoping that in 2015 we can accelerate our efforts and produce a report.
Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)