Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Official Languages
Issue 7 - Evidence - Meeting of February 27, 2012
OTTAWA, Monday, February 27, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages met this day at 5 p.m. in order to examine the use of the Internet, new media and social media and the respect for Canadians' language rights.
Senator Maria Chaput (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: I would like to welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages. I am Senator Maria Chaput, from Manitoba, and chair of this committee. Before introducing today's witness, I would like to ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Suzanne Fortin Duplessis, Quebec City. I am delighted to have you with us.
[English]
Senator Buth: I am JoAnne Buth from Manitoba.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: Rose-Marie Losier-Cool, New Brunswick.
Senator Robichaud: Fernand Robichaud, Saint-Louis-de-Kent, New Brunswick.
The Chair: The committee is pursuing its examination of the use of the Internet, new media and social media and the respect for Canadians' language rights.
We have with us today Ms. Deborah Drisdell, Director General of Accessibility and Digital Enterprises at the National Film Board of Canada. She is here to speak to us of the NFB's activities among other things on the Internet as well as on social media. Please go ahead with your presentation and the senators will follow with questions.
Deborah Drisdell, Director General, Accessibility and Digital Enterprises, National Film Board of Canada: Thank you for your warm welcome. I am delighted to be here today to speak to you of the experience of the NFB, which, since 2008, has gone digital.
The NFB was established in 1939 to tell stories of import to Canadians across the country. I will not read everything on the slides I am going to show you since they contain a great deal of information. I will go through them quickly so that we have more time for questions.
It was very important to have these stories that are so important for Canadian culture, and to ensure that Canadians could see them. Over the years and especially with the advent of television, the population lost sight of us a bit. Often Canadians would ask us: Where can we see NFB films? So we gave ourselves the mandate in 2008 to reply to that question. We realized that these new technologies presented an important way to answer that question and to become more accessible.
Our strategic plan, in 2008, had two objectives: accessibility and citizen engagement. We wished to facilitate and broaden access by Canadian and foreign audiences to the works of the NFB and its partners. Since the NFB was established in 1939, we have produced over 13,000 films. It was also important to present Canada and questions of interest to the public to Canadians in order to foster public and social discourse, as well as citizen engagement. We also wished to be present in rural communities and linguistic minority communities as well. This issue was of great concern to us.
Certain aspects of our digital and accessibility strategy included Internet-based distribution, other digital platforms — there were few of them at the time, but there are more now with the mobile, which we call e-cinema or digital cinema — and a renewed support for the education sector. The NFB was always very present in education across Canada by offering important Canadian content, but we wanted a renewed and revitalized offer for youth, traditional platforms and community projections.
So we began with Internet-based distribution. We wanted to make over 2,000 productions accessible to Canadians on a new viewing platform that was called onf.ca, or nfb.ca in English. We wanted Canadians to have access to platforms of their own choice, whether that be on a smartphone, digital platform, and now a touchscreen tablet or even interactive television which is under development.
Our strategy had two components: the destination, that is all platforms called NFB, and our partners' platforms, such as YouTube and Dailymotion.
In 2009, we launched our viewing platform, nfb.ca. Then we launched mobile applications for viewing such as the iPhone, the iPad, Android, RIM's PlayBook, and quite recently we launched applications so we would be available on what is known as SMART TV. We entered into partnerships with Dailymotion and Vimeo, among others.
On nfb.ca and our partners' websites, until 2009, we had nearly 30 million screenings, with continued growth. During the launch, we were very pleased to receive comments by Canadians saying they had rediscovered an NFB to which they did not have access. This encouraged us to pursue our efforts.
Of all the NFB's activities and those of its partners, 67 per cent are international, 33 per cent here in Canada, and about 90 per cent of all of our screenings in Canada are viewed on the NFB's designated platforms.
[English]
To give you a sense on the NFB platforms, about 20 per cent of the screenings in Quebec — or about 700,000 — are in English, and the remainder are in French. About 17 per cent of our screenings in French language occur outside of Quebec. At the moment there are approximately 2,000 films available on NFB.ca and the mobile platforms. It is a completely bilingual site and the applications are bilingual. They are not necessarily mirrored because we have specific films in French and in English, and as much as possible, subtitled versions in both.
We then have the numbers approximately and a showcase of la Francophonie on our blog with a selection of films that were made by francophones outside of Quebec.
We also use a blog to reach our clients quite a bit. It is an ideal showcase for the NFB's activities. It is a user-friendly site where film buffs and technology enthusiasts or educators — we have an education blog — can leave comments and interact with others and talk about the films. Two writers are responsible for the blog, one French-speaking and one English-speaking. They sustain these sites and they are translated in the other official language for the blog.
We did not believe that just by building it, they would come. We felt that we had to also be very present in the social media networks that are available to us, so we have an electronic newsletter that goes out. These are some of the data from December 31. We have two community managers who manage all our social media activities, again one francophone and one anglophone, who direct content to communities of interest in the realms of Canadian films, documentaries, animated films and interactive productions. They participate in conversations, interact with users and moderate the comments, be it on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or our electronic newsletters.
We spoke about the education sector. Children are changing, as we all know. As soon as we launched NFB.ca one the thing that quickly came to bear is a dramatic increase in our younger audience. Historically, our audience has been ages 40, 45 and up. We had a dramatic increase in our younger audience, from ages 17 to 25, when we went live with our mobile applications. Education across Canada is changing a great deal. We felt teachers needed to have many more tools to be able to have Canadian content in the classroom, again in both official languages, be it in Quebec or across Canada, and particularly in minority communities, so that they would be able to have this type of information for their students. We created CAMPUS, a digital online service.
We have approximately eight million Canadian students who have access to NFB's online service in the classroom. It is of particular value to teachers who are teaching in the minority language communities across Canada to be able to have a lot of rich francophone content in those communities or rich anglophone content in the case of Quebec communities. We have licence agreements now with the ministries of education in B.C., Ontario; in the English language in Quebec; most of Alberta; and we are in negotiation with the francophone schools in the Maritimes and in Manitoba.
We provide educational guides, channels and organized films. We hire teachers so that we organize the films according to curriculum and age groups, film descriptions, online virtual workshops and applications in blogs and newsletters for educators also.
Digital cinema is a cost-effective way of delivering particularly to remote communities. We did a pilot project in l'Acadie. There were five cinemas originally, and now we have expanded it to a number of other sites where it is delivered over the Internet. The films are digital and have theatrical quality screening. However, it is delivered by downloading from a digital server, so it greatly reduces the costs and increases accessibility across the country.
These initiatives that we started in earnest in 2009 have enabled us to bring our online content out to Canadians. It is equivalent, as I said, but not identical in both official languages, reflecting the breadth and diversity of our communities. There are films from across Canada, interactive productions and across the world. Enriching ties with the English- speaking and the French-speaking communities, we have consultations with the film-making communities, with the FCCF and, in particular, with ELAN in Quebec to work more closely with them. It offers a compelling platform for them to showcase and distribute their work and support teachers. It also helps us facilitate the partnerships with the different communities, enables us to engage and helps us overcome particularly isolation and eliminate boundaries for Canadians.
That the extent of my introductory remarks. I would be happy to answer any of your questions.
[Translation]
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Thank you so much. I have two quick questions of a general nature for you to begin with. My third question has to do with the National Film Board.
Have you personally noticed whether the Internet has fostered the development of a new francophone culture?
Do you think the francophone presence on the web is satisfactory?
Ms. Drisdell: I think those two questions are linked. Our view is that the francophone presence is always insufficient on the web. In fact one of ONF.ca's major goals was to offer a special place to francophone culture on the web. There has been an increasing presence over the years, whether that be with Radio-Canada, Tou.tv or Dailymotion, where one can find more francophone productions, but we would like to see even more of them. Thanks to social tools now the francophone space is growing, but in many cases the material is translated.
We at the NFB were aware that we needed to offer more francophone content or people would acquire other consuming habits on the web.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Is the National Film Board active on Twitter newsfeeds? You do have 27,000 subscribers. I wonder whether you are sending messages or comments in French on the Twitter newsfeed.
Ms. Drisdell: Yes. The National Film Board has two community managers, one in French and the other in English. They are responsible for our Facebook and Twitter platforms. For example, yesterday, we had two productions nominated for Oscars, so throughout the evening, we were running a Twitter newsfeed in each language.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: I was under the impression that there were more English-language messages on the NFB's Twitter newsfeed. Did I not read far enough?
Ms. Drisdell: Our community managers have noticed that Twitter subscribers' behaviour is different in each language.
For example, we had a Twitter feed for our CIFA event and we noticed that anglophones were much more interested in it than francophones were. So we immediately reacted to that audience. We adapt to the audience. With Twitter we can follow up, which allows us to adjust the number of tweets according to our subscribers' tastes. Sometimes, it is less about the numbers, we adapt to people who are retweeting instead. I apologize for using English words. So, the situation is not necessarily identical in both languages; managers adapt to the community's interest.
Senator Poirier: Do anglophones and francophones participate in equal measure on your various platforms, such as Twitter, your blog, and Facebook?
Ms. Drisdell: No. It is about one-third, two-thirds, strangely enough.
Senator Poirier: Two-thirds anglophone?
Ms. Drisdell: About two-thirds anglophone, one-third francophone. It depends whether we are talking about internationally or within Canada.
Senator Poirier: Do you know why there would be fewer francophones?
Ms. Drisdell: On Twitter we have about 8,500 followers and 24,000 in English. And on Facebook, that number is 14,000 as of March 31; but 9,000 followers.
Senator Poirier: Are you trying to increase the number of francophone participants?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes, we are trying to do that and to follow certain topics in French that could be of interest for our communities. It is a delicate balance, because if we do too much promotion, we realize that we also lose people. You have to catch their interest, and it is in working with some of our partners that we can find interesting events, for example in Acadia or with the Fédération culturelle canadienne-française, to see whether there are events of particular interest for francophones. We try to encourage content rather than the vessel. It is not enough for people to subscribe to the NFB, we must also offer a rich and interesting content that will lead to more subscribers. We have about the same number of discussions on Facebook; some of which work better than others.
Senator Robichaud: You spoke of facilitating partnership within various communities, as was the case for deploying your strategy to broaden the use of French. But are your efforts targeting only the francophone and anglophone communities? If we consider the other groups, that speak a different language, if they are only heading in one direction, that is English or French, one community or the other will suffer as a consequence. Are there efforts being made in that sense to invite people to get to know both?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes. The francophone space, in fact, represents an attempt to do just that. We had created a francophone space to celebrate francophonie outside of Quebec. And we thought that for that site, which was initially designed only in French, it could be interesting to translate it and offer it in English as well for francophiles, to promote francophonie within the anglophone community and vice versa.
We are a few days away from launching a new screener on nfb.ca which will allow us to offer more subtitling, so that people will be able to follow a production with subtitling in the other language. Also this would eventually allow us to make efforts aimed at linguistic communities other than anglophone or francophone in order to encourage them. We were limited with our previous screener; now we will be able to add productions. Nearly all NFB productions are made in one or the other of the two official languages. From now on, we will be able to reach other communities thanks to subtitling.
We are also making efforts with respect to aboriginal languages. We just launched an Inuit DVD box set and an online project for the north. We are very active within those communities. We have the largest collection of films on the various aboriginal peoples of Canada. We have translated many of these productions into Inuktitut recently and we have made them available to northern communities, but also to those in the south, in both official languages, in order to facilitate that interaction.
Senator Robichaud: May I make a suggestion? It would be to not use the expression "francophone communities outside Quebec," but instead use "the Canadian francophonie." I do not like being part of a group that is outside of something — if you would be so kind, madam.
Ms. Drisdell: Fine.
Senator Robichaud: Thank you.
Senator Losier-Cool: Thank you, it is always a personal pleasure to see you again, Deborah. I have two questions; the first concerns the budget, the Canada Interactive Fund. Does the NFB fear cuts are coming? Because this is one of the most connected federal institutions. You are talking about the budget these days; is everything okay?
Ms. Drisdell: This is the time of year when we are concerned about the budget. We are taking part in the strategic review that has taken place over the course of the year and we are waiting for news on the budget. The NFB has always, and this is one of our strengths, worked with very little. That is one of the reasons why we are not able to use a lot of publicity to promote what we do; we rely much more on word of mouth. The digital shift, for the most part, began with in-depth research on our internal expenditures, and we have freed up 5 per cent each year of our operating budget to invest in this digital shift. That is one of the challenges that we continue to meet.
Senator Losier-Cool: We will follow this issue closely to make sure that the NFB is able to achieve its goals.
I want to come back to the educational marketplace. Earlier, on the website, we saw that teachers were able to click somewhere to subscribe. Are the majority of teachers subscribers of the NFB?
Ms. Drisdell: A large percentage of them are. There is an option for an individual teacher who wants to subscribe; but there are also many departments of education that subscribe as a whole. The Province of Ontario, among others, has subscribed all of its teachers from kindergarten through to grade 12. This means a lot of educational groups. We have also signed up British Columbia as a province. Many school boards in Alberta subscribe. So it is often by large groups. There are some school teachers who have individual subscriptions, but it is above all the departments of education that have recognized the value of being subscribers and who have made that request.
Senator Losier-Cool: People say that teachers are somewhat afraid of this technological shift. You have a number of programs, a number of projects for students, in other words a kind of techno-curriculum. In teachers' colleges, there should be courses to give teachers confidence and encourage them to subscribe. Do you have anything like that at the NFB?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes. Over the past year, we have seen some professors who were more or less comfortable using media in class. It is extremely important for students to learn media critique. In the past year, we have organized workshops for students. We have gone to the majority of student conventions, and in some regions across the country, to hold workshops with teachers and explain how to use media in the classroom, particularly in regions where all the teachers are subscribers. We were able to help the teachers understand how to use media in their classroom.
This requires a great deal of work, but we are extremely proud of what we have done. Over the summer, we hired teachers to draw up descriptions and catalogue films for teachers. It is done for them and by them. So, teachers are relatively confident, but they know that there are other teachers who have classified the movies, saying, for example, that such and such a movie is good for seven grade history under the provincial curriculum. We have seen that this has greatly helped teachers. Given the potential resources, we will continue this work with the majority of teachers' groups.
Senator Losier-Cool: Sometimes, teachers are afraid of that, because students know more than they do, they are more connected.
Senator Poirier: Is it mainly English schools using your service? Is the same service provided in both the French- speaking and English-speaking schools at present?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes, the same service is available for both. At the present time, it is available to all schools in British Columbia and Ontario. It is somewhat different in Quebec due to the way that they acquire media, but the anglophone teachers in Quebec are registered in groupings. We are continuing to negotiate with everyone who is purchasing these services for the francophone component in French, as well as with the province of Manitoba and all of the maritime provinces. It is a bit difficult for me to say, which are more francophone or anglophone.
Senator Poirier: Are there francophone schools using them or are you only under negotiations at present?
Ms. Drisdell: Many Quebec schools have subscribed, as well as school boards. Also, a number of francophone schools outside are using them. In the provinces, among others, it is often the francophone schools that are interested because they do not have a lot of available content for students. This allows them to have a great deal more content.
The Chair: I have a supplementary question on educational resource content. Be it in French for francophones living in a minority community or in English for the anglophones in Quebec, who develops the content in each language?
Ms. Drisdell: Content is often developed by our educational team, along with curriculum specialists or teachers. This depends on the subject, but these educational guides are drafted in consultation with teachers.
The Chair: When we talk about the schools that can subscribe, are we talking about francophone schools, anglophone schools, and immersion schools?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes, all schools. The cost per teacher is approximately $25, and that cost is determined based on the number of students.
The Chair: Per year?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes, and it gives them access to all of the NFB content available online.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Could you give us an example of a success story in the area of education? Teachers subscribe, so you must be aware of ones who are successful and others who fail. Could you give us some good examples of success stories?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes. Last fall, we had an experience with a film on the 22nd Regiment that we are preparing for next year. We filmed capsules in which soldiers returning from Afghanistan appeared. The movie is scheduled to come out later, but since we had these short capsules, we thought that they would be interesting to those in education and that it would be a good idea for young people to see young veterans so they could talk about it. These capsules were put online for Remembrance Day of last year and the schools really liked that. Since the teachers are extremely busy and class time is quite limited, the fact that they had access to capsules exactly five minutes long allowed them to talk about different stories. This also taught us something, because often our movies are quite long. This was a good success story for us; also, teachers had difficulty finding new ways to talk about Remembrance Day.
We also have other very popular productions, including second-language programs. Teachers really like short films in one language with subtitles.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Congratulations.
Ms. Drisdell: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Buth: Thank you for your presentation; it was very good. Can you comment on the types of processes you might use for getting feedback on the quality of the programming? We often use things like hits and subscriptions, et cetera, for the amount of interest in programming, but is there a way you get feedback from users, and what it would be?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes. A lot of sites use visits and visitors, and one of the things we wanted to know is how many people were screening the films. We used plays, which is a certain amount of time and how long people stay to screen a film. That is one of the metrics we also use. As you mentioned, the comments and feedback on the social media is very important to us. We monitor followers versus un-followers, subscription on our Facebook numbers and how many people are commenting. As we have these elements in place, we are now looking at different engagement measurements. It is a fairly new science to see what that actually means. We are trying to find one that would be benchmarkable and how we could see what that is.
At the moment — because we were starting in a new way of doing it — we have looked at how people follow, do they comment, and where they comment. For instance we see people comment much more on YouTube than other platforms, so should we encourage that? How do we do that?
It is a very new frontier for us. We go through it and see if people also share our content, because all our content can be embedded in their Facebook and on a site. Our embeds are important to us because people are sharing likes, likes of films, and all those elements. It is quite a mishmash of things to look at. We have the quantitative metrics of visits, views, follows, un-follows, and then we also look at the nature of comments and interest that we have.
Senator Buth: Do you see any differences between anglophones and francophones?
Ms. Drisdell: Not a lot. We are surprised at how little people comment on our site. They tend to comment more on our Facebook that they like things. However, with some of the films that we bring forward, we thought there would be film- specific comments and we find that people seem to not really do that. They tell us "good job" or "thanks for talking about it," but we do not seem to be the place where they want to have the conversation. That is fine, as long as they see the project and comment somewhere. We try and follow where those elements are and where they are embedding. We know someone must have liked it because they would embed it somewhere, but they would not necessarily have had a long conversation. We are starting to see it a little more in the last six or eight months, but there is not a big difference between the anglophone and francophone community at this point.
[Translation]
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: On a very frequent basis, the committee hears about the need to expand broadband Internet access, as well as the need to expand access to the digital network.
What is your impression of broadband Internet access in official languages minority communities?
Where are the most disadvantaged communities in terms of Internet access located, as well as those with the least access to mobile networks?
Ms. Drisdell: With regard to broadband Internet access, it is clear that rural communities find it slightly more difficult with regard to Internet access. Some schools tell us that they find it more difficult to watch the movies, because all our movies are streamed live and so there is no downloading. We have also had discussions with schools in Nunavut, and they tell us that they would rather have a DVD to share it within the schools. We are trying to find solutions to these problems because the Internet speed is not sufficient for those who wish to watch streamed movies.
What they are telling us in the north, among other things, is that mobile access worked a little better than Internet access. Perhaps this is a potential solution for us. For the moment, we are trying to meet the need by offering downloads of all our products that we can send them and they can perhaps create an internal network within the schools for a smaller community. So it is about finding solutions if the speed of the Internet is insufficient. We also want to make sure that schools and libraries with whom with partner are able to have access even if the technological capability is not currently available.
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: We have often been asked that question. Some communities do not have broadband access. People are extremely disappointed. I thank you for your answer.
The Chair: A supplementary question to the one asked by Senator Fortin-Duplessis. Are you able to see where there is greater access versus where there is less access when you look for example at schools subscribing to your service? Are you able to say whether you have noted that there are some remote regions with very few or no subscribers? Does this not give you an idea of accessibility across Canada?
Ms. Drisdell: We have just launched this service so perhaps it is too early to tell, because we are starting to deploy the project. It would be too early to see whether that is true. In general, if school boards or schools tell us that they have an issue, we accept that and we try to find a solution be it through longer downloads in the evening, or something else. It is too early to assess where the weaknesses are.
The Chair: Are you working in partnership with, for example, TV Ontario, which is developing documentation for children and schools with independent producers who are also developing educational tools?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes, we have partnerships with producers and filmmakers who are working on projects. We also have partnerships with and will see some producers who have created various productions and who would like them to be picked up by this digital service to ensure the schools have access. We are currently in discussions with TV Ontario. We also have established some partnerships with them on specific projects and we are talking with them because they put on a lot of educational events. Perhaps there are areas where we can work together.
Senator Losier-Cool: I see that the NFB was established in 1939. We now have 8 million students enjoying the services or the works of the NFB. Would you be able to tell us whether or not people born around 1939 are also benefiting, in other words seniors?
Senator Robichaud: Why did you say 1939? That is the year of my birth.
Ms. Drisdell: I am not sure as regards those born in 1939. Our main clientele was 44 years and over. We said that we had our school-aged audience and then our 45-plus audience, but that we had lost the generation between the two. And now, we are seeing that. Initially, we hoped the Internet would be of help to our entire audience. The youth category has really developed a lot, but the 44 to 50-year-old bracket is also growing. I think people our age and older, as soon as they are more comfortable with the Internet, are interested in creative documentaries and the type of programming the NFB has to offer. That is one interest. We are starting to see that generation take part in social media. In fact, Facebook began with young people, but now young people find it less cool because the adults are the ones using it. In time, that audience which is starting to consume online will come back to the NFB because it is what we might call our traditional audience.
Senator Losier-Cool: Perhaps seniors' residences could have subscriptions to the NFB so seniors could enjoy it.
Ms. Drisdell: Yes, they could. In fact, we have a program called the "maisons de la culture" and we are partnering with some of them so that NFB films can be shown Tuesday evenings. Community screenings are a little less IT-based. There are still many activities that are done offline. Indeed, seniors' residences could subscribe like libraries do.
Senator Losier-Cool: Thank you. I feel better.
Senator Robichaud: Speaking of 1939 has got me thinking that time flies, because that is the year I was born.
Senator Losier-Cool: You are young.
Senator Robichaud: I started as a teacher in Richibucto, New Brunswick, and we would screen NFB films. It required machines.
Ms. Drisdell: Large reel.
Senator Robichaud: It was quite loud, but still, we used it. You said there was one age group that was using it, but that things had changed. I see here that you are referring to Tintin and the NFB.
Ms. Drisdell: In the blog.
Senator Robichaud: Have you determined the age group visiting it? One of my grandchildren watches anything Tintin-related and is following the series.
Ms. Drisdell: It is when we launched the iPhone app that we really reached out to them. They rediscovered the NFB. Although we may think that more recent work is what attracts the youth, really it was things like The cat came back, projects from 30 or 40 years ago, somewhat iconic for the NFB. Short animation projects, this is what attracted the youth. The NFB's mandate is to be where people cannot always be at the start and to be innovative. This was good for us because we were one of the first to have the iPhone app with video content in North America. Young people seeking Canadian video could see it because it is a free app. They rediscovered it through short animation films they liked and from there they discovered other things, documentaries et cetera. These youth are really quite involved and dynamic. If they see a short animated film they find funny, if they discover a documentary on an important social issue, they will return.
There is an increasing number of multiple visits, and according to the most recent figures from comScore, our youth clientele from 17 to 25 is increasing with the interactive products, but it is mainly on mobiles.
Strangely, we are starting to see, as we project into the future, that SMART TV and mobiles will probably be media consumption tools, even more so than the Internet through computers.
Senator Robichaud: You refer to interaction. What exactly are interactive programs with young people?
Ms. Drisdell: In fact, it is a new way of creating a work. On www.onf.ca, there is a channel called L'interactif and this relates to various ways of telling a story. We did one called Sacrée montagne on the mountain in Montreal. These are vignettes, short videos, clips of that nature. They are less like a linear documentary but can be like a photo essay. We did one after the earthquake in Haiti. It can be a multimedia mix or, like Bear 71, an experience where we go through the park with our cameras as though they were his eyes and explain the relationship between men and bears as well as environmental concerns, et cetera. On the computer you have to play with some of the elements and we sort of create a direction for the project instead of simply beginning production and ending it 30 minutes later. You click on different spots to get the production. It is a bit difficult to explain. It would have been easier to show you. I apologize.
Senator Robichaud: That is indeed the way to attract young people's attention. They are not happy with viewing things, they want to interact.
Ms. Drisdell: Manually as well. We have these types of projects. Approximately 20 per cent of our program creation is focused on interactive production experiences, either over the web or on a mobile device, but not necessarily aimed at TV.
Senator Robichaud: Do you invite young people to send you stories or reports they create themselves?
Ms. Drisdell: We do have some competitions for young cinematographers. We took part in a project at the Vancouver Olympic Games where people could download photo essays on Canada. It was done in cooperation with VANOC and we are going to be resuming that at the NFB. We want to protect our site for the benefit of our clientele, but we do not get involved in production. We do not allow people to download material willy-nilly. The photo of the young man you see is in fact an iPad2 application to teach people to create stop motion animation and air it. This is an app we had prepared for the educational market, and when we developed it the team was so enthusiastic that we made it accessible to consumers. It is a free application in Canada. It contains clips that teach people how to use this technique to create a film. They can do it on their iPads. It is lots of fun.
[English]
It is addictive, so be careful.
[Translation]
We will be organizing competitions in schools as well.
Senator Losier-Cool: Is the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie benefiting from your know-how or does it consult you on occasion? Your Strategic Plan 2008-13 aims to present Canada to Canadians. Are we presenting Canada to the francophone world?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes. In fact, our French development strategy includes partnerships with, among others, TV5 Monde and the OIF. There will be an event in Quebec City in April for the international francophonie and there will be another in the fall. We are having discussions with them to see how to share this information. They can also take part of our site and make it available on their site.
We will be in Durban, South Africa, in July, for an international French teachers' convention. We are having discussions with them and will make a presentation on the use of new media in classrooms. We are holding a number of events to facilitate the use of digital options to reach out to francophones abroad.
Senator Losier-Cool: Thank you and congratulations on your wonderful work.
[English]
Senator Buth: Are there any differences in any particular geographical region with regard to the sign-up for the CAMPUS project where you are signing up institutions or teachers?
Ms. Drisdell: We are seeing some. As I said before, we are just starting to roll it out. We have seen it a little more active. Ontario was our first province — they signed on very early on, actually before it was CAMPUS. They signed on to have the usage of NFB.ca in their classrooms; they are a very early adopter — and then B.C. We are very close, we hope, to signing Manitoba very soon. A lot of these ministries are also struggling with budgets and with elements also, so it is through the meetings that we are having. It is very popular, I would say, across the country in different areas.
It is just a question of really each province deals with media purchase also. It was completely decentralized in some provinces and in some it was not, so it took us a while to understand who we had to deal with on this issue. For instance, in Ontario, it was not the education purchasers who would normally buy books; it was the IT sector we had to deal with. In each province, the education system is also trying to adjust how they deal with these things. It has been a lot of ongoing conversations with them, and also asking them what tools they would need to do it.
At the moment, we are going slowly across the country to have the annual subscriptions, which seems to be the model. We initially thought we would go individually with teachers, and we have seen actually that we did not have the right strategy to start. We saw it would have been better to go straight on, and it is more the school commissions and the ministry level that are interested in getting it in for all their schools, so those discussions have been more fruitful than teacher by teacher.
Senator Buth: Have you launched in Quebec?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes. It has been available across Canada, and Learn Quebec was quite interested early on, so they purchased the licence for all the anglophone schools in Quebec. The francophone schools in Quebec have a different system, and it works differently, so we would not get one licence. We have to go to different organizations to do it. We are in discussions with them now.
Senator Poirier: Following on that, in the school system, once they buy into the system, would the students only have access to it while they are on the school grounds? If they are using a computer at home, would they have access to it at home?
Ms. Drisdell: They would. NFB.ca is available for consumers anyway, so teachers were always able to tell students, "You have to watch that at home." That is actually not public performance rights. It is only for the teachers to show it in the classroom. The students have always had access to be able to watch the film or report. CAMPUS is an environment for the teachers where they can comment and share. In the next iteration, we would like to create the same thing for their students so that school projects could be done in a controlled environment also, but that is development down the road.
[Translation]
Senator Mockler: Referring to social media, what role does the NFB play in supporting Canadians with disabilities, regardless of the language they speak?
Ms. Drisdell: That is an area of concern for us. Most of our projects are closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired. It was included in our project launched on www.nfb.ca. We are also working on accessibility needs for people with reduced mobility. Much of our work is accessible to the hearing-impaired. Some is also accessible to the visually impaired, which is more costly and complex. There is also video description on our website, but less of it, given the high costs. We made sure the site as such was accessible to people with reduced mobility. It is a bit more complex when it comes to social networks because we do not control that accessibility, but we do it directly on our website's platform.
Senator Mockler: Is the government doing enough with the NFB to try to provide better service to people with special needs?
Ms. Drisdell: I can only respond for the NFB. We are trying to do this and we regularly interact with various groups to see what could be improved and discover best practices at the global level.
I met with someone in Sweden on this point. I think it would be preferable for us to come together to achieve success. It would be simpler. I fear that sometimes we try to do things on an individual basis.
It would be worthwhile to come together and try to find best practices in media. Tablets, for one, would be very important, specifically for people with reduced mobility. These platforms should be more and more accessible. Personally, I feel you can never do enough.
Senator Mockler: I have one last question. I just did a Google search on the NFB. You referred to apps at the NFB. How many apps have you created? And how many of them are free and how many are not?
Ms. Drisdell: We have not developed many, but we have our two main ones which are onf.ca and nfb.ca. These two applications are free. We created the David Suzuki Test Tube and the éprouvette, which are also free; that was for specific projects. There is PixStop here, where we tried to charge for some parts of it. We decided to make it free to Canadians but to charge for foreigners.
We have some applications that are directly related to our production. One is called Code Barre, it is free and useful in interacting with production. And before Christmas, we tried to create a virtual Advent calendar where people could go see an NFB film, instead of eating chocolate. It is the first time we have tried to sell this calendar in Canada. We did sell it, it was not a major success because we already had these films online. We thought that we should put them online in another context, during the holiday season, to encourage their sale, but at a relatively low cost. So we are trying various things.
Senator Mockler: In French and in English?
Ms. Drisdell: In French and in English, always.
The Chair: Do you think the government should regulate certain new modes of communication? We know there are some obligations with respect to official language minority communities and that the government must promote and support their development, in the case of both francophones in a minority setting and anglophones in Quebec. Does the federal government have that responsibility? What could it do? Killer question!
Ms. Drisdell: I am not sure I have the expertise to answer that question. According to our experience, it would be very difficult to regulate. When we launched nfb.ca, we were betting that if it were available, Canadians would want to see it. It was a gamble. Canadian content must be available to be seen. Our role is to make it accessible to the public and to ensure there is enough francophone and anglophone Canadian content on all platforms. That is our responsibility.
I am not sure this can be regulated, perhaps because I have post-teenagers at home. I am not sure regulating the digital universe is very successful. Rather, we must make sure that we have something interesting enough to offer them that reflects their reality. Canadians want to see themselves, whether they are young or not so young. They want to see their own stories. And if we can make these stories available I think it would be more effective than trying to regulate.
The Chair: If I can summarize what you have just said, all Canadians throughout the country should eventually have access to new digital technology. Moreover, content should be available and accessible in both official languages. Is that more or less correct?
Ms. Drisdell: Yes, it is more effective than trying to regulate. Instead, we should make sure that what we have to offer is available.
The Chair: Ms. Drisdell, on behalf of members of our committee, I would like to thank you sincerely for your presentation. It has been most interesting and will certainly be quite useful in the drafting of our report.
Ms. Drisdell: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Honourable senators, we are taking a five-minute break to come back in camera and to discuss a draft report.
(The committee continued in camera.)