THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 6, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met with videoconference this day at 6:49 p.m. [ET] to study matters related to transport and communications generally.
Senator Leo Housakos (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good evening, honourable senators.
I am Leo Housakos, a senator from Quebec and the chair of this committee.
[English]
I would like to invite my colleagues to briefly introduce themselves starting from my left.
[Translation]
Senator Simons: Good evening. Paula Simons from Alberta. I live in Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Cardozo: Andrew Cardozo from Ontario.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
The Chair: Thank you, fellow senators.
This evening, we are continuing our study of the local and regional services provided by the CBC/Radio-Canada, focused on Quebec.
Joining us by video conference this evening are Daniel Côté, Mayor of the City of Gaspé, Pierre Tousignant, President of the Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs de Radio-Canada, Amélie Hinse, Executive Director of the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec, and Angelica Carrero, Executive Director of the Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec.
Welcome, and thank you for joining us.
We will first hear opening remarks of five minutes each, starting with Mayor Côté, followed by Mr. Tousignant, Ms. Hinse and Ms. Carrero.
Also with us is Senator Dasko from Ontario.
Daniel Côté, Mayor, City of Gaspé: Honourable senators, my name is Daniel Côté. I’m a lawyer by profession, but I have been the mayor of Gaspé for 11 years and the reeve of the regional county municipality, or RCM, of Côte-de-Gaspé for 7 years. I was president of the Union des municipalités du Québec from 2021 to 2023.
I will be testifying here mainly in my role as mayor, although I have some insight into Quebec’s regional realities in general, given my recent prominent positions.
I was invited to appear with 24 hours’ notice. I had little time to prepare, but I’m willing to try to guide the committee with my take on the situation.
I can’t complain about Radio-Canada’s coverage over the last five or six years in my region, Gaspé. We are covered from Gaspé by seasoned radio and television journalists. There is an on-site camera operator, a control room, an editing room and a recording studio, which are connected to the Matane hub for radio and Rimouski for television.
The morning and afternoon shows are hosted out of Gaspé and Matane. The 24-7 news coverage and on-air hosting meet high standards of quality.
Honestly, I have no complaints about the programming or the way it’s delivered in general.
Occasionally, we have no journalists on hand for press conferences or other events. That’s also the case for private and local community media in the region. They can’t be in two places at once for different events given the massive size of our territory.
In the Gaspé, one journalist usually covers an average of 5,000 to 10,000 square kilometres. That is a huge territory, but there are a lot of us spread out over it. If a journalist is dispatched to Murdochville for some event, they clearly can’t be 100 or 150 kilometres away in Percé or Gaspé at the same time.
Compared with six or seven years ago, the coverage is much better now. That said, it can always be improved.
For example, at our city council meetings in Gaspé, the biggest city in the region, we rarely see a Radio-Canada journalist. Reporters from other media outlets show up pretty regularly. Is the reason that city councils deal with local issues and Radio-Canada has a broader, regional or national, mandate? Is the reason that our council meetings run smoothly without any friction among councillors, making our meetings less entertaining than the meetings of other councils? Is it that journalists usually work the day shift and our meetings are held in the evening? I don’t know. But try as I might to find a problem with the coverage, I find things are going well in general.
If I looked really hard, I’d say that there is less coverage in small villages outside urban centres. Journalists will only make the trek if something happens to draw media attention.
Anyone who sees my positive remarks as a chance to slash the budget of the public broadcaster, think again. That’s not at all what I’m getting at.
We need our impartial public broadcaster. If we want even better coverage of more events to keep the public better informed, it would be a good idea to think about investing more to enhance the public service. Budget cuts would be harmful to our people and the health of our democracy. We need Radio‑Canada to properly cover our regions. Accurate, impartial information is one of the main keys to a democracy. We need to maintain it, in both cities and regions. Thank you.
Pierre Tousignant, President, Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs de Radio-Canada: Mr. Chair, honourable senators, my name is Pierre Tousignant, and I’m the president of the Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs de Radio-Canada, or STTRC.
Thank you for having me. The union I head represents around 2,800 employees of CBC/Radio-Canada in Quebec and Moncton. They are admininstrators as well as technicians and producers.
The STTRC is a member of the Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture, or FNCC, which itself is one of the nine federations of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux.
I am one of the vice-presidents of the FNCC.
All these fancy titles aside, I am a reporter and have been for close to 40 years. Like many of my colleagues, I clearly remember the day I started working for Radio-Canada: July 13, 1998.
CBC/Radio-Canada is more than an employer and a workplace. It’s the only media organization active across the country, the only one that tells me my country’s stories and talks about the world from a Canadian perspective.
For francophones outside Quebec and anglophones in Quebec, CBC/Radio-Canada is the main forum for expression and debate, reflecting the economic, social, cultural and sports vitality of the communities that have stations.
I am essentially a product of regional media. I can attest to the importance of the local coverage provided by CBC/Radio-Canada’s network of regional stations. It is better developed in Quebec and Moncton than in the rest of the country and, in my opinion, is a treasure. We need to preserve it and support its development. That is all the more important in a time of disinformation and misinformation, when an unprecedented crisis has led to the disappearance of hundreds of media outlets.
Along with many civil society stakeholders, the FNCC is engaged in a battle against the information deserts in many regions. That’s why, more than ever, CBC/Radio-Canada needs to maintain a strong presence in local and regional markets, and not only as a broadcaster. It also needs to produce original content unique to each market. The best way to do that is to include these obligations in the licence conditions.
In the last few years, the trend has been to underfund regional production in favour of the mother stations in Toronto and Montreal, and to use technological advances — and they are major — not to improve programming, but to lower costs. CBC/Radio-Canada managers have adopted an accounting approach to management rather than focusing on the interests of CBC/Radio-Canada users.
I don’t have the business experience that many committee members have. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a budget is also a matter of choice. Yes, executives have an obligation to efficiently manage the resources the government has provided to them. However, they also need to understand that CBC/Radio-Canada is more than a business. It is a window onto who we are as a society, and, more importantly, it belongs to us. Thank you.
Amélie Hinse, Executive Director, Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec: Mr. Chair, honourable senators, good evening. My name is Amélie Hinse, and I am the executive director of the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec, which brings together and supports 42 community television stations throughout Quebec.
Set up to defend and promote non-profit media, the federation plays a central role in enhancing local, publicly owned television stations. By supporting the development of community television, the federation actively helps protect a local media community that contributes to Quebec’s democratic and cultural vitality.
More than ever, Canadian programming provided to the public needs to include local and regional news. While the sector is fragmented because of the advent of new technologies, Canadians are still looking for local content they can identify with and where they can see themselves reflected.
You’ve been given a lot of data by other witnesses this week, so I’ll spare you. There seemed to be a clear consensus that the public broadcaster had a crucial role to play in producing and broadcasting local news. We believe that the community side of broadcasting has an equally important role to play.
CBC/Radio-Canada’s mandate is to reflect Canada’s regions, contribute to cultural expression, and provide programming that informs, enlightens and entertains.
Community television has a similar role, as recognized in the Broadcasting Act, but community television stands out by giving a voice to communities. It is a way for people to express themselves, share their concerns, and bring to life the realities and cultures unique to each region. In a media landscape where the major national and international issues dominate, community television ensures visibility for local issues. We believe that both services are essential and complement each other.
I will give you a few examples of the way public and community broadcasters can work together.
In the Netherlands, public broadcasting is a public-community hybrid model. The national broadcaster, headquartered in central locations, is staffed by professionals, while regional studios are like community studios where professionals work with community members. That way, Dutch people have a direct voice within the national broadcaster.
When the now defunct Local Programming Improvement Fund was implemented in 2010, Karen Wirsig from the Canadian Media Guild and Cathy Edwards from the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations, the federation’s counterpart for the rest of Canada, co-wrote a research paper entitled “Public-Community Partnerships to Improve Local Media.” They submitted it to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, as part of its consultations on the fund. The authors recommended that dedicated funding be allocated to encourage the two sectors to work together. However, the CRTC never followed up on their recommendation.
Despite that, the community TV sector started implementing a few ideas from the report concerning the way CBC/Radio-Canada could benefit from small community broadcasters in small communities by accessing their content. In return, community broadcasters could benefit from CBC/Radio-Canada’s journalistic leadership. In the context of the Local Journalism Initiative, a national online portal was set up with content accessible to all broadcasters, whether CBC/Radio-Canada or private broadcasters. In return, CBC/Radio-Canada provided free training in data journalism to help improve the quality of journalism produced by community broadcasters.
We are convinced that greater cooperation would be to the advantage of Canadians.
Thank you for inviting us to discuss this with you. We will be pleased to answer your questions.
Angelica Carrero, Executive Director, Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec: Good evening, Mr. Chair and honourable senators. I am Angelica Carrero, Executive Director of the Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec since September 2024. Thank you for inviting me.
I would like to start by giving you a bit of background on the association.
The association brings together and supports 37 independent community radio stations all over the province of Quebec. It was founded to represent and promote its members, and ensure their growth as community media organizations. It is committed to recognizing the contribution and impact of its member stations in their local areas and in broader society. By doing so, the association actively protects local media and helps it thrive.
I will echo the words of my colleague Ms. Hinse. We have several points in common, since we both represent community media associations. I’ll start by highlighting the critical importance of local news, especially at a time when reliable news is fast disappearing. Canadians are looking for content they can trust that reflects their reality.
There seems to be a consensus that the public broadcaster has a crucial role to play in producing and broadcasting local news. We agree with that. We believe that CBC/Radio-Canada plays an important role. It is there to ensure a measure of impartiality, as my colleague Mr. Côté mentioned. These broadcasters’ roles intersect. Community media also have an important role to play. That’s my second point: the public broadcaster and the community sector have similar and complementary roles.
The Broadcasting Act specifies that CBC/Radio-Canada programming must reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions. That last requirement intersects with the role of community radio, which must also focus on the interests of regional listeners, address their issues and represent them. However, community radio is fully entrenched in the area it represents, and so, is in a privileged, enviable position. We recognize that the public broadcaster is similarly rooted, but the numbers are obviously not the same.
Community radio stations are created by and for the community where they operate. They are managed by community members. In addition, community radio gives communities a voice. It allows citizens to express themselves, share their concerns, and support the realities and cultures of each region. We believe that the missions of both broadcasters are essential and complementary. Where the public broadcaster has limitations, community radio fills them. Indeed, at present, the withdrawal of several Radio-Canada stations in several regions has already been filled by the presence of certain community media.
In conclusion, we humbly submit that the contribution of community radio stations could strengthen and contribute to Radio-Canada’s mission, which is a very important one. Obviously, this collaborative model presupposes adequate compensation for all parties involved and contributing to the work. Furthermore, the expertise of community radio stations must be put forward, and we must trust them in their way of doing things, as well as in the experience and expertise of Radio‑Canada, which is also a value that must be put forward.
Thank you very much for the invitation. I’m open to answering any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you for your testimony. If I understood correctly, all of our witnesses are saying that it’s very important to have local and regional broadcasters and news, and that it’s essential. I couldn’t agree more.
My question is more specific. In the current context, compared with previous years, does Radio-Canada meet the objective of providing effective local and regional journalism and broadcasting, particularly in Quebec? From the outside, I see a company that’s been receiving a lot of taxpayer subsidies over the past 10 years — more and more. We’re now talking about $1.4 billion a year. However, year after year, I see cuts, particularly in the number of journalists, and the service isn’t necessarily at the same level as it was a few years ago. I would like to have your specific perspective on Radio-Canada in the regions of Quebec.
Second, are there broadcasters in the private sector like Quebecor or other local stations that could fill that space if, for example, Radio-Canada were to disappear overnight?
Ms. Hinse: I see two objectives here, because you’re talking about local and regional. For me, they’re two completely different things. I feel that Radio-Canada is fulfilling its role well at the regional level. Radio-Canada has a presence in all regions in Quebec.
Personally, I’m in Victoriaville, in Centre-du-Québec, and I see that we’re being left behind, because we’re being lumped in with the Mauricie region. The media coverage isn’t extraordinary. It’s mainly concentrated in Trois-Rivières and Shawinigan, on the north shore of the river. However, there is regional coverage.
When it comes to local coverage, the answer is no. It all depends on what you mean by “local.” To me, local coverage means the municipalities where people live, not in Trois‑Rivières, Sherbrooke or Quebec City. Those are rather large centres. They’re entire regions of Quebec at the provincial level.
Locally, the answer is no. I don’t think the private sector can fulfill this role in broadcasting. It’s a different story when it comes to newspapers. There are many more, although the number has dropped significantly in the last 10 years, given the many closures.
At the local level, if you don’t turn to small community radio and TV stations, there’s no television coverage. You don’t see yourself reflected on TV or on the radio. It’s very rare that I hear about Victoriaville or the city of Warwick, where I live, on Radio-Canada. They don’t come here unless there’s a major disaster.
As a result, I don’t think the local mandate is being met right now.
It’s true that a lot of investment is being made and that coverage is declining. However, per capita investment in the national broadcaster is extremely low compared to other OECD countries. I don’t see that a lot of money is going into local CBC/Radio-Canada news. I think the investment could and should be greater.
Mr. Tousignant: You won’t be surprised if I tell you that I agree with the last part of Ms. Hinse’s answer. Indeed, CBC/Radio-Canada costs far less per capita than other public broadcasters around the world.
As for the first part of your question, I also agree. Organizational issues do exist within the corporation. Radio‑Canada isn’t the only company facing this reality. The same is true for private broadcasters. The proliferation of broadcasting platforms has meant that we’re playing with roughly the same number of employees, but we’ve multiplied the sources and places of broadcast, which means that a journalist who used to produce one or two stories a day on radio now has to produce them for radio, television, the web and digital platforms. We therefore have as many or, in the case of Radio-Canada, slightly fewer journalists to cover the same socio-economic and socio‑cultural reality as in the past, but with multiple broadcast outlets, all the while respecting, in the case of Radio-Canada, journalistic standards and practices. We talked about impartiality, and I could talk about honesty. These rules provide a framework and at the very least ensure that the work is done in accordance with a number of recognized standards.
It’s true that we currently have fewer journalists covering the regions of Quebec, and we’re asking them to do a lot more within the time allotted to do their job. I agree with Mr. Côté that we see fewer and fewer journalists at municipal councils, whereas there was a time when CBC/Radio-Canada journalists covered council meetings in Gaspé. I’ve done it in several towns in the Eastern Townships, and it was true elsewhere too.
There’s an objective reality and production pressures that didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago, because we have broadcasting venues that didn’t exist at the time and the means haven’t kept up. Production costs and fixed overheads have risen, putting CBC/Radio-Canada in a special situation. That’s why we’re asking — and there’s an assessment to be done on the part of the legislator — for adequate, sufficient, multi-year funding, which is not currently the case. At CBC/Radio-Canada, we want to avoid having to renegotiate budget envelopes year after year with the legislator, which prevents it from preparing budget forecasts for a longer period.
I think working with community networks is an interesting avenue. I’m speaking as a journalist. Just as CBC/Radio-Canada collaborates with certain private media on investigative subjects, we could imagine the same thing with community networks. Even if I don’t live in Warwick, Victoriaville or Gaspé, I’d be the first to want to hear from Montreal or even Victoria, British Columbia, a story or investigation that concerns realities specific to Gaspé, but that speaks to me as a British Columbian, Albertan or Ontarian. The beauty of CBC/Radio-Canada is that it can connect communities with each other. Even if the news is very local or regional, you have to be able to make it transnational or Canadian, which other media can’t do.
To answer your question, no, the private sector couldn’t replace CBC/Radio-Canada tomorrow morning. The private enterprise business model is broken, and we need to find a new one. We need to find alternative solutions. TVA has reduced the number of journalists in the regions and the realities —
The Chair: Mr. Tousignant, thank you for that very complete answer.
Mr. Côté, Ms. Carrero, would you like to add anything?
Mr. Côté: Everything has been said about the local and regional component. I agree with the previous statements. I think the situation varies from place to place in Quebec.
As I pointed out earlier in my opening remarks, in the reality of the largest urban centres, where journalists are based, coverage is better than in the smallest remote communities, as is the case in Warwick. Municipalities like Grande-Vallée, for example, will have much less CBC/Radio-Canada coverage of their local issues. However, anything a little more regional is still very well covered.
As for the private sector, I agree with what I’ve just heard. The private sector can never compensate for, replace or make up for the coverage CBC/Radio-Canada has to deliver. CBC/Radio-Canada is a public broadcaster that operates according to a notion of impartiality, providing a service to the public without necessarily having to take into account the notion of profits to be made. It is not beholden to anyone but the public or the state. This is a fundamental role in a democracy. A private broadcaster can never replace CBC/Radio-Canada.
Ms. Carrero: I agree with Mr. Côté and Mr. Tousignant as well as Ms. Hinse. To answer the second part of your question, about the private sector, I also believe that private broadcasters cannot fulfill this mission. As I said earlier, community radio stations already do. They fill the gap. That’s the best proof that community radio can really do it.
Senator Simons: At one time, when I was a young director at CBC Edmonton, I had a colleague who worked at Radio-Canada. We decided to produce a documentary together about a utopian colony in Saskatchewan called La Rolanderie, which was ultramontane. I found it very interesting to do this project with him, and I asked him: why not do it in French for a francophone audience? He replied that it was impossible, that the people who worked in Montreal had said that it wasn’t a story that would interest them, given that it was a Saskatchewan story. There were no francophones in Saskatchewan, even though he was a Saskatchewanian.
It was the first time I’d come to understand francophones who live in Bathurst, Rimouski, Gaspé, Edmonton, Saskatoon, or even St. Boniface in Winnipeg, who have the same problem with Montreal that other Albertans have with Toronto. The guardians in Montreal decided it was a real story for everyone.
But Mr. Côté, Mr. Tousignant, is it the same today? Is it still difficult to hear stories from a French-speaking place other than Montreal? Or do people in Montreal decide what’s going on for all of Radio-Canada?
I don’t speak French very well, but I tried.
Mr. Tousignant: The answer is yes. It’s not the journalists’ fault. I attended the launch of a book co-written by two journalists, one from the French network and one from the English network. Several of my colleagues from both networks were there too, and we all want to see more collaboration between the French and English networks of CBC/Radio-Canada. It’s the managers of these two networks who manage in silos, and who make all possibilities for co-production between the two networks impermeable. It’s extremely difficult.
Senator Simons: That’s not my question. I want to know if it’s easier now for journalists who live in Bathurst, Gaspé or Rimouski to access our stories in Montreal. Or is it the people in Montreal who decide that this is a good story, or that it’s boring and not interesting enough for people who live in Montreal?
Mr. Côté: I can attest to some experience in this regard. It’s still very much the case. There’s a concentration of news about Montreal. It’s rare for regional news to find its way into national news bulletins. In fact, it’s as if the national news only happened in the major centres. Even news from Saguenay, which is a major Quebec city, very rarely reaches the so-called “national” media, or CBC/Radio-Canada, which is called “national”. It’s the same with TVA and all the other major “national” networks. It has to be really bad in a region for it to be considered national news.
To come back to something Mr. Tousignant said earlier, connecting the regions is one of CBC/Radio-Canada’s roles. This role will be taken over by web platforms. But beyond web platforms, in radio and TV, for there to be interaction between the regions, it really takes very, very bad news for a regional story to take on a certain stature and make national headlines, and for our regions to find themselves on the national stage. Yet anything that happens in Montreal, for example, will automatically find its way into the national news. It’s as if there’s an a priori: If it happens in a major centre, it’s national, whereas if it happens in a region, it’s regional.
Senator Simons: For me, this study isn’t just about whether we have enough journalists in the regions. Whether it’s in English or in French, it’s CBC/Radio-Canada’s duty to think of ways to make all stories accessible to all Canadians, not just news from Saguenay for people in Saguenay, but also to explain what’s happening in Saguenay for people who live in Montreal, Moncton or Vancouver.
That’s enough for me.
The Chair: I think we’re all in agreement. You’ve done well, senator.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a lot of questions. Obviously, as a former journalist, I’ll say in advance that I have opinions and experience at CBC/Radio-Canada. Mr. Tousignant, first of all, I’d like you to send us the figures you were talking about, the declining number, as you said, of journalists. Do you have these figures and can you send them to us? I don’t need them now, but I’d like you to take a serious look at this.
Indeed, it’s a bit of a paradox, because it’s true that the Quebec population lives in the best-served province in terms of TV and radio.
I was listening to Mr. Côté, who has no interest in CBC/Radio-Canada other than talking about it from the outside, and frankly, it’s not so bad. Compared to Alberta and what francophones have access to there, we’re certainly privileged.
The part that’s missing from the table is TVA. You said that the private sector isn’t capable of taking over and doesn’t have the same standards. As far as I know, before the drastic cuts in the regions, TVA still had the most watched regional news. Am I mistaken?
So, on that subject, why is TVA suddenly out of money? They made cuts. It’s a bit paradoxical, Mr. Tousignant, that you say CBC/Radio-Canada journalists don’t have the means to do what they do. There are none left at TVA. We’re in a completely unbalanced market, where I understand that we might want more journalists — it’s always better to have more and just do radio and TV — but at the same time, CBC/Radio-Canada remains the most pampered in the market. Am I wrong?
Mr. Tousignant: No, senator, you’re right. What I also said in the case of TVA is that the business model for private companies is broken. I understand very well, it’s true that CBC/Radio-Canada remains a pampered medium, if we compare ourselves to others. You’re right. It’s true that in Quebec, certain choices have been made by successive managers of French radio and television, unlike other choices that have been made at Radio-Canada’s English network, at CBC. As a result, there are more stations serving smaller communities in Quebec, in Sept‑Îles, for example, or even in Matane. In Sept-Îles, there’s a station where about thirty people do TV and radio. All true. The fact remains that if you want to ensure proper coverage, you need at least that. The difficulty we have is the multiplication of the places where we broadcast, which increases the workload, which means that you’re a journalist for less time in the day and you’re producing content for different platforms for longer.
But you’re absolutely right to say that CBC/Radio-Canada’s situation is enviable when compared to TVA or even Noovo, which is making efforts.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I’m going to have to interrupt you, Mr. Tousignant, because I know you’re inexhaustible, but isn’t there a competition problem, now that TVA has fewer journalists who do their newscasts from major centres? Do you feel that since these cuts, you’ve had less variety? They were very deep cuts.
Mr. Tousignant: Competition is essential to have a plurality of points of view. That’s why at the federation, we launched this campaign with several public sector players, including media company owners, precisely to find other formulas to ensure —
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Mr. Tousignant, I will ask Mr. Côté to respond in order to have a variety of points of view.
Mr. Côté: I don’t believe that a private network can replace the public broadcaster, on the one hand. On the other hand, yes, there have been drastic cuts at TVA, because they have a notion of profit that’s inherent in the fact that they’re a private company, which a public corporation like CBC/Radio-Canada doesn’t have. This is an advantage that CBC/Radio-Canada has in terms of quality, point of view and impartiality, which is not imposed on a private broadcaster. There should be room for both in the marketplace. That said, only one is publicly funded to serve democratic institutions.
One of the roles of the public broadcaster is to disseminate information impartially, to inform the population, and this information is part of a democratic framework and this is healthy for democracy.
CBC/Radio-Canada is the guardian of fair, equitable and effective information that serves democracy. I’m not saying that others aren’t, quite the contrary, they are, but they are accountable to private shareholders and that’s a notion that doesn’t run counter to impartiality, but it is at odds with CBC/Radio-Canada’s duty of impartiality.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I really like this idea that you feel CBC/Radio-Canada should work with its partners, precisely because it’s publicly funded. It shouldn’t behave like a monopoly, but rather try to work with community radio and TV stations. I thought the example you gave us from the Netherlands was interesting.
Do you judge, more bureaucratically, that CBC/Radio-Canada’s licence conditions should be tightened to ensure that this regional coverage remains and has certain thresholds? There have been some important changes. At the moment, things are going well in your region, but there was once a desire to bring all the bulletins back to Quebec City; we had that unfortunate experience. So, things can vary according to budgets or the managers in place. Do you think there should be more CRTC intervention to impose stricter licence conditions on CBC/Radio-Canada?
Mr. Côté: I’m not an expert on this issue and I didn’t prepare for it. That being said, I believe that the vocation of serving the regions and ensuring that the regions have media coverage worthy of the name should be among CBC/Radio-Canada’s conditions of licence.
When I come back to the notion of differences between public and private, in the regions, there are often fewer backers, fewer advertisers to feed the private networks. Often, regions are a little less affluent in terms of large companies than urban centres can be.
The presence of the private sector is more difficult in terms of profitability, a bar that CBC/Radio-Canada does not have to meet.
So, a contrario, if CBC/Radio-Canada is expected to serve the localities and regions, it would make good sense to arrive with such conditions.
Mr. Tousignant: I think others have said it before me before this committee. Yes, the CRTC must tighten CBC/Radio-Canada’s conditions of licence to force a more equitable distribution of budgets to the benefit of the regions, not just in Quebec, but for the entire territory, because this affects all minority regions.
The Chair: For your information, I have been informed by the clerk that LCN has filed a statement in relation to our study and they are in the process of translating it. We’ll share it with our committee members.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: We invited TVA.
The Chair: We invited them. They refused to come as witnesses, but they sent a written statement.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: That’s right; that would be great.
The Chair: We can share their point of view.
Senator Dasko: It’s hard to ask a question. You have the perfect world, don’t you?
[English]
You sound like you live in the perfect media world. That’s what I am hearing. It’s difficult to think of something to ask you, but let me try.
I’m interested in the difference between radio and television with respect to Radio-Canada. Is one more important than the other, and if so, why and which one? What is the most indispensable, if either, or are they both equally important? I would ask anybody. Thank you.
[Translation]
Ms. Hinse: I think both are equally necessary because identity needs to be seen, not just heard. That is extremely important in my view. Even though television watching has been declining for the past decade or so, television is still the first place people turn to for information. That hasn’t changed. Television watching has decreased percentage-wise, but television is still the main news medium. It is just as important as radio. Radio costs less to make, but it’s important not to disregard the importance of television, because people need to see themselves on screen. TV is not going to disappear tomorrow. The way people watch it will change. They will adapt, and that’s fine, but video will always be important.
Ms. Carrero: I want to say that I, too, think both mediums are important. Keep in mind, however, that radio is a big part of our society and should be given more room. We are constantly battling screens. It’s a real problem. Radio can help solve a lot of problems and could provide an excellent alternative. While I certainly agree with my colleague that TV and radio are both important, radio has something television doesn’t. Radio should be promoted and leveraged more. I think society would really benefit.
Radio-Canada television airs a lot of rebroadcasts. There aren’t many original productions. Radio, however, has a lot more in the way of original production. I’m not sure whether that is something to take into account, but I have often noticed that, having spent a long time in the audiovisual industry working with Radio-Canada. There was a lot less production on the television side.
[English]
I don’t know if that answers your question.
Senator Dasko: Yes, thank you. If anybody else would like to answer, do you have any thoughts?
[Translation]
Mr. Côté: I would say that both meet what I consider an essential need. Radio reaches a certain part of the population. Someone who is driving, for instance, can’t watch TV, but they can listen to the news, tune into a program, get informed and stay connected with the rest of the world through radio.
In the comfort of their homes, people watch TV. Radio and TV occupy equally important spaces when it comes to what people want and what the public needs in terms of a source of information. I think both need to have their place.
Mr. Tousignant: To build on Ms. Hinse’s comment, I would say that Radio-Canada’s content, whether on TV or radio, is available all over the country. People don’t need to have cable to access it. Radio-Canada is an essential tool for communicating with people in an emergency.
[English]
Senator Dasko: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Cardozo: My question has to do with federal funding support. Some are calling for the English-language network, CBC, to be defunded. What impact would it have on Radio‑Canada, the French-language network, if its English counterpart ceased to exist?
Mr. Tousignant: Since 2010, the broadcaster has consolidated a huge number of service divisions of the English‑language and French-language networks, including capital asset management and technological development. Most francophone stations outside Quebec are in the same buildings as their anglophone counterparts. I’d really like to understand what exactly the people pledging to defund the CBC mean, because doing that has a very real impact on the broadcaster’s entire system. To defund the CBC is to undermine the French-language network, especially in minority communities outside Quebec. Similarly, it undermines the English-language network serving minority communities in Quebec. “Defund the CBC” is more than just a slogan; it’s a proposal that requires examination. I’m not against questioning whether CBC/Radio-Canada’s funding is appropriate. CBC/Radio-Canada belongs to Canadians, so it is a valid question, but we need to look beyond the slogan.
Senator, my answer to your question is that it would hurt the French-language network.
Ms. Hinse: To Senator Simon’s point, how do you share a community’s stories with other communities across the country without a public broadcaster whose job it is to do that? Cooperation between the public and private sectors is difficult to begin with, so I don’t see how Radio-Canada could adequately inform francophones in Quebec and the rest of Canada if the public broadcaster’s French-language network continued to exist but the English-language network disappeared. I do not see how that could be viable.
Mr. Côté: I wholeheartedly agree with the other two witnesses. I have trouble seeing how a Crown corporation that is supposed to provide fair news coverage like Radio-Canada could have its funding reduced or taken away completely. It would most certainly have an impact on the English-language network. History tells us that, if the English network is penalized, the French network will be too. Cutting off the funding of the Crown corporation that is the country’s only public broadcaster is a very bad idea.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you.
My second question has to do with the changing media landscape. Many radio stations, television stations and local newspapers have closed in recent years. Social media are another player. The media landscape looks a lot different today than it did 10 years ago. In that context, how do you see CBC/Radio-Canada’s role going forward? Consumers are turning to social media for information a lot more.
Ms. Carrero: If I understand your question correctly, senator, you’re asking whether people will turn to social media for news as opposed to traditional media? The answer is no. The Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec did a study on that. We asked a number of questions. For news, people look to sources other than social media much more. People don’t necessarily consider the information on social media to be reliable. Given the study we did and the reliability of the information, I don’t think so.
Ms. Hinse: It is true that consumers, the public, are turning to social media a great deal, but as content producers, we can’t rely on social media. Just look at Meta, which cut off access to news links for all users in Canada. We can ill afford to depend on a social media network to get our news or content out there. Social media remain an engine, a conduit for distribution, but we need something else to hitch our wagon to, something independent of all that. Who knows what will happen. We have no control over private platforms. It is not people’s welfare they care about. That is not their mission. They have to put money in shareholders’ pockets, so we have to be extremely careful. What happened with Meta could just as easily happen with other social networks.
Mr. Côté: I would add to that the fundamental issue around social media algorithms. They will always be predisposed to promote news or topics related to things that we have looked at or read recently, so they are always drawing on the same information environment or promoting the same ideology. A social media platform could never take the place of a public broadcaster like CBC/Radio-Canada when it comes to information quality.
There are private broadcasters people can turn to for a wide range of viewpoints, but, because of algorithms, social media will always be predisposed to promote and reinforce the views people already have. That is creating a huge amount of polarization in society right now. I’m not an expert on the issue, but I have been following current affairs and politics long enough to see the polarization at work and link it to social media algorithms mainly. It would be a very bad idea to put our news solely in the hands of social media. The platforms are going to push news content, fine, but they shouldn’t become THE source for news. That would be one of the worst ideas in the history of humanity.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you for bringing up polarization. Mr. Mayor, do you use traditional media more than social media, or both?
Mr. Côté: I’ve had a fairly significant media presence for the past few years. In my personal life, I use social media to share things I want to share, but I get a lot of media requests, from both private and community outlets, as well as from the public broadcaster. Basically, I try to talk to all of them so residents have access to the information I want to share with them, regardless of what that information is or where they get it from.
Nevertheless, I’m just one person speaking on behalf of a city and an RCM. It’s the same for most politicians trying to get their message out on as many platforms as possible. Relying solely on Facebook to reach a certain number of users would never be sufficient to share information with the public. Not everyone is on social media. Again, I associate social media with the risks of algorithms. They can refine the information to focus on such a highly specific aspect of what we want to see or what we have shown an interest in that it can ultimately be dangerous. That is the huge caveat I have about social media.
The Chair: Our sincere thanks to the witnesses for being with us and sharing their views on this important topic.
[English]
Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
The Deputy Chair: For the second panel this evening, the committee is joined by Christopher Waddell, Professor Emeritus, Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication.
Welcome, and thank you for joining us. We will first hear your opening remarks, five minutes, followed by questions and answers from senators. Professor, you have the floor.
Christopher Waddell, Professor Emeritus, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, as an individual: Thank you very much for inviting me to appear this evening. I was supposed to be here last week, but unfortunately, I couldn’t do it. I am glad that the clerk was able to rearrange something and I could get here for tonight.
The Deputy Chair: We wanted to hear you.
Mr. Waddell: Thank you. I hope I live up to that sort of advance billing.
I assume I was invited to participate based on the book, The End of the CBC?, that my late friend David Taras from Mount Royal University and I wrote in 2019 for the University of Toronto Press. The book came out just two weeks before the pandemic lockdown in March 2020, but the trends that Mr. Taras and I highlighted affecting CBC English television have only become more pronounced in the intervening almost five years. I believe our analysis of how CBC English television got to this point and our proposal for a new CBC are just as relevant today as when we wrote the book.
We think we need a radical rethink about what the role of public broadcasting is in today’s media environment. Sadly, that’s something the federal government has consistently avoided up to this point.
Meanwhile, the federal government continues to subsidize the salaries of journalists in what was print media to offset some of the lost advertising revenue to Google and Facebook. At the same time Parliament allocates about $1.4 billion annually to CBC/Radio-Canada so it can compete for advertiser dollars against the same media outlets that the government is subsidizing. That makes no sense.
The changes we have seen in media in the past decade and a half mean that media outlets can no longer afford to be everything for everyone. Each must make choices and tough decisions to stop doing things where they are no longer competitive. Each must concentrate on what it thinks it can do better than anyone else.
News, current affairs and information are the only elements of CBC English television’s current activities where it maintains a competitive advantage, whether it is online, in local radio markets across the country or in the number of Canadian journalists CBC posts abroad to show and tell Canadians about the world through Canadian eyes. Except for The Globe and Mail, Canadian media have abandoned foreign reporting to cut costs. That means Canadians learn about the world through foreign media and wire services. Wire services whose interests reflect the interests of the audiences in their home countries, not the interests of Canada and Canadians.
We argue a revitalized CBC must concentrate on news, information and current affairs, eliminate advertising and abandon everything else that CBC English television currently does. The broadcaster is no longer competitive in entertainment, drama, comedy and sports. Audiences are small. Streaming services have the money CBC will never have to spend on programming and to buy the rights for sports properties.
Chasing advertising revenue distorts programming decisions and content. It creates a mentality within the CBC of competing against private media at a time when the CBC is needed to help rebuild private media.
Co-operation, we argue, must replace competition. Getting out of advertising completely is the essential first step down that road. CBC Radio did it long ago, and it remains a strong presence in both urban and rural Canada, with distinctive programming despite CBC management’s continuing cuts to radio budgets at the expense of television and online activities.
The federal government’s new vision for the CBC, we think, needs to focus on how it can use its relative financial stability to work with private media — both the mainstream and the growing number of start-up online media organizations — to help them survive and grow.
But the CBC also needs to significantly narrow the range of what it covers in news, current affairs and information programming. That can help provide the editorial philosophy and approach that, I would argue, it currently seems to lack. It would also clarify where private media can concentrate its attention without fear of being outnumbered by the CBC.
In our book, we proposed a new CBC concentrate on six themes in news, current affairs and information.
First is international news, placing more Canadian foreign correspondents in more countries that are important to Canada, including putting more reporters across the United States, something that in the last 24 hours may have made a bit of difference in what people think about that.
In Canada, CBC news, current affairs and information programming would focus on five themes and subthemes, namely: urban life in Canada; business and the economy; public policy at the federal, provincial and municipal levels; health, science and technology, and; Canadians who are making a difference.
These themes, we argue, should guide both CBC local television and radio news, as well as national news, current affairs and information programming. CBC Television should do what radio already does with regular programming around many of the issues under these themes.
That leaves room for local private media to cover police, crime and the courts, traffic, fires, sports, weather and entertainment without competition from CBC. They can also choose whatever else they want to cover of the themes they know the CBC will focus on if they want to do that.
The CBC should also make its foreign and domestic reporting available free to any Canadian news organization that wants to use it. That means current broadcast competitors and all Canadian online news sites. Perhaps The Canadian Press can be the organization that does that distribution.
Finally, CBC online should feature stories from small news start-ups, helping give those organizations the visibility for their work among the broader audience they lost when Facebook stopped posting Canadian news on its site. That would include encouraging audiences to subscribe to those small media outlets, helping them grow.
So what happens to entertainment, drama and comedy programming? If the federal government believes telling Canadian stories is an important public policy goal, it should fund that programming directly to get Canadian content onto the global streaming services. Then use another agency, perhaps the National Film Board, to market that programming to the streaming services. More Canadians would then see Canadian stories than currently see them on CBC Television.
Sports provide a possible example of how that can be done. When Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Winter Olympic games, the federal government decided that Canada must not repeat the embarrassments of 1976 in Montreal and 1988 in Calgary. Both of those Olympic games we hosted and Canada did not win a gold medal in either of the games. So the federal government created Own the Podium and began funding sports directly, supplemented by the private sector, with a clear goal of more athletic success. That paid off dramatically in Vancouver and continues to do so today.
The dramatic transformation we propose would take place within the CBC’s current budgets. All English-language television funding would go to news, current affairs and information programming.
It’s a very different vision for public broadcasting — a fundamental change in the mindset of CBC management and employees — not competing with private media but helping save and rebuild Canadian media for the future.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you for this. I just want to be sure that you’re talking here about the English CBC, nothing about Radio-Canada?
Mr. Waddell: Nothing about Radio-Canada. I’m not an expert on Quebec. Obviously, Radio-Canada plays a very different role in the cultural life of Quebec than it does in English Canada, and also in defending the French language.
The Deputy Chair: Yes.
Mr. Waddell: So, no, this is not about Radio-Canada, it is about English television and, to some degree, radio as well, but radio already achieves a lot of what we are talking about, I think.
The Deputy Chair: I was looking at the depth of the reforms, and obviously the two, CBC and Radio-Canada, are linked. The focus of our study is on local and regional news. Obviously, you say that we have to focus on news at CBC. What about local and regional news in the reforms? Do you think they are they okay now? Do you think there should be more?
Mr. Waddell: We think that local CBC news, radio and television should concentrate on the same themes that we talked about for everyone else and abandon everything else. Do not do police, traffic, fires or courts. Leave that to other people. In that way, the private media that continues to exist, at least, will at least have an opportunity to know that it can be in some areas where it will not be overwhelmed by the CBC.
The Deputy Chair: I will let my colleagues delve into that because it is interesting. In a country where you have a free press, can you really decide who does what? It seems to me — but let’s go with new ideas. That’s why we are here.
I would like to have your views on the fact that — it happens at Radio-Canada, too — we have more and more journalists working on the internet platforms. They now have means, photographers — basically, they have more resources to do print journalism than the print press. How do you see that?
Mr. Waddell: Well, I guess, on a couple of levels. One, as some of the members of the previous panel said, at the same time as they are going online, they are also being asked to do more and more things. They are filing for three or four different social media —
The Deputy Chair: But Radio-Canada and CBC have reporters who work only on the —
Mr. Waddell: Yes, I know. To some degree, that comes back to the question and the point about competing against private interests. Is CBC/Radio-Canada now trying to turn itself into the same organization that used to be a newspaper — what we used to call a newspaper — and why are we doing that?
The Deputy Chair: So are you doubting that this is a good path?
Mr. Waddell: I don’t see what the editorial philosophy is of CBC English at the moment. What is the editorial? What is a CBC story and what is not a CBC story? Is it a CBC story that somebody loses their luggage on an airplane? Or that someone can’t get parts for their Ford F-150 truck? This, that or something else? I would argue that, at least on CBC online, a lot of what we see at the moment is click bait designed to attract audiences for advertising purposes. That is one of the reasons I argue that they should get rid of advertising and concentrate on doing stories that are important to the public at all different levels.
I don’t see the value of CBC trying to replicate what everyone else is doing. I think CBC should think about what it could do and where it can provide additional value to audiences and tell stories that private media may not be able to tell anymore because they don’t have the resources or the people, and do it in a different way that is not just picking up what someone said on social media and turning it into a story.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Simons: You may or may not know that I was a CBC producer for six years, and I spent 23 years as a print journalist with the Edmonton Journal.
Mr. Waddell: I certainly know that, and I can tell you that there is a French population in Saskatchewan in Willow Bunch.
Senator Simons: I made a whole documentary about it.
Mr. Waddell: I know.
Senator Simons: The point of that story was that nobody in Montreal cared.
Mr. Waddell: That is true as well.
Senator Simons: I got Bernie Lucht to let me do an hour-long documentary about this; it was a win for me.
I agree with much of what you say, but here is my first question. I was surprised to learn, when we were told by witnesses from Canadian Heritage, that there is a parallelism built into the legislation governing the CBC, and that if they have one service in Radio-Canada on the French side, they must have the same in English. We were told that this idea, which has been around for a long time, of getting the CBC out of baking shows and hockey would be impossible because you would then have to cut those same services in Quebec. I am wondering if your book dwelt on that idea at all.
Mr. Waddell: No, it doesn’t, but I assume they write the legislation, and if they want to change the legislation, they can. We are still governed by the 1991 Broadcasting Act, as I understand it. There was a committee that was supposed to be looking at this back in 2017 or 2018, and not much happened from that. Rewriting the Broadcasting Act is long overdue.
Senator Simons: That was Bill C-11. We rewrote it, but we didn’t do that.
Mr. Waddell: You didn’t, because you didn’t come to grips with what the public broadcaster’s role is in that, and the committee dodged that.
Senator Simons: Well, the legislation dodged it.
Mr. Waddell: Absolutely.
Senator Simons: Here is my concern: When you and David Taras wrote this book — and we miss him greatly as a public intellectual — it was a different time. Before the pandemic, there was the Calgary Herald, an Edmonton Journal and a Saskatoon StarPhoenix, and this concern that the CBC was competing was legitimate. But if we are very blunt, the Postmedia papers that serve many of the mid-sized cities in this country are ghosts of their former selves.
Mr. Waddell: Of course.
Senator Simons: And the CBC, in a metropolis like Calgary or Edmonton, is often the only source of news. If you pull the CBC from covering the courts, there may not be somebody to cover the courts. The problem is that the model presupposes that there is robust competition that just needs a little boost, and I don’t think that there is.
Mr. Waddell: Yes, we did write it before the pandemic and things have changed since the pandemic, and you are right about the collapse of Postmedia and everything else. I would argue — obviously, you can’t prove it one way or the other. Postmedia still exists and is enough of an entity to prevent other people from coming in with ideas to try to start up something else. If Postmedia were to disappear, there would be opportunities for people to do that. If people were to come in and do that, and they had an understanding of what the public broadcaster was going to be doing, they could. At the moment, if the public broadcaster wants to take up all that space, I would argue that it makes it different for someone else who wants to come in and start The Sprawl in Calgary, or something like that, to find funders and be able to operate.
Senator Simons: I guess my concern is — and I am sensitive to this because I have covered some of these beats — I don’t think that intelligent coverage of the courts is a wrong thing for a public broadcaster to be doing. The CBC in Edmonton has done remarkably important work in covering wrongful convictions, cases that went sideways and deaths of children in foster care. I think there is a really important role for the public broadcaster covering the criminal justice system.
Mr. Waddell: I would completely agree with you.
Senator Simons: And I agree with you. I hate those, “I had bad service at the auto body shop,” and the CBC does a story on it. I’ve been railing against those kinds of stories since my days as a CBC assignment producer.
On the other hand, people listen to the Calgary Eyeopener or Edmonton AM when they are driving their cars, and they like to know where the traffic is, and that doesn’t cost anything. It’s not like the CBC has a helicopter, they are looking at an app online and giving a traffic check and a weather check in the middle of — I used to direct that morning show, so I am sensitive to these issues. People like to know what time it is, and they like to know if there is a car accident. That’s why they are listening to the morning show for the complete package.
Mr. Waddell: A lot of people find that out from the app on the map and screen at the moment as opposed to listening to it on the radio.
Senator Simons: It is hard to look at an app while you are driving.
Mr. Waddell: A lot of people seem to.
Senator Simons: That is a bad public policy to encourage.
In terms of the CBC and resourcing, I agree with you. They should get out of advertising. Competing for advertising, especially on the web, makes no sense.
Mr. Waddell: Right.
Senator Simons: But I am concerned with the idea that if they pull out of journalism that you don’t think is highbrow enough, then nobody will listen. Because if it becomes a Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, and National Public Radio, or NPR, model, then it is not serving the broad general audience, who, frankly, in cities that are becoming, if not news deserts then news arid plains, there is a fundamental role for them in covering local news.
Mr. Waddell: I would answer that in two ways: First of all, I would say that one of our categories is urban Canada and everything that goes on in urban Canada —
Senator Simons: What about rural Canada?
Mr. Waddell: Well, yes, rural Canada can be covered. Business and economic stories, health and science stories and technology stories. You can go find those anywhere in the country. You don’t have to find them in your own city.
The other thing I would say on the justice issue is that I think the way we tried to define it, anyway, is that court cases that have an impact on justice policy one way or the other should be covered by the public broadcaster. The average court case that some people get into about a murder, or this, that or something else that has no broader policy implications could be left to private radio or whoever is left.
Some are great stories.
Senator Simons: They are great human interest stories.
Mr. Waddell: Yes. That’s where people will have to make decisions, but I still think that you don’t have the resources to do everything, so you have to decide what is important.
You can make those decisions and still clearly say what you are going to do and leave room for the private sector to do what it wants to do, and, hopefully, that might encourage some people in the private sector to get in with investing in media if they think they can make some money or run it as profitable operations.
Part of the problem at the moment is the CBC has become so large that it prevents people from actually thinking about trying to do that.
Senator Dasko: These are really interesting ideas, Chris, of course. Thanks for being here.
Mr. Waddell: They may not all be right, either, but we need a debate and conversation about what the future is going to be.
Senator Dasko: It is really important to have this kind of conversation.
I know you are mainly talking about English-language television, but I want to go back. You said something about radio.
To me, CBC Radio is one of the most perfect things in a really imperfect world — at least for me. It has a variety of programming. There is a lot of news and public affairs content. There is music and all kinds of stuff.
Would your vision of radio be similar to what we have now? Would you change radio at all?
Mr. Waddell: It would be similar to what we have now, but it would also change some things. Increasingly — again coming back to the issue of cutbacks and people doing more things — increasingly on radio and radio news, what you are hearing is the audio tracks of television pieces.
If you listen to “The World at Six” on CBC Radio, a lot of the pieces on “The World at Six” are the same pieces that are on “The National” now. In many cases, it’s the audio track.
When the script says, “Dogs like these,” you have a pretty good sense that you are listening to a TV voiceover track.
Senator Dasko: Right.
Mr. Waddell: I think what radio has lost in some of the consolidation is some of the great storytelling that radio journalists have done and continue to do.
Because of the cutbacks, because of the concentration and because of having people do more, they are repeating the same stories for radio and television when radio should be telling stories differently than television tells stories, and it should not be telling the same stories.
There was an interesting question asked in the previous session — it might have been your question, Senator Dasko — about radio and television. There are television stories and there are radio stories, and they are not the same thing.
For instance, the Spanish flood story is a very different story on radio than it would be by seeing the pictures of what actually happened, or in Asheville, North Carolina. There are other stories that are not great television stories — budgets and economic stories, some of those sorts of things, because you need pictures to tell a good story. They each have their place, and they are both important.
Increasingly and unfortunately — and it is a longstanding complaint of CBC Radio people that their budgets have been cut, first, for television and, more recently, for online. That’s unfortunate, because radio storytelling is different than television storytelling and different that print storytelling, as well.
Senator Dasko: If we are looking at the costs of this vision of the CBC Television and looking at a potential world where the CBC is not going to have more resources — I mean, just looking ahead at the political environment and context, I don’t think the CBC is well positioned, shall we say, to get more public money — then, of course, there is the whole conversation about cutting advertising.
Does this vision of CBC Television cost more, less or about the same? That’s what we used to ask in the polling business.
Mr. Waddell: I don’t know. I don’t know the details. I think the budget — and I didn’t check this — I think the budget for CBC English television is $380 million or a little bit more, but that is for everything on —
Senator Dasko: Of the 1.3 —
Mr. Waddell: The 1.3 or 1.4 —
Senator Dasko: Actually, of course, they have more revenue, because —
Mr. Waddell: They have a bit more —
Senator Dasko: — that’s just the public revenue.
Mr. Waddell: Yes, they have a little bit, and they get some advertising revenue. But that’s probably disappearing, just like it is for everybody else.
I think it is about $380 million. We didn’t do a detailed breakdown of how much money goes to each, but if you are taking out all the other areas, then there has to be more money left for news and current affairs.
Something that should be said that I don’t think was mentioned in the previous session is that in many ways, doing news is much cheaper now than it ever used to be in that the technology is cheaper and easier to use. Anybody can use it. You can do everything on a smartphone, if you want, on a smartphone and a computer. You can do all your editing. Feeding material to wherever you are going is much easier and cheaper to do. You can now report from anywhere — in the middle of the Arctic or in the middle of the desert. As long as you can get a satellite phone uplink, you are fine.
There are a lot of opportunities where it doesn’t necessarily cost more to do.
Senator Dasko: It costs less, in fact.
Mr. Waddell: On the technology end, it costs less. Where it costs more is on the people, because you want the people to actually be there. You don’t want the people to be sitting in an office and reporting from an office, and that’s what costs money.
Senator Dasko: Right. Do other countries have this model that you have described?
Mr. Waddell: Not that I know of.
Senator Dasko: In terms of public broadcasting —
Mr. Waddell: People have said for a long time, and some of the previous witnesses said as well, in relative terms, Canada doesn’t fund its public broadcaster nearly to the same level as other countries, whether it’s France, Germany, Japan or any others. So they have a lot more money. The BBC, for instance, is another example. They have a lot more money to be able to do a variety of things, so they may allocate their money differently.
Senator Dasko: Yes. Would this vision of CBC Television look anything like the current News Network?
Mr. Waddell: I don’t think so, no. I’m not much of a fan of all-news television, and I don’t think it has any future, frankly. The audience is disappearing on that as well.
I would say it looks much more like CBC Radio. Let’s say we have a program every week on health care or health. We have one or more programs on science. We have a program on agriculture, which they used to do a long time ago, and agriculture is still a really important business in this country, and food and agriculture seem to have — you have both the agriculture end of it, and then you have the “Top Chef” end of it and food version of it and those sorts of things.
But as news and information — not as entertainment. Not as bake offs or take-offs from what other countries have done first.
Senator Dasko: Thank you. That’s good.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you very much, Professor Waddell, for this. Let me just respond to a couple of things, and then I have some questions for you.
Mr. Waddell: Sure.
Senator Cardozo: The first part I will say is not what you said, but there has often been people who have talked about how the CBC should be different from the rest, and they’ve always said it should do programming that the others won’t do, and you are not saying that.
Mr. Waddell: No.
Senator Cardozo: What it says to me is they should do programming that nobody will watch.
Mr. Waddell: Yes, that’s what the privates used to argue all the time.
Senator Cardozo: Which is the best way to kill it. You get it to do highbrow programming that nobody else does, because nobody watches it. But there is a sense when you outline some of the areas that CBC Radio should cover —
Mr. Waddell: And television —
Senator Cardozo: And television. Are you saying it should be more like The Globe and Mail and let the private sector be more like the Toronto Sun? Then, they cover the courts and the weather and such, and it does become more of a highbrow approach.
Mr. Waddell: Well, sure, but I don’t think that — sorry.
Senator Cardozo: I think you are challenging us to look at everything and think things through.
My concern is that the people who are against CBC, the real critics — and some might use the word “haters” — are not upset about “Murdoch Mysteries,” “Son of a Critch” or “Schitt’s Creek.” They are really mad at the news part. They name certain journalists. They target them. They have social media posts that are sometimes vile. Take the vile part of out of it. The critique is against the news part that they feel is biased. They feel that CBC has a bias. Then on top of that, they are critical of the outgoing president over the bonuses issue.
The main thing about not doing those entertainment shows is that it would save money, and you could put more money into news programming. Perhaps you can comment on that. CBC has TV, radio and now social media or online and print. I don’t know how you can’t do the newest part, the print without — people consume all of it together. I don’t know if I am typical at all, but I might hear a short piece on the radio or the news and then go and look at the written part where you will find more detail, so the written part obviously has more room for more detail. To me, that’s the usefulness of having the whole package there. So any thoughts on what you said?
But just coming back to local, which is really the focus of our study, what do you think “local” would be? What you outlined, could that apply to local?
Mr. Waddell: Absolutely. There is nothing that would stop it applying to local. All those issues are good local issues. There are great stores in urban Canada about transportation, immigration, social policy, housing and about what works and what doesn’t work.
We have 10 provinces and how often do you see stories in any media, let alone the CBC, that compares the British Columbia health care system with the Ontario health care system or the Saskatchewan health care system. Or how Edmonton has dealt with Light Rail Transit, or LRT, issues compared to how Ottawa dealt with LRT issues. Not only do we never compare ourselves to other countries on these issues, except the United States, we also never compare one province to another. And there are a lot of opportunities there for interesting stories that I don’t think are necessarily highbrow stories but stories that could engage or interest everybody.
Part of that comes down to how you decide to tell them. There are a lot of opportunities to do things in those fields. In Ontario at the moment, we have a premier who decides he wants to get rid of bike lines. We hear about bike lines in Montreal being very successful, and we could hear a lot more about how Montreal has done it and how Toronto has done it, and do some of those comparisons. There are a lot of opportunities for both radio and television to do things.
You are never going to make everybody happy. Back in 2006, I worked with what was then Decima Research, and we were doing polling in the election campaign. We asked people, “Do you think the coverage of Mr. Harper is too positive, about right, or too negative?” And we also asked it about Mr. Martin who was the Liberal leader at the time. People who said they were going to vote Conservative thought the coverage of Mr. Harper was too harsh and the coverage of Mr. Martin was not harsh enough. The Liberals saw it the other way. Much of the argument bias is in the eyes, or the biases, of the beholder.
That is not to say that the public broadcaster couldn’t do a better job covering more of the country than it appears to do, particularly on television, because there are large parts of the country that we never see in news and current affairs on television. That’s true to some degree in radio as well. But maybe if you focus on some of these areas and you think about doing some of the stories in different parts of the country, not necessarily all in the urban centres, maybe that deals with some of the concerns that some people fairly believe result from never seeing their own circumstances or their own region in the news or as part of current affairs coverage. I don’t know, but I think it is worth a try.
Senator Cardozo: Your point about other cities is really interesting. Even if it is not comparing other cities, we don’t get news about other cities. Halifax just elected a new mayor.
Mr. Waddell: Yes.
Senator Cardozo: I only heard this because I happened to talk to a member of Parliament from Halifax, so there isn’t even news in one small example. For some reason, sometimes, I think it is on statutory holidays, the Iqaluit station is on leave and so —
Mr. Waddell: Ottawa goes to Iqaluit.
Senator Cardozo: — the Ottawa station goes to Iqaluit, and to me, that’s a perfect occasion to hear a little bit of Iqaluit news for us in this city, but they don’t do it.
Mr. Waddell: There are a fair number of people from Nunavut who live in Ottawa, too.
Senator Cardozo: That, too. All the more reason to have a little bit of Iqaluit news at least once every two months or something.
Mr. Waddell: Sure.
Senator Cardozo: Do you see that as more of a role, because I think CBC could do that better than anybody else, given that you have great local stories which are prepared? You almost don’t have to do a separate news story to run it in a different city.
Mr. Waddell: I think it comes down to what the editorial philosophy of the broadcaster is, what they think that their role is and what they should be thinking about and what they should be doing. To a significant degree, I would argue at least, the editorial philosophy of the CBC is shaped or poisoned by advertising. Because, right now, their editorial philosophy is what they can put on the air that they think will either get more advertising or, on the other side of it, how much advertising breaks up some of the programming. I think if you could get rid of advertising, you create the opportunity to actually think about doing different stories, doing different things, not worrying about what the competition is doing.
That’s particularly true online. I find it really frustrating that if I go online and I want to see something on the CBC news site, I have to watch three commercials before I see it. One year, it was at Queen’s speech, and had you to watch three commercials before seeing Queen’s Christmas Day message. What’s the public broadcaster doing with something like that?
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. Now, it is time for Paula Simons to ask another question. I’m sorry. I’m trying to time because I know there is a lot of interest. You went a bit overboard. Now it is Senator Simons’s turn. Try to keep your questions as questions and not commentary on the whole world.
Senator Cardozo: Are you commenting on my question?
The Deputy Chair: Not only yours. Everybody is fascinated, and it is a long topic. Later, you will have time.
Senator Simons: Once upon a time, saying getting out of advertising seemed like a bold statement. These days, advertising revenues for linear television have collapsed to such an extent that these arguments seem to me to have fallen a little bit out of date because I don’t think the CBC is making enough money from advertising that they are making their programming decisions that way.
Mr. Waddell: I’m sorry? They are —
Senator Simons: I think their advertising revenues have cratered to the point that to suggest they’re making programming to sell ads — have you looked at the ads they’re selling on television? They are not selling ads that are of real value. I agree with you. They should get out of advertising. It is not worth it, frankly, and we should increase their funding.
Mr. Waddell: Yes.
Senator Simons: But we all know that very few governments are likely to increase their funding. What concerns me a little bit as someone who worked for the CBC locally and at the network is that it seems to me that what you are calling for is a model that is very top-down. That someone in Toronto is going to decide what local and regional programming will do, and to me, that’s the antithesis of serving local markets.
I wondered if we could get you to talk a little bit more about how you think having a grand philosophy of what gets covered and what does not, might impinge on the news judgment of local news directors to figure out what stories matter to their communities?
Mr. Waddell: I don’t think it impinges on their judgment at all. I think it allows them to say these are the areas we are interested in, and we’re going to go find stories in our communities that relate to these areas. There are a lot of stories that can relate to these areas in all communities across the country.
Senator Simons: Do you think the CBC still has a role in doing breaking news? Or would you have them do current affairs features only?
Mr. Waddell: What is breaking news these days? A fire and this, that or something else?
Senator Simons: You say “a fire” dismissively. In Alberta, a fire can be — I’m not talking about your garage burning down.
Mr. Waddell: Of course.
Senator Simons: The Fort McMurray wildfire is a fire.
Mr. Waddell: Absolutely. Yes, and it’s a public policy issue.
Senator Simons: You say that the CBC can’t cover fires.
Mr. Waddell: No. I said the CBC should concentrate on federal-provincial-municipal public policy issues, and fires and how you deal with fires is certainly a public policy issue.
Senator Simons: I’m not talking about how you deal with fires. I’m talking about there is a fire, and you need to tell people there is one highway open.
Mr. Waddell: Absolutely.
Senator Simons: The number one vector for that information is the public broadcaster. I’m really concerned about a model in which you would strip from —
Mr. Waddell: I’m not saying that would be —
Senator Simons: Because if you live in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal or even Vancouver, this isn’t an issue.
Mr. Waddell: Senator Simons, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying that I also found interesting in the fires over the last couple of years was the number of people who seemed to say that without Facebook, people were lost and wouldn’t know how to deal with fires when, in fact, the CBC was there and did a very good job. They should continue to do a good job on those things, but the average fire in a house in a suburban area, let the private broadcaster cover that.
Senator Simons: That’s de minimis news value.
Mr. Waddell: Yes.
Senator Simons: I just worry, having been a CBC producer both locally and nationally, that if you impose a grand design, you may end up destroying the real public service value of public broadcasting in smaller communities.
Mr. Waddell: I’m going to argue against that and give you a different example. I spent 10 years at the CBC. I was program producer for “The National” for a year and a bit. Then for about seven or eight years, I was executive producer of news specials and also the Ottawa bureau chief.
One of the jobs I had was also responsible for provincial elections and other elections — national elections, the Quebec referendum and things like that. I would go across the country with a small group of people from Toronto who would work with the people in the local community. It used to be that when we would go into a province, we had executive producers there who were great and knew their province superbly. You would go in, and they would tell you everything. They lived in those communities. They were very happy to live in those communities. They saw their role as providing news and information for their communities, and they also saw a significant part of their role as being the training for young journalists who would ultimately go on to other more senior positions, whether it’s people like Anna Maria Tremonti or Keith Boag or some of those people.
Unfortunately, what’s happened over the last few years is a lot of those people have disappeared, and a lot of that farm system, you might call it, has disappeared as well.
Senator Simons: Those people have disappeared because their jobs have been cut.
Mr. Waddell: Yes, but we need to have that. That’s where the local — I think Senator Downe was here yesterday talking about Charlottetown and some of the issues there and the need for local ability. The vision we talk about is decisions at the local level, but decisions that actually reflect an overall editorial philosophy of what CBC and CBC News are doing and should be doing.
Now, as I said, that’s us. People can argue and do something differently, but part of this still comes back, I would argue, to the question of what — the CBC, first of all, has never wanted to stop doing anything.
Senator Simons: I agree.
Mr. Waddell: The more you keep on doing things and adding things — the other thing that is a truism is that the budgets for CBC are not going to increase. When I was at CBC, the Liberals cut the budget under the Martin government, and we dealt with all of that, and it wasn’t great.
Senator Simons: That’s when I left to work at the Edmonton Journal.
Mr. Waddell: Right. So the question becomes, how long do you keep on spreading your funding across everything, which is partly funding things that you’re not going to be competitive in, and are not competitive in? But on the other side, you’re strangling the things that you can do better than everyone else.
Part of that — at least in David Taras’s and my assessment — is how you create the environment that allows you to pick the things that you think you can focus on and you think you can do better than anybody else, which will then attract an audience. It’s not going to be the audience of everybody, but what’s changed is the point you made, both in national reporting and international reporting, is that private media doesn’t really exist anymore. The question is, do we let that die, or do we do something that tries to use the public broadcaster as a focus for good, important news coverage on a series of themes?
Senator Simons: Margaret Evans cannot be the only reporter covering the world, and I sometimes feel as if she is.
Mr. Waddell: That’s right. We need to have Canadian journalists in countries where a lot of Canadians have come from so that we know more about those countries and we know more that might help people who have been here a long time understand why people have come here, what they see here and what the advantages are.
Senator Simons: There’s a major civil war right now in Ethiopia, and you would sure never know that.
Mr. Waddell: Correct, and there are a lot of other things as well. To do that, you have to actually place people in areas. You can’t have them go out when there’s a flood, a fire or this, that or something else. You have to tell the stories of those regions.
It would be interesting to see how, whether it’s the Scandinavian countries, Germany, France or some others, how do their health care systems work? Their systems are different than ours. We are in an environment where we’re talking about privatization of the health care systems more and more. Some of those health care systems are already partly privatized. Well, how does that work?
The Deputy Chair: I would differ on one point. You say, yes, we have to be in many more places around the world.
Mr. Waddell: Yes.
The Deputy Chair: However, CBC/Radio-Canada has the habit of building big offices —
Mr. Waddell: Yes.
The Deputy Chair: — and being less agile. It has been complicated to move around because of that.
Mr. Waddell: Yes.
The Deputy Chair: It’s also a change of culture.
Mr. Waddell: Yes, absolutely. Totally.
The Deputy Chair: Obviously, this is a point of —
Mr. Waddell: In some respects, Radio-Canada has been better than CBC at doing all of that over time.
The Deputy Chair: To start with, we’re smaller. We have less of everything.
Mr. Waddell: Yes. All I’m saying is that we picked what we think is important. Other people may have other ideas, but you can’t do everything for everybody.
Senator Cardozo: Two things. One is, there is a report that the minister commissioned a panel of experts that talked about the future of CBC/Radio-Canada that reported toward the end of summer, I think?
Mr. Waddell: I don’t believe it has reported as yet.
The Deputy Chair: We don’t have a report.
Mr. Waddell: This was the one that the new president was part of, correct?
The Deputy Chair: Exactly. We think they should get some stuff out soon.
Senator Cardozo: My question, Mr. Waddell, is a very broad and general one. You talk about these things quite often in the media and on panels.
I wonder if you could talk to us about bias. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges facing CBC. How do you bring back the critics and even the haters who feel CBC is beyond repair and is biased against a large swath of the population?
My other two or three thoughts, if I can throw them out there, just to make it a bigger question —
The Deputy Chair: In fairness, we had a witness here who is not a hater, Kirk LaPointe, who was quite critical.
Senator Cardozo: I would not include Mr. LaPointe in this group because he really said, “Fix it, don’t nix it.” The people I’m talking about are saying, “Defund it 100%” or whatever.
What is the effect of social, online and changing consumer habits? Are we hanging on to something in radio and television that has passed its time?
What do we do about the active and determined misinformation and disinformation, the growing polarization, some of which is coming from outside sources outside of the country? In all of that, what is the role of the public broadcaster at the local level?
Mr. Waddell: I should be able to answer that in less than two minutes.
Senator Cardozo: Maybe you can just share some thoughts with us.
Mr. Waddell: Gee, I don’t know where to start on some of that.
The bias and the haters, as I said earlier, I think some of the bias is in the eye of the beholder, but there is also a lot of interest — and that comes from social media — in promoting that these days.
That’s where you get into misinformation and disinformation. You’re not going to change that.
As we talk about in the book, politicians are a big part of the problem in that. Politicians are raising money on the backs of — the Harper government was great. Look what the CBC did now, and they send out a new fundraising letter. They would raise a bunch of money to help us fight this media. Frankly, some of that has been going on since Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, for people who are old enough to remember that. It’s still going on. You are not going to be able to address some of that. Some people are going to say that it’s biased. One of the ways you address bias is that you tell stories from more parts of the country than perhaps we are seeing at the moment on either radio or television.
I’m not sure how much Senator Downe talked about that, but we talked about it in the book a bit, about the changes that CBC went through in local when they cut back, when they didn’t come back, cut back, this that and everything else. The cuts that have been made in local newsrooms make it much more difficult — the previous panel raised a little bit of that — for the local reporters to do stories that may have a broader interest in their own community too. You have fewer people, you can’t do it. Some of the programming CBC used to do that featured stories from across the country. I’m thinking here of the early days of “Newsworld”, but that’s all gone a long time ago. It’s now mostly panels of people sitting at tables talking about stuff. Those are ways to do it too.
You don’t get at this easily or quickly, but you start to get at it by saying, “why don’t you come back and listen and see what we’re doing?” We don’t have advertising anymore. One of the reasons streaming services are so popular is that there is no advertising on streaming services in most cases. You have an opportunity to recreate at the CBC by changing some of the things they have done that then may create a little bit of interest in people that actually come and have a look and see.
People will still say that it’s biased or whatever. But to a significant degree some of that is driven by people who have other agendas as well and are using social media in part to promote those other agendas.
Misinformation and polarization — the thing social media does do is amplify things that people say. The thing that social media doesn’t do for the most part is reporting and being on the ground and doing things. When people do post pieces of video from things, you never really know if that’s part of the story, the whole story, and there are problems.
A lot of what social media is actually playing off is in the real media, whether it’s criticizing it, taking part of it and using it or comments in a world where everyone thinks their opinion is worth broadcasting to the rest of the universe. It is all some of that. Some of that you’re not going to get rid of it. The misinformation and disinformation part is certainly true. There are foreign entities out there that are trying to undermine our democratic institutions. I think that’s fairly clear. We have seen there are people who are prepared to take money from those foreign interests to help do that.
I don’t know how you stop that. One of the ways you stop that is to have a public broadcaster that is doing the stories and getting out there and telling stories and showing people what is really happening.
The Deputy Chair: This was very interesting. Thank you for talking about all those issues that are obviously dear to us. You know there are quite a few journalists here, two out of four. This was very interesting and food for thought. I’m obviously wondering if there are other countries in the world that have put in place this model. I don’t think so. I think it’s a completely new idea.
[Translation]
That concludes our time with the second panel. Please join me in thanking the witness for being here and sharing his expertise this evening. Thank you, senators and journalist senators.
(The committee adjourned.)