Proceedings of the Subcommittee on
Communications
Standing
Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 6 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Wednesday, March 12, 1997
The Subcommittee on Communications of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 3:50 p.m. to study Canada's international position in communications.
Senator Marie-P. Poulin (Chair) in the Chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, the purpose of our meeting today is to examine Canada's international competitive position in the communications field. When we enter the new millennium, we must ensure that we are competitive in four fields: technology; human resources, namely today's professionals and those we are training for tomorrow; culture, in other words, will we be able to continue delivering Canadian messages, and trade agreements and regulations.
We are very pleased that you are interested in appearing before the subcommittee. You provide a unique and Canadian service outside of Canada. I would like to introduce you to Senator Spivak, who is the vice-chair of the subcommittee. Mr. Brassard, I would invite you to make your presentation.
Mr. Pierre-Paul Brassard, President, Canada Live News Agency: Thank you for your cordial invitation. We were very pleased to prepare our brief with the assistance of the Senate staff. In order to facilitate the presentation, in a moment we'll take a look at what it can give. We summarized our brief on slides. This will enable us to make comments precisely on the areas that you have emphasized. It is delightful to be able to respond to such clear parameters. Reference was made to technology background, infrastructure efficiency and competition.
The Chair: It would be interesting to point out to the public that this is an audiovisual presentation. This is one of the first computer-assisted presentations. We here in the Communications Subcommittee find this very appropriate.
Mr. Brassard: We often hear that a picture is worth a thousand words. I try to apply this as much as possible. This is a summary that you are familiar with.
[English]
We will be talking about the technology. In the last 10 to 15 years, perhaps, just about every task in telecommunications and broadcasting has been modified drastically by the changes. As you have heard over and over again, these changes are called digitization.
As far as television and radio are concerned -- and I will concentrate my remarks on these aspects -- digitization has increased tremendously the production capacity of any network or production house that uses these methods. Like computers, we do not have much choice but to use it if we want to remain competitive.
To give an example, one half-hour of a variety TV program requires 300 person hours of work , if everything is added up. Traditionally, some 20 per cent to 25 per cent of that 300 hours would have been technical work, such as editing, recording, et cetera. Nowadays, that can be cut down to about four or five hours. This multiplies by two the quality of video; it also increases by two or three the audio point.
We can sometimes hear CD quality on an FM station. What is that? It is digitized sound. I am not an engineer; and I do not want to go into a detailed explanation. However, simply put, digitization is another way to write or record pictures and sound and to transmit or to read it. Between an analogue recording of a picture and a digitized recording of a picture is the difference between a black and white television image and a 35-millimetre picture.
Once this process is started, a great deal of data must be put into a computer, a recorder, a microphone or whatever. Soon, you run into many problems. Because it is so much more efficient, you say, "It is going overboard," and compression has come from there.
The compression of a digital signal permits you to multiply by four your transmission capacity. In other words, a satellite that was engineered 15 years ago, built 10 years ago and launched 5 years ago can now transmit 48 television channels instead of 12 on the same transponder that is out there in space because we are using these methods.
It used to cost a network such as CTV or TVOntario about $1 million per year to rent a transponder. Theoretically speaking, now, using just one-quarter, the cost has come down to about $300,000 per year. I think that is important to remember because the remarks that we will make on commerce and culture have tremendous implications in terms of the number of services in the context that we know today.
We have cited the impacts of these changes. They provide a larger number of services from domestic and foreign origin. We do not need to demonstrate that lower transmission costs, lower production costs and more efficiency provides more product cheaply. This has also made possible the emergence of the Internet and of the multimedia industry about which we hear so much.
What does the Internet do to existing competition? That is why I mentioned earlier that you have no choice to use these methods, whether you are a TV or radio station or a telecommunications operator and to reinvest heavily in the hardware that permits you to operate.
In television, where I come from, this is new but not all that dramatic because there has always been competition in television in this country. It was set up very early in a system where public and private broadcasters would compete. It has also been evolving and developing for the last 35 to 40 years beside the most competitive market in the world, which is the U.S.A.
One statistic we rarely mention is that 90 per cent of the Canadian population lives not farther than 200 kilometres from the American border. Physically speaking, when you think of that in terms of a radio station being able to transmit in Canada, it is very logical.
Competition stimulates vitality and originality. Seen from where we sit, that is something we did early on. It is still happening. It is becoming an edge in terms of looking at the global market.
Competition has also created a push for quick growth in the industry. When we look back over the last 10 to 15 years we notice that, perhaps, specialized services in television, or the number of FM stations, would not have happened that quickly if we had not been neighbour to a very big market. Regulations in Canada have always helped to protect us from external pressures.
Development of technology has brought growth into programming, which is the positive aspect at which we like to look. Digitization and its continued development has brought better programming quality because there is more of it. There is more competition and more services available now than there were 10 years ago, for example. The fact that these services are available creates new needs.
If we were to go home tonight and find that the cable service delivers only five television channels, many people would ask, "What is happening?" That is the context in which we now live.
The negative side of that is that this number of services creates fragmentation. As we say in our brief, the smaller the market, the more fragile it is.
Since this committee is thinking about and discussing these issues we should like to ask: Should we put a limit on the growth of services? If the answer is in the affirmative, then where are the limits and how do we define them? That is an issue which you will have to analyze and discuss.
When we talk about trade, bypassing is mentioned. That is a geographical phenomenon with networks of the size we have in Canada. In television, bypassing refers to foreign programming. Therefore, the protection of the Canadian cultural identity is linked closely to the success of television services and, mainly, the general TV service. I like to compare general TV services, whether they are French or English, to newspapers like The Ottawa Citizen, La Press or The Globe and Mail. The specialized services are much more focused, of course.
General TV services have a far broader reach. Everyone looks at them. Whether they do so regularly is not a matter on which we want to focus. However, they are there. Good quality Canadian programs are successful at home and abroad. This committee has been told, and many of you know, that for the last five to ten years many of our dramatic and youth programs are being sold. They are in demand. There are a number of success stories in Canada with regard to exporting programs.
Canadian TV programming in English or in French has been slow, but there has been regular growth since 1990. In regard to bypassing, I wish to direct your attention to page 11 of our brief. There, we point out that growth in watching Canadian programs has been increasing. Fewer foreign programs were watched between 1984 and 1990, whereas watching more Canadian programs in both French and English was taking place.
In 1994-1995, watching foreign programs made quite a jump in both languages. With regard to French, it went from 73 per cent in 1990 down to 63 per cent. In English, Canadian programming went from 31 per cent down to 26 per cent, up from 68 per cent to 74 per cent. These are major moves.
When I sent the text of our brief to your committee, we did not have the figures for 1994-95. Perhaps I should leave this with the clerk.
In other words, this points out a reality that is setting in now. That multiplication of services and the number of hours of programs which must be made available is becoming more and more foreign. Therefore, the French and English television markets are becoming more and more fragmented.
Senator Spivak: The question is: What sort of Canadian programs are being sold? The criticism is that they are programs which are tailored to the foreign market, in particular the American market. They have to fit in with what is generally seen as American taste. The only exception to this is if you do not get involved in funding until your project has been completed. However, if you become involved with funding at the beginning of your project, then they tell you what you should do. There was a recent article about this in The Globe and Mail.
The criticism is whether these productions for foreign programs truly reflecting Canadian tastes. Are producers making what they would normally make for a Canadian audience, something which could be sold in both markets?
Mr. Brassard: That is a large question, senator. At one point in my career, I worked on what we call co-productions. The co-production approach to exports was developed in the 1980s in order to help open a number of markets that were not then open. If we keep that in the back of our minds, and look at the size and strength of the American market, we see that they play hard ball, just as the French do with the French Canadians. I think that goes on with any production. One of the inconveniences of the tool we call co-production is that working in a partnership causes one producer to make a compromise. In order to export that, I agree with you, it becomes difficult.
Senator Spivak: Those guys to the south of us do not always have the correct judgment. There is a number of things which have been huge successes against all wisdom. British productions are in demand simply because they are British. Why should Canadian productions not be in demand because they are Canadian? Are we too anxious at this point in time to tailor our products to what we think might be the American taste when we could educate that taste and create more demand by being Canadian?
A film like The English Patient, or the Jane Austen films, are not being tailored to the American taste.
Mr. Brassard: That is an interesting point, senator. My personal opinion is that there is much more to this planet than the U.S.A., especially in television. I will give you an example. We have a quiet and large institution about which we rarely talk. It is something this committee should hear about. I refer to the National Film Board of Canada. It sell films, animation, children's and history programs all over the world. It is like a blue chip stock, so much so that in markets outside North America, the NFB cannot keep up with demand for its productions. Quality and originality sells, senator.
Senator Spivak: You are saying that we should support production. I guess you have other recommendations for us to promote that particular point of view, which is that we should be ourselves and market ourselves.
Mr. Brassard: Absolutely.
The Chair: From where should that support come?
Mr. Brassard: The support should come from where it comes from now. I think we have good tools in Canada in institutions such as Telefilm and in the cable fund.
One thing we must realize is that there is a large enough potential to expand and to invest and to stop thinking about subsidies in this industry. In telecommunications or in aerospace, companies and governments will spend millions and millions of dollars for years to come because they have long-range objectives. That is okay, there is competition. We accept easily these approaches. We have to make that step in terms of television in this country.
We have seen huge successes in Bryan Adams, Céline Dion and Alanis Morissette. The films you mentioned earlier, senator, as well as some of our animation programs are known world wide. I work in Asia where I keep being told, "Why are you so shy? Bring it over and sell it. Push it. Show it."
Senator Spivak: There is something puzzling to me about this. Patrick Watson wrote an article in The Globe and Mail on the weekend in which he asked, "Why are we ignoring private television because private television is doing good things?" I do not believe that. What they do is buy cheap American programs and fill up their space with it. They are not really fulfilling what they should be fulfilling.
Are you suggesting that we do not need to keep up our public supports, or that we do need to keep them up? I do not quite understand what you are saying. It seems to me that it is because we have had those public supports that we have been able to nurture this wonderful artistic stable that we have. We have a wonderful bunch of people who are not getting rich. Other people like the promoters and the producers are getting rich. Céline Dion is getting rich, but she is an exception.
What is your feeling about public support?
Mr. Brassard: I think that it must remain. I also think that public broadcasting became good over the years as a result of being able to invest in their talent and their facilities. I also think that it can happen in the private sector as well.
Senator Spivak: Do you mean as a result of regulation?
Mr. Brassard: Either by regulations or mechanisms that would support production. For example, when Telefilm was created in 1983, la Société de développement des industries cinématographiques du Canada, had a budget of $3.5 million. I happen to know because I was working there at that time. It was then identified as an objective that the production expertise, which lay mostly in the public sector, should be diversified, and that money should be invested in order to broaden the base out of Montreal and Toronto to Vancouver, Halifax and all across the country.
Some moneys through a tax imposed on cable were injected into Telefilm. Some 15 years later -- and I have not done an in-depth analysis in this regard -- there are some interesting results, both in terms of public and private broadcasters. The CBC has taken advantage of that, as has the NFB to a certain extent. Many private production houses from Quebec City to Vancouver to Halifax have also taken advantage of it.
Senator Spivak: Do you think that this addition of funds, which the government has done as well into private production, will create more of a balance between cheap American programs and these programs? Do you think we will get more of a balance?
Mr. Brassard: The reality is that if you want to be in business in five years, you have got to be good, competitive and successful. If that is not the case, then you will not survive. If people do not watch your programs, you will not sell them.
We like to see stories that mean something to us. That is what culture is all about. We have a marvellous series in French called Cher Olivier. It is done privately and it is of a very high quality. It is also very popular. It is not high culture.
Senator Spivak: Is it like La Petite Vie?
Mr. Brassard: No, it is not in the same range at all.
Cher Olivier is a huge success because it looks like us. When Patrick Watson speaks about what he would like to see in the television industry and in the CBC, he is trying to adapt this model to the end of the century. Basically, the message we are trying to get across is the same.
Senator Spivak: There is a suggestion that news facilities should come together. There is no comparison between CBC NewsWorld and the news-gathering facilities of CNN. It is a joke. CNN is just superficial, and Haslett Cuff has pointed that out in his columns regularly.
Here is an example of real quality. They would like to get it across the line, if they could. I do not know if they do. In dramas and other kinds of productions, it still seems to me that, by and large, Canadians are watching American television.
Private networks are interested in making money, and they will still do that. I am not sure that the case is as accurate as it can be.
You are suggesting that we put more into production, ensuring that prime time as it is now is almost entirely Canadian. Is that what you are saying? What else do you suggest? You say you have to be here in the year 2000. Izzy Asper could cut every single Canadian program, and he would still be here in the year 2000 because he has Seinfeld, and a number of other programs. He is not feeling a financial spur to have Canadian programming. The only reason he is doing it is because if he does not he will not be able to keep his licence.
Mr. Brassard: I am very tempted to answer you with an example from French Canada in terms of drama. When the téléromans started, for example, Un homme et son péché, they were costly and not making money. They were watched, but on and off. This started very early in television, in about the 1950s. At that time, when the first private corporation came on board, they were not producing any téléromans because it was costly.
It was discovered soon thereafter that the ratings, the market share and the advertising going into these productions allowed the critical mass of profitability to be reached very early on. After that, they started to do it. I think that is possible in English programming, as well as in French programming.
In order to do that, because of the different context in English Canada, it is much harder to do. However, it is feasible. The competition will always be there. In this regard, I think of the Avro story. It will be exported and sold all over, whether we like it or not. It reminds me of something I read when I was a kid.
Senator Spivak: The Boys of St. Vincent is another example.
Mr. Brassard: I remember the president of the CBC saying that the way we dream, the way we cry and the way we eat is something that must remain. Voilà, that is us.
That being said, how much can we tolerate? Put it the way you want. It is up to us.
Senator Spivak: It should be enough to survive.
The Chair: Are you saying that what will ensure the success of Canadian programming is sustained investment in talent development?
Mr. Brassard: Yes, absolutely.
The Chair: That has begun, has it not?
Mr. Brassard: Yes.
The Chair: It must not be stopped. What has to be increased is the private investment. In terms of balance between public and private funds in what I call largely entertainment, if we go back to the 1950s, the beginning of television, public funds were greater than private funds.
Mr. Brassard: I think you are right, Madam Chair.
The Chair: We do not have any studies on that; we will probably have to obtain them from the department. I think we should get that in order to see where that balance is today in terms of investment of funds in what I call Canadian programming, of every nature, be it entertainment, current affairs, or news. You are saying that that sustainability is essential for the development of talent, for it to be first quality and for it to sell internationally. What we were told when we went to Boston was that if our productions are of quality, then they will sell. Even if they are Canadian stories, they will sell because of the fact that they are of prime quality. What do you think of that?
Mr. Brassard: You are quite right. I cannot agree more, Madam Chair.
Last May, I was invited by Beijing TV to a symposium that is held there every two years. All of the young producers of China are invited to this symposium. As you know, the cultural revolution has cultivated a young and dynamic rise in production people there. So-called experts from all over the world were invited to attend this symposium. The vice-president of the Discovery Channel, the president of a German network, people from Australia, India, and so on, were in attendance.
In one of the sessions, a young Chinese producer got really wound up on the fact that Chinese movies were never shown or sold anywhere else but in China. We watched something that looked very much like Un homme qui plante des arbres which has one an Oscar, and so on. The same thing was done by Chinese television, with the assistance of some Japanese.
At one point, I intervened and said, "There are no Chinese films; there are Chinese writers." I say the same thing about Canadians, or Americans, or whoever. If a story is good, even with a low budget and with poor technical resources, it can be exported abroad. It will sell and it will be liked.
[Translation]
We are obsessed with the size of the United States, by the quantities. We do not need to export tons of dramas or variety shows. If we export high calibre productions, they will be shown around the world, they will sell. We have examples of this in all fields: in music, in sports, in youth programming, in variety shows, soaps.
[English]
Senator Spivak: However, the marketing is important, too. Céline Dion could never have been a big success if she had not been marketed. She was good.
Mr. Brassard: That is why I answered the Chair the way I did. At the moment, we are trying to break into a global universe. It is important to understand that we must continue to invest in production, whether it is public or private.
The Chair: I believe that the federal fund, and even certain provincial funds, have always been earmarked for production.
Mr. Brassard: You are right.
The Chair: Would there be a role for public funds, for instance from the Department of International Trade, to be thinking now in terms of a responsibility for marketing Canadian products, as has begun?
Senator Spivak: Does Team Canada do it?
The Chair: That is the whole spirit behind Team Canada. They will market any product. Some of their products were broadcast products.
First, what do you see as the balance? Second, what do you see as the role and responsibility of governments in terms of marketing Canadian products, Canadian content? Third, what do you see as the balance between private and public?
Senator Spivak: In Manitoba, as well as other provinces, there are agencies which market film and film location. They are specifically set up for that purpose, but it is not at the federal level. Is that right?
Mr. Brassard: The provinces do it.
Senator Spivak: They been very successful.
Mr. Brassard: In order to market abroad, we have some tools already. We have Telefilm Canada, for example, which helps a producer to export on the French and foreign markets. They do it in the United States. They do it in a lot of specialized trade shows. They go to Hong Kong as well.
To answer your question, I think that the federal government, along with the provinces, if possible, should be able to design a stronger, but a more commercial and better organized mission. Later on in our presentation we will tell you what we are trying to do in the Asian market.
In terms of competing, we see that Canadian cultural policies are under review at present. There is an ongoing debate. There have been a couple of declarations in the last couple of months. As we say, it is in the air. There is a rapid evolution of the environment. It changes quickly. We all feel the need to reassess and to keep up.
The emergence of new markets is a reality. Five years ago, no one was selling video compact discs or multi-media products. There were no telephone companies in this country selling Internet hook-ups as they do by the thousands these days. Think of what you were paying for your cable subscription in 1987 and what you are paying now.
In 1985, would the taxpayer have accepted to pay what they pay now for their cable hook-up? We now pay between $25 and $30 per month. If you have an Internet hook-up, you pay $25 to $30 extra.
The Chair: How much was it in 1987?
Mr. Brassard: In 1987, it was $14.
Canada Live is a partnership among CFCF, CTV, Codevtel, which is my company, and a French television network. As far as the emergence of new markets is concerned, about three years ago I came up to these people and said, "We export everything but news." All of us around this table have travelled. If we leave Canada, we never see anything about ourselves in the newspaper; nor do we hear or see anything about ourselves on TV or radio. We are not there.
That was the first gut feeling. For that purpose, we targeted the electronic media, that is, television networks, radio stations or publishing and editing groups such as newspapers.
We have designed a service which is not like CNN or the Discovery channel. It is tailored to meet the need of a subscriber. An agency does that. Reuters, BBC, CNN, APTV and WT do it. No one does it in Canada.
We put the pool together. We syndicated the news and said, "What about selling this service to television networks abroad? Why not sell it into the States, Western Europe or Japan? These are very mature markets." However, we did not have the financial resources to do that. Therefore, we went to China, Korea and Malaysia. We also looked at Latin America and the Middle East.
Senator Spivak: What are you selling?
Mr. Brassard: News subscriptions.
Senator Spivak: Does that include financial information? Is it like Bloomberg and Reuters?
Mr. Brassard: We package an international 30-minute edition after the CTV national news. Respecting copyright, we select items that we feel will be watched, or could be watched, if you live in Korea. They deal with any subject and they are in both French and English. We do that three times a week. We send it by satellite one hour after it is on air in Canada, between midnight and one o'clock in the morning. It is packaged and sent to 12 countries.
Senator Spivak: Is it in the language of that country?
Mr. Brassard: If that is their wish. We send it as it is shown in Canada, in either French or English, but if CCTV wants it in Mandarin, they can come back to us and say, "That topic on cloning you had yesterday, could you do it in Mandarin?" It is not true that everyone on the planet speaks English."
Senator Spivak: Does CNN do foreign languages or is it all English?
Mr. Brassard: They started about a year ago in Korea and in Japan. Contrary to CNN's philosophy, we did not want to develop a full-fledged service. It is too costly and associated too much with a particular flag. It is not that we do not like the Maple Leaf; we think it will be much more useful and flexible if a subscriber can pick up any item he or she wants.
Senator Spivak: By subscriber, are you talking about a wholesale subscribe, or do you mean television networks?
Mr. Brassard: We do not deal with the public at this time. We think it will bring a regular presence of Canadian events to electronic media abroad. Contrary to when there is a crisis with the seal hunt, or an Oka-type situation or a crisis on the west coast, there will be a regular presentation of events in this country.
The service is available in Mandarin, Japanese and Korean at this point in time on request. It takes two hours. We have interpreters. We do it over phone lines or with a fax machine.
There are times during the year, such as Christmas holidays, summertime and weekends, when the news is not all that interesting, or it can be very local. Let us say that we have an edition coming up tonight and we have looked at the two national editions, both French and English, and we have 22 minutes but we would like to deliver 30 minutes. We have made arrangements with TVOntario, Télé-Québec, the NFB and Radio-Canada for excerpts of specialized magazine reports, such as those form Découverte, La semaine verte, W5 and Canada AM. Again, when it is pertinent, we will throw in another four minutes, which is not a complete report. The television producer at the other end may say, "Could you send us a VHS on this thing you did on deer?" About that, we will negotiate.
Senator Spivak: What are they interested in, in terms of that material?
Mr. Brassard: High-tech, commerce and a great deal about nature, such as La semaine verte and La Ferme à L'heure. We are actually negotiating with CCTV, which is a very large company. They are looking at a large stock of La semaine verte which, in English, is called Country Canada. It is programming which is watched by 95 per cent of everyone in this country who farms. It has been on the air on Radio-Canada for 35 years.
Anything that is short-lived or of a medium life in television, such as news, which is our niche, is not exported. If we have the tools, we can do it. We are starting to do it and we believe it will work.
Canadian expertise in the field of programming and engineering can be exported. We have a large number of experts in radio and television. I think of animators, writers, performers, engineers and journalists that could be of use. We have done it. We are doing it. However, it could be re-marketed and exported.
We recommend the creation of a Canadian training program for intensive specialized training for journalists, engineers and technicians from Asia. We could invite 150 foreign journalists for training sessions in the industry, in cooperation with either colleges or universities in both languages. In that way, we could develop a network. Marketing must start there. We have the best base to do it.
Senator Spivak: Did you know that the Department of National Defence markets its training of pilots all over the world? It is a huge marketing program. Canada has expertise in this area.
Mr. Brassard: In conclusion, we at Canada Live News think we are well-positioned to contribute to the government objective in partnership. I neglected to mention earlier that we have worked very closely with the Departments of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, as well as the embassies, for the last two years, which has started to give some results. We are pleased to inform you that we reached an agreement today to do a six-month test in 21 posts in 12 countries.
In the context of the new policy they have said that they we will do a contribution agreement and see if there is a market out there. In this way, they will provide the first turn of the wheel, as we say.
The regular news service can contribute to a much greater exposure of Canadian values abroad in many, many areas. In this way, we at Canada Live can support our foreign policy of diplomacy, economy and culture.
The Chair: Could you speak to us a little bit about the structure of Canada Live News Agency?
Mr. Brassard: It is a private company partnership among CTV, CFCF in Montreal and another French network with whom we are having discussions. Basically, we are a three-associate partnership doing exactly what I have tried to describe. We syndicate the news, package it, transmit it and sell it abroad.
The Chair: Does that refer to the capital structure also?
Mr. Brassard: Yes, with the three partners. We set up our company about 15 months ago. We ran marketing tests for two months in Asia last March and April. We made contact with 16 networks during those eight weeks. At the end of that time, we were told by six of them to stay in touch. In May, I visited Asia again, when we signed as our first subscriber Beijing TV station. I returned to China in the fall when we did a transmission test for news with Shanghai TV station. Shanghai TV station reaches 125 million people.
Senator Spivak: It usually takes a long time when dealing with the Chinese.
Mr. Eugène Béasse, Vice-President, Finance, Canada Live News Agency: It is a very long process.
Senator Spivak: It did not take you that long.
Mr. Brassard: We have been at it for two years. We are still about six months away from reaching a formal agreement with that one.
Senator Spivak: Are you ahead of the competition? Are there other people from Canada who would like to do what you are doing?
Mr. Brassard: There is no one else apart from the CBC with foreign American service. To my knowledge there are no other agencies doing what we are doing now.
Everywhere we go in Asia, we are told, "Stay in touch. Come back. Send more material which we would like to evaluate. You have very good technical quality." Where we have to invest more work and more money is in showing it because we are coming from nowhere.
The usual answer in Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo is, "We have three or four news feed from the U.S. already." We always say, "Fine. What about taking a look at this one? It carries American stories by Canadian journalists, but it also carries Canadian stories."
What is happening in these markets is like what happened here in the 1970s. They are creating cable and new services. Competition is also coming into these markets. By being there, we provide something that can give them an edge on their competition. It is the same case in Seoul and in China.
Senator Spivak: Do they appreciate the difference in your programming?
Mr. Brassard: They certainly appreciate the fact that we are much more neutral. I will give you an example, senator. In Beijing, they are amazed that we can provide in the same report out of Jerusalem a CTV reporter going on to the Palestinian side as well as the Israeli side. A CNN reporter cannot do that.
Senator Spivak: Why?
Mr. Brassard: Because they will got shot if they do it. In Moscow, Vietnam or in other places, we have the advantage of neutrality.
To answer your question, Madam Chair, in the long run this will be very valuable for Canada.
The Chair: In selling Canadian news, you are getting across the message that Canada is neutral in different parts of the world where other countries like the United States are not perceived to be neutral. This, you say, contributes to one of the pillars of our External Affairs philosophy, that is, diplomacy.
Mr. Brassard: That is correct.
Senator Spivak: Everyone knows when they travel abroad that if it is thought that you are American, you will not get the same treatment as if you say you are a Canadian. You have combined that. It is very interesting.
Mr. Brassard: When I go to Asia, of course, we all feed on CNN International to look at the news. However, once you have been there for 10 days are you ever tired of seeing the same thing.
The Chair: At the beginning of your presentation you talked about technology and digitization. You were saying that in terms of person hours in producing on the technological side we could move from 300 person-hours for a program to about five or six. Did I understand you correctly?
Mr. Brassard: No, Madam Chair. Some 300 hours is needed to produce a program from scratch, including the technical aspect. The technical part is about one-quarter of the total work and costs. Thereafter, you decrease that portion by five or six times.
The Chair: That means that if the amount of money invested from both private and public sources remained stable, then the production could increase.
Mr. Brassard: It has, yes. A unit which can edit sound and pictures costs $3,500. The same thing 10 years ago would have cost $1 million. When we talk about impact in television, in particular, although digital radio is coming up, the important aspect to understand is that the reinvestment older networks, private or public, have had to do in the last 10 ten years has been tremendous.
Senator Spivak: When I think of what you have said and done about the Canadian advantage, how can we translate that into contributing to Canadian unity? Do you think that Quebec by itself would be able to command the same sort of thing abroad as you do coming from Canada?
Mr. Brassard: When I signed the first agreement with the Beijing TV station, the vice-president told me, "Please keep your Canadian politics to yourself. They are so dull."
Senator Spivak: I get your point.
Mr. Brassard: Every time I come back to Canada, I always feel this is really a small problem.
[Translation]
The Chair: Mr. Brassard, we would like to thank you very much for your presentation and your contribution to the discussions that we have had. If the members deem it appropriate, would it be possible to send you some supplementary questions to which you could respond? Our research team has suggested some questions, which are excellent, but we have taken a different track and discussed other topics. I would also appreciate knowing your viewpoint on additional questions. However, unfortunately, we must go back to the Senate. We have appreciated your cooperation tremendously.
Mr. Brassard: Thank you very much, this was very pleasant.
The committee adjourned.