Proceedings of the Standing Committee on
Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament
Issue 17 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met this day at 9:35 a.m. in order for the Senate to approve in principle the installation of equipment necessary to the broadcast quality audio-visual recording of its proceedings and other approved events in the Senate Chamber and in no fewer than four rooms ordinarily used for meetings by committees of the Senate.
Senator Donald H. Oliver (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, you will recall that Senator Cools had suggested the name of Ms. Martha Fusca as a witness who could testify before the committee with respect to the order of reference to consider the possibility of broadcasting the proceedings in the Senate Chamber.
[English]
Ms. Fusca is the founder, president and CEO of Stornoway Communications. Prior to founding Stornoway Communications, Ms. Fusca had an extensive and distinguished career in Canadian journalism as a producer and as a production executive of television documentaries and series. Ms. Fusca has kindly agreed to accept our invitation to come before us and share with us her insights into the broadcast environment and her perception of the proposal to televise our proceedings.
Honourable senators, before we turn to our witness, I would like to observe that there are some fundamental questions our committee needs to come to grips with in reflecting on our order of reference. For example, do we believe that televising our proceedings is a necessary and good thing to do? If so, what is the objective of televising our proceedings? Would it be openness or transparency or education, the promotion of our work, or all or none of these normative questions? Are there aspects of how we conduct our sittings that should be addressed in order to improve the flow of our business in the Senate without impacting on the substance of what is done? Are there behaviours that may change as a result of the presence of television cameras, such as Question Period in the House of Commons, and is it the desire of the committee to identify and address any of these behaviours?
These are some of the questions I have been pondering, and I would welcome your ideas as well at future meetings as we move forward with this order of reference. Perhaps some of these questions will be answered by our witness today.
Ms. Fusca, welcome to the Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament. I know that you have with you your colleague, Mr. Glenn O'Farrell. Welcome, Mr. O'Farrell.
Honourable senators, there are three matters on the agenda for today. First is the presentation of our current witness. The second is consideration of the proposed draft survey, and the third is the Senate committee study on committees.
Ms. Fusca, you now have the floor and, once again, welcome.
Martha Fusca, President and CEO, Stornoway Communications: Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today is my colleague, Glenn O'Farrell, who works with me on corporate strategy.
While some of you are familiar with both Stornoway Communications and Stornoway Productions, others of you may not be. For this reason, I would like to take you through a brief history of both. Then I will share some ideas with you with regards to the subject currently under exploration by your committee.
Stornoway Communications was founded in 2001 and currently owns and operates three television networks from its integrated digital television production and broadcasting centre in Toronto: ichannel is a public and social affairs issues channel; bpm:tv is the dance channel; and we also run The Pet Network.
Stornoway Communications grew out of Stornoway Productions. Founded in 1983, Stornoway Productions began by producing geopolitical documentaries on subjects such as the Soviet Union's global disinformation campaigns during the Cold War; the Soviets' involvement in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, and with Cuba; global drug smuggling; and Asian smuggling into North America, to name a few.
Over the years, Stornoway turned its attention to issues here at home with such productions as Days of Reckoning, A Question of Honour, Does Your Vote Count and series such as It's your Government and The Underground Royal Commission Investigates. Although some of you are quite familiar with these productions, I brought along some material for you, which I hope you will enjoy.
As an independent Canadian production company, Stornoway's focus and globally recognized expertise are in the area of Canadian public policy and foreign affairs on an international, national, regional and local basis. Stornoway Productions has a long and rich tradition of producing in-depth documentaries that have achieved high critical praise, excellent ratings and numerous national and international nominations and awards.
Stornoway's productions have been broadcast on CBC, CTV, Global, CBC Newsworld, TVO, Radio Quebec and, of course, on our own ichannel. In the U.S., they have been broadcast on PBS, Discovery and A&E, with many also broadcast around the world. Days of Reckoning was developed into a third-year distant-learning political science course for Guelph University, and we are currently working on a series for ichannel on immigration that will be used in classrooms at York University. Over a dozen books have been written using the material and research from Stornoway's productions.
In 2001, Stornoway Communications launched ichannel, a national, English-language, digital specialty television service that is Canada's only television service dedicated to public and social affairs programming 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Now in our ninth year, ichannel has offered Canadian viewers a continually challenging, all- inclusive forum for the examination, discussion and exploration of ideas, opinions and events that relate to our own experiences as Canadians and as citizens of the world, with depth, context and diversity.
A particular mission of ichannel has been to engage Canadian youth in the discussion of political and social affairs issues.
As you might expect from my background both as a producer and journalist and as a television broadcaster of public and social affairs issues programming, I applaud the Senate, and this committee in particular, for your examination of the ways and means of creating and disseminating broadcast-quality audiovisual recordings of the public proceedings of the Senate and its committees.
The Senate is an important part of our democracy, yet its role is by no means clearly understood by Canadians, nor are they familiar with your contributions. The Senate and therefore Canadians are poorer for this general lack of awareness, insight and civic engagement.
Today's grammar, that is, the way we communicate, the ways in which we can access information, the ways in which we share information via social networking online, demands that timely and readily accessible audio and video materials be made available to Canadians to allow and encourage them to make contact with their public institutions.
In the digital age, it is even more vital than ever before that Canadians, particularly young Canadians, are aware of the role and contributions made by our democratic institutions, and, of course, that very much includes the Senate. Otherwise, given the choices provided by global digital technology, our institutions and Canadian citizens are drawn further apart, as Canadians, particularly young Canadians, become exposed to greater and greater sources of non- Canadian material.
By way of example, in the past year two years, how informed have Canadians been and what advantage have they enjoyed due to the role of committees such as the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce and the Subcommittee on Population Health of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology?
One cannot help but expect that greater public access to and awareness of the legislative work, analysis and research of the Senate Chamber, committees and subcommittees represents a significant opportunity for improving public knowledge, engagement and participation in the civic affairs of Canada.
I gather that this committee is concerned with determining how best to make the work of the Senate more accessible to Canadians. I would assume as well that there is or may be an interest by this committee in engaging the public, not merely as passive observers, but as active participants, indeed, contributors to the work of the Senate. I will get into this in greater detail in a few minutes.
Television and the Internet are not only suitable distribution vehicles, they are also complementary and effective means of distribution, and both may be used in an interactive manner. For example, the Internet may be used by the public to interact with the Senate, thereby increasing public access, information and engagement. It will be important for this committee, therefore, to determine where and how each of these and other media may or may not be used. I would be happy to explore this with you during the question session of our appearance.
As a public affairs broadcaster, I would suggest that, where feasible from a cost and capacity point of view, the two mediums should be used as follows: real-time television within network availability; real-time webcasts of all proceedings, whether or not televised, as determined by the Senate; on demand and archive, all material previously live on television and on the Internet, all material that played live only on the Internet, and material that was neither broadcast or webcast.
Interactivity will have to be determined by the Senate, and should there be any desire to pursue that, I would be more than happy to elaborate on how it may be accomplished and outline various advantages and precautions that would need to be taken. However, interactivity should be considered, as it is the future.
Availability and accessibility on this scale will encourage Canadians to become engaged with the Senate and become far more familiar with its role in our legislative process. It will open a new world for Canadians as they become more familiar with the research and the thoughtful examination of public policy issues conducted by the Senate.
Clearly, this would be a win-win for Canada and the Senate, and from an accessibility perspective, this would put the Senate of Canada well into the 21st century's digital age and, possibly, ahead of the rest of the world.
In the outline above, I have proposed various distribution options you may wish to consider, and I have done so in light of how these distribution options could be made available working with Stornoway's public affairs and issues channel, ichannel.
Ichannel could build into its broadcast schedule regular time slots for the broadcast of real-time Senate proceedings. These time slots would provide regular, daily offerings of live Senate proceedings available to the ichannel audience, both on air and online by linking to the Senate's own website.
Further, we would propose that additional programming that revolves around the work of the Senate be produced on a daily or weekly basis — programming that would involve live interactive engagement between the Senate and Canadians from across the country on a variety of issues.
Outside of the CBC, Stornoway has produced and has more public affairs, national and international experience than any other producer-broadcaster in Canada. Our experience dates back to 1983, and as I mentioned earlier, we have worked with virtually every broadcaster in Canada, a number in the U.S. and with many others around the world.
Over the years, we have interviewed hundreds of members of Parliament, ambassadors, and well-known and highly regarded Canadians and foreign figures. We have covered leadership conventions and international conflicts and have produced multipartite series on health, youth at risk, the environment and so on. We are ideally suited to undertake a project of this scope, and we would welcome the opportunity.
While it would take some work on both our parts to figure out the logistics of such an arrangement, I think this would be a significant opportunity for both the Senate and ichannel to achieve their respective objectives, informing and engaging Canadians, especially younger Canadians, in the public and political affairs of our country.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before this committee. We look forward to your questions and further discussion.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Mr. O'Farrell, did you want to add anything to that, or are you here as a resource?
Glenn O'Farrell, Corporate Strategy Advisor, Stornoway Communications: I am here as a resource, I hope, yes.
The Chair: Thank you.
I have a couple of questions before I turn to my list. You said that you can give us more information with respect to interactivity. Can you give us some more information on what you refer to as interactivity right now?
Ms. Fusca: Yes, I can.
The Chair: You do know that CPAC has been very engaged in covering a great deal of the work of the Senate. Would your proposals be exclusive to you, or would you see CPAC continuing to do work in the Senate? Is there exclusivity in what you are suggesting?
Ms. Fusca: No, there is no exclusivity in what I am suggesting. There is no reason why CPAC could not continue to provide the coverage that they are able to make available. I gather, obviously, that there are certain constraints due to the coverage that they must provide for Question Period and other types of material coming out of the House of Commons.
What I am suggesting goes a little bit further. I read some of the transcripts that were available to me. There was not very much information, but what there was I did read, so I know that there is a limitation in what they can do. What I am proposing is something that would be complementary to what they currently do.
I also suggest we go a little further. The exciting opportunity I see, just to segue into the interactivity part of your question, I think it will be important in the future for the Senate of Canada to really engage with the public. It is one thing for the Senate to be sitting in a room like this where you have witnesses and you are exploring, but the way to really engage the Canadian public is to give them their own platform. In other words, not only should they have access to the work that you are doing and to listen in on the conversations and the committee hearings that you have, but the Senate may also wish to be prepared to have input from the public on any number of issues. That way, you get more input into whatever subject you are looking into and the public feels more engaged. I think that an engaged public is an important thing as we move into the future, particularly, as I mentioned in my piece here, for young Canadians.
We have done a lot of work on this subject and have discovered that young Canadians are spending a good deal of time online. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of Canadian content online that allows them to interact with that. They are not simply there to be reading material; they are there to interact. They are into social networking. I know this may sound a little radical, but how can we take the work that the Senate is doing and allow young Canadians, and all Canadians, to be able to interact with that material?
There is one other piece that I think is also critically important. I know that Senator Cools is somewhat familiar with some of the work we have done. I would propose that there be a daily or a weekly program that actually revolves around the work of the Senate and that is a little more broadcast-friendly than simply watching.
Hello, Senator Duffy.
The Chair: That would go on the ichannel?
Ms. Fusca: Yes.
The Chair: How many people view the ichannel at any time of day?
Ms. Fusca: That is a good question, and I will send that to you. It depends on the time of day and it depends on the day, but we have anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 viewers on a daily basis. It is a discretionary channel, and I assume you know what that means. It is a specialty digital —
The Chair: I have seen it. Tell me, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on a weeknight, Monday to Friday, how many people would be viewing ichannel?
Ms. Fusca: Fewer than 7 to, say, 11. Like most other television channels, we tend to get more viewers a little later in the evening. I do not have the breakdown. I did not know we would be getting into this question, but I would be happy to get my staff to provide you with a breakdown of the daytime viewers. We are currently in approximately 1.5 million households across the country.
The Chair: Thank you for that.
Senator Smith: How do you get the ichannel? A fellow called Stephen LeDrew used to be on it, and he complained that I never watched him. I do not get it. Do you have to sign on to a cable company for the maximum number of channels? I am not a high-tech person.
Ms. Fusca: As you know, over the next two years, the entire country is transitioning to digital, and everyone will need a digital box. We have the old boxes, but now they will be digital boxes so that for everything you watch, for example in Ontario from TVO to CPAC, you will actually have to have a digital box. You will be able to get some channels with rabbit ears, but we are transitioning to digital.
When you have your digital box, you then call your local cable or satellite provider and you simply ask for the channels that you wish to acquire. There is an additional charge. It is not expensive if you are only getting one channel. They sell them in packages and that sort of thing.
Senator Smith: I was not intending to pay just to watch LeDrew.
Ms. Fusca: We have a lot of other programming that you would find of interest, I am sure.
Senator Smith: To use a rather dated phrase, my sense is that you are sort of preaching for a call in the event that we decide to do broadcasting to produce whatever it is we might do. I suppose if we decided to go that route, we would probably have to invite bids from qualified people in order to do this. Is that the gist of the presentation?
I guess you want to sort of enlighten us a bit on what options exist. I know that some of us have reservations about full coverage of everything going on in the chamber as a whole; when you get into going through the Order Paper, I refer to it as a surefire cure for insomnia. The Senate Question Period will never be quite as lively and melodramatic as the House of Commons ones, seeing as we just have one minister answering questions, sometimes two.
Is this more or less what we are hearing — your thoughts on what our options are? In the event that we decide to go this route, do you feel that it might make sense for us to get into some contractual relationship with a production company and that you would be qualified to put in a bid on it? Is this the gist of your presentation? Or am I missing something?
Ms. Fusca: I am trying to keep track of the various questions you had in there. To start at the beginning, I believe that if you do some more work and you actually called for bids, you will find that there are actually very few qualified producer-broadcasters available to the Senate.
Senator Smith: I do not argue with that.
Ms. Fusca: There might be the CBC, but their schedule is pretty full. You have already spoken with CPAC. I think CPAC has alerted you to the possibilities that exist on CPAC, and I was trying to think of other broadcast avenues for you. I think ichannel is it. There may be someone I am not thinking of, and of course you should endeavour to do more research.
Senator Smith: The House of Commons I do not think uses a producer, does it?
Ms. Fusca: I beg your pardon?
Senator Smith: The House of Commons does not use a producer for its coverage. Is that right?
Ms. Fusca: No, it is just a simple feed that goes out and is available to the public.
Senator Smith: Is the point you are trying to make that rather than just have live coverage of everything, it makes more sense to sort of précis certain highlights and have the packaging of that produced by some experienced public information outfit such as yourselves?
Ms. Fusca: My colleague wants to add something.
Mr. O'Farrell: The reason Stornoway came to this proceeding this morning was to offer a point of view on what might be some options going forward that this committee would like to consider to make more accessible the work of the Senate and make it more available to Canadians. I do not think that Stornoway is advocating any particular option specifically but instead saying the world in which we live now has, yes, large players, and you are aware of those, but there are still some small players, such as Stornoway, that are playing a vital role in ensuring a diversity of voices exist in the media in Canada. I think what Senator Cools wanted this committee to hear was the voice of a smaller, independent, unaffiliated player to one of the larger groups expose the options. Stornoway has been involved in this from a producer perspective and then from a broadcaster perspective for a number of years. There is a bit of a unique perspective in that.
In terms of what all that means, I think it comes down to looking at the world and asking, ``What are the options?'' Once you have decided what your objective is, and if your objective is to make fully accessible or a little less than fully accessible the work of the Senate, whatever that universe is, there are new options on the table today that did not exist two, three, four, five or six years ago.
Senator Smith: Okay.
Mr. O'Farrell: If the Senate were a company, if you wanted to use that as an analogy, all companies are operating for all intents and purposes as media companies are because they operate websites and are very much engaged in selling what they do, such as their products, services, profile, history, current operations and where they are going.
The question is whether the Senate wants to adopt something in the way of a profile, such as companies do, which is to get out there and be very engaged in this new media experience that digital technology is making available, and there are multiple channels to market to do so. There is the traditional broadcast media, the CTVs, the CBCs, the CPACs and others, and there are all those other new media. Ms. Fusca was saying earlier that we live now in somewhat of an open network where there are so many channels to market it is a matter of deciding what you want to do and how you want to go about it.
To summarize, at the core of all this, here is the voice of an independent player in the broadcasting system saying that ichannel exists. We would be prepared to work with you, certainly not on an exclusive basis, as Ms. Fusca said, but as one option for you to consider in the plethora of channels to market that are available to you now.
Senator Smith: I cannot resist asking how you picked the name Stornoway when the company was founded. Did you flirt with calling it 24 Sussex Productions? How did you wind up with Stornoway?
Ms. Fusca: I am married to a Scottish-Irish-English gentleman. We were driving along Queen Street when we started Stornoway, and he said, ``What do you think of the name `Stornoway'?'' I said, ``Why Stornoway?'' It comes from his Scottish roots. I thought it sounded like a very strong, bold name and within a few minutes I thought, yes, Stornoway. Candidly, I did not think about the house of the Leader of the Opposition for a number of years. I just thought it was unique.
Senator Smith: That is okay. I have Scottish roots, too, and so has Senator Duffy. He is from Dufftown, where they have all the distilleries.
The Chair: Is ichannel time shifted for the various time zones across Canada? If you are covering something at five o'clock Ontario time, what time will it be shown in either Newfoundland and Labrador or British Columbia?
Ms. Fusca: No, there is no time shifting for ichannel. It is a national channel. Something shown at five o'clock in Ontario will be shown at four o'clock in Winnipeg, and so on.
To follow up on the question from Senator Smith, the way I see this is really not that complicated. The Senate would need to decide what information it would like to make accessible. If it is everything, that is a different kettle of fish. However, once you have decided that, it must be determined when these meetings are being held, how they will be broadcast and whether they will be broadcast live. To respond to your concern about time shifting, they could also be streamed live on the Internet. They could also be made available on the Internet for anyone who missed it while it was live.
Then you have two other components, which are how and when can people interact with the senators, and what other original programming would be produced to complement the committee piece or whatever was going on that was of a more formal nature.
That is how I see that.
Senator Duffy: Ms. Fusca and Mr. O'Farrell, thank you for coming today.
I am subscriber to the ichannel and I will happily tell Senator Smith where to find Mr. LeDrew. He is in that bag with the hammer. That is a small aside.
I think your channel would be an ideal ally or co-producer with the Senate because you have a whole range of work already done that we would have to do if we were going into some kind of different arrangement. I think the advantages to begin with are obvious.
Just for the record, how much do you get from the cable companies per subscriber?
Ms. Fusca: We usually keep that confidential.
Senator Duffy: Is it not a matter of public record with the CRTC?
Ms. Fusca: No, it is not.
Senator Duffy: Is it higher or lower than CPAC?
Ms. Fusca: It is a little higher, but I would take CPAC's carriage agreement over ichannel's agreement, because CPAC is a mandatory channel in 11 million households.
Senator Duffy: I am getting to that.
It is important to emphasize that the decision has not yet been made and there is continuing debate, but assuming that there were to be a decision to proceed with this, presumably you or we or we together would ask the commission to make you mandatory and to move you down on the dial.
Ms. Fusca: That is very possible.
Senator Duffy: That would help expand your footprint.
Ms. Fusca: That is right. That would make us much more accessible to the Canadian public, and of course that would be most welcome by us. That would also assist quite dramatically in our ability to produce even more content.
Mr. O'Farrell: The commission will launch a proceeding in the next month or two designed to create criteria for exactly what you refer to, that is, Canadian services that should have mandatory distribution. They are saying they want that to be a closed universe because it should not be available to all. In a less self-serving way than simply to serve the interests of ichannel, if this committee were to say that you believe that public affairs channels about Canada from Canadians should be given mandatory distribution, whoever they are, if they qualify with the commission criteria, that would be very positive, because currently the only people who have mandatory distribution in the public affairs category are CPAC. I think more rather than less could be a good thing.
Senator Duffy: Would you see it also applying to CBC and to CTV News Channel?
Mr. O'Farrell: CBC does not have mandatory distribution, but I believe it now has distribution to 9 million or 10 million homes. CTV News Channel is in a similar position without having the mandatory distribution requirement.
The idea of mandatory distribution has been a very limited tool the commission has chosen to use in a very finite number of circumstances. I was raising for your consideration that the commission has fortuitously decided to launch in the next month or so this process designed to determine whether it should be doing anything more with regard to mandatory distribution. If you wanted to weigh in on that discussion, it would be useful for you to consider doing that.
Senator Duffy: You already have the framework in place. You have arrangements with the various broadcast distribution undertakings and so on. If we wanted to move fairly quickly, that would move us into the game much faster than starting from ground zero.
Finally, one of the big concerns of the Senate will always be about balance and fairness and how one ensures that each side is given equal treatment. Someone who has been on the ichannel quite a bit is Patrick Boyer, a former Conservative MP who has been active in community involvement and that sort of thing. Do you think he would be a valuable witness who could talk about editorial balance and the way to ensure that while the Senate undertakes this, were we to green-light it, there would be these more interactive and more citizen-engaged kinds of programs so that it would not end up being biased one way or the other?
Ms. Fusca: When I started putting together the concept for ichannel, I was very concerned about that. I got together an advisory group of folks from Ryerson and CBC to help me with that whole idea. I am a CBC radio person as well as a broadcast person, and one CBC radio program that I loved was Ideas at nine o'clock with Lister Sinclair. I listened to that program for many years, and I miss Mr. Sinclair.
I decided to call them, because as I listened to the show I would on occasional be enraged with the point of view that was being expressed and then love the point of view that was being expressed. That was my favorite media of the time. I had a long talk with them about objectivity.
Having been a journalist for so many years — you know this as well as I do — you try to be as objective as you can, but if you are truly honest you understand that you bring with you your experience and your baggage. I did not shy away from that.
What they told me was that they try to have variety. They try to ensure they have as many perspectives as possible so that very strong point-of-view material is not precluded. Obviously there is a line between point of view and hate. I think that is so clear that we do not really have to be too concerned about that.
The philosophy at ichannel has always been to ensure you keep an open mind, be broad-minded and ensure that you have variety. While Patrick Boyer has been on ichannel, so have Ray Heard and Stephen LeDrew. We have had many people from the NDP. I confess we have probably had fewer from the Bloc, but that may be not because we do not invite them but because they do not wish to come to an English-speaking national television channel.
I know the way these things work: after the first year or two, everyone becomes very comfortable; everyone knows you get into the swing of things and you no longer need the group. However we could have an advisory, the same way I established an advisory for ichannel for the first year.
It is really about variety.
Senator Duffy: I prefer to use fairness.
Ms. Fusca: Even that is in the eye of the beholder.
The Chair: Did I hear you say you are English-speaking only? What about the French? What about bilingual Canada?
Ms. Fusca: I have given that only a little thought, so I would have to think further. My initial thought is that we could do closed captioning; if someone is speaking in English we could do closed captioning in French, and if someone is speaking in French then it would be closed captioned in English.
The one thing ichannel does not provide service for now is the visually impaired. We do not have that, but that does not preclude us from including that in our programming.
Senator Fraser: I have so many questions. I will start with a simple but probably uncomfortable one. You outlined a basic package on page 4 of your brief, including real-time TV, real-time webcasts, and on demand and archive. Supposing we said we want that basic package and we want the real time to be four hours a day — I just pull that out of the air — and we will give you the turnkey contract to do all this for us other than install the equipment, what kind of cost are we talking about?
Ms. Fusca: If you are providing the feed, there is no cost to me on that. I would propose that the streaming that happens should happen on the Senate website. We would have a link on the ichannel website that would go to the Senate website. It is very important to have a more fulsome and engaging Senate website than currently exists. I have checked a few others around the world before I came, and ours could use a little punching up.
As long as that happens, the only money we would invest — and would be prepared to invest — is on the complementary programming that will be very critical, I think, to go along with the committee material. We would absorb that cost.
You mentioned four hours. I did do a little bit of work before coming here — and currently it does not preclude us from broadening this — but we would make available as much as six hours a day to the Senate, assuming we could get your time and attention to do other material. I do believe there needs to be complementary material that goes along with these room-type set-ups, the wraparound — the way Senator Duffy would in the House of Commons, sometimes, after Question Period. You need that follow-up and public engagement. It is critical.
People should have more access. I am not saying all of your time, but a little more time with you. It is as if I want to say to you all, ``Get out there,'' because that is the way to make the Senate more relevant. I think we should endeavour to make the Senate more publicly relevant, especially with younger people. I have four children. I have a vested interest in ensuring that my children know a little more about you than they do today, which I am afraid to say is not that much.
Senator Fraser: My colleagues are aware that I have grave reservations about television as the appropriate medium for distributing our proceedings. Part of that has to do with the necessity to make choices, and part of it has to do with the fact that television is real time and when it is over it is gone.
I think the mere fact that one knows one is going to be on television can tend to produce a change in behaviour, a grasping for the immediate impact. ``If I do not get them in these three seconds, I never will.'' That is what we see notably in the House of Commons during Question Period.
I would draw to the attention of colleagues an absolutely wonderful series of articles in Le Devoir by Hélène Buzzetti the other day about the dynamics of Parliament in recent years. She quotes Preston Manning, who says that in his view they should stop televising the House of Commons Question Period for at least a year to see what happens. That is a brilliant idea, I think.
In the Senate, I assume a television network would want a fixed time slot. You would want to know when you would be programming Senate stuff, such as from two o'clock to six o'clock or whenever. The only predictable elements in the Senate are the most boring ones — statements and tributes, going through the tabling of documents, the presentation of reports from delegations. That is the second-most boring. Then you get to Question Period, which, as has too often been noted, will never be in the Senate a vehicle for the exchange of a great deal of information. I do not think most senators would want it to become a vehicle for the kind of gladiatorial theatre that we see down the hall.
The interesting stuff comes later in the day, sometimes but not always. How does a television network deal with that? We would ask you to program something where you know that day after day after day it will be dull as dishwater for at least the introductory hour and then may or may not be interesting, because the really interesting stuff often happens in committee. What do you do about that?
I have trouble getting my mind around this. That was a rather incoherent plea for further discussion.
Ms. Fusca: There are two things I have heard you say. One is the behaviour, and I understand and appreciate your concern. In part the reason the issue arises is that people feel they have only three minutes or three seconds. To relieve some of that pressure, I am proposing giving you more time in a different kind of program to perhaps expand on what you are concerned with or talking about, researching, debating or exploring.
Senator Fraser: It is the audience.
Ms. Fusca: Only in part. That is why I brought this package to you. I would like you to pick one, pick any one that looks like it might be intriguing to you; the choices range from defence to Parliament to following the dollar and economic, financial issues. Pick one and watch it, because those are the kinds of things I have in mind.
My love of wanting to do ichannel also happens because I hate when journalists do what I call the ``snippet précis.'' They give you two or three words — I do not know what you were going to say — and then they finish your sentence for you. As a viewer and as a journalist, that has always driven me crazy.
I hope the way we are proposing to cover not only, as you say, the ``dull as dishwater'' stuff — and I am afraid I do not totally disagree with you, which is why I am saying you need to have wraparound production and to engage the public to make it relevant to them — will take the pressure off of anyone feeling the need of being theatrical for their three seconds. They will have more time. There will be more in-depth material and it will be done in such a way that it is not dull as dishwater. That was the first part, and I am afraid I got so carried way with that that I forgot the second part.
Senator Fraser: It does not matter; I think you were addressing the second part, too.
In this enhanced, value-added programming you are talking about, who would get to choose what benefited from the enhanced attention — what topics, what elements of our work were treated by these enhanced examinations?
Ms. Fusca: I think we both would. As I mentioned in my written piece, it will be important for you in many ways to determine what you feel is critical, what you want to see made available to the public, where it is you want to engage. Then, frankly, we would like to be able to engage in that as well. Not so much in terms of the actual work you do, but let us say that there was a committee on health, education, the environment or any number of these subjects; ichannel might choose to produce an in-depth documentary on that subject. We might choose to do a number of pieces over the course of six months to a year on that subject.
There are many subjects that you folks are looking at. I did not mean to be disrespectful by saying ``you folks;'' I mean that the Senate is looking at.
Senator Fraser: That is okay; we are folks.
Ms. Fusca: Many subjects are of vital interest to Canadians. Indeed, we are covering many of them anyway, without the benefit of your experience and input. Once in a while, we will drag one of the senators out and we will say you were working on this thing or this is what we were working on and what has your experience been.
That is the way I see it working. You will have as much say and control as is appropriate for the kind of work you do. This is pretty serious business. Then we would complement that and dig a little deeper into a certain number of subjects — not everything obviously, but a certain number of them.
The Chair: Who pays for all that?
Ms. Fusca: We would.
The Chair: For example, if a Senate committee was doing a study on aging and you decided that ichannel wanted to do a documentary on aging using some of the information from the Senate study, would there be any extra charge or cost to the Senate for your producing that?
Ms. Fusca: No.
Senator Joyal: Thank you very much for your contribution to taking our approach a step further in the context of broadcasting. I am one of those who think that the webcast would be much more useful for the Senate than just the plain TV broadcast. We are much beyond the TV age, as I understand the emergence of webcast; you probably know the reality much better than any of us around the table.
According to your own evaluation, you are one of the players in that field. Who would be your counterparts in the private business of broadcasting that would offer the same kind of opportunities that you have developed over the years? Who are your competitors?
Ms. Fusca: I cannot really think of any. From a broadcast perspective, there would be the CBC.
Senator Duffy: Is there a Quebec broadcaster, a specialty channel on issues in Quebec?
Ms. Fusca: No, there is not; this is why I am saying the CBC. I checked to make sure I was not just telling tales or building Stornoway Communications up into something it is not. In the old days of CTV, we were doing W5; Stornoway was W5 behind the scenes, so to speak. There really is not another ichannel out there.
We could also talk about the possibility of having a second channel that we would work with; but I would need to think about this further in terms of having a fully French-language, dedicated channel in partnership. For example, I work with TV5 and there are folks in Quebec I work with.
However, before I let Mr. O'Farrell say something, I want to talk to you about why TV broadcast is incredibly important. Please have no misunderstanding about how critically important Canadian television broadcasting continues to be. It is still, despite the fact that folks are spending more time on the Internet; this is in addition to the time they are spending on television. Canadians are actually not watching less television today than they did 10 years ago. In fact, I think the numbers have gone up slightly.
They have made more time in their day to go on the Internet and for other entertainment to pass time. Our concern for the Internet is about the youth. I would suggest that when we talk about money — and I know there is some concern here, because I have read a few of the transcripts — if you want the Senate to be relevant on the Internet, I would suggest you spend roughly around $30 million to promote your site. Once you have done that, you had better have something on that site that everyone is really wild about, because you are going to be competing with all the new Google sites, Facebook, YouTube and all the rest of that.
The reason the web is so important is twofold. It is a wonderful ready-made archive. If you missed it on television and it is not going to be broadcast again for another week and you want to see it right now, great. That is why it needs to be there.
However, not only will you have to spend $30 million on marketing, even after you have done that, good luck if people are really coming. Television is still the number one media globally and is critically important in Canada.
Mr. O'Farrell: I have three quick points. First, the business of broadcasting is commercially driven. Ichannel is the only public affairs channel in English — there is none in French other than RDI — that has been added to the mix of broadcast channels since 2001. The reality is that there is not a lot of appetite in the business community to throw shareholder money at developing public affairs channels, because people do not see it as a good business. That is first.
Second, you mentioned the realities of digital broadcasting and webcasting versus that role. Ms. Fusca indicated what is very interesting, which is that for all the time surveys indicate Canadians are spending on the web, they are still dedicating a lot of time to traditional television. They are expanding, as opposed to contracting, their time spent absorbing information.
I am not sure where that is going to go, but from my perspective it means that for an institution like the Senate to be relevant in the minds of Canadians, it has to have a strategy that encompasses both. You cannot be in one and not the other and be doing a fulsome job. You have to be in both those worlds, because that is where Canadians are spending their time.
Third, what is the commercial business plan that supports websites? It is advertising. I do not know whether you have been following this, but Rupert Murdoch's News Corps has just gone very public with the view that it will no longer make its websites free of charge to users. His premise is really very fundamental. He is saying there is not enough advertising in the world to support all the websites in the world.
I read a survey in The Times last night saying that Americans, Britons, Italians and Germans were prepared to pay for content that they would consume on news websites. That is a new phenomenon, because so far most people are looking for free on the web.
The point I think is that we are in a changing, transitioning world where all of this is not static and where whatever you decide to do to make your work more accessible will be a fluid reality that will have to be adjusted, but where you are at now is looking at the realities of today, tomorrow and the next little while with open eyes and seeing that the Senate needs to take some steps forward to be more accessible in both areas — the traditional media and the new media.
Senator Joyal: We could decide to webcast only the committee's proceedings and not the chamber's debates, correct?
Mr. O'Farrell: Surely.
Senator Joyal: We would not change what is available generally with CPAC. We would have the agreement with CPAC already in place regarding the capacity they offer us, and then we would develop the coverage of committees' proceedings on the whole. Any committee that sits in public and not in camera would be available on the webcast.
Mr. O'Farrell: You could do that, and I think Senator Fraser made an interesting comment earlier about ``TV is now.'' That used to be the case. People are now archiving webcast material, yesterday's proceedings, the week before, and, frankly, that is becoming a more and more attractive opportunity, because the cost of storing that content is coming down every day with every new development. The servers that store content no longer cost as much as they did before.
To your point, senator, yes, you could do that, and you could actually archive that material as well, so if I want to look at the proceedings of this committee, I could go back a month from now, six months from now, in whatever time period you allow me to retrieve that kind of archived material.
Senator Joyal: The ideal situation for us in the context of the education purpose that you described in your opening statement would be to make the materials available in archives. We might want to give schools, universities and others with an interest in a public policy issue the ability to go back on the web and review statements, meetings, discussions or debates that took place around that issue. The archival materials that are essential to understand what an issue is all about for someone who wants to be informed or to take a stand or to intervene or make his or her views known would be available.
You have not really developed the interactivity mentioned in your opening statement, but I think it is an aspect we might want to take into account in the choice of a support that we would like to privilege to be able to see the further generation in the use of the medium, which is essentially interactivity. Could you expand more on what we could do there?
Ms. Fusca: Yes, and I also want to comment on what I think I understood you to say, which is that some of you may be content and feel that where you are with regards to CPAC and having some material on the web is sufficient. With respect, I do not think so. It is just so opportune that you are talking about this now because I think, more than ever, that if the Senate of Canada, on a go-forward basis, wants to become and remain relevant, you really have to move a little beyond these walls; and that may be a little bit scary for some, but I think it is really exciting. You can do it with grace and intelligence. I am not suggesting some wild cowboy scenario here. You have to do it in keeping with the gravitas that the Senate engenders in one's mind.
I really do believe that if we are to continue with the Senate in Canada we need to be far more proactive and engage with the public. I would suggest strongly that you not sit here satisfied with the odd, bland — which is why nobody's watching — material that is on CPAC and the stuff that is streamed on the Internet. That just will not do on a go- forward basis. Quite frankly, it is not really that great now, period, so never mind on a go-forward basis.
You really need, not only for the sake of the Senate but for the people you serve, Canadians, to be out there engaging with them, whether it is through the television medium, whether it is because you will be part of a program that is like a call-in show or you are doing a live program.
Now I will segue into your question here. What I envisage is that, if we were doing a talking heads program, we would also include in that program footage that was of a documentary nature, and we would call on the audience to communicate with us.
We have been developing technology, which I am a little hesitant to discuss with you because I have spent a lot of time, money and effort on this and I do not want to give it out too freely right now, but there are ways and means whereby, if we were doing this, televising this right now and showing footage we incorporate into this piece — so it is not just this room with these talking heads — we can also engage with the audience; the audience can use any technology available to them to communicate with us in real time and vice versa. Therefore, we could Skype; we could use webcams; they could use Twitter; they could phone; they could email, and this would be happening. We would engage, and we might have some Canadians out there saying, ``Senator Fraser, I am with you. I agree.''
Senator Fraser: Unlikely.
Ms. Fusca: They could say, ``Do not let this woman talk you into the idea that we need to do this. We need more French; we need to have this more accessible in Quebec and Quebecers do not have enough of a voice.''
We could actually engage that way, but it is your choice. You are the people who need to decide whether that is what you will do or not. I certainly encourage you, not only for my sake and not only for your sake but actually for Canadians out there.
Does that answer your question about how we can interact?
Senator Joyal: Well, it definitely opens opportunities to consider.
Ms. Fusca: It is exciting.
Senator Joyal: My other question was about the amount of money you suggested should be invested to promote the site. Would you think that to be effective we should consider investing some money if we go through webcast the way you describe it to promote it, to ensure that it is available and that people are aware of it? What is the amount of money you would consider to be reasonable?
Ms. Fusca: I am recommending what I am recommending because it actually helps with the marketing. Once you are in so many households, and to Senator Duffy's questions and observations earlier, if we were in more households, ichannel or whoever, and producing material that is truly engaging and is proactively interactive with the various communities across the country, people will start talking about it. People will say, ``Gee, did you see that thing?'' They will not only be talking about it but emailing, twittering. That, in and of itself, actually provides an incredible marketing vehicle.
If you do not use television in the way that I am suggesting, in any event, and you simply put up the equipment and stream on the Internet live and then archive it, why would anyone go there beyond the number of people who go there now? There is no reason for them. They would not know about it. That is what I am saying would require huge dollars. Even after you have spent all of that money telling everyone that it is there, why would they continue to go there when they did not in the past? You will get a slightly larger number of people because at least they will be aware of it, but what guarantees that they will continue to go there on a regular basis? What will you provide them with to ensure they would go there? You have to be thinking about those kinds of things as well.
I do not mean to make it too confusing. The broadcast will actually go a long way in promoting this. There are all kinds of other vehicles. If we undertook to do this, we would develop a marketing plan. I could get back to you with regard to what that might cost. That would include the television component.
Mr. O'Farrell: I think what Ms. Fusca is saying is that broadcasting, in and of itself, is a promotional vehicle. Next, you would obviously need some kind of a promotional budget to launch any kind of activity, and that is an arbitrary determination that one must make.
Perhaps more important is that you need to sustain the interest that you might create around that, and you do that by more promotional material but also by the very essence of what you are providing in the way of a service.
I do not know whether you have spent any time on the Archives Canada website. I have, quite fortuitously. It is a fabulous site, rich and multi-dimensional. However, how many people actually go to the site and use its outstanding resource base? I would think an infinitesimal number of Canadians actually know about the website.
How do we create and maintain awareness, and how do we create an appetite to continue to develop that awareness? Those are the challenges we would face.
The Chair: Senator Joyal and I both asked you questions about interactivity. I wanted to know whether you know of a report entitled The Parliament We Want. Deborah Grey, Senator Yves Morin and Carolyn Bennett did a report, and they had a survey done by pollsters asking Canadians a number of questions, similar to the questions we are asking today. Canadians said they are tired of being asked questions, because they answer them but there is never any feedback.
You seem to be saying the same thing today, but have you read this report? Have you studied this report; and if so, what do you think of their conclusions?
Ms. Fusca: I am afraid I have not heard of the report. It sounds like a wonderful piece that I should read. I would be more than happy to read the report and submit a written response to your question.
What you just said to me is not that surprising. I have no empirical evidence for this, but it is just something I have observed, with young Canadians in particular. We constantly wring our hands about why they are not voting and why they are not engaged, and then we kind of forget about it. The fact of the matter is that youth are on YouTube and Facebook because that is their space. Someone made space available for them. I think it is part of human nature as well. People are not engaged because we do not give them the space to engage.
I will read this report and send you a written perspective on it, but what I am trying to encourage you to do is to give people space and bring them in. I am not saying just bring them in in an ad hoc and unorganized manner that would in some way or other damage the Senate of Canada. There are ways and means of doing it such that there is mutual respect and regard and far greater understanding, and indeed a far greater respect for what the Senate does. If you conducted a survey tomorrow, I can assure you that the numbers would be quite ugly. Canadians are not aware of the work and all of that.
The Chair: I think we all know that.
Senator Cools: I would like to thank Mr. O'Farrell and Ms. Fusca for coming before us today. In addition, I would like to thank them for their dedication and strenuous commitment to broadcasting as small, independent producers in a modern community of oligarchy and monopoly. It takes a lot of skill, resources and personal stamina to stay with that issue. Please know that I appreciate the work you do, because it takes a lot of independence to be able to stand up in the face of those tidal waves.
We are talking about many issues, and I had not thought we would go into this sort of detail about how much money this or that costs. I thought we were still at the stage of looking at opportunities and getting a handle on what is going on out there in the world.
I would like to say to you, Ms. Fusca, and to the committee that many of the concerns here come from a silent acceptance of what I would describe as the decline of Parliament. Maybe those words have not been put on the record, and I would like to do that today.
Many of the problems Senator Fraser has raised, as have others, have to do with the decline of debate in the houses, and that is more a function of the paucity of today's Parliament and its participants than anything else. I do believe, dear witnesses, that unless members of Parliament and members of the Senate move to arrest the tendencies that are rampantly running away in our society, they will soon be beyond correction.
Colleagues, I would like to answer Senator Smith on ``dull as dishwater.'' There should be nothing as exciting as a debate on the floors of the houses, with great repartee, intelligence and articulation, and with great wit.
Senator Smith: I am not talking about debates but about ``stand,'' ``stand,'' that stuff.
Senator Duffy: Procedure.
Senator Cools: Again, my experience in life — and I am sure Senator Duffy can testify to this — is that any time we have an opportunity to put this massive great process that we inherited from our forefathers before the public, I have found that people reach out and grab that knowledge with great relish. That is why this interactive process Ms. Fusca is describing is interesting. I think one would have to do a lot of fine tuning to ensure we are really doing what we intend to do so as to have the result we want.
One of the big problems this country is facing — and the results are manifesting themselves, for example, in voter turnout — is that Canadians have been robbed of the language of Parliament. Quite frankly, most ministers do not even speak in the language of Parliament anymore; the entire lexicon is gone. I would submit to you that it is very difficult to have a public discourse when we can no longer speak a common language.
I am of the opinion that unless we move directly and swiftly in the next few years to address some of these problems, the situation will be irretrievable. Because of our failures, we now have a situation where the public discourse is proceeding not on the grounds of principle, because there is no clear articulation of the principles on a regular basis; the public discourse is moving ahead on the grounds of self-interest, ambition and vanity. I find some of it so tiresome and tedious. I would like to put myself on the side of those who wish to arrest this phenomenon.
I have no fears, because television is a fantastic medium, and it very quickly crystallizes out the authentic from the non-authentic. When we talk of broadcasting Senate debates, the viewer will very quickly be able to see and to perceive the true and the honest from the artificial and the shallow. I have no fears about any of that sort of thing.
The fear I have is the unwillingness of Canadian parliaments to engage in a very public way. I think that is really the problem. I am prepared to do anything I can do to assist senators and members to overcome their fears. I have never had any problems, as you know, Ms. Fusca, communicating and engaging with people, and I welcome it.
I do not have much to add in terms of the actual substance of the matter. I would like to encourage senators to continue to go step by step, but it would be wonderful if, in the process of doing this, we also included not only the business of engaging the public but of engaging members and senators.
I have not seen a really strenuous or uplifting debate on the floor of the houses for quite some time now, and I have had the opportunity in my career here to witness and participate in many of those fine debates. I would like us to move in that direction. I understand that we have many new senators and they are not very confident and are a little bit afraid. The Senate is quite an intimidating place, especially for newcomers. However, I think we should be addressing those paucities, these questions apart from broadcasting Senate debates, because I have a suspicion that it is our concern for those problems rather than disinterest in public engagement that is causing reticence in Senate colleagues.
This is not a Canadian problem. I have recently had some encounters with some very important members from other parliaments. This is happening throughout the British Westminster systems world. It is a huge problem. Unfortunately, governments have paid little attention to it because governments are quite content, I must tell you, to field one speaker and sometimes no speakers. The opposition fields one speaker and then bills pass in three days with the government supporters jumping up and down and talking about how long it took.
I can tell you three weeks is nothing for a Criminal Code amendment to go through the two houses. We do our publics a terrible disservice. Further, the public has become habituated to this haste. There are massive, monumental bills with complex concepts that have not even been read by the people voting upon them. Now, the government has habituated the public to the expectation that these complex bills should pass in two or three days. I will always be on the side of those who would be objecting.
The Chair: Senator Cools, may I ask the witnesses to respond now?
Senator Cools: Yes. I know the witnesses quite well, so I am laying out the range of substantive issues that facing us as houses of Parliament that wish to communicate with the public. Go ahead.
The Chair: Before you proceed, I want to say I have three more senators who want to ask questions. We have two other items on the agenda.
Senator Smith: I want to speak as well.
The Chair: We have several other senators who have questions. If you could keep your responses short, I will ask the questions be short, as well, because there are two other items we have to cover on the agenda today.
Ms. Fusca: I will simply say that I fully agree with Senator Cools and really respect what she has endeavoured to do. Senator Cools, along with others not present in the room right now, has been in a number of our programs because we actually share some of these concerns.
I will just reiterate for the sake of Senator Fraser that the work we do for television would be distinctly Canadian. However, that does not mean that it would not be very interesting and exciting and something that the public would really want to engage in. That is all I will say.
Senator Furey: Thank you, Ms. Fusca and Mr. O'Farrell for coming this morning. Thank you for much for the materials you have supplied to our committee.
This morning, we have heard a number of broadcasting options discussed, both in your presentation and, of course, in the interaction with my colleagues. If our goal is to be better understood and more relevant to Canadians — to use your words, ``to go beyond these walls'' — what, in your professional opinion, would be the best first step forward for us as a Senate?
Ms. Fusca: I think you really have to be on television, and I think you have to be on television not only within these rooms. You have to be on television beyond these rooms. You have to engage in more conversations with a variety of Canadians, whether they be the general public or other folks within those areas that you are dealing with. You must also produce material that complements the work that you are doing here, which is of a more engaging nature, for some, than a simple conversation is for some and, quite frankly, a minority.
Senator Furey: Thank you.
Senator Fraser: You do not have to persuade us — you certainly do not have to persuade me — that parliamentary stuff can and should be interesting. I suspect that if we were televised and started to get much of an audience, you would see more, not fewer, potted speeches, especially from senators sitting on the side of the party that formed the government of the day. The pressures not to depart from the party line would grow, I think, rather than diminish. However, that is a separate point.
The basic thing that caught my interest in what you were saying was the underlying thread that senators do not understand the Senate and, indeed, that Canadians do not understand the Senate. It is very clear that Canadians do not really understand Parliament. They do not understand the parliamentary system, the fundamental principles that underlie it and the way those principles work on a day-to-day basis.
Do you do educational programming?
Ms. Fusca: Yes, we do. I mentioned just a few here. We have a relationship with an organization. I am so sorry, I was remiss in putting their cards in these envelopes, so I will hand them out. It is called Breakout Educational Network, and they are working with high schools, colleges and universities.
You have books in your packages. I mentioned that we had done a third-year political science course, which involved Patrick Boyer. Mr. Boyer was the liaison between the production company, Breakout Educational, and the University of Guelph. At this stage, I am the liaison between ichannel and York University on a multi-part series we are doing on immigration.
Senator Fraser: At this point, I am less concerned about what happens in universities, because by then you have lost half the population, than what happens in high school, essentially. Has anybody shown any interest in putting together a series of the engaging, gripping and informative audiovisual materials on Parliament, how it works, what it is supposed to do and what it is not supposed to do?
Ms. Fusca: We have not done a sort of ``A, B, C'' and structured it as primarily an educational tool, because I am not an educational tool. Primarily, I am an information engagement tool. Therefore, we try to take those pieces. That is why I lugged this stuff to Ottawa for you. I really encourage you to please look at the material.
Senator Fraser: We will.
Ms. Fusca: We had a screening of Does Your Vote Count, which looks at what the life of the MP is really like. What does it mean to be a member of Parliament in Canada? How much authority do you have? How much time do you have? How much support do you have?
Before I came here, I did my homework in terms of a comparison of staff and resources of American senators versus Canadian senators. That has been our approach, Senator Fraser. Have a look, and I think that you will be impressed, with two things in particular: first, how incredibly informative the material is and second, how incredibly engaging it is. When you are talking about the public in general, Canadians, it is very difficult to present something in a classroom format and have people pay attention.
Young people I have met at different functions have told me that they have used Days of Reckoning to write their essays. Many educators have called us wanting to acquire the material, which is in various libraries, including the Library of Parliament. We have had calls from the Library of Parliament for our material.
That is the manner in which I would like to see us proceed. We will not be able to build Rome in a day, but we can do it if we take one step at a time. We can do a great deal of good work and make it so that they want to come to it. We are not feeding them or telling them to take their medicine. They will be amazed when they hear about it and then want to see it. That is what we want to accomplish.
Senator Fraser: Thank you.
Senator Duffy: Ms. Fusca, have you thought about C-SPAN, Brian Lamb and the example in Washington? When we speak in the abstract, it is sometimes difficult to understand. Perhaps a pilot would be valuable to provide a kind of visual indication of what is possible.
Senator Wallace asked whether your remarks meant that you did not see the chamber as being useable for this purpose. Following Senator Smith's point, I could see that you could envision having a daily host of the Senate — and Brian Lamb comes to mind. John Warren used to do it years ago on the CBC. It would require someone who is knowledgeable but neutral in opinion. Former clerks or retired senators familiar with the issues on both sides could be part of a group talking about here is the Senate for today and introducing the issues up for debate, and while procedural matters were taking place that could be up in the corner while these knowledgeable people talked about the issues on the agenda, and then you could switch to the floor following the end of procedural matters.
Ms. Fusca: Absolutely. With respect, that would make it more interesting and engaging for the public without taking anything away. At the end of the day, what is the goal? The goal is to make your work, information and research more accessible, not less accessible. You do not want to diminish it in any way. We want to build around that to make it attractive and bring people in.
Senator Duffy: With other witnesses, we have talked about fibre optics to the home and bandwidth technology. Are you saying that until we enter this vast new digital age where everyone has access to one million channels, television should be, at the very least, a bridging medium to bring us to that day when everyone selects their own?
Ms. Fusca: Absolutely.
Senator Duffy: The first step that Senator Furey talked about was how much it would cost to install equipment temporarily for a trial run so that we are not committed 100 per cent. Do we have some of that equipment in the building?
Ms. Fusca: The idea of doing a pilot project is exciting because it could alleviate any existing concerns. It would not require additional wiring but would require lighting the room in such a way as to look good on television and setting up microphones so that everyone is audible. We could do a test run and a pilot at the same time.
You asked about CPAC and cost. I gather a committee is working on a budget. I could not give you that kind of information, because I am not privy to the technical specifications. However, I would be happy to engage in that exercise as well. In terms of cost, I am thinking about the required personnel and cameras.
The Chair: This would be a cost for one pilot.
Ms. Fusca: Yes. It would cost roughly $10,000 to $15,000. To be on the safe side, I could prepare a budget. It might be a little more or a little less. I would like to do a two-hour piece in the chosen room with the kind of engagement that you mentioned earlier. That would be exciting. It would not be horribly expensive, but it would mean absorbing many of the other costs, such as graphics. You would want to do a nice job.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: Further to Senator Duffy's question concerning a pilot project, if you were asked to go forward with such a project, would you currently have the necessary bilingual human resources to comply with the Official Languages Act?
Ms. Fusca: Yes.
[English]
I am sorry; my French is not very good, but I understood the question. Yes, we have the resources.
[Translation]
Mr. O'Farrell: Yes.
Senator Losier-Cool: That is better than a ``maybe''.
Senator Fraser: As I listened to the witnesses earlier, I got the impression that on the matter of broadcasting in both official languages, the solution being proposed was to have sub-titles appear simultaneously, whereas CPAC, for example — and even then, the arrangement is far from ideal — provides sound access in both languages. Would you consider at least providing what CPAC provides?
[English]
Ms. Fusca: I will respond in English.
The Chair: As well as what CPAC was directed to do by the courts.
Ms. Fusca: Yes, I would like to explore what I spoke about earlier. Although I would have to research this, perhaps it would be easier for people to listen than to read.
Senator Fraser: Often, what is captured is inaccurate. That is a greater problem than whether it can be heard.
Ms. Fusca: There are issues with the hearing as well because at times the audio levels are not suitable. I was watching Question Period last night while I waited for a meeting to begin. When they spoke in English, I could barely hear them over the French translation and vice versa. Therefore, I would like to do a little experimentation with audio levels.
The Chair: Your proposal in response to my question does not meet the test of equality for the two languages in Canada. That suggestion would not work.
Ms. Fusca: Meeting the test of equality is a technical issue.
The Chair: I am saying that the response you gave would not meet Canadian standards today.
Ms. Fusca: Okay; but it could be done.
Senator Smith: I do not have a question, but I want to speak for three or four minutes on the questions that we have to decide. This has been a useful session to help us to identify the options. However, it seems to me that we will probably have to have a primal scream therapy session in which we make big decisions on about three or four questions.
The first question will be whether or not we increase what is currently on CPAC from the Senate. In other words, do we just maintain the status quo, or do we go for more Senate coverage, which would presumably include some coverage from the Senate for itself — maybe not all, but some?
In making that decision, we decided at the outset that cost is very relevant. Our clerk has been doing some work on trying to identify those costs, so when we have this session, that will be relevant, and he can tell us later where he is on that.
The next question, if we opt to increase coverage, is do we then just say to CPAC that we want more time because we are going to have some coverage from the Senate floor? Alternatively, we have now identified another option, which is rather than just have more time on CPAC, do we look at having a producer who packages components of what goes on in the Senate. This option is on the ichannel.
That has some appeal actually, although I never see the ichannel and I do at least get CPAC, so we need a better understanding of how many viewers there are on the ichannel as opposed to CPAC; and then is all that solved once we have gone digital? When are we going digital?
The Chair: It is 1.5 million to 11 million.
Senator Smith: Okay, from 1.5 million to 11 million.
This is another very relevant factor, and then there is the cost of opting for a producer. The $30-million figure did shake me a bit; I do not know exactly what that involves, but that was a pretty hefty figure.
If we are going that route, then we could hardly do a one-off version of these eHealth contracts that have got the Government of Ontario in an awkward spot these days, so we would probably have to invite bids from qualified producers, and there may not be any other qualified producers. I have no idea; I am sure there will be two or three who think they are, and does TVO want to go national and bilingual? I have no idea, probably not, but I do not know. Do I rule anything out? No, I do not rule anything out.
These are the three or four big questions that we really have to have this session on before we figure out where we are going from here. I thought it was a little odd initially when I heard about this request that we are hearing from one possible producer without inviting more — are there any producers out there who want to pitch us? — but you are the most obvious one with a track record. I think it has been very helpful for us to identify the option of saying to CPAC we want more time and we do not need a producer — the House of Commons does not use a producer so we do not need one; we just need more time. Or are we more interested in the packaged approach that does not cover every last word that is uttered everywhere, some of which would be painful to watch?
Pretty soon, Mr. chair, we will just have to have this session and figure out what, if anything, there is a consensus on. I can truly say that personally I am open-minded, but I want to have a much better feel for the cost elements, because those will obviously influence my thinking.
The Chair: Thank you for that excellent summary, Senator Smith. You have raised and discussed many of the questions that I think we all have, and that is a good way to end this particular session.
I would like to thank our two witnesses. We have had a fruitful discussion today, and we thank you for your valuable contribution to our study.
Thank you, Senator Cools, for the recommendation of having Ms. Fusca come.
Honourable senators, we have two other items on our agenda.
Senator Cools: Before moving on and looking towards the future, since the name of Patrick Boyer and his work in bringing Parliament to the public came up, perhaps we could also have Patrick Boyer as a witness.
The Chair: That is something we will take up in the steering committee with Senator Smith and Senator Cordy.
Senator Cools: Thank you. Maybe you could take it up at the next committee meeting.
The Chair: Thank you very much. This section of our agenda is completed, and we will move to item number 2.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable Senators, the second item on our agenda is the consideration of a proposed draft survey that would be distributed to all members of the Senate to get their opinion on various issues.
[English]
Are there any questions or comments with regard to the contents or the proposal to use such a survey? You will recall that the last time this issue of televising aspects of the chamber came up, there was in fact a survey. You will know from your briefing packages that a survey was conducted last time. This survey, I believe, is a little more comprehensive, and we would welcome suggestions for changes or input. Those changes and input will be incorporated into this questionnaire, which will then hopefully be sent out.
Senator Harb: I think the sooner the better. I went through and filled it out. I found it to be quite comprehensive. It is my hope you will give a deadline for members to give their input and at some point this week to proceed and distribute it to everyone else, because from what we heard here we have diverse opinions on the issue. Going to Senate colleagues as a whole will give a clear picture in terms of where everyone is. In essence, it would be like a referendum on the issue.
Senator Fraser: I think a survey is a good thing. However, with respect to its content, I have some comments, which I can make now or in the next round of questioning, as you prefer, chair.
The Chair: Senator Harb suggested we get this out as soon as possible.
Senator Fraser: Simple comments.
The Chair: Are they the types of things you could do now?
Senator Fraser: I would think so, that staff could do now.
This committee has gone on a learning curve on the distinction between traditional television broadcasting and webcasting. I do not think most of our colleagues have had the same advantages we have had. Therefore, I would suggest that the questionnaire initially set out in the background the distinction that has between simply televising and webcasting that has emerged as we have worked on this, and then that the questions make a clearer division between those two.
At the moment, if you look at the first question, broadcasting — maybe there is a different verb — but then the next five questions could be set up under one heading, subcategory A, if you will, because they are more about broadcasting. Then starting close to the top of page 3, ``Should an electronic archive . . .,'' is when we get into more of the webcasting possibilities, and that could be a separate subcategory.
I just think that as it is, without trying to walk our colleagues through some of our learning curve, the input we get back from them may not be as useful as it would otherwise be.
The Chair: Those are good suggestions, and perhaps Senator Smith and I can direct the table, based upon your representations, to make those changes in the questionnaire. If you do not mind, Senator Fraser, after I get that redraft I would like to run it by you as well.
Senator Fraser: Thank you, chair.
Senator Cools: I have some strong sentiments about these surveys. I think the opinions of colleagues should be obtained in other ways that are more parliamentary than such surveys.
Now, it may be I was inattentive, but where did this survey come from where did this concept of a survey come from? I have a lot of misgivings about it, but maybe I was not paying attention, or maybe I was not around that day. Where did this suddenly appear from?
The Chair: It was used long before I came to the committee, because it was used at the last Rules Committee when this very subject came up before. In fact there was a survey in which all honourable senators were asked to give their views about the use of television in the chamber. It is not new.
Senator Cools: Was this survey used before?
The Chair: Not this survey; this is an adapted survey.
Senator Cools: By this committee?
The Chair: By this committee, yes.
Senator Cools: Maybe, as I said before, I missed it, but I still have misgivings, because I am not sure that I like the system of questionnaires where senators may feel committed to answers that they have given in these surveys. I do not like the phenomenon of anticipating or leading the decisions of members of Parliament; I have misgivings. If everyone likes it, it is fine, but I have deep misgivings about polling members on questions that are before the house for judgment. This question is definitely before the Senate for judgment. You have told me it has been used before, but I have no recollection of this committee taking a decision to use it in this instance. Maybe this survey should have come forward for a decision of this committee.
Senator Joyal: I do not want to contradict you, but we did it on the restructuring of committees, Mr. Chair.
Senator Cools: If you recall, I was not around; I was otherwise preoccupied with being sick.
Senator Smith: There was a consensus to do it.
Senator Cools: Maybe there was a consensus, but it would be nice if there could be a discussion and decision in this committee on the merits of using such an instrument or technique.
Senator Smith: There was.
Senator Losier-Cool: There was.
Senator Cools: Not on this, there was not.
Senator Joyal: As I said, we did it in this committee, and the Conflict of Interest Committee did it two years ago when we had to review the code according to the bylaws that we had adopted at that time, so it happens sometimes. I just want to mention it.
Senator Cools: Only sometimes it happens. As far as I am concerned, every time it should happen, it should be as a result of a decision taken on a committee at the time. I do not want to belabour the point, but it is not a good parliamentary tool to solicit opinion from senators, especially on issues as complex as this and on issues where some members of the committee have declared their own positions quite early. I question the wisdom of it all, and if senators want to go ahead, include me out.
The Chair: Honourable senators, subject to the suggestions made by Senator Fraser, is it agreed that this survey, as amended and corrected, be circulated to honourable senators this week?
Some Hon. Senators: Agreed.
Senator Cools: Let the record show one voice here in opposition.
The Chair: The record will so show.
The third item on the agenda today relates to the options papers that were sent out, called the Study on the Senate committee system as established under rule 86, taking into consideration the size, mandate, and quorum of each committee; the total number of committees; and available human and financial resources.
The steering committee had brief discussions on these options papers and the supporting documentation, and it was felt that these are matters of such fundamental importance that all honourable senators ought to be able to have an opportunity to read them and see them before we take decisions and have further discussion and debate and witnesses in this committee. It would be my hope that we could agree that the options papers prepared by the Library of Parliament be circulated to all honourable senators and perhaps even be discussed in their respective caucuses so that there could be input from all senators before we proceed further.
Again, I say this because they are matters of such fundamental importance to us as members of the Senate and as the Senate.
Senator Smith: To clarify, when this is circulated, it will be senators who fill it out. Will it be anonymous?
The Chair: Yes, certainly.
Senator Harb: It makes perfect sense, because this is something that impacts everyone — caucuses, committees, individuals. That is great.
The Chair: The options papers and supporting documentation are a good long read, and there are references to the U.S. practice and the size of committees, and the French Senate and the size of its committees, the names of their committees and so on. It is very informative and instructive.
Would it be agreed that we have the right to circulate it so honourable senators can also read it and get back to us as members of the committee?
Senator Cools: Senators need time to read it and think about it.
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Is there anything else to come before the committee at this time?
Senator Joyal: Do we have a meeting tomorrow?
The Chair: Yes, it is on the revision of the rules. Right now, only two senators have indicated they will be coming, so they will be phoning members' offices to see who is available and whether there are enough for the meeting. Right now only Senator Joyal and I have said we are coming. That is tomorrow, Wednesday, but there is a meeting planned on the rules, and we will see whether we have enough to have the meeting.
Senator Fraser: Is this a meeting of the full committee or the working group?
The Chair: It is the working group.
If there is nothing further before the committee, this meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)