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Offrir un contenu dans les deux langues officielles

Prière de noter que la Loi sur les langues officielles exige que toutes publications gouvernementales soient disponibles dans les deux langues officielles.

Afin de rencontrer certaines des exigences de cette loi, les procès-verbaux du Conseil seront dorénavant bilingues en ce qui a trait à la page couverture, la liste des membres et du personnel du CRTC participant à l'audience et la table des matières.

Toutefois, la publication susmentionnée est un compte rendu textuel des délibérations et, en tant que tel, est transcrite dans l'une ou l'autre des deux langues officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le participant à l'audience.

                   TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
             FOR THE CANADIAN RADIO-TELEVISION AND
                 TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

                TRANSCRIPTION DES AUDIENCES DU
                 CONSEIL DE LA RADIODIFFUSION
             ET DES TÉLÉCOMMUNICATIONS CANADIENNES

                       SUBJECT / SUJET:

                  PUBLIC CONSULTATION ON THE 
           CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION (CBC)/
                CONSULTATIONS PUBLIQUES SUR LA 
                  SOCIÉTÉ RADIO-CANADA (SRC)

HELD AT:                                TENUE À:

Crown Plaza                             Crown Plaza
Albert Room                             Salle Albert
350 St. Mary Avenue                     350, avenue St. Mary
Winnipeg, Manitoba                      Winnipeg (Manitoba)

March 9, 1999                           Le 9 mars 1999

tel: 613-521-0703         StenoTran         fax: 613-521-7668


Transcripts

In order to meet the requirements of the Official Languages
Act, transcripts of proceedings before the Commission will be
bilingual as to their covers, the listing of the CRTC members
and staff attending the public hearings, and the Table of
Contents.

However, the aforementioned publication is the recorded
verbatim transcript and, as such, is taped and transcribed in
either of the official languages, depending on the language
spoken by the participant at the public hearing.

Transcription

Afin de rencontrer les exigences de la Loi sur les langues
officielles, les procès-verbaux pour le Conseil seront
bilingues en ce qui a trait à la page couverture, la liste des
membres et du personnel du CRTC participant à l'audience
publique ainsi que la table des matières.

Toutefois, la publication susmentionnée est un compte rendu
textuel des délibérations et, en tant que tel, est enregistrée
et transcrite dans l'une ou l'autre des deux langues
officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le
participant à l'audience publique.

                          StenoTran

                 Canadian Radio-television and
                 Telecommunications Commission

              Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des
                télécommunications canadiennes

                  Transcript / Transcription

              Public Hearing / Audience publique

                  PUBLIC CONSULTATION ON THE 
           CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION (CBC)/
                CONSULTATIONS PUBLIQUES SUR LA 
                  SOCIÉTÉ RADIO-CANADA (SRC)

BEFORE / DEVANT:

Andrée Wylie                            Vice-Chairperson, Radio-
                                        television / Vice-
                                        présidente, Radiodiffusion

ALSO PRESENT / AUSSI PRÉSENTS:

Gary Krushen                            Director, Winnipeg Regional
                                        Office / Directeur
                                        régional, Winnipeg

HELD AT:                                TENUE À:

Crown Plaza                             Crown Plaza
Albert Room                             Salle Albert
350 St. Mary Avenue                     350, avenue St. Mary
Winnipeg, Manitoba                      Winnipeg (Manitoba)

March 9, 1999                           Le 9 mars 1999

                          StenoTran

                              ii

            TABLE OF CONTENTS / TABLE DES MATIÈRES

                                                          PAGE

Presentation by / Présentation par:

Ms Lesia Szwaluk                                             6
M. Christian Dandeneau et M. George Parastre                11
Mr. Jack Kowalchuk                                          18
Mr. Greg Lowe                                               24
Ms Gustine Wilton                                           27
M. Paul Ruest                                               34
M. Daniel Boucher                                           40
Mme Mona Audet                                              49
Ms Evelyn Downey                                            53
M. René Piché                                               60
Ms Anna Sudletsky                                           68
Mr. Alex Gardiner                                           69
Mr. Pat Carrabre                                            73
Mr. Frank Lawson                                            80
Mr. Richard Horne                                           87
Ms Bernice Baldwin                                          94
Ms Margaret Waterman                                       100
Ms Roberta Christianson                                    104
Ms Ann Loewen                                              110
Mr. Menno Klassen                                          114
Mr. Thomas Walker                                          116
Reverend Harry Lehotsky                                    121

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                              iii

            TABLE OF CONTENTS / TABLE DES MATIÈRES

                                                          PAGE

Presentation by / Présentation par:

Mr. Eric Pownall                                           126
Ms Melinda McCracken                                       132

Reply by / Réplique par:

M. René Fontaine                                           139

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                             1

 1                                          Winnipeg, Manitoba
 2     --- Upon commencing on Tuesday, March 9, 1999
 3        at 1300 / L'audience commence le mardi
 4        9 mars 1999 à 1300
 5  1                    THE CHAIRPERSON:  Good day, ladies
 6     and gentlemen, and welcome to this public consultation
 7     on the CBC.
 8  2                    LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Bonjour, mesdames et
 9     messieurs.  Bienvenue à cette consultation publique.
10  3                    My name is Andrée Wylie and I am the
11     CRTC's Vice-Chair, Broadcasting.
12  4                    Mon nom est Andrée Wylie et je suis
13     la Vice-présidente en radiodiffusion du CRTC.
14  5                    We are here to gather your views and
15     comments on CBC radio and television.  In your opinion,
16     how should the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation fulfil
17     its role in the coming years?
18  6                    The CBC is a national public service,
19     broadcasting in English as well as in French.  It plays
20     an important role in the Canadian broadcasting system. 
21     Today many elements are constantly being added to the
22     broadcasting system as new technologies multiply,
23     converge, open up new horizons and increasingly offer
24     new services.  In this context, we want to know what
25     are your needs and expectations as viewers and
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 1     listeners of the CBC.
 2  7                    Given that, it is very important that
 3     the Commission hears what you have to say.  We must not
 4     lose sight of the fact that the CRTC is a public
 5     organization that serves Canadian citizens.  In this
 6     capacity, we are responsible to you.  This is why my
 7     fellow Commissioners and myself find it vital to come
 8     and meet with you to discuss these issues and why we
 9     are holding this series of regional consultations, from
10     one end of the country to the other, in eleven Canadian
11     cities, from March the 9th to March the 18th.
12  8                    Ces consultations vous donnent
13     l'occasion de nous faire part de votre opinion sur le
14     rôle de Radio-Canada, le genre d'émissions qu'il vous
15     propose et l'orientation qu'il devrait se donner à la
16     veille du millénaire, aussi bien à l'échelle nationale
17     qu'aux échelles régionales et locales.
18  9                    Ces consultations se font dans
19     l'esprit d'établir avec vous un dialogue ouvert et
20     d'être à l'écoute de vos préoccupations.  Tous vos
21     commentaires feront partie du dossier public.  Il sera
22     lui-même ajouté à celui de l'audience publique qui
23     s'ouvrira à Hull le 25 mai prochain.
24  10                   At the upcoming hearing in Hull on
25     May 25th, the Commission will examine the CBC's
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 1     application for the renewal of its licences, including
 2     radio, television, specialty services, Newsworld and
 3     the Réseau de l'information.  You can also take part in
 4     that public hearing by sending your written comments to
 5     the CRTC.  If you wish to do so, please remember to
 6     refer to the specific licence renewals being examined
 7     when you file your comments.
 8  11                   Now I would like to come back to
 9     today's consultations.  Please allow me to introduce
10     the CRTC staff person who will be assisting us today,
11     Gary Krushen, the Director of our Winnipeg Regional
12     Office, who will act as the Secretary of this
13     consultation.
14  12                   Please feel free to call on him with
15     any questions you might have about the process today or
16     any other matter.
17  13                   Permettez-moi de vous présenter le
18     personnel du CRTC qui nous secondera.  Il s'agit de
19     M. Gary Krushen, le Directeur de notre bureau régional
20     à Winnipeg, qui agira comme secrétaire de cette
21     consultation publique.  N'hésitez pas à vous adresser à
22     lui si vous avez des questions concernant la marche à
23     suivre ou toute autre question.
24  14                   Pour que vous ayez tous l'occasion de
25     vous faire entendre, nous vous demandons de limiter
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 1     votre présentation à 10 minutes.  Ces consultations
 2     sont votre tribune à vous et nous voulons être à
 3     l'écoute du plus grand nombre possible d'intervenants. 
 4     Nous ne poserons pas de questions sauf si nous avons
 5     besoin de clarification.
 6  15                   So that you will have the opportunity
 7     to speak, we ask that you please limit your
 8     presentation to 10 minutes.  As these consultations are
 9     a forum designed especially for you and we want to
10     listen to as many participants as possible, we will not
11     ask any questions unless there is a need for
12     clarification.
13  16                   At the end of this session,
14     representatives from the local CBC stations will have a
15     chance to offer their views, as they are naturally very
16     interested by the issues we are discussing here today.
17  17                   Before we start, I would ask
18     Mr. Krushen to go over some of the housekeeping matters
19     regarding the conduct of this consultation.
20  18                   Avant de vous céder le micro, je
21     demanderais au secrétaire de l'audience, M. Krushen, de
22     vous indiquer la marche à suivre.  Je vous remercie.
23  19                   MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you
24     Commissioner Wylie.
25  20                   In a few moments I will be calling
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 1     the first 10 names of the list that I believe each of
 2     you received when you checked in and we will proceed in
 3     the order in which the names are on this sheet.
 4  21                   I would ask that when you commence
 5     your presentation to please remember to press the white
 6     button on the microphone so that the court reporter and
 7     translation people can easily pick up your voice.
 8  22                   If at the time when I call any
 9     particular name that person is not in the room we will
10     call that name again at the end of the listed agenda.
11  23                   For those of you who simply wish to
12     not make a presentation but may wish to make some
13     written comments, we have comment cards available at
14     the desk outside the room or you may have received it
15     when you came in here.  Please feel free to comment in
16     that fashion if you choose to you.
17  24                   One last housekeeping matter.  For
18     those who wish to use them, we have translation
19     receivers available at the back of the room.  You will
20     be asked for either your driver's licence or a major
21     credit card as a deposit.
22  25                   That completes my announcements.
23  26                   I would like to call the first 10
24     people.  Please seat yourself as you choose around the
25     table:  Lesia Szwaluk; Christian Dandeneau et George
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                             6

 1     Parastre; Jack Kowalchuk; Scott MacNeil; Greg Lowe;
 2     Gustine Wilton; Paul Ruest; Daniel Boucher; Mona Audet;
 3     Evelyn Downey.
 4  27                   THE CHAIRPERSON:  Good afternoon and
 5     welcome to you all.
 6                                                        1305
 7  28                   MR. KRUSHEN:  I would now like to ask
 8     Ms Lesia Szwaluk to commence her presentation.
 9     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
10  29                   MS SZWALUK:  Thank you.
11  30                   The Ukrainian Canadian Congress was
12     founded in 1970 with the exclusive goal of unifying and
13     co-ordinating efforts of various Ukrainian
14     organizations operating across Canada.
15  31                   The UCC represents the Ukrainian
16     community before the people, the Government of Canada;
17     promotes linkages with Ukraine; and identifies and
18     addresses the needs of the Ukrainian community in
19     Canada to ensure its continued existence and
20     development for the enhancement of Canada's
21     social-cultural fabric.
22  32                   The Ukrainian Canadian Congress
23     welcomes the decision of the CRTC to review the role of
24     the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, the
25     programming CBC offers, and the direction CBC should
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 1     take in the coming years, both at the national and
 2     regional levels.
 3  33                   Since the last CBC review, Canada has
 4     become a more culturally and linguistically diverse
 5     country.  Almost 80 per cent of the 1 million
 6     immigrants who arrived here through 1991 and 1996
 7     reported a mother tongue other than English or French.
 8  34                   A Canadian heritage and identity that
 9     is common to all must be respected and promoted. 
10     However, for the full and equitable participation of
11     Canada's ethnocultural communities in Canada's
12     mainstream, their cultural and social rights must be
13     preserved and enhanced.
14  35                   The policies.  Section 3(1)(d)(3) of
15     the Broadcasting Act states that:
16                            "The Canadian Broadcasting
17                            system should, through its
18                            programming and the employment
19                            opportunities arising out of its
20                            operations, serve the needs and
21                            interests and reflect the
22                            circumstances and aspirations of
23                            Canadian men, women and children
24                            including equal rights, a
25                            linguistic duality in a
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 1                            multicultural and multiracial
 2                            nature of Canada's society, and
 3                            a special place of aboriginal
 4                            peoples within the society." 
 5                            (As read)
 6  36                   CBC should be mirroring the full
 7     range of today's Canadian multicultural reality in its
 8     programming.  CBC must foster a society that
 9     recognizes, respects and reflects a diversity of
10     culture so that peoples of all backgrounds feel a sense
11     of belonging to a truly inclusive nation that is
12     Canada.  This is of greater fundamental concern today
13     than ever before in our history since 42 per cent of
14     Canada's population is neither of French or English
15     background.
16  37                   The CBC, more than any other
17     broadcaster, should focus on reflecting the full range
18     of Canada's multicultural experience in dramatic
19     productions, entertainment, news coverage and
20     documentary programming.
21  38                   News coverage should regularly focus
22     the community life and issues of importance to Canada's
23     diverse population and fairly report any important
24     community events and achievements.
25  39                   Future documentaries must examine
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 1     both the early and current attempts of our various
 2     ethnic communities to establish themselves in Canada.
 3  40                   Programming directed specifically to
 4     ethnocultural groups should reflect national, regional
 5     and local experiences and provide information about
 6     Canada.  It should serve as a link to the community
 7     while yet strengthens and unifies by informing
 8     listeners and viewers about the larger Canadian
 9     community of which they are part.
10  41                   The CBC should be required to air at
11     least 10 hours per week of ethnic broadcasting which
12     should be allocated to communities based on population,
13     demand and ability of the community to produce or
14     supply programming which contains 50 per cent Canadian
15     content.  This will result in heightening community
16     awareness of activities from coast to coast and the
17     promotion of greater understanding amongst Canada's
18     diverse population for which Canada will surely
19     benefit.
20  42                   Radio Canada International's
21     Ukrainian programming has a threefold function:  it
22     informs Ukrainians in eastern Europe about Canada and
23     its democratic way of life; it informs Ukrainians in
24     Canada about issues, events and achievements of the
25     Ukrainian Canadian community; and, it informs Canadians
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 1     about the major developments in Ukraine and eastern
 2     Europe.
 3  43                   RCI programs should be rebroadcast in
 4     Canada through the CBC's local AM and FM stations. 
 5     Recommendations and conclusions of the Ukrainian
 6     Canadian Congress strongly urges the CRTC to ensure
 7     that the CBC, more than any other broadcaster, focuses
 8     on reflecting the full range of Canada's multicultural
 9     experience and all its programming; two, the CBC
10     allocate at least 10 hours per week of ethnic
11     broadcasting; three, RCI programs be rebroadcast in
12     Canada through the CBC's local AM and FM stations; and,
13     four, the CBC adheres to the spirit of values
14     entrenched in the Broadcasting Act, the Canadian
15     Multiculturalism Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act,
16     and the Canadian Charter of Rights or Freedom, and the
17     creation of any programming.
18  44                   Thank you.
19  45                   THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you very
20     much, Ms Szwaluk.
21  46                   Mr. Krushen.
22                                                        1310
23  47                   MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
24     Commissioner Wylie.
25  48                   Maintenant, j'appelle M. Christian
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 1     Dandeneau et M. George Parastre.
 2     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
 3  49                   M. DANDENEAU:  Bon après-midi, Madame
 4     la Commissaire.  Je me nomme Christian Dandeneau.  Je
 5     suis membre du C.A. d'Oniric et je réside au Manitoba.
 6  50                   J'aimerais maintenant vous présenter
 7     George Parastre, membre du C.A. d'Oniric, qui vous fera
 8     une brève description de notre organisation.
 9  51                   M. PARASTRE:  Madame la Commissaire.
10  52                   Oniric, dont les lettres veulent dire
11     Organisme de nouvelles initiatives régionales en
12     information et communication, est un organisme
13     interprovincial à but non-lucratif de l'ouest canadien
14     qui existe depuis plus de trois ans.  Son conseil
15     d'administration est composé de professionnels du monde
16     des nouveaux médias et du secteur de l'éducation
17     provenant des diverses provinces de l'ouest ainsi que
18     du territoire que couvre Oniric et qui comprend aussi
19     le Yukon et les Territoires-du-nord-ouest.
20  53                   Tel que le décrit sa mission, Oniric
21     regroupe des intervenants dont le but commun est de
22     créer un environnement qui promouvoit l'entrepreneuriat
23     chez les francophones de l'ouest canadien dans le
24     domaines des médias numériques.  Oniric accomplit cette
25     mission en assumant le mandat de réaliser des activités
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 1     de recherche et de développement, d'assurer l'accès à
 2     des services d'appui de formation, en établissant des
 3     partenariats, en faisant de la sensibilisation et de la
 4     promotion.
 5  54                   Il est évident que pour les
 6     représentants d'Oniric, les enjeux du réseautage via
 7     l'internet sont trop nombreux pour que les intervenants
 8     francophones, que ce soit les écoles, les communautés
 9     et les institutions, ne s'y engagent pas énergiquement. 
10     Et c'est sur ce point même que je vais repasser la
11     parole à mon collègue Christian qui va vous présenter
12     notre mémoire plus formel.
13  55                   M. DANDENEAU:  Merci, George.
14  56                   Notre présentation devant vous
15     aujourd'hui dans le cadre d'audience en vue du
16     renouvellement de licence d'exploitation de la Société
17     Radio-Canada s'appuie sur l'importance que cette
18     Société de la couronne représente quand au
19     développement des communautés francophones et des
20     jeunes francophones de l'ouest canadien et des
21     territoires.
22  57                   Il est important de rappeler le rôle
23     essentiel que Radio-Canada a joué tout au long de son
24     histoire dans l'ouest dans le soutien au développement
25     des communautés francophones, que ce soit en
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 1     fournissant des services d'information, en produisant
 2     des programmes culturelles et en procurant aux
 3     francophones de ces régions un lieu d'expression et un
 4     outil de rassemblement.  Il faut également noter que la
 5     Société Radio-Canada continue de jouer ce rôle malgré
 6     les importantes réductions budgétaires qu'elle a subies
 7     dans les dernières années.
 8  58                   Il est essentiel que Radio-Canada
 9     continue de jouer ce rôle.  La Société doit aussi
10     s'assurer que notre réalité régionale trouve une place
11     sur l'ensemble du réseau, particulièrement à la télé,
12     sous forme de productions locales, documentaires et
13     autres, en partenariat avec le secteur privé.
14  59                   D'un intérêt plus spécifique pour
15     Oniric, à l'heure des médias numériques et alors qu'on
16     assiste à une convergence des médias, nous constatons
17     que la radio de la Société Radio-Canada s'engage avec
18     détermination dans le monde de l'internet où elle
19     occupe déjà une place remarquable.  Elle est le premier
20     réseau de radio francophone au monde qui diffuse en
21     continu sur l'internet.
22  60                   Dans un monde où les médias
23     numériques sont la voix du présent et de l'avenir, la
24     Société Radio-Canada dans l'ouest entend aussi élargir
25     ce mandat et devenir un partenaire communautaire dans
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 1     une intervention dont bénéficieront écoles et
 2     communautés francophones.
 3  61                   Si nous pouvons appuyer cette
 4     démarche, c'est que nos stratégies de développement
 5     reposent sur trois éléments principaux qui
 6     s'harmonisent avec la vision et le mandat élargi de
 7     Radio-Canada dans nos régions.
 8  62                   Nous voulons en effet, premièrement,
 9     privilégier la formation et l'éducation des jeunes de
10     nos provinces et territoires, particulièrement dans le
11     domaine des nouveaux médias, en vue d'assurer une
12     relève qui sera à même d'intervenir en région dans la
13     préparation d'un nouveau contenu et la mise en place de
14     technologies répondant aux besoins de nos communautés.
15  63                   Dans un premier temps, il s'agit de
16     développer chez les jeunes une compréhension des médias
17     et leur rôle dans notre société.  Mais il faut aussi
18     les familiariser avec les techniques spécifiques aux
19     médias numériques, particulièrement la radio, afin de
20     les inviter à produire pour leurs écoles, leurs
21     communautés et éventuellement au niveau national.
22  64                   Deuxièmement, fournir aux jeunes
23     entrepreneurs francophones de l'ouest des occasions de
24     travailler et de se perfectionner en français en
25     nouveaux médias dans un environnement professionnel
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 1     alors que les occasions d'emploi au sein des grandes
 2     institutions d'état deviennent de plus en plus
 3     limitées.
 4  65                   Ce sera aussi pour eux l'occasion de
 5     développer des produits dans les deux langues
 6     officielles du pays, et finalement, de permettre aux
 7     détenteurs de droit d'auteur du domaine culturel de
 8     diffuser ses oeuvres dans les nouveaux médias.
 9  66                   Aujourd'hui, la radio de Radio-Canada
10     veut jouer un rôle actif en partenariat avec d'autres
11     intervenants dans le soutien des communautés
12     francophones.  Certaines des initiatives déjà mises de
13     l'avant par Radio-Canada en ce qui concerne la
14     formation et l'éducation témoignent de cette vision et
15     de cet engagement.
16  67                   Ces initiatives visent
17     particulièrement un développement de la radio dans les
18     régions par la culture et l'information.  Ceci repose
19     sur la nouvelle présence des stations régionales de
20     radio sur le réseau d'internet.  Ainsi, Radio-Canada
21     veut utiliser les nouvelles technologies pour se
22     rapprocher des communautés.
23  68                   La production en région d'un CD-ROM
24     permettant l'accès et une utilisation profitable et
25     facile des contenus des sites de Radio-Canada par les
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 1     jeunes et le grand public contribuera à cet objectif.
 2  69                   Le fonds MicroRadio(ph) est aussi une
 3     initiative de Radio-Canada.  Ce projet vise la
 4     production de matériel destiné à la clientèle jeunesse
 5     et à la clientèle scolaire jusqu'au secondaire.
 6  70                   Radio-Canada veut aussi être associé
 7     à des expériences de perfectionnement en productions
 8     radiophoniques et en multimédias ici-même à
 9     St. Boniface, un programme destiné aux jeunes de
10     l'ouest.
11  71                   Radio-Canada veut également être
12     associé à des programmes de formation en productions
13     radiophoniques numériques pour les jeunes, une
14     formation qui pourrait faciliter d'autres initiatives
15     communautaires ou scolaires en radio.
16  72                   Il est essentiel de souligner le
17     leadership que le Canada joue dans le développement des
18     nouvelles technologies dans un monde francophone.  Les
19     initiatives régionales que nous avons décrites peuvent
20     contribuer à ce rôle de leadership et amener d'autres
21     importantes retombées pour le Canada et pour nos
22     régions dans ce domaine.  Il est toutefois important de
23     préciser les conditions au soutien que nous apportons à
24     ces initiatives.
25  73                   Malgré ce que l'on dit de la
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 1     révolution numérique, notamment qu'elle abolit les
 2     distances et qu'elle a un effet rassembleur, on
 3     pourrait être tenté de profiter des avantages de cette
 4     technologie pour gérer les démarches proposées de trop
 5     loin et donc de réduire la présence locale de
 6     Radio-Canada.  C'est le contraire qu'il faut faire.
 7  74                   L'enracinement de Radio-Canada dans
 8     les communautés et sa présence continue et renforcée
 9     dans nos régions sont indispensables si la Société veut
10     baser son intervention, telle qu'elle se doit, sur une
11     connaissance approfondie de sa spécificité, des
12     intérêts et des aspirations des francophones de
13     l'ouest.
14  75                   L'engagement des représentants de
15     Radio-Canada nous assure que les conditions ci-dessus
16     mentionnées seront remplies.  Donc, pour toutes les
17     raisons précédemment énoncées, c'est avec plaisir que
18     nous appuyons le renouvellement de la licence de la
19     Société Radio-Canada ici au Manitoba et naturellement
20     dans les autres régions de l'ouest canadien et les
21     territoires.
22  76                   Nous vous remercions de nous avoir
23     donner cette occasion de présenter notre point.  Merci.
24  77                   LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Nous vous remercions,
25     MM. Dandeneau et Parastre, pour votre présentation.
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 1  78                   Monsieur Krushen.
 2                                                        1320
 3  79                   MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
 4     Commissioner Wylie.
 5  80                   I would now like to call
 6     Mr. Jack Kowalchuk.
 7     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
 8  81                   MR. KOWALCHUK:  Thank you very much.
 9  82                   I live in a small farming town about
10     100 miles north of Winnipeg called Fisher Branch.  At
11     Fisher Branch we have the CBC tower which is
12     approximately a mile and a half from my house.
13  83                   The views that I'm saying today are
14     the views of being a viewer of CBC and a person that
15     listens to CBC radio quite often.
16  84                   To start the day off, I turn on the
17     TV to CBC because we -- okay, we just have two choices,
18     CBC and CTV.  CTV, half the time, the picture is not
19     very good -- very bad, very fuzzy.  CBC is quite well,
20     so we watch CBC quite often.
21  85                   However, being 100 miles north of
22     Winnipeg, I turn on the TV in the morning and the first
23     thing I see is Mykasou(ph) Morning, I hear bingo from
24     Thompson and then music from Churchill with pictures
25     from Churchill.  I'm quite disappointed in that.
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 1  86                   I go to work and come back about five
 2     o'clock, go downstairs, watch the kids, the kids are
 3     watching CBC Simpsons -- bad programming, bad timing,
 4     bad altogether.
 5  87                   However, CBC is not all that bad. 
 6     I'm just saying the view of the -- now, this is my day.
 7  88                   However, I do have a lot of time
 8     during the wintertime; I'm fairly busy in the
 9     summertime.  I like to watch CBC TV.  It's a good
10     network and CBC should keep up the good work.  However,
11     I think they are missing the viewpoint of the viewers. 
12     They have lost their touch in communicating with the
13     people that watch TV at all.
14  89                   Okay, Saturday night -- Hockey Night
15     in Canada, back-to-back, Hockey Night in Canada.  I
16     love hockey; my kids are in hockey.  Back-to-back night
17     Hockey Night in Canada.  It comes from where?  Toronto. 
18     Rename the CBC the TBC, the Toronto Broadcasting
19     Corporation.  I'm sick and tired of seeing stuff from
20     the east.  We don't get stuff here locally.
21  90                   When we had the Winnipeg Jets for a
22     hockey team we were trying to get the Jets to be on TV. 
23     We couldn't get them.  We couldn't even get the Jets
24     when they were playing away.  We got Toronto, Toronto,
25     Toronto, maybe Montreal and then they go to Vancouver.
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 1  91                   So I think you should look at that
 2     more often.  You should keep in touch with your
 3     viewers.
 4  92                   However, Sunday night comes along you
 5     have Walt Disney.  Fantastic.  You have some fantastic
 6     programs on there the kids like.  Wind on my Back and
 7     all those shows are great.  However, you bring in
 8     specials at the wrong time.  You brought the Junos,
 9     that's great, but three hours of it?  Come on, have a
10     heart.  Okay.  There is stuff that -- you know, figure
11     skating the whole week.  Too much.
12  93                   You put on too much stuff at one time
13     and it gets boring.  I get frustrated so I turn back to
14     CTV and they have figure skating, too, so I lose both
15     ways, you know.
16  94                   However, we up there believe that CBC
17     should become a multichannel network for the people
18     that don't have the privileges of living in the big
19     towns, in the big cities, and the big luxury visions
20     and watching cable TV and all that.
21  95                   I would like to recommend that CBC
22     definitely look into installing Newsworld, you know,
23     100 miles north of Winnipeg.  If I could get bingo in
24     Churchill I'm pretty sure that I could get Newsworld
25     100 miles north.  That should be a network must.
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 1  96                   Another network that they should
 2     provide is a sports network, totally sports.  When the
 3     world soccer was on I was frustrated.  I couldn't watch
 4     it.  I would have loved to have watched the world
 5     soccer games.  I would love to watch the world
 6     championships and a few of those games.  We had some
 7     Mexican students stay at our place and they were truly
 8     disappointed because they couldn't watch, like, world
 9     soccer.
10  97                   And the third feature would be keep
11     your regular channel but maybe provide an entertainment
12     channel, more of the movie channel, and stuff like
13     that.
14  98                   When CBC does have something on good
15     and nice to watch -- like, they do have good movies
16     occasionally -- they kill us with too much advertising: 
17     15 minutes of movie, 15 minutes of advertising;
18     15 minutes of movie, 20 minutes of advertising.  It's
19     terrible.
20  99                   You know, we have come to watch TV. 
21     We know it costs a lot of money.  We are paying for it
22     through our taxes.  We are supporting it by looking at
23     it.  Maybe the art of communication between the viewer
24     and CBC must be improved in the TV section.
25  100                  Another frustration I have with the
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 1     CBC is that when they were cutting back the funds to
 2     the corporation we had some fantastic local programs. 
 3     We had the Coleman and Company.  That was great.  It
 4     dealt with Manitobans working in Manitoba.  The first
 5     thing off the air.  The first thing when CBC slashed
 6     their budget, the first thing to go was the good local
 7     programs, and that's wrong.  People get mad and
 8     frustrated.  People aren't very happy.
 9  101                  So what do the people do?  They go
10     out and buy satellite dishes.  They go out and by sky
11     cable.  They invest their money to get alternative
12     programming because the CBC was not providing the
13     programs that they had which they enjoyed in the past. 
14     So they went out and bought something else.  So you are
15     losing a lot of people up north.  You are losing a lot
16     of people in the rural areas.
17  102                  Okay.  I would like to talk a little
18     bit about CBC radio.  It's good.
19  103                  CBC radio has maintained local
20     program.  This is good.  CBC radio has a fantastic
21     morning show, keep up the good work; and they have a
22     fantastic news show at six o'clock, keep up the good
23     work.  In between is okay.
24  104                  CBC radio has multi bands.  If you
25     want to listen to classical music you can; if you want
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 1     to listen to it in the north you could.  It's good. 
 2     There's no complaints of CBC radio.
 3  105                  Finally, I didn't come here to praise
 4     the CBC but I didn't come here to run them down.  What
 5     I would like to see the CBC do or the Commission -- I
 6     blame you guys, too.  I came down here thinking, "I'll
 7     come down here, see a bunch of guys from the east, big
 8     table, big books, a bunch a lawyers on one end, you
 9     guys on the other end, and I'll be sitting back there
10     facing you with the intention, which I truly believe
11     will happen, that this is a formality."  But how much
12     of this stuff will you really listen to?
13  106                  We believe that you have a platform
14     and these are the things you have to do.  We believe
15     that the government of today has given you a mandate to
16     spend money or save money -- I don't know -- but I
17     believe, and a lot of people back where I come from
18     believe, that things are going to happen to the CBC
19     which may downgrade it.  Don't downgrade it.
20  107                  Make CBC a competitive TV station
21     like you did with the radio station.  Look at multi
22     channels, look at different ways, but first of all talk
23     to your viewers.  I guess the main word I'm saying is
24     "communication".  You have lost the art of
25     communication and some people are getting frustrated.
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 1  108                  So, in closing, thank you very much
 2     for this short time to make a presentation.
 3  109                  Keep up the good work, keep up the
 4     good thoughts, but don't lose your viewers, okay?
 5  110                  Thank you.
 6  111                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 7     Mr. Kowalchuk.
 8  112                  As you can see, we got you to sit
 9     very close.  Thank you for your presentation.
10  113                  Mr. Krushen.
11                                                        1328
12  114                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
13     Commissioner Wylie.
14  115                  I would now like to call
15     Mr. Scott MacNeil.
16  116                  It doesn't appear that Mr. MacNeil is
17     in the room.
18  117                  Now I would like to call
19     Mr. Greg Lowe.
20     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
21  118                  MR. LOWE:  Hi.  Can you hear me?
22  119                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Yes, we can.
23  120                  MR. LOWE:  Okay.  Testing.
24  121                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Welcome.  Good
25     afternoon, Mr. Lowe.
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 1  122                  MR. LOWE:  I'm a composer, a
 2     musician.  I just have a couple of points to make and
 3     one very definite one.
 4  123                  First of all, the CBC is doing a
 5     great job as far as content of local performers and
 6     supporting artists in every genre.  I feel it is very
 7     evenly dispersed.
 8  124                  The specific issue that I would like
 9     to bring up is, as an orchestra composer, with the new
10     technology coming in, at the present time when you
11     actually get an orchestra piece recorded and broadcast,
12     which would cost the CBC well over $10,000 in musician
13     fees and recording, those pieces are broadcast twice
14     and then they are put on the shelf.  For the amount of
15     money it takes to commission a composer and to record
16     and broadcast the performance, it seems like two
17     broadcasts are very minimal and, also, I guess the
18     composer loses access to that recording and doesn't
19     have access to the master tapes.
20  125                  Recently there has been -- on smaller
21     projects, the CBC has been initiating or attempting to
22     initiate a project that when a musician does record
23     music there is a possibility of leasing the master tape
24     back and producing CDs and being able to sell them in
25     the -- if they can get distribution of some sort, and
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 1     at the same time the CBC would be getting an allotment
 2     back off of the sales giving them an opportunity
 3     perhaps to make some of their own money back, although
 4     in the case of orchestra music that is unlikely.
 5  126                  My point is, with the new technology
 6     coming in, there will be scheduled broadcasting but I
 7     assume there will also be the option for the public to
 8     select what radio programs they want to listen to
 9     without having to tune in at a specific time, which
10     means they would be downloading the program, which
11     means that they would be downloading an orchestra
12     piece.  My question is:  If the present situation is
13     that when you have a piece recorded and it can only be
14     broadcast twice, how is it going to sit in the digital
15     world where people can download it as many times as
16     they would like without some form of payment that would
17     go back to the CBC and in fact back to the musicians?
18  127                  This is obviously a question for the
19     AF of M and CBC to sort out.  But my concern is that it
20     might make it more difficult for an orchestral composer
21     to get work recorded because it will indeed become more
22     expensive.
23  128                  So that is basically the issue that I
24     wanted to bring up.
25  129                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
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 1     Mr. Lowe.
 2  130                  Your concern is in part the copyright
 3     issue?
 4  131                  MR. LOWE:  Yes.
 5  132                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you for your
 6     presentation.
 7  133                  Mr. Krushen.
 8                                                        1331
 9  134                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
10     Commissioner Wylie.
11  135                  I would now like to call
12     Ms Gustine Wilton.
13     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
14  136                  MS WILTON:  Thank you.
15  137                  I would like to begin by introducing
16     ourselves.  Beside me is Jeanne Ball and in the
17     audience Ivy MacNeil, Dorothy Donnelly and
18     Bruce MacNeil, and we are regular attenders of the
19     Wednesday Morning Meetings.
20  138                  Wednesday Morning Meetings have been
21     happening in Carmen, a town of 2,500, 70 kilometres
22     southwest of Winnipeg for almost 19 years.  Each week
23     we have a speaker, film or discussion and our topics
24     are wide ranging:  the arts; health; nature; science;
25     current issues; local, national and international
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 1     politics; et cetera.
 2  139                  At one of our recent meetings it
 3     became clear that in an audience of twenty-some, almost
 4     without exception, we were fans of the CBC.  It was
 5     this rather dramatic unanimity that suggested to us
 6     that we might have something to say at these hearings.
 7  140                  We are rural people and the CBC
 8     connects us to other communities and people in our
 9     province, our country and the world.  It helps to keep
10     us current in literature, music, visual arts, politics
11     and government, business, the law, justice, science. 
12     We are here to add our voices to those who believe that
13     a strong public broadcaster, well supported by public
14     funds, is essential to Canada continuing as a country
15     with a strong identity.
16  141                  On the whole, we believe the CBC
17     fulfils its role as a national public broadcaster very
18     well.  It brings the country and the world into our
19     homes.
20  142                  We appreciate the TV documentaries
21     and specials as well as regular programs such as The
22     Nature of Things, Market Place, The Health Show,
23     Witness, and The Fifth Estate.  Drama series like
24     DaVinci's Inquest and North of 60 are not afraid to be
25     obviously set in Canada.  Seeing ourselves reflected in
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 1     our media is essentially essential to our sense of who
 2     we are and to our sense of it being okay to be who we
 3     are.
 4  143                  For most of us, radio is an even more
 5     important medium than TV.  It entertains us and informs
 6     us.  It tells us what other Canadians are thinking and
 7     doing.  High quality programs such as Quirks and
 8     Quarks, The Vinyl Cafe, As It Happens, The Inside
 9     Track, Ideas, Between the Covers, and Tapestry simply
10     do not exist on commercial radio stations.
11  144                  Connecting Canadians to each other
12     and to our culture is an important role for a public
13     broadcaster and CBC has done this well in the past and
14     we hope will continue to do so in the future.
15  145                  The CBC has also been a leader in
16     having women and people from a variety of racial and
17     ethnic backgrounds among their on-air personnel.  We
18     applaud the CBC for this leadership.  We believe it
19     makes a positive contribution to our society by helping
20     to break down gender and racial stereotype.
21  146                  The CBC promotes the development of
22     Canadian talent in music and literature.  We see this
23     as an important function of a public broadcaster. 
24     Because they are not dependent on ratings, they can
25     afford to explore the new and the fringes.  They don't
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 1     have to stick to the already popular and to the safe.
 2  147                  Regional and national programming are
 3     both important services of the CBC.  If others can do
 4     local programming better, why do we always have our
 5     radios tuned to the CBC?
 6  148                  For us, in a rural community, the
 7     Radio Noon show is an important one and in fact there
 8     are many of our neighbours who may not be so hooked on
 9     the rest of CBC broadcasting but make a point of tuning
10     in to Radio Noon.  It is simply the most comprehensive
11     show of its kind.
12  149                  We would urge the CBC to keep this
13     rural content.  In spite of our relatively small
14     numbers, our urban neighbours need to stay in touch
15     with rural issues and people.  Farming and fishing,
16     after all, are our primary industries.  It would be a
17     great loss if more budget cuts squeeze the CBC further
18     and our regional broadcasting has to cover wider areas. 
19     It's important for us to be informed about the issues
20     arising for town councils and school boards in our
21     province, what's happening in local art galleries and
22     concert halls, what the local weather is and what's
23     happening in our provincial legislature.
24  150                  Many people in our group felt that
25     one recent change did not improve the local versus
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 1     national balance and would like to see 24 Hours Late
 2     Night restored to its 11:00 p.m. time slot instead of
 3     repeating The National at that time; 11:25 we felt is
 4     too late for local news.
 5  151                  Should programming provided by the
 6     CBC radio and television be different?
 7  152                  Of course it should.  Because it is
 8     supported by public funding, it does not have to be a
 9     slave to ratings.  It can provide service to more
10     specialized groups both in terms of interest and
11     geography.  A one-hour program of conversation with the
12     author of a literary work may not be to everyone's
13     taste, but Writers and Company is intensely interesting
14     to some and CBC should continue to meet such
15     specialized needs.
16  153                  By the same token, CBC has a
17     responsibility to report on and to isolated and remote
18     communities in Canada.  It's a service essential to our
19     sense of who we are as Canadians, and private
20     broadcasters are not likely to choose to provide it.
21  154                  Canadians also need international
22     news reported from a Canadian perspective.  While
23     private broadcasters may choose to hire other nationals
24     to do much of their overseas reporting, we believe the
25     CBC has a responsibility to provide Canadian coverage.
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 1  155                  There are of course things that we
 2     don't like about the CBC.  Many find the comedy of Air
 3     Farce and Comics coarse and questions if it has to be
 4     on at all could it not be at a later time.  Warnings
 5     alone are insufficient.
 6  156                  The events surrounding the APEC
 7     Conference in Vancouver have us wondering if there is
 8     enough distance between the government and the CBC.  Is
 9     there a danger of censorship?
10  157                  We think that advertisements during
11     the news are inappropriate and two hockey games on
12     Saturday night are at least one too many.
13  158                  Occasionally, the CBC has given us
14     more coverage of an event than we want.  Did we need
15     Peter Mansbridge reporting from London night after
16     night following Princess Diana's death; and, although
17     radio showed that it could provide a community service
18     of a different kind during the flood, in our opinion,
19     it continued past its usefulness.
20  159                  To this point I have been talking
21     about the CBC as a listener and a viewer.  A few times,
22     however, I have been closer to news events and those
23     experiences have raised concerns about how news is done
24     by various media outlets, including the CBC.
25  160                  Several years ago, Wednesday Morning
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 1     had a legislature reporter from the CBC as our guest. 
 2     In response to a question about Major Gas, this
 3     reporter said that the worst thing that had ever
 4     happened was that they hadn't foreseen the big Liberal
 5     gains in the recent provincial election.  It surprised
 6     me that she saw predicting the news as a media
 7     responsibility.
 8  161                  During the Meech Lake debate, I was
 9     registered as a presenter at the hearings in Winkler. 
10     A few days before the session a CBC producer phoned me
11     to ask about the content of my presentation.  She
12     indicated that they had covered the points I was making
13     after the Brandon hearings and that they were really
14     looking for the anti-Quebec story.  In fact, that story
15     didn't show up at Winkler.  In my opinion, another TV
16     station that sent a reporter and a camera operator to
17     the hearings and gave a summary of the presentations
18     did what had to be done.
19  162                  Some years ago my husband attended a
20     meeting called to discuss crisis in agriculture. 
21     Hundreds of farmers gathered in a community hall.  The
22     scene was of recent debate.  People expressed their
23     opinions calmly and articulately, all except one
24     hothead who was neither calm nor reasonable.  Who do
25     you think was interviewed for the news.
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 1  163                  I wonder if it's time that media
 2     people re-thought their man-bites-dog definition of
 3     news.  We consumers of news depend on the media to be
 4     our ears and eyes, and when they choose to report the
 5     exceptional rather than the event they do us a
 6     disservice.  We don't need the news predicted nor
 7     created nor distorted.  We can have confidence in a
 8     news service that reports, describes and analyzes.  CBC
 9     as a public broadcaster can and should be that news
10     service.
11  164                  Thank you.
12  165                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
13     Ms Wilton, for your presentation and for the presence
14     of the Wednesday Group on Tuesday.
15  166                  MS WILTON:  On Tuesday. 
16     (Off microphone...)
17  167                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Mr. Krushen.
18                                                        1342
19  168                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
20     Commissioner Wylie.
21  169                  Maintenant, j'appelle M. Paul Ruest.
22     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
23  170                  M. RUEST:  Bonjour, Madame la
24     Commissaire.
25  171                  Monsieur Krushen.
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 1  172                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Bonjour,
 2     Monsieur Ruest.
 3  173                  M. RUEST:  Je tiens à vous remercier
 4     pour la tenue de ces audiences portant sur l'avenir de
 5     la Société Radio-Canada.
 6  174                  Permettez-moi de me présenter ainsi
 7     que l'établissement que je représente.  Je suis Paul
 8     Ruest, Recteur du Collège universitaire de
 9     St. Boniface, université de langue française du
10     Manitoba et la seule université de langue française de
11     l'ouest canadien.  Les débuts de notre établissement
12     remontent à 1818 et notre histoire est intimement liée
13     à celle des francophones du Manitoba.
14  175                  Notre établissement accueille
15     aujourd'hui les diplômés des écoles secondaires
16     francophones et d'immersion française.  Il est
17     également devenu, au cours des dernières années, une
18     université d'accueil pour des étudiants et étudiantes
19     un peu partout à travers le monde qui choisissent de
20     venir étudier en français au Manitoba.
21  176                  Le Collège universitaire a contribué
22     à la formation de plusieurs des employés de la Société
23     Radio-Canada qui oeuvrent présentement ou qui ont
24     contribué dans le passé, soit ici-même à Winnipeg ou
25     ailleurs au Canada.  On n'a qu'à mentionner M. Henri
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 1     Bergeron comme diplômé du Collège.
 2  177                  Notre représentation portera sur deux
 3     points:  soit le principe d'un réseau public et son
 4     importance pour une population francophone vivant en
 5     milieu minoritaire.
 6  178                  La Société Radio-Canada a été soumise
 7     au cours des dernières années à un régime d'austérité
 8     tout en questionnant la nécessité-même d'un tel réseau
 9     public.  Certains éléments de la population canadienne
10     ont questionné le rôle de l'état dans le domaine de la
11     radio et télédiffusion à l'égard qu'il s'agissait là
12     d'une dépense publique inutile et d'un domaine
13     d'activité qui relève davantage de l'entreprise privée.
14  179                  Nous ne partageons pas ce point de
15     vue.  À notre avis, la Société Radio-Canada est une
16     institution qui contribue à l'identité canadienne et
17     qui répond à un mandat unique qui ne pourrait être
18     rencontré par une agence privée.  Son statut public
19     fait en sorte qu'elle doit répondre aux aspirations et
20     aux besoins des citoyens et citoyennes canadiennes
21     plutôt que des impératifs privés axés sur la quête des
22     profits financiers.
23  180                  Il est à noter que ce qui est
24     important n'est pas toujours rentable et ce qui est
25     rentable n'est pas toujours très important.
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 1  181                  C'est d'ailleurs ce statut
 2     particulier qui lui permet de véritablement refléter
 3     les valeurs canadiennes.  Elle possède ainsi
 4     l'autonomie et la latitude nécessaire pour offrir un
 5     service parfois pas très rentable mais important pour
 6     la population canadienne.
 7  182                  La Société Radio-Canada est reconnue
 8     pour la qualité de sa programmation, son sens de
 9     l'objectivité dans le partage de l'information et sa
10     présence partout au Canada... entre tous les Canadiens,
11     peu importe où ils demeurent.
12  183                  La programmation en français de la
13     Société Radio-Canada occupe une place non-négligeable
14     dans la vie des francophones qui vivent en milieu
15     minoritaire.  Nous savons tous que cette présence est
16     rarement rentable pour un diffuseur, mais elle est
17     doublement importante pour les populations isolées,
18     tant sur le plan géographique que linguistique et
19     culturel.
20  184                  Elle contribue au maintien et au
21     développement des communautés francophones, et dans ce
22     sens, elle aide au gouvernement du Canada à s'acquitter
23     de ses engagements, tel que prévu par la Loi sur les
24     Langues officielles.
25  185                  Aucune entreprise privée serait en
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 1     mesure de maintenir à long terme un tel engagement qui
 2     se veut aucunement rentable sur le plan financier. 
 3     D'ailleurs, on n'a qu'à penser à la réticence des
 4     câblodistributeurs à incorporer des chaînes françaises
 5     dans leur offre pour comprendre qu'il serait utopique
 6     de penser qu'une entreprise privée pourrait remplacer
 7     la Société Radio-Canada.
 8  186                  D'autre part, il faut noter que la
 9     SRC offre des services de nature parfois moins connue
10     ou moins appréciée par les personnes qui ne vivent pas
11     dans des milieux linguistiques minoritaires.  Il s'agit
12     de services que je qualifie d'ordre pédagogique.
13  187                  La SRC nous offre en permanence un
14     modèle de langue alors que la situation en milieu
15     minoritaire tend vers l'appauvrissement linguistique. 
16     Elle vient appuyer nos efforts pour l'apprentissage du
17     français tout en faisant connaître la francophonie
18     canadienne sous ses multiples facettes à ceux et celles
19     qui veulent la découvrir.
20  188                  Il s'agit là d'un puissant outil
21     pédagogique pour l'enseignement de la langue première
22     comme pour l'apprentissage de l'autre langue officielle
23     du Canada, et du même coup, cette présence quotidienne
24     au sein de notre vie contribue à un véritable
25     rapprochement entre les différentes communautés
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 1     francophones vivant au Canada.  Cette présence et ce
 2     service irremplaçable ne pourraient être assurés par
 3     une entreprise qui doit s'autofinancer ou qui n'est pas
 4     clairement mandatée de contribuer à la promotion de
 5     l'identité canadienne.
 6  189                  Il ne faudrait cependant pas
 7     conclure, à partir de mes commentaires, que nous sommes
 8     complètement enchantés des services offerts par la SRC. 
 9     Il est évident que sa programmation n'est pas en mesure
10     de répondre à tous les goûts à tout temps.
11  190                  Nous sommes d'ailleurs heureux de
12     constater que la SRC s'intéresse au domaine des réseaux
13     spécialisés d'information.  Il s'agit là de nouveaux
14     outils d'information dont nous saurons prendre
15     pleinement avantage et auxquels il nous fera plaisir de
16     contribuer.
17  191                  D'autre part, nous tenons à souligner
18     l'importance d'augmenter le nombre de productions en
19     région.  Celles-ci sont particulièrement utiles pour
20     promouvoir un véritable sens de l'identité canadienne. 
21     Elle permet de développer un sens d'appartenance des
22     différentes régions au réseau national tout en leur
23     donnant l'occasion de développer leurs compétences dans
24     le domaine de la production.  L'ère des nouvelles
25     technologies devrait grandement faciliter ce genre de
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 1     productions.
 2  192                  Enfin, il serait important que la SRC
 3     entreprenne une véritable campagne de promotion de sa
 4     programmation auprès des jeunes.  Il faudrait qu'elle
 5     se fasse mieux connaître auprès des écoles et des
 6     universités.  À notre avis, la SRC offre d'excellents
 7     produits qui ne sont pas suffisamment connus par le
 8     public en général et surtout par la jeunesse.
 9  193                  J'espère que ces quelques
10     commentaires vous auront été utiles et je profite de
11     l'occasion pour vous souhaiter des audiences
12     fructueuses qui contribueront à l'avancement de la
13     Société Radio-Canada.  Et soi-dit en passant, Madame la
14     Commissaire, cette initiative est extraordinaire.
15  194                  Je vous remercie.
16  195                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Nous vous remercions,
17     Monsieur Ruest, pour votre présentation.
18  196                  Monsieur Krushen.
19                                                        1349
20  197                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
21     Commissioner Wylie.
22  198                  Maintenant, j'appelle
23     M. Daniel Boucher.
24     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
25  199                  M. BOUCHER:  Bonjour, Madame la
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 1     Commissaire.  Bienvenue de nouveau au Manitoba.
 2  200                  Monsieur Krushen, bonjour.
 3  201                  Je m'appelle Daniel Boucher et je
 4     suis le Président et Directeur-général de la Société
 5     franco-manitobaine.
 6  202                  La Société franco-manitobaine est
 7     l'organisme porte-parole officiel de la communauté
 8     francophone du Manitoba.  Elle veille à
 9     l'épanouissement de cette communauté et revendique le
10     plein respect de ses droits.  De concert avec ses
11     partenaires, elle planifie et facilite le développement
12     global de la collectivité et en fait la promotion.
13  203                  Aujourd'hui, vous entendrez les
14     propos de la Société franco-manitobaine ainsi que
15     d'autres groupes de la communauté -- et vous en avez
16     déjà entendu quelques-uns -- en ce qui a trait au rôle
17     de Radio-Canada dans notre communauté et nos besoins en
18     tant que communauté de langues officielles.
19  204                  Je vous remercie de cette occasion de
20     faire valoir le point de vue sur la Société
21     Radio-Canada car tel que vous le constaterez dans notre
22     présentation, la Société Radio-Canada, tant la
23     télévision que la radio, joue un rôle primordial dans
24     notre communauté et dans l'ensemble de nos communautés,
25     et ce, d'un océan à l'autre.
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 1  205                  Vous conviendrez que la Société
 2     Radio-Canada a joué un rôle direct de développement
 3     dans notre communauté, et ce, depuis plusieurs années. 
 4     La Société Radio-Canada a été pour plusieurs de nos
 5     communautés et à plusieurs points de vue le seul
 6     véhicule de média francophone.
 7  206                  Ici au Manitoba, nous avons la chance
 8     d'accéder d'autres médias qui jouent des rôles
 9     particuliers dans notre communauté.  Je cite en exemple
10     la radio communautaire qui offre principalement un
11     service de divertissement et qui se démarque
12     considérablement du service de Radio-Canada, qui est
13     plutôt axé sur l'information.
14  207                  Nous sommes également bien servis par
15     notre journal hebdomadaire "La Liberté".  Nous avons
16     aussi accès à d'autres postes de télévision français
17     que nous apprécions énormément.  Il s'agit cependant
18     d'un produit que nous consommons beaucoup mais auquel
19     nous ne participons pas à la production.  L'avantage de
20     la SRC est que nous pouvons non seulement consommer le
21     produit mais aussi participer à sa production.
22  208                  La Société Radio-Canada, je réitère,
23     a participé au développement de la communauté
24     francophone du Manitoba.  Au niveau du poste de radio,
25     qui existe depuis plus de 50 ans, nous avons pu
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                             43

 1     développer une radio qui reflète la plupart des
 2     activités qui existent dans notre communauté.  Nous
 3     avons des émissions de qualité qui sont produites chez
 4     nous et qui renforcent l'identité de notre
 5     collectivité.
 6  209                  Si on écoute à la radio de
 7     Radio-Canada le matin, le midi et en fin d'après-midi,
 8     nous avons non seulement un bon portrait de ce qui se
 9     passe dans notre communauté mais aussi un bon portrait
10     national et même international.  L'accent est cependant
11     sur les activités locales et régionales car c'est ce
12     qui touche de près les gens.
13  210                  C'est ce sentiment d'identité qui
14     nous démarque des radios anglophones où on peut
15     entendre les mêmes nouvelles en anglais, mais le simple
16     fait de ne pas parler des gens de chez nous diminue le
17     lien entre notre vie comme francophone et l'histoire
18     racontée.
19  211                  En ce qui a trait à la télévision de
20     Radio-Canada, la télévision joue aussi un rôle
21     important dans le développement de notre communauté,
22     qu'il s'agisse du bulletin de nouvelles quotidien de
23     "Ce Soir" ou les émissions spéciales telles la "Télé
24     relais" qui est produit et diffusé en direct lors du
25     Festival du Voyageur.  Ce type de production locale
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 1     permet de faire connaître le visage de notre
 2     communauté.
 3  212                  De plus, Radio-Canada, depuis environ
 4     cinq ans, nous offre un produit qui fait connaître tous
 5     les Canadiens et Canadiennes d'expression française, et
 6     ce, par le Réseau de l'information.  À tous les jours,
 7     RDI produit des émissions provenant de chaque région du
 8     Canada et ces émissions nous permettent de mieux
 9     connaître les gens d'un peu partout au Canada.
10  213                  De plus, des émissions telles
11     "L'accent francophone" font en sorte que l'ensemble de
12     la francophonie se rejoignent et connaissent un peu
13     mieux les réalités de chacune de nos communautés
14     francophones.
15  214                  Malgré le fait que le Réseau de
16     l'information nous offre un produit de grande qualité,
17     il reste que plusieurs francophones vivant à
18     l'extérieur de la ville de Winnipeg et qui ne sont pas
19     câblés ne reçoivent pas le RDI.  Aussi, certains de
20     ceux qui sont branchés au câble ne sont pas
21     nécessairement abonnés à un câblodistributeur pouvant
22     émettre le signal.
23  215                  Sur ce point, nous considérons que la
24     Société Radio-Canada, qui n'avait pas demandé que la
25     diffusion du RDI soit obligatoire d'un océan à l'autre,
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 1     et le CRTC, qui ne l'a pas imposé dans l'octroi de sa
 2     licence, ont tous deux à revoir cette décision.
 3  216                  Nous considérons que le Canada est un
 4     pays bilingue d'un océan à l'autre.  Nous estimons
 5     qu'avec le nombre de francophones vivant à l'extérieur
 6     du Québec et qu'avec une population grandissante de
 7     diplômés d'écoles d'immersion qu'il est essentiel
 8     d'offrir des produits de Radio-Canada d'un océan à
 9     l'autre.
10  217                  La SRC, financée par le gouvernement
11     fédéral, a un mandat tout à fait spécifique et direct
12     qui touche les valeurs fondamentales du Canada. 
13     Rappelons que l'une de ces valeurs est que le Canada a
14     deux langues officielles.
15  218                  Cette valeur doit dépasser les
16     considérations financières.  Cette valeur doit aussi
17     dépasser la bonne volonté de certains
18     câblodistributeurs.  Le CRTC doit considérer les
19     valeurs fondamentales canadiennes lorsqu'il prend des
20     décisions sur la diffusion des produits.
21  219                  La Société Radio-Canada a un rôle
22     très particulier vis-à-vis nos communautés et une place
23     très particulière dans l'immensité du monde de la
24     radiodiffusion.  Nous voulons que la Société
25     Radio-Canada soit un véritable produit canadien conçu
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 1     pour les Canadiens et Canadiennes et par les Canadiens
 2     et Canadiennes.
 3  220                  Il doit y avoir un contenu
 4     pan-canadien produit par des gens provenant des
 5     communautés locales et régionales car la voix d'un
 6     francophone de l'ouest, malgré certaines similarités,
 7     est différente de la voix du francophone du Québec ou
 8     du Nouveau-Brunswick.  Nous avons tous un message
 9     unique à livrer même si nous partageons la langue et la
10     culture française.
11  221                  Il est aussi important de noter que
12     Radio-Canada doit jouer un rôle très important pour
13     appuyer les producteurs locaux qui font du travail de
14     qualité et qui souvent cherchent des partenaires avec
15     qui ils peuvent développer des projets ou à qui ils
16     peuvent vendre leurs produits.
17  222                  Dans un monde de plus de 200 canaux,
18     la Société Radio-Canada et le CBC doivent se démarquer
19     de façon très spécifique pour y trouver leur place. 
20     Qu'il s'agisse de nouvelles demandes qui ont été
21     avancées par la Société Radio-Canada telles InfoRadio,
22     le Réseau de la Culture, le Réseau des Arts, le Réseau
23     de l'Économie, et j'en passe, ce sont tous des produits
24     qui doivent refléter l'ensemble des communautés.  Pour
25     bien répondre à son mandat pan-canadien, la SRC doit
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 1     s'assurer que ses produits valorisent l'expertise
 2     locale.
 3  223                  Depuis quelques années, nous avons
 4     remarqué, surtout au niveau local, des changements au
 5     niveau du produit de la Société Radio-Canada.  Résultat
 6     immédiat des coupures:  nous avons beaucoup moins de
 7     productions locales et beaucoup moins de productions
 8     culturelles.
 9  224                  Les possibilités de développement de
10     produits locaux sont maintenant limitées.  Il est
11     essentiel de contrer cette tendance et d'augmenter le
12     nombre d'heures de productions locales.  Nous devons
13     aussi être diffusé de façon plus régulière à l'échelle
14     du pays, et ce, en plus du RDI.
15  225                  Nous convenons que beaucoup plus de
16     produits viennent et viendront toujours du Québec. 
17     D'ailleurs, la qualité des produits en provenance du
18     Québec est très impressionnante et nous ne voulons
19     certainement pas laisser l'impression que nous sommes
20     insatisfaits avec le produit.
21  226                  Cependant, nous cherchons une plus
22     grande voix à l'intérieur des produits de Radio-Canada. 
23     Le CRTC peut certainement jouer un rôle en demandant à
24     la Société Radio-Canada d'accentuer la production et la
25     diffusion d'émissions provenant des différentes régions
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 1     du pays.
 2  227                  Ici, au Manitoba, nous avons une
 3     histoire très riche et une communauté qui a la capacité
 4     de contribuer à l'essor de la Société Radio-Canada. 
 5     Que ce soit au niveau de la production, au niveau
 6     artistique, au niveau des émissions d'information, nous
 7     avons développé des équipes solides et des produits de
 8     qualité dignes d'exportation à l'échelle du pays.
 9  228                  Néanmoins, nous avons soif de
10     découvrir et d'apprendre et nous bénéficions des
11     produits venant d'autres communautés francophones à
12     l'extérieur du Québec.  Le RDI a fait des pas dans
13     cette direction et continue à y jouer un rôle important
14     mais il doit toujours accentuer la diffusion de
15     produits locaux.
16  229                  Nous croyons que la licence de
17     Radio-Canada doit être flexible pour permettre au
18     Réseau de l'information et à la Première chaîne de
19     faire des échanges sans que l'un ou l'autre soit
20     pénalisé.  Il est important que les échanges de
21     produits entre la Première chaîne et les chaînes
22     spécialisées, de même que les partenaires avec les
23     autres postes tels TV5, soient souples et dans le
24     meilleur intérêt du consommateur.
25  230                  J'aimerais terminer en vous disant
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 1     que nous considérons que la Société Radio-Canada a un
 2     mandat précis en ce qui a trait au reflet des valeurs
 3     canadiennes.  La Société Radio-Canada doit recevoir un
 4     financement adéquat pour refléter ces valeurs et pour
 5     promouvoir les richesses qui existent partout au
 6     Canada.
 7  231                  La Société Radio-Canada doit se
 8     développer de façon innovatrice tout en respectant sa
 9     concurrence privée.  Avec ces lignes directrices en
10     tête, la SRC sera assez forte pour contrer les
11     influences nord-américaines.
12  232                  Merci beaucoup.
13  233                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Nous vous remercions,
14     Monsieur Boucher.
15  234                  Monsieur Krushen.
16                                                        1400
17  235                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you, Madam Wylie.
18  236                  J'appelle maintenant Mme Mona Audet.
19     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
20  237                  MME AUDET:  Bonjour, Monsieur. 
21     Bonjour, Madame.
22  238                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Bonjour,
23     Madame Audet.
24  239                  MME AUDET:  Il me fait plaisir au nom
25     des membres du conseil d'administration et du personnel
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 1     de Pluri-Elles Manitoba Inc. de vous adresser la parole
 2     cet après-midi.
 3  240                  Permettez-moi d'abord d'expliquer qui
 4     nous sommes.  Pluri-Elles est un centre de femmes qui
 5     travaillent auprès des femmes francophones du Manitoba
 6     depuis 1982.  Pluri-Elles dessert les femmes vivant en
 7     régions rurales et urbaines et offre des services
 8     d'information et d'aiguillage, d'accompagnement, de
 9     counselling et d'orientation.
10  241                  En plus de ces services, plusieurs
11     programmes ont déjà été développés et offerts aux
12     femmes, tel qu'un programme de promotion de la santé et
13     un programme de réintégration sur le marché du travail.
14  242                  En plus des dossiers spécifiques à la
15     clientèle féminine, Pluri-Elles travaille dans les
16     programmes d'alphabétisation, de refrancisation et de
17     francisation, ainsi que le service d'aide à l'emploi,
18     qui sont offerts aux hommes et aux femmes.
19  243                  Le programme "Pour de meilleures
20     relations" est un programme qui vise directement les
21     adolescents et les adolescentes qui risquent de devenir
22     parents ou qui le sont déjà.
23  244                  En tant qu'organisme provincial,
24     Pluri-Elles croit important de travailler étroitement
25     avec les médias francophones afin de sensibiliser notre
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 1     communauté.  La Société Radio-Canada, tout
 2     particulièrement CBWFT et CKSV, travaille étroitement
 3     avec nous depuis plusieurs années.
 4  245                  En 1994, Radio-Canada a été
 5     partenaire avec Pluri-Elles dans la production d'une
 6     vidéo intitulée "Se prendre en main".  Ce projet,
 7     financé en partie par Santé Canada, nous a permis de
 8     sensibiliser les femmes de 50 ans et plus sur la
 9     préparation de la retraite, à la violence chez la femme
10     et la ménopause.  La vidéo a été distribuée à travers
11     les groupes de femmes au niveau pan-canadien.
12  246                  Encore cette année, grâce à une
13     subvention de Santé Canada et un partenariat avec le
14     Festival des vidéastes, Radio-Canada a été
15     collaborateur technique dans notre nouvelle production,
16     "Félicitations, I guess", un documentaire touchant la
17     grossesse chez les adolescentes et adolescents.  Le
18     lancement de cette vidéo aura lieu bientôt.
19  247                  De plus, la contribution de la
20     Société Radio-Canada est importante pour nous
21     francophones du Manitoba.  Tant à la radio qu'à la
22     télévision, les journalistes sont à l'écoute des
23     besoins et réalités francophones.  Nous pouvons
24     toujours compter sur la SRC pour parler de nos
25     activités, nos réalités, nos besoins, tant dans le
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 1     domaine d'éducation, d'économie, de santé, de services
 2     sociaux, culturels, et j'en passe.
 3  248                  Cependant, il est aussi important que
 4     des émissions provenant de chez nous soient aussi à
 5     l'antenne afin de garder la culture francophone vivante
 6     dans l'ouest et le nord canadien.  Les émissions venant
 7     de l'est du pays sont toujours très intéressantes mais
 8     nous sommes encore plus ravis lorsque les émissions
 9     sont tournées chez nous avec notre contenu.
10  249                  Nous croyons fermement que la Société
11     Radio-Canada doit continuer à être un partenaire dans
12     la communauté, tant dans la diffusion des nouvelles
13     locales, nationales et internationales, que partenaire
14     dans le développement de productions francophones du
15     Manitoba.
16  250                  En terminant, nous espérons de voir
17     la continuité du service en français de la Société
18     Radio-Canada tant à la radio qu'à la télévision.
19  251                  Je vous remercie beaucoup.
20  252                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Nous vous remercions,
21     Madame Audet.
22  253                  Monsieur Krushen.
23                                                        1404
24  254                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
25     Commissioner Wylie.
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 1  255                  I would now like to call
 2     Ms Evelyn Downey.
 3     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
 4  256                  MS DOWNEY:  Can you hear me?
 5  257                  I am making this presentation as a
 6     concerned and interested individual, a long-time
 7     listener of CBC, in fact, the roots go back I guess to
 8     the second world war and listening to Matthew
 9     Holten(ph), that's my father, tuning into a radio.  It
10     was a lifesaver during the time that I was raising my
11     own children.
12  258                  I preface my remarks by saying that
13     they are connected mainly with radio, both CBC One
14     and Two, as I seldom watch television.  The two
15     programs that I watch regularly are on PBS.
16  259                  I recently attempted to watch a
17     special program produced by our native community on
18     CBC TV and I was so frustrated with all of the
19     advertising I gave up.  I have tried other times and it
20     has been the same thing, so I find the amount of
21     advertising is anathema.
22  260                  Secondly, and maybe most important is
23     my deep concern about the cost-cutting measures that
24     are and have for some time been visited on CBC.  I
25     perceive this as being due to a current economic and
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 1     political climate in this country.  When I voted for
 2     the Liberals I voted for a change in the economic
 3     principles enunciated by Milton Freedman and the
 4     Chicago School of Economics that dominated the policies
 5     of the previous Conservative government, and much to my
 6     chagrin they continue under the present government. 
 7     That these policies are destroying the country can be
 8     seen all around us from the gutting of the CBC to the
 9     horrors that are occurring in our cities.
10  261                  Thirdly, the present push to
11     privatize the CBC is of very deep concern to me.  I
12     seldom listen to other stations, but I did so at the
13     beginning of the current technicians' strike.  I was
14     aghast to hear the diatribe against the CBC in general
15     and against the striking technicians in particular. 
16     The whole tenor of the program, both from the host of
17     the program and for many of those who called in,
18     reminded me of what might have been heard in pre-war
19     Nazi Germany.
20  262                  The host of the show was against
21     unions, pinkos and communists ad nauseam.  He was
22     forcefully stating that the private stations could take
23     over any programs that the CBC does and do them equally
24     well.  It is axiomatic that the bottom line of business
25     is profit, or so I have been informed by people
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 1     knowledgeable in the business world.
 2  263                  It is my understanding that a man by
 3     the name of Tom d'Aquino is a focal person pushing the
 4     present government with governmental policies.  I would
 5     like to hear from him and I think it would be of great
 6     interest to have him interviewed on CBC.
 7  264                  Fourthly, I am deeply concerned about
 8     the scaling back of our foreign news bureaus.  It is
 9     extremely important that we have a balanced news
10     coverage.
11  265                  Fifthly, I cannot comment on the
12     issues of the technicians' strike and a threatened
13     strike by the reporters, editors, producers and
14     anchors.  These issues I understand have to do with
15     wages, job description and workloads.  We have had
16     insufficient information on which to base any informed
17     comment on this issue and I'm concerned that the CBC
18     has not done something about that.
19  266                  Sixthly, with regard to the issue of
20     reliance on commercials on TV, they are one of the
21     reasons that I seldom watch TV, and I do hope that
22     commercials will not be allowed on CBC radio.  Surely,
23     there must be a right for people not to have to be
24     bombarded by commercials.
25  267                  Seventh, the issue of the
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 1     arm's-length relationship of the Crown Corporation from
 2     the government and from political pressures to me is
 3     highly important for the objectivity of the news that
 4     we receive.  If we wish to preserve democracy, we need
 5     to be wary of any form of dictatorship.
 6  268                  Eighth, the need for stable
 7     year-to-year funding for CBC is vital to maintain the
 8     integrity of our public broadcasting system.
 9  269                  Ninth, CBC programming is the envy of
10     our neighbours to the south.  One only needs to tune
11     into the radio to hear the number of listeners that
12     tune in to CBC from all areas of the states, north,
13     south and from states as far away as California.  I
14     personally visited a number of areas in the United
15     States and have been unable to tune into anything but
16     pap.
17  270                  With regard to the issues to be
18     addressed directly -- the role of the CBC.
19  271                  Firstly, our public services are
20     under assault in this climate of globalization.  I see
21     CBC as being the preeminent national institution for
22     maintaining our Canadian identity and to keep the
23     electorate informed on both national and local issues. 
24     Without an informed citizenry democracy is lost.
25  272                  I would refer, for example, to the
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 1     Massey Lecture Series and in particular to the writings
 2     of one of our Canadian scholars, John Ralston Saul.  I
 3     think it is crucial that this type of programming
 4     continue.
 5  273                  As far as the programming is
 6     concerned, I would like to request a continuation of
 7     such programs as Ideas with Lister Sinclair, Writers
 8     and Company with Eleanor Wachtel(ph), Quirks and
 9     Quarks, The House, This Morning, As It Happens, and The
10     Royal Canadian Air Farce, and of course the regular
11     news.
12  274                  I sorrily miss the depth and breadth
13     of Peter Gzowski, of the gutting of CBC Sunday Morning,
14     and my Sunday morning church service with
15     Clyde Gilmor(ph).
16  275                  I enjoy The Opera and programs The
17     Classical Vote(ph) and Music from All Parts of the
18     World.  I must say I intensely dislike much of the
19     modern popular music and see it intruding more and
20     more.  I would like to see CBC balance this type of
21     music especially, for example, on Saturday evenings
22     between CBC One and Two, so that people might have a
23     choice.  Teenagers are not the only ones who at times
24     stay in on a Saturday evening.
25  276                  I have just once tuned into the
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 1     overseas broadcast after twelve o'clock in the
 2     evening -- during the night and I was just wondering if
 3     it might be possible to hear more of that during the
 4     day when those of us that have normal hours could
 5     perhaps listen to it.
 6  277                  I think it is vitally important that
 7     we have more coverage on the current crisis in -- and
 8     here I am talking about in-depth coverage -- on the
 9     current health care crisis and on the breakdown that is
10     occurring in our society.  I think we see it
11     drastically occurring in our core area in Winnipeg and
12     I think there needs to be an in-depth examination of
13     what is producing this type of breakdown and an
14     encouragement of programs to try to do something about
15     it.
16  278                  As far as the direction, further
17     direction as far as the CBC, I really can't comment
18     further other than to say that to retain a functional
19     and vibrant democracy, I see CBC as being crucially
20     important.
21  279                  That is the end of my presentation. 
22     I would like to thank you for holding the consultations
23     with the public.  I think it is very important and to
24     thank you for hearing me.
25  280                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  We thank you,
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 1     Ms Downey.
 2  281                  This will conclude the presentations
 3     of the first group of registrants.
 4  282                  We will take a 15-minute break and
 5     resume with the next group.
 6  283                  Alors, nous reviendrons dans 15
 7     minutes.  Maintenant, je vous rappelle à tous qu'il y
 8     aura une transcription d'un procès-verbal de ce qui se
 9     passe aujourd'hui qui fera partie du dossier public du
10     renouvellement.
11  284                  I remind you all that your
12     presentations have been transcribed and will become
13     part of the renewal file.
14  285                  We thank you very much for taking the
15     time to come and see us.
16     --- Short recess at 1412 / Courte suspension à 1412
17     --- Upon resuming at 1432 / Reprise à 1432
18  286                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  À l'ordre, s'il vous
19     plaît.  Order please.
20  287                  Mr. Krushen, would you please call
21     the next group of presenters.
22  288                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
23     Commissioner Wylie.
24  289                  At this point I will call all of the
25     remaining registered presenters.  If you would please
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 1     come up to the table:  Mr. Kevin Miller; René Piché;
 2     Anna Sudletsky; Alex Gardiner; Pat Carrabre; Richard
 3     Horne; Raymond Theberge; Leo Robert; Mariette Mulaire;
 4     Eric Pownall; Len Soltis; Frank Lawson; Bernice
 5     Baldwin; Margaret Waterman; and Roberta Christianson.
 6     --- Short pause / Courte pause
 7  290                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  We welcome you all. 
 8     Bienvenue à tous.
 9  291                  Mr. Krushen, please.
10  292                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
11     Commissioner Wylie.
12  293                  I don't believe Mr. Miller is here.
13  294                  Mr. Kevin Miller, are you at the
14     table?  No.
15  295                  Maintenant, j'appelle René Piché.
16  296                  Monsieur Piché.
17                                                        1435
18  297                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Bonjour,
19     Monsieur Piché.  Oui, c'est ça, vous avez besoin de
20     votre micro.
21  298                  M. PICHÉ:  Je parle très fort mais...
22  299                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Il s'agit de faire la
23     transcription et l'interprétation.  Allez-y.
24     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
25  300                  M. PICHÉ:  J'aimerais tout d'abord
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 1     vous remercier de nous offrir l'occasion d'exprimer nos
 2     propos sur l'importance qu'a la Société Radio-Canada
 3     pour la collectivité francophone du Manitoba.
 4  301                  Je m'appelle René Piché.  Je suis
 5     Président fondateur de la Société des communications du
 6     Manitoba et m'accompagnent M. Alain Boucher, Directeur
 7     général du Centre culturel franco-manitobain ainsi que
 8     Guy Noël, Directeur de l'Ensemble folklorique de la
 9     Rivière Rouge.
10  302                  Cette présentation est faite aussi au
11     nom du Cercle Molière, la plus ancienne troupe de
12     théâtre du Canada français et du Festival du Voyageur,
13     la fête d'hiver la plus importante de l'ouest canadien.
14  303                  La Société Radio-Canada est depuis
15     l'extension pan-canadienne de son réseau de
16     télécommunications, à titre de société d'état et de par
17     son mandat, l'allié naturel des communautés
18     minoritaires de langue officielle française.
19  304                  Bien que nous accueillons volontiers
20     d'autres chaînes télévisuelles indépendantes de langue
21     française sur la scène nationale, nos communautés
22     mettent toujours leurs espoirs dans cette société
23     d'état qui a comme mandat de présenter aux autres
24     Canadiens et Canadiennes leur réalité sur les ondes et
25     à l'écran ainsi que de les informer sur les événements
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 1     pertinents dans leur propre localité.
 2  305                  De fait, Radio-Canada est à plusieurs
 3     égards, la radio particulièrement, un intervenant
 4     socio-culturel actif au Manitoba français grâce à ses
 5     émissions locales réalisées avec des talents d'ici,
 6     émissions qui ont été exportées avec succès dans
 7     d'autres coins du pays.
 8  306                  Un an environ avant l'annonce des
 9     réductions budgétaires imposées par le gouvernement
10     fédéral, le CRTC avait répondu positivement à une
11     demande conjointe et très remarqué des communautés
12     francophones de l'ouest canadien en exigeant comme
13     condition de renouvellement des licences que la Société
14     Radio-Canada accorde une plus grande place à la
15     production régionale.
16  307                  Cette dernière, après consultations
17     intenses à la grandeur du pays, avait développé un plan
18     pluriannuel imposant qui avait su satisfaire les
19     demandes.  Malheureusement, sauf pour la radio, ces
20     plans restèrent sur les tablettes de Radio-Canada dès
21     que les restrictions furent imposées.  Des émissions
22     disparurent et même les émissions d'information
23     subirent des changements.
24  308                  Certes, la création de RDI a permis
25     la production d'une émission de nouvelles et
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 1     d'information quotidiennes importante sur les réalités
 2     pertinentes de la francophonie de l'ouest. 
 3     Malheureusement, peu de gens d'ici la regardent
 4     puisqu'elle est diffusée l'après-midi.
 5  309                  Avec les réductions budgétaires, nous
 6     avons perdu à la télévision la majorité de nos
 7     émissions artistiques et culturelles et bien que nous
 8     accueillons avec empressement la proposition de créer
 9     de nouvelles chaînes spécialisées à visée culturelle,
10     économique et historique, nous voulons que la chaîne
11     générale fasse une plus grande place à nos productions
12     afin qu'une population canadienne plus large puisse
13     être exposée à nos réalités et à notre vision des
14     choses.
15  310                  La Société Radio-Canada,
16     particulièrement la télévision, doit encourager
17     davantage la production locale ou régionale dans toutes
18     les régions du pays pour améliorer la pertinence de son
19     contenu canadien afin que celui-ci soit un vrai reflet
20     du Canada et non seulement de Montréal.
21  311                  Les francophones du Manitoba ne
22     veulent pas seulement être des auditeurs de
23     Radio-Canada mais ils veulent y participer en tant que
24     créateurs et producteurs.
25  312                  Il est vrai que les réductions
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 1     budgétaires gouvernementales des dernières années ont
 2     motivé la Société Radio-Canada à s'allier avec des
 3     producteurs indépendants de diverses régions du Canada
 4     pour créer un contenu qui reflète mieux la réalité
 5     canadienne.
 6  313                  Une entente signée entre la Société
 7     des communications du Manitoba et la Société
 8     Radio-Canada permet à nos producteurs d'accéder à des
 9     licences de diffusion et, par le fait même, d'accéder
10     aux investisseurs tels Téléfilm Canada et le fonds des
11     câblodistributeurs, mettant par le fait même nos
12     producteurs sur un même pied d'égalité que les autres
13     au Canada.
14  314                  Nous pensons par contre que la
15     Société Radio-Canada devrait manifester plus de
16     générosité financière et travailler de très près avec
17     les producteurs francophones du Manitoba et de l'ouest
18     afin de planifier avec eux une production accrue de
19     contenu spécifique et diversifié sur une base
20     pluriannuelle.  La création de chaînes spécialisées
21     rendrait ceci impératif.
22  315                  Nous croyons aussi que la Société
23     doit donner plus de discrétion d'ordre décisionnel
24     qu'elle ne le fait aux directeurs régionaux.  De même,
25     elle devrait cesser de penser que des fonds alloués
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 1     pour la production régionale, et ceci va aussi bien
 2     pour les régions du Québec, porte préjudice aux
 3     producteurs de la métropole montréalaise.
 4  316                  Sachez qu'au cours des quatre
 5     prochaines années, la Société des communications aura
 6     consacré 1 265 million à la formation et au
 7     perfectionnement professionnel des équipes de
 8     production francophones de l'ouest afin d'assurer la
 9     qualité des productions locales et régionales.
10  317                  Nous souhaitons que les responsables
11     du Réseau à Montréal cessent de caser les producteurs
12     hors Québec dans le cadre, pour ne pas dire le carcan,
13     de l'identité culturelle minoritaire.  Ils sont
14     capables aussi de tourner des reportages ou de réaliser
15     des émissions sur des thèmes universels.
16  318                  À l'heure actuelle, deux consortiums
17     de producteurs sont activement engagés dans des
18     productions.  Un partenariat entre trois producteurs
19     hors Québec en provenance de l'Acadie, de l'Ontario et
20     du Manitoba participe à la création de neuf
21     documentaires dans un cadre de premières oeuvres.  Un
22     autre partenariat entre ces mêmes producteurs et deux
23     autres du Québec ont débuté le processus de fabrication
24     de documentaires d'une heure sur la francophonie
25     canadienne.
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 1  319                  Quant à la radio française de
 2     Radio-Canada, permettez-nous d'abord de vous dire
 3     comment nous apprécions le travail de notre station
 4     CKSV, qui se fait remarquer au niveau national pour ses
 5     initiatives heureuses.  Au-delà des actualités toujours
 6     très appréciées et bien présentées, cette équipe
 7     participe vraiment au développement de la communauté.
 8  320                  Au niveau culturel, CKSV est un
 9     partenaire important et réclame plusieurs initiatives. 
10     Nous n'avons qu'à penser à son implication en tant que
11     partenaire dans la série "En Éclosion", au Gala
12     manitobain de la chanson, au Festival du Voyageur, au
13     Salon du livre français, aux productions de séries
14     d'émissions telles "Les petites oreilles" et "Contes du
15     monde" et j'en passe.
16  321                  Toutes ces activités auxquelles
17     participe CKSV sont des occasions de développement et
18     de formation pour nos artistes.  Cette participation au
19     niveau de la communauté permet une diffusion du produit
20     culturel franco-manitobain et parfois, mais pas encore
21     assez souvent, au régional et au national.
22  322                  Nous désirons une diffusion qui
23     dépasse les frontières du Manitoba pour nous faire
24     connaître partout au pays.  L'avènement de la
25     numérisation des nouvelles technologies va permettre
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 1     d'autres collaborations.  Déjà, CKSV et le Collège
 2     universitaire de St. Boniface collaborent dans un
 3     projet de cours de maîtrise en études canadiennes. 
 4     CKSV va produire deux séries d'émissions à contenu
 5     historique qui serviront d'appui à ce cours tout en
 6     étant l'objet d'une radiodiffusion.
 7  323                  Nous apprécions la création du fonds
 8     national MicroRadio pour la production de contenu et
 9     l'apprentissage de la langue par les jeunes.  De plus,
10     CKSV va créer un CD-ROM à visée éducative qui va
11     l'ancrer davantage dans le milieu de la jeunesse.  Son
12     site internet, réalisé par la Société Oniric et Les
13     jeunes entrepreneurs francophones du Manitoba fait sa
14     gloire au sein de la Société.
15  324                  Enfin, permettez-nous de réitérer
16     notre appui à la Société Radio-Canada que nous croyons
17     être un outil essentiel au développement de nos
18     communautés.
19  325                  Grâce à une diffusion accrue de nos
20     productions et de nos réalités au niveau national ainsi
21     qu'à une collaboration plus intensive et systématique
22     avec nos producteurs indépendants, nous sommes
23     confiants que la Société Radio-Canada répondra de plus
24     en plus aux besoins de la population canadienne de
25     langue officielle française.
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 1  326                  Merci de nous avoir entendu.
 2  327                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Nous vous remercions,
 3     Monsieur Piché, et saluez M. Boucher pour nous.
 4  328                  M. PICHÉ:  Merci.
 5  329                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Monsieur Krushen.
 6                                                        1445
 7  330                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you, Madam Wylie.
 8  331                  Is Ms Anna Sudletsky with us? 
 9     Ms Sudletsky, please.
10     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
11  332                  MS SUDLETSKY:  Good afternoon,
12     Madam Wylie.
13  333                  I speak primarily as a listener and a
14     fan of CBC radio although I feel some of my comments
15     apply to the TV as well.
16  334                  The CBC's role as a national public
17     broadcaster should continue into the new millennium as
18     it has in the past been our Canadian voice promoting
19     Canadian artists and giving every Canadian the
20     opportunity to hear and see them.
21  335                  The CBC reaches out regionally by
22     producing programs across Canada.  Although my
23     favourite program may originate in Vancouver, I like
24     the fact that talented, knowledgeable people can work
25     in their field in Winnipeg as part of the voice of
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 1     Canada.
 2  336                  The programming provided by the CBC
 3     should be different from other broadcasters.  It should
 4     continue offering Canadians quality non-commercialized
 5     programs promoting Canadian arts and artists presented
 6     to us by skilled, talented broadcasters who in the past
 7     have become revered household names such as
 8     Foster Hewitt, Clyde Gilmor, Peter Gzowski, and
 9     continued in the present by Shelagh Rogers, Stuart
10     MacLean(ph), Jurgen Goth(ph), Micheal Enright(ph), and
11     Avril Benoit(ph).
12  337                  This national treasure should be
13     nurtured and preserved for the next generation when
14     they recognize this is our voice, it speaks to us and
15     for us as Canadians, or we may just wake up one day and
16     realize what we are listening to is the voice of
17     America.
18  338                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
19     Ms Sudletsky.
20  339                  Mr. Krushen.
21                                                        1448
22  340                  MR. KRUSHEN:  I would now like to
23     call Mr. Alex Gardiner.
24     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
25  341                  MR. GARDINER:  Thank you very much
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 1     and thank you for this opportunity to speak to the
 2     CRTC.
 3  342                  In my day-to-day life I'm the General
 4     Manager of the National Sports Centre Manitoba.  We are
 5     a relatively new organization that supports Manitoba's
 6     best athletes and coaches in their preparation for
 7     national/international competition.  We are part of a
 8     network of seven national centres across the country
 9     who are all designed to do the same thing, to help
10     Canadians, young Canadians, athletes compete with the
11     best in the world.
12  343                  Although my focus today will be on
13     what we term amateur sport, I would like to begin with
14     some general comments about the CBC as a private
15     citizen.
16  344                  How well does the CBC fulfil its role
17     as the national public broadcaster?  I asked myself the
18     question:  Why do I turn on CBC radio every morning in
19     my car and why do I watch the Late Night News on CBC
20     and why do I, whenever I do turn on television, tend to
21     drift towards Channel 2?  Where else do you find the
22     diversity of programming?
23  345                  I remember very fondly driving
24     through the Ontario countryside one summer and
25     listening to a story on CBC radio about a rural Alberta
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 1     surgeon who also happened to suffer from Tourette's
 2     Syndrome and how he got on with his life, and then that
 3     same evening I was able to watch This Hour Has 22
 4     Minutes and some wonderful sport programming as well. 
 5     Not only are they diverse, they are timely and they are
 6     thorough and they are creative in most of the work that
 7     they do.
 8  346                  Should the programming provided by
 9     CBC Radio and television be different?
10  347                  Yes, I think it should be.  I think
11     we need to tell as many Canadian stories as we can and
12     I think we need to present the Canadian perspective on
13     global issues.
14  348                  A special role for CBC is they
15     continue to strive and be supported as leaders in
16     broadcasting, not just in Canada but throughout the
17     world.  They need to be encouraged as innovators and
18     risk takers and they need to be supported as they
19     achieve an excellence that they are recognized for.
20  349                  I want to speak very, very briefly
21     about sport and amateur sport.  I will leave Hockey
22     Night in Canada alone, although I do enjoy exploring it
23     for Ron MacLean's puns, two broadcasts on a Saturday
24     seem to be too much for most people.
25  350                  Amateur sport tells stories that
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 1     bring communities together in the most compelling of
 2     ways.  As an illustration, I had the great fortune of
 3     being in Atlanta at the 1996 Olympics.  At that point,
 4     I was working for Athletics Canada Track and Field
 5     Association, and people envied me that I had a position
 6     on the finish line, at Donovan Bailey's wonderful
 7     100-metre victory and the men's relay victory.
 8  351                  It certainly was tremendous, but my
 9     first thought was:  Where is the replay; where is the
10     commentary; where is the in-depth profiles that CBC
11     provides?  I was at loss without that.  When I got back
12     to Ottawa, where I was living at the time, I asked
13     people what they were doing on that day.  They said,
14     "Well, we were out at our cottage, but the minute those
15     races were won there were parties that erupted and a
16     group of us went into a television store, we were
17     shopping in the mall."
18  352                  What point I'm bringing out right now
19     is that stories like this are national and
20     international, however, they deliver strong messages
21     and they really certainly bind communities together.  I
22     don't think there is any greater cultural glue than
23     great stories in sport.  The CBC network does a
24     first-rate job in describing amateur sport.
25  353                  I certainly urge the CBC to continue
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 1     their excellence in amateur sport coverage and would
 2     also urge them to increase their coverage of all sport
 3     across the country.  I'm a big fan as you can see and I
 4     think they have done an absolutely wonderful job.
 5  354                  Thank you very much.
 6  355                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 7     Mr. Gardiner.
 8  356                  Mr. Krushen.
 9                                                        1450
10  357                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
11     Commissioner Wylie.
12  358                  I would now like to call
13     Mr. Pat Carrabre.
14     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
15  359                  MR. CARRABRE:  Thank you.
16  360                  I'm here today with a variety of hats
17     on.  I'm the Academic Vice-President at Brandon
18     University.  I'm a composer.  I have been an associate
19     composer with the Winnipeg Symphony for the last four
20     seasons.  I'm currently Vice-President of the Canadian
21     League of Composers and I'm also an avid listener of
22     CBC.  I have also been a guest host and commentator on
23     the corporation as well.
24  361                  CBC is an important and vital part of
25     our Canadian culture.  It's one of the most important
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 1     venues for the dissemination of Canadian music, and I'm
 2     speaking specifically about what is frequently called
 3     concert music or classical music.  It's part of an
 4     infrastructure that supports a very diffuse culture
 5     across this country that is not well co-ordinated
 6     amongst the various partners.
 7  362                  There is the Canada Arts Council and
 8     provincial arts councils, there are Canadian orchestras
 9     and other professional performing organizations, there
10     are the universities that train musicians and the
11     conservatoire, there are individual performers and
12     composers and there is CBC and other broadcasters.
13  363                  So how does the CBC fulfil its role? 
14     It is the component that supports the making of music
15     and its dissemination across the country.  It supports
16     access.  It allows you, no matter what part of the
17     country you are in, to hear a wide variety of music
18     from the vast reaches of this country, and it's the
19     kind of music, in particular, on Radio Two that's not
20     supported by private broadcasters.  It really does need
21     an investment from the federal government and from our
22     provincial governments and from all Canadians.
23  364                  It also provides an infrastructure
24     that pays the salaries of musicians across this country
25     that help to make music on a daily basis, that help to
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 1     teach young people how to play music, that help to
 2     train audiences for the future.
 3  365                  This is a very exciting time in
 4     Canadian music.  It's a time when many of the
 5     orchestras in Canada have decided, I think very wisely,
 6     that their future and the vitality of music in Canada
 7     requires that they enter into various kinds of
 8     agreements and relationships with living composers. 
 9     You will find composer-in-residence programs now across
10     this country from Vancouver to Edmonton to Winnipeg to
11     Quebec City to Halifax, and that these
12     composer-in-residence programs are helping to
13     revitalize the audience for our orchestras in this
14     country.  And certainly with the help of CBC, they have
15     been helping to revitalize the radio audience as well
16     for live music.
17  366                  CBC, unfortunately, is not able
18     always to play the role that I think it would like to
19     play.  There is a lot of creativity in the corporation,
20     but I certainly have seen the cuts myself, how they
21     have affected the people who work there and how they
22     have affected their ability to realize their vision for
23     the life of music in our country.
24  367                  Just as a couple of examples, the
25     Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is not able to pay
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 1     the league rates that have been set by the Canadian
 2     League of Composers when they do commission composers. 
 3     Frequently, that means that composers are asked to
 4     write work at a rate that would not support their
 5     livelihood in any way as professionals.  This is
 6     something that we very much need in this country.
 7  368                  We have come from a time when
 8     composers have been marginalized to a time when they
 9     are much more ready to meet their public and the public
10     wants to hear their work.  All we have to do is look at
11     the New Music Festival here in Winnipeg to see up to
12     2,000 people a night over 10 days on their feet after
13     almost every piece, hungry to hear the work of their
14     living composers.
15  369                  I think there are a number of other
16     things that have impacted on CBC, not the least of
17     which is the ever-growing demand from a new variety of
18     stakeholder groups that have come up in our country,
19     different ethnic music, world music, popular music that
20     now are asking the CBC to help them as well.
21  370                  I think this is an excellent
22     development for our country.  However, what it does
23     mean is that there is less air time for the traditional
24     stakeholder groups that have been supported by CBC.  I
25     think this probably means in many ways that CBC needs
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 1     to expand the number of minutes that it has for
 2     broadcast that's available to this variety of groups.
 3  371                  Information that we have received
 4     from CBC through the Canadian League of Composers is
 5     that about 50 per cent of the music broadcast by CBC
 6     would meet the Maple Code of content for Canadian
 7     content.  However, only 5 per cent of that repertoire
 8     is actually written by Canadian composers.  I think
 9     this is a serious concern for the long-term health of
10     creativity and the creation of music in Canada.  I
11     think it's excellent that the Canadian performers are
12     supported to that level by CBC, but I think it is a
13     tragedy that we aren't able to do the same for our
14     composers.
15  372                  I think that 30 years of investment
16     in private broadcasting and the Maple Code has ensured
17     that Canadian artists are at the top of the world
18     charts in popular music.  I think that if we had the
19     same kind of support for Canadian composers in
20     classical music or concert music that within a period
21     of time that's not that long we would be able to have
22     the same kind of recognition on an international level.
23  373                  The regional and national components
24     of CBC are quite important.  I can speak from personal
25     experience.  When I first came back to Canada after
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 1     studying abroad in the mid-eighties I was able to go in
 2     to CBC and speak directly with a producer and I was
 3     fortunate enough to have my work broadcast.  That work
 4     from that first concert of mine later went on to be
 5     recorded on CD and nominated for a Juno award.
 6  374                  I think that the infrastructure in
 7     Canada can work, however, the cutbacks at CBC has made
 8     it that much more difficult for the producers at CBC to
 9     know the artists in their region and to have those
10     artists move up through the ranks so that they can be
11     recognized at the national level.
12  375                  I think there are a lot of partners
13     at play in this.  I think that the Canadian orchestras
14     are now taking a much more active role in developing
15     artists across this country, as are all Canadian
16     performers.  They are taking a much more proactive role
17     and I think that CBC would like to take a more
18     proactive role, but I think that the current situation
19     that they face in terms of the infrastructure within
20     the corporation make it very difficult for them to
21     realize that objective.
22  376                  So I think that it's really vital for
23     us to work together with the infrastructure and with
24     our public policy in this country so that we can
25     cultivate the talent that we do have because our brain
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 1     drain is not necessarily to the United States in
 2     classical music; our brain drain is that people
 3     eventually get tired of living on the margin
 4     financially and they eventually go to other means of
 5     subsidizing their livelihood, which frequently means
 6     that they cannot create as much work.
 7  377                  I think that a publicly funded
 8     broadcaster like CBC must have a focus on the creation
 9     of music by Canadian composers.  I don't think it
10     matters what genre that's in.  I think that the
11     corporation needs to spread its wings and support as
12     many Canadian creators as they can.  I think that there
13     is a certain progression as that music moves into the
14     realm of financial viability on its own.
15  378                  I think that concert music in this
16     country is very much alive.  We should all be concerned
17     about it because the ongoing development of an audience
18     for a diverse kind of music such as classical music is
19     not that easy to support and it certainly requires an
20     investment on the part of our country.  But I think
21     that if CBC was to take its mandate to a further degree
22     than it has and to, just as an example, say that a
23     target of 25 per cent of its broadcast should be work
24     directly created by Canadian musicians, not just
25     performers but composers as well, I think in a very
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 1     short period of time we would all see the benefits of
 2     this in an increased healthy infrastructure and in a
 3     more diverse audience for the work of all musicians.
 4  379                  Thank you.
 5  380                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 6     Mr. Carrabre.
 7  381                  Mr. Krushen.
 8  382                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
 9     Commissioner Wylie.
10  383                  I understand that Raymond Theberge
11     has cancelled.
12  384                  Maintenant, j'appelle M. Leo Robert.
13  385                  Monsieur Robert?  No.
14  386                  Mme Mariette Mulaire?  No.
15  387                  I don't believe the next two are here
16     either:  Mr. Eric Pownall or Mr. Len Soltis.
17  388                  Now, Mr. Frank Lawson, please.
18                                                        1458
19  389                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Good afternoon,
20     Mr. Lawson.
21     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
22  390                  MR. LAWSON:  Hi.  I don't represent
23     any particular interest group, but I hope I do
24     represent a few of the 30 million people in the
25     country.
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 1  391                  There is a well-known author by the
 2     name of Scott Peck.  I'm sure many of you will
 3     recognize the name.  He defined "religion" as being one
 4     sense of worldliness, a sense of community, of
 5     interconnectiveness and balance, fairness and openness.
 6  392                  I think if you study some of the
 7     countries who have public broadcasting systems, I think
 8     you will find a group of people who are indeed more
 9     community minded, seem to be more interconnected with
10     those around them and the world, seem to be a little
11     more balanced in their views towards others and on any
12     subjects, just seem to be all around more open and more
13     fair.
14  393                  If you have ever had the misfortune
15     of watching any extensive television down, say, in
16     Los Angeles, I think you will find just the opposite. 
17     It is extremely insular and self-serving and a lot of
18     other adjectives that will properly describe it I
19     guess.
20  394                  The point is that some of our
21     commercial radio has gone the way of the Americans.  I
22     personally don't care for it.  I think the CBC is the
23     anchor that prevents us from falling into that trap.  I
24     think that if this country and its people and, in
25     particular, possibly the immigrants that are coming to
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 1     this country in the millions now over the last couple
 2     of decades, if they are to discover their real self, I
 3     think in the deepest sense of that it is going to be
 4     through the CBC and not commercial radio.
 5  395                  Last summer I believe it was the CRTC
 6     imposed some more restrictions on Canadian content.  It
 7     just happens the following morning or thereabouts I met
 8     a popular DJ in a restaurant which I frequent, and I
 9     have known him for years gone by and brought up the
10     subject.  He was indignant.  He was hostile.  He was
11     angry and he was extremely defensive.  The bottom line
12     to basically his argument was:  We don't need any
13     Canadian content.
14  396                  You know, I got this in the mail. 
15     I'm sure many others who live in Winnipeg here got it
16     in the mail in the last couple of days -- I'm not going
17     to mention the radio station, I don't think that's
18     material -- but it lists their schedule, their daily
19     schedule of programming.  Out of 24 hours, 11 of it is
20     piped in, taped and rebroadcast American radio.  With
21     this, I think if we didn't have some Canadian content
22     and the CBC, that ratio would be much higher, in my
23     view.
24  397                  I even have to question where Canada
25     today would be without the asset of CBC over the years. 
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 1     Today we have newspapers that are owned by virtually a
 2     few people.  We have radio stations that are now in
 3     conglomerates or groups.  We have split-run magazines
 4     which are an issue now in our free trade agreement. 
 5     These are all owned principally by a very, very few
 6     number of people, and the CBC is owned by 30 million
 7     people.  This institution we call the CBC is our
 8     broadcasting system.  I don't think it's the CRTC's and
 9     it's certainly not the politicians' and it isn't the
10     bureaucrats' and it's certainly not the large
11     corporations' or the multinationals'.
12  398                  I'm here to say basically that it is
13     not for sale nor demolition.  I guess I have to say,
14     too, that if I were Monsanto I would be really
15     concerned about public broadcasting in this world
16     because every time we find out about something devilish
17     that is going on, it's almost on every occasion through
18     a public broadcasting system.  As a Canadian citizen, I
19     thank God for that because without it it's really quite
20     hard to imagine where we might be, what we might be
21     eating, and ingesting and so forth.
22  399                  Anyway, I think, as a Canadian
23     politician, I think we should caution the parties.  I
24     think we should caution the back room spin doctors,
25     because we are not going to tolerate this systematic
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                             84

 1     demolition of the CBC.  I think it has gone far enough
 2     now that there are enough people who are really getting
 3     angry and realize what we are really losing.
 4  400                  Now, democratic governments by
 5     necessity require checks and balances.  The CBC may
 6     very well be the biggest check and balance that we have
 7     in the country.
 8  401                  I give you an example of the Monnino
 9     Inquiry.  Would it exist while we sit here today if it
10     hadn't been for the journalistic investigative
11     resources of the CBC, and the courage, I might add? 
12     Would we have known about two years of secret meetings
13     in Paris, France on the MAI if it had not -- which, by
14     the way, the Canadian government was a participant
15     in -- if it had not been for public broadcasting both
16     in Europe and in Canada?
17  402                  So CBC is basically our newspaper,
18     our magazine, our radio and our TV broadcaster.  We own
19     it.  The politicians do not.  The corporations nor the
20     bureaucrats do not own it.
21  403                  I have here a list.  I'm not going to
22     read it for the sake of time.  But I have to tell you,
23     and I would like to tell every Canadian, if they get a
24     chance you should read the endless list of
25     commendations received by the CBC at various levels,
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 1     regionally and nationally, from international bodies,
 2     among our own people regionally and so forth.  It is
 3     astounding.  It is absolutely astounding to realize the
 4     quality of people we have, the creativity and
 5     sensitivity and intelligence that we have at the CBC
 6     who is doing this on our behalf.
 7  404                  I don't think I have to give you this
 8     because I'm sure you will have access to it.  I would
 9     like, though, to ask the CRTC to add this to what
10     little presentation I may be adding here, that it be
11     considered.
12  405                  I think we have reached a stage where
13     we have to now reinvest in the CBC.  I think we have to
14     look at it for what it is.  CBC TV is class, it's
15     educational, it's on the cutting edge of humour, hence,
16     how many writers and producers and directors have gone
17     south to help the Americans improve their gain.
18  406                  You look at radio, Tapestry?  Where
19     are you going to hear the program Tapestry in
20     commercial radio in this country?  Cross Country
21     Checkup, the program ideas for those of you -- I mean,
22     The Massey Lectures.  Where on earth are you going to
23     get it if you don't get it from CBC?
24  407                  I think that public broadcasting
25     influences the way we think, how we think about
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 1     ourselves and about the world around us.  In the last
 2     10 years I have seen the people who are the art of
 3     deception slowly but surely dismantling what is really
 4     owned by the people of Canada and I think it's about
 5     time we stood up.
 6  408                  My intuition, that gut feeling, tells
 7     me that something smells bad in the woodpile.  I'm from
 8     the country, and those of you from the country know
 9     that usually when there is a smell in the woodpile it's
10     because there's a few skunks hidden in there.
11  409                  Thank you.
12  410                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
13     Mr. Lawson.
14  411                  You will leave this document with us?
15  412                  MR. LAWSON:  Pardon me?
16  413                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  You will leave the
17     list or the document that you would like appended to
18     your presentation with Mr. Krushen?
19  414                  MR. LAWSON:  Yes.  My point was,
20     though, this is a trivial amount by comparison to the
21     total if you just took the last 10 or 15 years.  What I
22     would like to do is -- if this is possible, I'm not
23     sure -- is to request the CRTC to obtain from CBC a
24     complete list of all the awards ever awarded to CBC at
25     every level and make it part of my presentation.
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 1  415                  Is that a fair request or not?
 2  416                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  We will hear from
 3     the CBC later and I'm sure they would be delighted.
 4  417                  MR. LAWSON:  Okay.  Thank you.
 5  418                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 6     Mr. Lawson.
 7  419                  Mr. Krushen.
 8                                                        1510
 9  420                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
10     Commissioner Wylie.
11  421                  I must apologize to
12     Mr. Richard Horne, whose name I inadvertently skipped
13     over on the list.
14  422                  Mr. Horne, may I now ask you to do
15     your presentation?
16  423                  MR. HORNE:  Thank you.
17     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
18  424                  MR. HORNE:  Hello.  My name is
19     Richard Horne.  I'm the Executive Director of the
20     Manitoba Motion Picture Industry's Association.
21  425                  I'm very pleased to be here.  I would
22     like to talk about the CBC's television rather than
23     radio, as a lot of the discussion has focused on.
24  426                  The association supports actively the
25     concept of the public broadcaster.  We believe that it
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                             88

 1     is critical in order to maintain and to develop our
 2     cultural identity as Canadians.  100 per cent Canadian
 3     content in prime time is a good thing we believe and we
 4     actively support that.
 5  427                  As a public broadcaster, CBC's
 6     interests differ from other broadcasters because of its
 7     role as a public broadcaster.  I would like to refer
 8     you back to your own Visions statement that says, and I
 9     quote:
10                            "CBC will lead the way in
11                            providing relevant, reliable and
12                            meaningful programming that
13                            reflects the diversity of Canada
14                            to Canadians and to the world. 
15                            Our services will be recognized
16                            by Canadians as unique and
17                            essential services that are not
18                            offered by the private component
19                            of the Canadian broadcast
20                            system."  (As read)
21  428                  In short, the CBC should show
22     Manitoba to Canada, show Canada to Manitoba and show us
23     all to the world.  Is this happening?
24  429                  Well, locally, over the last few
25     years, CBC Manitoba television has worked very hard to
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                             89

 1     develop relationships with the independent community
 2     here in order to show Manitoba to Canada.  They have
 3     supported it through some development funding, some
 4     regional broadcast licences and participation in
 5     initiatives like Prairie Wave.  These have all been
 6     driven through the regional office of the CBC.
 7  430                  The public's support for the CBC has
 8     also been obvious through their recent open house where
 9     thousands of people came down to the CBC's offices in
10     Manitoba to come and take a look at what they consider
11     to be part of their heritage.  This is the good news.
12  431                  The bad news is this, though, that
13     these commitments are not a reflection of the national
14     broadcaster but are a reflection of the particular
15     ingenuities of the regional director.  They do not
16     reflect what the corporation overall does.
17  432                  The staff itself of the CBC on the
18     television end has been reduced by almost 50 per cent
19     over the last five years, and the cuts to the operating
20     budget have been likewise.  The regional office itself
21     has little presence outside of the supper hour news
22     program and this already is being limited severely.
23  433                  To my knowledge, there is no ongoing
24     financial commitment from the national office to the
25     regional offices.  There is no air time outside of the
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 1     news hour dedicated to the regions.  Any air time that
 2     the regional office wants to get has to be negotiated
 3     through the national office.
 4  434                  As well, the abilities of the
 5     regional office to participate in the ongoing
 6     development of the independent production community in
 7     Manitoba is also severely restricted.  There is no
 8     dedicated funding to broadcast licence or to
 9     development funding.  Given the CBC's ever-shrinking
10     budget, both nationally and especially regionally where
11     it has been hit the hardest, it's through these
12     relations with the independent community that the CBC
13     can potentially meet its mandate.
14  435                  Furthermore, CBC's relationship with
15     the independent community has been hampered by its
16     reliance on commercial production for revenue. 
17     Although it's understood why CBC produces commercials,
18     and that is part of how they perceive revenue and
19     that's also part of how the limited funding that is
20     sometimes dedicated to independent production is
21     arrived at, it's also competing with the private
22     sector, which is a major concern of a lot of my
23     membership who are commercial producers who wind up, in
24     effect, trying to compete with the public coffers for
25     production.
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 1  436                  Furthermore, the regional licences
 2     that are offered to local producers are not allowed,
 3     through the CBC's own regulations, to trigger
 4     additional funding from the Canadian Television Fund. 
 5     This is because of the envelope that CBC National
 6     reserves for national projects.  In short, very little
 7     regional production ever hits the national screen.
 8  437                  There has actually been a significant
 9     decline of CBC production on the prairies.  The Western
10     Television Production Study prepared for the Department
11     of Canadian Heritage shows that CBC's production of
12     western Canadian television has dropped 51 per cent
13     between 1993 and 1998.  The majority of this production
14     was MOWs, movies of the week, for television and
15     miniseries.
16  438                  In the next year, the CBC has
17     restricted further the production of miniseries and
18     movies of the week, these productions which have
19     typically benefitted regional producers.  Now, with
20     North of 60 concluded, there is no prairie series
21     either.  In fact, the only series in Canada at this
22     point is either from the east coast or west coast or
23     Toronto.  There is nothing reflecting a prairie
24     sensibility.
25  439                  Although, it is understood that the
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                             92

 1     executives of the CBC, the people who actually wind up
 2     making decisions in terms of what is going to be on
 3     your television station, operate out of Toronto and
 4     they are very busy people with very hectic schedules. 
 5     As a public broadcaster, they have an obligation to
 6     come out to us, to meet with the producers on the
 7     prairies, define what is available here and to work
 8     with the people that are here to make production.
 9  440                  I'm not suggesting a politically
10     correct situation where it says you have to come out
11     and do 1 per cent here and 2 per cent there because the
12     population is spread out this way.  The problem really
13     is that producers on the prairies have an incredibly
14     difficult time even connecting over the telephone with
15     producers at the CBC National in Toronto.  It has
16     become described as the $1,500 lunch.  If you can
17     afford $1,500 to go to lunch in Toronto to meet with
18     CBC producers you may have a shot of getting some sort
19     of production happening.  If you can't, you won't.
20  441                  The eastern-based producers will have
21     regular contact with the CBC just because they are down
22     the street.  We don't have that fortune here.  It is
23     imperative that the CBC seek out the best production
24     across the country including the prairies and seek
25     opportunities to bring this to the screen.
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 1  442                  The historical realities have changed
 2     significantly over the last few years.  There are
 3     production companies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan that
 4     are equal in strength and in stature to Atlantis,
 5     Alliance 10 years ago.  Manitoba has proven itself a
 6     centre for movies of the week and miniseries through
 7     productions like The Arrow, Nights Below Station
 8     Street, and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. 
 9     Manitoba can do television series, as shown through The
10     Adventures of Shirley Holmes.
11  443                  The CBC has a vital role to play. 
12     They have an obligation to reach out to the country in
13     its entirety and find out what kind of production is
14     available and bring this back to the screens and show
15     it to Canadians.  It is within their mandate to do
16     this.  The continual cutbacks to the CBC, regionally
17     and nationally, have hamstringed the efforts of local
18     producers and the CBC to realize this.
19  444                  It is critical that if the CBC wants
20     to be able to maintain a viable role as a public
21     broadcaster, that it reaches out to the community, that
22     it stops cutting its own budgets, that it stops having
23     its efforts to reach its mandate being cut continually
24     by the government, and that it develop the
25     relationships with the regions similar to the
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 1     relationships that it has developed with its eastern
 2     partners.
 3  445                  Thank you.
 4  446                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 5     Mr. Horne.
 6  447                  Mr. Krushen.
 7                                                        1518
 8  448                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
 9     Commissioner Wylie.
10  449                  I would now like to call
11     Ms Bernice Baldwin.
12     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
13  450                  MS BALDWIN:  Thank you.
14  451                  You have to have a comedian always
15     for every hearing, so I'm going to fill that capacity.
16  452                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  You are welcome,
17     Ms Baldwin.
18  453                  MS BALDWIN:  Thank you.
19  454                  Since early in the eighties the
20     Conservative and Liberal record on privatization:  The
21     airports; cutbacks on railroads and privatization; the
22     sale of the Churchill Sea Port, which affects us, and I
23     don't think they have the constitutional right to sell
24     sea ports.  Halifax wants help to build up their
25     seaport so it is a super port, and I understand Ottawa
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                             95

 1     is not going to come to the support of them, so they
 2     have to stand on their own and compete with Boston or
 3     New York or whatever.
 4  455                  They have withdrawn support for the
 5     Health Protection Branch and our health.
 6  456                  I don't think it's unusual to expect
 7     that they were going to work to privatize the CBC. 
 8     It's in the books.  They don't want anything to do with
 9     Canadians.
10  457                  I wasn't going to do a presentation,
11     but I have been reading "The Globalization of Poverty: 
12     The impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms" and I had to
13     talk because I'm going to read you a little bit of
14     this:
15                            "While financiers are involved
16                            in politics, politicians have
17                            increasingly acquired a
18                            financial stake in the business
19                            community.  Marred by conflict
20                            of interests, the state system
21                            in the west is in crisis as a
22                            result of the ambivalent
23                            relationship to private economic
24                            and financial concerns.  Under
25                            these conditions the practice of
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                             96

 1                            democracy in the developed
 2                            countries has also become a
 3                            ritual.  No policy alternative
 4                            is offered to the electorate. 
 5                            As in a one-party state, the
 6                            results of the ballot have
 7                            virtually no impact on the
 8                            actual conduct of state economic
 9                            and social policy.  In turn, the
10                            state, under the neo-Liberal
11                            policy agenda, has become
12                            increasingly repressive in
13                            curbing the democratic rights of
14                            its citizens."  (As read)
15  458                  We recognize that the aim of the
16     present government is also as of the preceding one,
17     desirous of disappearing the Canadian nation as soon as
18     it is politically feasible.  But let us warn them we
19     will not vanish quietly in the night.
20  459                  I see these hearings as a repeat of
21     the methods employed by the Spicer hearings in
22     preparation for the vote on the Charlottetown Accord. 
23     So you are surprised at the number of concerned
24     Manitobans who have an opinion on the future of public
25     broadcasting?  We care.  We do care.
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 1  460                  If they really wanted to hear from
 2     us, why did they silence the voice of the local CBC
 3     stations a few years ago and continuing to?
 4  461                  We have surfaced again news of a
 5     desire, or is it an intention, to bury nuclear waste in
 6     the Canadian Shield.  Located in that same shield, I
 7     vote for a location in Ottawa as being as reasonable as
 8     any other site.  What emanates from that area is not
 9     conducive to a continued nation of Canada or care for
10     its citizens.
11  462                  What is happening to all the money
12     the government brags about saving?  It's not going
13     towards alleviation of the needs of the hungry and the
14     homeless.  Who would ever think that, what was
15     considered one of the bread baskets of the world, we
16     would have hungry people and food banks and soup
17     kitchens, and an expectation that they are going to be
18     a permanent part of our societies and areas.
19  463                  They have taught us to be cynical of
20     any program on information that they purport to share
21     with us.  It's a cloud with no silver lining, any
22     expectation that anything good for us, in attempting to
23     maintain our public broadcasting, will arise from these
24     hearings.
25  464                  Public broadcasting is our window on
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 1     the whole of Canada, keeping us in touch with what our
 2     neighbours are thinking and doing.  It offers a
 3     magnification nationwide of the talented artists,
 4     academics, musicians who are born and developed on the
 5     local scene first and need the opportunity on the wider
 6     stage that the CBC offers.
 7  465                  We don't want to be delivered to
 8     private stations with their dedication to consumerism. 
 9     In making this appeal for a continuation of an access
10     to an uninterrupted hour of pleasure which is provided
11     by ideas, reviews, serializing of recent books,
12     symphonies, farm news, I speak for all which adds to
13     our sense of sharing with our neighbours from to sea to
14     sea to sea.
15  466                  We do not all have available
16     libraries, concert halls, art galleries, sports arenas
17     or theatres.  We count on the CBC to deliver these into
18     our homes, isolated as many of us are.
19  467                  With little expectation that these
20     hearings are any more than another exercise, I still
21     have a shred of hope that we may impress upon the
22     bureaucracy that maintenance of our voice in the world
23     is a wise political manoeuvre, the only aspect which
24     carries any credence in government choices, while
25     realizing that their voice, too, is secondary to an
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 1     upper echelon of power.
 2  468                  I'm not persuaded that we are not
 3     being submitted to the clutches of the International
 4     Monetary Fund and the World Bank even now.  I would
 5     like to read you just this little bit from the end of
 6     his book.
 7                            "Yugoslavia is a mirror of
 8                            similar economic restructuring
 9                            programs applied not only in the
10                            developing world but also in
11                            recent years in the United
12                            States, Canada and Western
13                            Europe.  Strong economic
14                            medicine `is the answer
15                            throughout the world.'  People
16                            are led to believe that there is
17                            no other solution.  Enterprises
18                            must be closed down, workers
19                            must be laid off and social
20                            programs must be slashed.  It is
21                            in the foregoing context that
22                            the economic crisis in
23                            Yugoslavia should be understood. 
24                            Pushed to the extreme, the
25                            reforms are the cruel reflection
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 1                            of a destructive economic model
 2                            imposed under the neo-Liberal
 3                            agenda on national societies
 4                            throughout the world." 
 5                            (As read)
 6  469                  Thank you very much.
 7  470                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 8     Ms Baldwin.
 9  471                  Mr. Krushen.
10                                                        1526
11  472                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
12     Commissioner Wylie.
13  473                  I would now like to call Ms Margaret
14     Waterman.
15     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
16  474                  MS WATERMAN:  Thank you very much.
17  475                  I wasn't going to make a
18     presentation.  I was just going to come.  But I do
19     think that I'm one of the silent majority across the
20     country who listens only to the CBC and has it on much
21     of the day, so my remarks are about radio only, both
22     Radio One and Radio Two.
23  476                  Other speakers have commented on
24     various programs.  I could add some, too, but I think
25     those of us who are here probably all have our
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 1     favourite ones, and even ones that aren't our
 2     favourites.  We can see that the variety is there.
 3  477                  Commercial radio stations cannot do
 4     what the CBC can do.  Of course they are driven by the
 5     profit motive and they must have advertising and they
 6     must meet the wishes of their advertising public, but
 7     what a dearth of radio listening we would have if we
 8     had no choice.
 9  478                  I was in St. Louis, Missouri a few
10     years ago visiting relatives and I said "What is the
11     public radio station?" one evening when I was going to
12     be there alone.  My daughter said, "Well, I don't think
13     you will find it very exciting, mom, but this is it." 
14     Well, it was a whirlwind experience.  There wasn't even
15     a 10-second introduction before we were launched into a
16     movement of a Mozart symphony, and I think perhaps
17     there was five seconds between that offering and the
18     next.  The whole thing was done with so little dignity
19     that I couldn't even enjoy it.  I came home enjoying
20     even the occasional seconds of silence on the CBC.
21  479                  The benefits have also been named by
22     even the few people that I have heard speak.  The CBC
23     must be one of the few forces that really hold this
24     country together now.  We used to have a TransCanada
25     railway, we still do have a TransCanada Highway, but I
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 1     think we may have to wait until we get a TransCanada
 2     hiking trail before we can feel that there is anything
 3     as important as the radio, which goes not just to the
 4     cities and all the homes there but to the country and
 5     to places where people have not access to some of the
 6     things that the former speakers spoke of.
 7  480                  It overcomes regional isolation,
 8     which is impossible given the size of our country.  It
 9     is impossible not to feel isolated if we can't share
10     something of the lives of people elsewhere in the
11     country.  The CBC has done that in a marvellous way. 
12     We find ourselves enjoying aspects, insights into
13     people's lives that none of us would -- or very few of
14     us could experience very much arising in that respect.
15  481                  The thing that I have not heard
16     mentioned is that we live next to a very much larger,
17     not geographically but in all other ways, country to
18     the south of us.  There has been a constant pressure
19     ever since Canada has been a country to make the ties
20     north-south rather than east-west.  I'm not a U.S.
21     hater, but if we have a national radio we can withstand
22     those pressures much better and have a significant
23     difference in our approach to some of the questions
24     that are uppermost in many minds.
25  482                  There is a great variety of
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 1     programming on the local level and what chance have the
 2     local people to get their programs shown or heard
 3     nationally if they haven't got the wherewithal, the
 4     money to develop them in the local scene.
 5  483                  I, too, am going to quote, and that
 6     is, in 1993 when, in renewing the CBC's four radio
 7     networks, the CRTC -- I think it is the CRTC -- said:
 8                            "The Commission considers that
 9                            the Corporation, in a time of
10                            financial restraint and
11                            uncertainty, should be commended
12                            for the general excellence of
13                            its radio programming which
14                            stands as a model for
15                            broadcasting in Canada and
16                            around the world."  (As read)
17  484                  And in 1994, for renewal of the
18     English television network licence, I quote:
19                            "The need may be greater than
20                            ever for an outlet to express
21                            truly Canadian stories, ideas
22                            and values amid these foreign
23                            voices.  A strong Canadian
24                            national public broadcaster is
25                            indispensable in this context." 
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 1                            (As read)
 2  485                  How are we going to keep that strong? 
 3     How are we going to fulfil that and continue to do so
 4     if we experience the cutbacks and the controls that we
 5     are threatened with?
 6  486                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 7     Ms Waterman.
 8  487                  Mr. Krushen.
 9                                                        1533
10  488                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
11     Commissioner Wylie.
12  489                  I would now like to call
13     Ms Roberta Christianson.
14     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
15  490                  MS CHRISTIANSON:  Good afternoon.
16  491                  I would like to begin by thanking you
17     for allowing us this opportunity.  I know how very
18     exhausting these kind of things can be, so thank you so
19     much for your time.
20  492                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  We are not even
21     tired.
22  493                  MS CHRISTIANSON:  Yet.
23  494                  I would love to be able to have time
24     to speak to you about what CBC has meant to me as a
25     person who has chosen Canada as my country, I would
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 1     love to be able to speak to you about what the CBC
 2     means to me as someone who lives in rural Manitoba and
 3     spends many, many hours in my car feeling a very
 4     personal relationship with CBC as I drive around the
 5     countryside, but I think it is most appropriate that I
 6     speak to you today in my role as Chair of the Manitoba
 7     Arts Council.
 8  495                  The council is the provincial funder
 9     for artists and arts organizations in every discipline,
10     and I would like to speak to you of the importance,
11     from our perspective, of the role of the CBC and the
12     development of Manitoba artists and the education of
13     its audiences.
14  496                  We see CBC as a very, very important
15     partner in this and they have done it very well to date
16     and we hope they will continue to do it.
17  497                  As you know, Manitoba has a
18     relatively small population, most of it concentrated in
19     one large centre.  We are isolated geographically from
20     other large centres and from the benefits of ready
21     access to media and markets.  We do not have the
22     opportunities for arts dissemination, the venues or the
23     population base to sustain the arts that are available
24     to other Canadian artists.  In spite of this, the
25     excellence of our arts is applauded throughout the
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 1     world, and national media such as Globe and Mail
 2     regularly cite Manitoba as being a centre for artistic
 3     excellence.
 4  498                  Frequently, when regional programming
 5     provides the opportunity for exposure, the programs are
 6     picked up nationally.  Programming such as Hot Off the
 7     Docks, It's a Living and Heartland have been nominated
 8     for awards and run across Canada to appreciative
 9     audiences.
10  499                  The CBC has been an equalizer of
11     opportunity for Manitoba Arts, and once that exposure
12     is provided, we can and do easily compete on national
13     and international levels.  The CBC in Manitoba provides
14     an opportunity for our artists to be heard and seen. 
15     This alone often leads to a demand and market for more
16     work and is a factor in the ability of artists to
17     develop a career with self-generated income.
18  500                  For years I have been involved at the
19     community level in tour presentation and the groups
20     that would sell most easily are inevitably the groups
21     that we cannot afford; they have a very high national
22     profile.  But the next easiest group to sell is someone
23     who has been exposed by CBC.  They have been
24     interviewed, they have been heard, the community will
25     right away embrace, and it makes it much easier for us
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 1     to bring that artist into our community and it makes
 2     the community acceptance of it one step already
 3     developed.
 4  501                  The CBC's commissioning of work is
 5     also an employment opportunity and an important one for
 6     artists in every discipline here who compete at a
 7     disadvantage for public recognition.  The commissioning
 8     of work by the CBC has another benefit, that of
 9     training and development.  Through editorial and
10     production direction, Manitoba artists receive
11     professional development sometimes not otherwise
12     readily available to them in learning to edit and
13     refine their work to reach what is often a new or at
14     least an expanded audience.
15  502                  The other important point I would
16     like to make is the CBC's role in the education of the
17     audiences.
18  503                  The type of regional arts programming
19     provided by the CBC gives analysis and critical
20     attention to artistic work.  This commitment to serious
21     arts journalism is of immeasurable benefit to the
22     artists in their own development, but it also has
23     another crucial benefit:  it educates the audiences to
24     the work.  Without understanding access and
25     appreciation for the context and intent of artistic
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 1     endeavour, audiences would have no knowledge of how to
 2     view or hear the work, how to understand its role in
 3     their lives, and its important to their culture.
 4  504                  More than merely telling us what our
 5     entertainment choices are, the CBC tells us, through
 6     its analysis and coverage, how and why the work was
 7     created and what it has to do with the rest of the
 8     country and with being Manitobans.
 9  505                  The arts journalism provided by CBC
10     programming is a critical factor in the present and
11     long-term sustainability for the arts in Manitoba.  It
12     is important to recognize that the CBC is the sum of
13     its parts and that the excellence of its regional
14     programming is therefore essential to the overall
15     quality of the CBC.  If belonging to a culture is an
16     active rather than a passive state, we need the
17     commitment of the CBC to provide a vehicle for that
18     activity.
19  506                  In this electronic age, it is no
20     longer the railroad or the TransCanada Highway that
21     binds our country together from sea to sea, it is
22     however a role that CBC can play.  The CBC is one thing
23     the Government of Canada does that is accessible and
24     beneficial to us all.
25  507                  The Manitoba Arts Council supports
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 1     this work and would encourage the continued support of
 2     this valuable service to Canadians.
 3  508                  Thank you.
 4  509                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 5     Ms Christianson.
 6  510                  Mr. Krushen.
 7  511                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
 8     Commissioner Wylie.
 9  512                  That completes the current group that
10     I called to the table earlier.
11  513                  As our colleagues next door in the
12     other room are not progressing through the agenda quite
13     as quickly as we have, we have moved three presenters
14     from next door to this room.
15  514                  In addition, I will now also be
16     recalling the names of those who were not present when
17     I called their names initially.
18  515                  At this time could I ask Ann Loewen,
19     Menno Klassen, Thomas Walker to please come to the
20     table.
21  516                  In addition, if any of the following
22     names are present, could they come up as well: 
23     Scott MacNeil, Kevin Miller, Leo Robert,
24     Mariette Mulaire, Eric Pownall and Len Soltis.
25     --- Short pause / Courte pause
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 1  517                  MR. KRUSHEN:  I have just been handed
 2     one additional name, Reverend Harry Lehotsky.
 3                                                        1539
 4  518                  At this time, I would like to ask
 5     Ms Ann Loewen to commence her presentation.
 6     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
 7  519                  MS LOEWEN:  Good afternoon.  Thank
 8     you for the opportunity to speak here.
 9  520                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  You are welcome,
10     Ms Loewen.  It's our pleasure.
11  521                  MS LOEWEN:  Can you hear me?
12  522                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Yes.
13  523                  MS LOEWEN:  Okay.
14  524                  I would like to start out by saying
15     that I hate commercials and so I only listen to the
16     CBC radio and watch the commercial-free children's
17     programming with my children in the mornings, so my
18     comments will be confined to that.
19  525                  I am a long-term CBC radio listener. 
20     As some of the other speakers have mentioned, it was
21     only when I lived in the more remote and less
22     accessible parts of Canada that I realized how
23     important CBC was and continues to be.
24  526                  While I was in university I was in a
25     major centre, but neither myself nor my colleagues had
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 1     TVs or newspaper subscriptions and we all listened to
 2     CBC.  My American friends at the university I attended
 3     were very envious of the information and quality of
 4     listening that was available on the CBC.
 5  527                  When I move to Newfoundland to
 6     continue training and then to work and live, I was in
 7     Labrador and various other parts of Atlantic Canada. 
 8     It was both a revelation to me to realize how important
 9     it was to access the same familiar programming, but
10     also to become familiar with the new culture and
11     geography that I was experiencing in that region
12     through the local Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada
13     programming.
14  528                  I cannot see how I could have I could
15     have as quickly assimilated the understanding of the
16     issues that faced that community and population and its
17     various subregions without the CBC, because I do not
18     feel that the print media adequately reflected the
19     depth and breadth of the local issues and certainly the
20     local media did not report the national and
21     international events with any degree of thoroughness. 
22     I found that I became absolutely dependent on CBC for
23     information when I lived in these very remote areas.
24  529                  I have now moved back to Manitoba,
25     but I work in a rural area and, again, with the
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                             112

 1     driving, with the distances, with the relative
 2     superficiality of many other radio broadcasts, I do
 3     find that there is a very major role for a
 4     commercial-free, in-depth, Canadian-oriented but with a
 5     world vision form of broadcasting to both make us
 6     better as individual world citizens and to bind us
 7     together and reinforce what makes us Canadian.
 8  530                  I was living in Newfoundland when one
 9     of the first major rounds, in my knowledge of such
10     things, of cutbacks came to the CBC and all the
11     regional offices in Newfoundland and Labrador were
12     closed down and it was completely centralized to
13     St. John's, Newfoundland.  Even as an outsider to the
14     Newfoundland culture, I realized what a shame this was
15     because Newfoundland is a culture of its own but it has
16     many subcultures within itself and those voices are
17     very important.
18  531                  Again, in Manitoba, the northern
19     voices are very different from the southern voices, the
20     farming from the urban, and I think that the
21     regionality of CBC radio, in particular, is very
22     important and within the television realm as well, I'm
23     sure.
24  532                  It would be a shame to see the CBC
25     become more centralized in Central Canada, as many
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 1     trends seem to be these days, and I would certainly
 2     urge the CRTC to consider encouraging very strongly
 3     that the CBC's mandate be very much across Canada and
 4     not just central Canada and radiating from there
 5     outwards.
 6  533                  I would see it as a positive step if
 7     the CBC television could reduce its dependence on
 8     commercialization, however, this is perhaps something
 9     beyond the CRTC and perhaps more a political issue. 
10     But without a doubt, I see the effects of how
11     commercialization effects the transmission of
12     information and entertainment.
13  534                  As I mentioned, I'm very glad that
14     there is commercial-free entertainment for the children
15     because I have seen, in very clear effects, the way it
16     modifies their behaviour and their desires and I don't
17     want that for my children any more than I want to be
18     barraged with the hype that goes along with
19     commercials.
20  535                  In closing, I would like to say I'm
21     glad that I'm able to recommend to my colleagues, who
22     are frequently foreign and coming to rural areas, that
23     they tune into CBC when they come to Canada to be able
24     to hear what is going on around the world as well as to
25     familiarize themselves with the country they have moved
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                             114

 1     to, and I would like to thank the CRTC for making this
 2     process available to those of us who really care about
 3     the CBC and its future.
 4  536                  Thank you.
 5  537                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
 6     Ms Loewen.
 7  538                  Mr. Krushen.
 8                                                        1545
 9  539                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
10     Commissioner Wylie.
11  540                  I now call Mr. Menno Klassen. 
12     Mr. Klassen.
13     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
14  541                  MR. KLASSEN:  Thank you.
15  542                  Hi.  I have headed my presentation
16     "Canada's Fate and Quality of Life is Tied to the CBC". 
17     It is that serious with us.  I have headed that
18     presentation in that way.
19  543                  In the twenties, we listened to the
20     CBC through crystal sets.  In fact, we constructed
21     these sets in order that we could hear Foster Hewitt
22     announce the hockey games in those days, and other good
23     programs.
24  544                  To us it is not a question of CBC or
25     no CBC but the need to restore the necessary funding so
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 1     that it can do its job.  No efforts should be spared in
 2     order to achieve this perfection.
 3  545                  My presentation is short, I put it
 4     together this morning, but every word could be expanded
 5     into a presentation by itself, so I will proceed with
 6     what I have here.
 7  546                  Without a strong and independent CBC,
 8     Canadian distinctiveness will be lost forever.  Without
 9     it Canada, as we have come to know it, will vanish from
10     our seeing and from our hearing.  The quality of
11     Canadian life would be drastically diminished.  The CBC
12     has become such a significant part of our lives that
13     unless it is kept strong and healthy, pride of country
14     will fade into oblivion and responsible citizenship and
15     democracy will be insufferable -- will suffer.
16  547                  Without the CBC listener choice will
17     be drastically reduced.  People's lives will be filled
18     with unnecessary and irrelevant clutter to insult our
19     intelligence.  An alternative source of broadcast
20     information, which an independent CBC can offer, will
21     be denied to discriminating Canadians.  Our only
22     independent, unfettered broadcaster will be no more. 
23     Many of our best and active citizens will be forced to
24     turn off the broadcast medium altogether and seek out
25     other types of media.  The priceless educational
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 1     service and cultural values that characterizes CBC
 2     broadcasting has greatly enriched our lives.
 3  548                  Listeners to CBC may be in the
 4     minority, but I would suggest it is a minority that we
 5     dare not ignore or to undervalue this minority.  The
 6     fans of a strong and healthy CBC could well be
 7     considered the true patriots of Canada that hold the
 8     country together and defend its best democratic
 9     traditions and cultural and spiritual values.
10  549                  It is therefore of prime importance
11     that this value and national-building institution, the
12     Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, be restored to its
13     proper place in the life of our country.
14  550                  Submitted respectably.  Thank you.
15  551                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
16     Mr. Klassen.
17  552                  Mr. Krushen.
18                                                        1550
19  553                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
20     Commissioner Wylie.
21  554                  I would now like to call
22     Mr. Thomas Walker.
23     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
24  555                  MR. WALKER:  First of all, I would
25     like to apologize on two points.  One is that, given
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 1     the room, that I am not able to speak in the other
 2     official language, especially since I have a
 3     granddaughter who speaks only French.  I think it shows
 4     right away some of the educational inadequacies of our
 5     country and some of the barriers that we allow to
 6     occur.
 7  556                  Now, about another barrier, the 49th
 8     Parallel, which I give thanks for every day --
 9     incidentally, I make no apologies for being an
10     out-and-out nationalist, given all my prejudices and so
11     on.
12  557                  I recall being at a luncheon attended
13     by a variety of professional people, working people,
14     and the one person asks a question -- this was a
15     relative recent arrival from the U.K. -- an
16     understandable question:  Why is there a boundary on
17     the 49th Parallel?  Why is it there?
18  558                  Good question.  Out of at least
19     15 professionals, now keep in mind most of them were
20     engineers and accountants and you don't expect them to
21     know very much any how, but nobody was able to answer
22     the question.
23  559                  So what on earth is lacking not only
24     in the schools and universities but in our general
25     input of knowledge?  Nobody has heard of the United
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 1     Empire of Lobbyists, for example, as they call it, and
 2     the General Activists and the War of 1812.  There is
 3     definitely a conflict, a conflict of values and
 4     attitudes.  I won't bother going into that because my
 5     knowledge of that is about as sparse as my knowledge of
 6     the French language.
 7  560                  What on earth is going to keep this
 8     country together?
 9  561                  We currently are faced with this
10     magazine issue, the split-runs on magazines, if you
11     have heard anything about it.  But, personally, I think
12     the saving of the CBC radio and television is as
13     important if not more important than the saving of a
14     couple of Canadian publications.  The thing that is
15     more insidious is that if the CBC were to disappear and
16     be taken over, I'm talking radio here, they would be
17     Canadian owned -- whoop de do -- but they would
18     generate nothing but U.S. material; in other words, all
19     our history and all the difference in attitudes and
20     values gradually become eroded.
21  562                  I don't have too much sympathy with
22     the present Quebec government, but I can see their
23     point, that the rest of the North American continent is
24     turning into a bland homogenous entity and if you want
25     to retain any character, or so on, you have to do
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 1     something about it.
 2  563                  It's sad to say a lot of my peers
 3     don't feel the same way.  The thing that bothers me
 4     this afternoon is that we are reaching at the
 5     converted.  It's all about the same people that you
 6     would expect to have at this type of hearing, the
 7     people that care.  Now, you would probably count on the
 8     same people on almost anything if it was important to
 9     their country, but the others aren't there. 
10     Unfortunately, come election day, the others' votes
11     count just as much as do the votes of anybody in this
12     room.
13  564                  My own experience with the CBC -- you
14     know, I'm a junkie, a CBC junkie, like everybody else
15     here.  I have had every radio.  If I could have them
16     fused to one station, I would, but the CBC One and the
17     CBC Two makes it a little difficult.
18  565                  My only complaint is the signal is
19     usually so weak and it is perpetually being jammed by
20     rock and roll stations.  Once you get off the station,
21     I find it hard to get back on it.  I don't know if
22     anybody else runs into that.
23  566                  The wonderful thing about radio is
24     you can do something else and still hear it, or you can
25     be some place where you can't get TV and you can still
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 1     listen to it.
 2  567                  I also have the odd acquaintances, a
 3     member of a right-wing party I won't mention, and they
 4     say they can't wait to have it commercialized or
 5     privatized.  Well, we in Manitoba went through an
 6     experience with our telephone company and we believe
 7     that the word "privatize" has become synonymous with
 8     "sodomize".
 9  568                  What would be worse, more degrading
10     yet, is another type of PBS where people stand there
11     weekly and beg for nickels and dimes.  You know, a
12     great and important national institution that happens
13     to operate on charity would just be unconscionable. 
14     You know, you might as well get rid of all the
15     libraries and everything else.
16  569                  Yes, perhaps this person from the
17     U.K. is right.  Why bother with the 49 Parallel?  We
18     can all go down to Texas and go into -- well, anyhow.
19  570                  Thank you.
20  571                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
21     Mr. Walker.
22  572                  Mr. Krushen.
23                                                        1555
24  573                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
25     Commissioner Wylie.
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 1  574                  I would now like to call Reverend
 2     Harry Lehotsky.
 3     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
 4  575                  REV. LEHOTSKY:  Hi.
 5  576                  My own perspective is maybe a little
 6     bit different from some of those who have spoken.  I'm
 7     an inner-city pastor and I guess the issues that I deal
 8     with on a day-to-day basis sometimes overwhelm me to
 9     the point where I feel out of place at a hearing like
10     this.
11  577                  I don't share the same angst I guess
12     about the loss of a Canadian identity.  I don't have
13     the same paranoia about the government cutting out our
14     tongues.
15  578                  I am concerned, though, and that's
16     what brought me here anyway, I plugged my parking meter
17     with an extra coin because what the CBC does is
18     important to us as well in the inner city and the work
19     that we are doing.
20  579                  I can speak to this from a number of
21     different issues.
22  580                  I guess as a pastor, I have
23     experienced a respect without a patronizing attitude. 
24     Those of you who are familiar with the evangelical
25     church, evangelical tradition, there is a great
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 1     paranoia about the media, and sometimes even a fear of
 2     doing things out in the public arena because of the
 3     fact that people just won't understand and it won't be
 4     reported fairly.
 5  581                  Part of what has happened in my
 6     experience, in the circle of churches that I'm familiar
 7     with or that are familiar with me, has encouraged them
 8     to get more involved as well, because as they have seen
 9     us involved in the inner-city community doing things,
10     sometimes from a right-of-centre perspective, sometimes
11     from an evangelical rather than mainline perspective,
12     what has encouraged them is that we have been treated
13     fairly.  That has encouraged me and given me more
14     boldness to keep going out and doing the things we have
15     done.  I have not always experienced that in different
16     places.
17  582                  So as a pastor I have been encouraged
18     and I have seen other faith communities also get more
19     involved in the community as a result of having some of
20     those fears alleviated of unfair treatment.
21  583                  I do want to give a little bit of a
22     shot to the CRTC about the resistance to a Christian
23     station, an explicitly Christian station.  You can
24     have -- you know, some of the stuff that we have, the
25     specialty stations already, the head-banging
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 1     obscenities set to music, that's kosher, you know, but
 2     a Christian station is somehow off limits, aboriginal
 3     networks, country or musical classic stations.  We
 4     don't have one music station and say give equal time to
 5     every style of music.  I think it is kind of ludicrous
 6     to say we have one faith station, give equal time to
 7     every faith.  It wouldn't be fair to the music lovers
 8     and its not fair to people of faith to say you are not
 9     allowed to have your own network if you have the
10     resources to do it.
11  584                  But that aside, let's move on to some
12     of the other stuff.
13  585                  In terms of some of the inner-city
14     work that I do, I appreciate the regional work that CBC
15     does.  I appreciate the fact that they have invested in
16     the inner city in terms of the place where their
17     station is.  It's encouraging to see them there, as I
18     live not too far from there.
19  586                  It also brings across some vested
20     interest in terms of the reporters when they go out
21     into the community.  They want to get to know the
22     community around them a little bit better, and that has
23     been I think a benefit to us as well.
24  587                  I have seen a depth of reporting in
25     terms of -- and that has something to do with resources
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 1     that has been talked about here, you need resources to
 2     be able to have that depth of reporting, but also a
 3     passion and questions that I don't hear asked by other
 4     people.  That I'm very appreciative of.  It's not just
 5     what sells ads, but sometimes what needs saying, and
 6     even by people who aren't that articulate.
 7  588                  In the other room they were talking
 8     about how it's a showcase for Canadian talent before it
 9     gets viable enough on the commercial airways.  It also
10     is a showcase and a platform for people in the
11     community who are not that articulate yet.  Somebody
12     has the time to work through the issue and actually
13     hear what they are saying and then report it, and that
14     is a huge benefit to our community.
15  589                  There are issues of zoning, planning,
16     housing policy, by-laws that are totally skimmed over
17     by other media outlets at times, and we have found the
18     CBC quite helpful in terms of even helping us clarify
19     how to articulate those concerns and issues.
20  590                  Cuts in funding is always an issue, I
21     guess, and that's not your scope I guess right now, but
22     I mean the question begs asking:  Wouldn't a dollar be
23     better spent putting food in a kid's mouth or building
24     a house than paying a CBC reporter what they are paid
25     as opposed to someone else or the facilities?  But I
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 1     think that also in the inner city what we need -- and
 2     there are other ways of doing that.  I don't think if
 3     it is cut in one place it is necessarily going to go to
 4     the kids anyway.  I'm not naive enough to think that.
 5  591                  What we do need is an institution
 6     that promotes excellence and a depth of coverage and
 7     reporting, and I appreciate that.
 8  592                  In terms of recommendations, I would
 9     like to see some more community round tables that are
10     facilitated through the CBC discussions, whether it is
11     news or forums, that have a breadth of perspective.
12  593                  I would like to see more youth
13     programming, youth involvement in programming and youth
14     programming itself.
15  594                  I would like to see a further
16     development of technology in terms of even archives for
17     students.  More and more students are doing their
18     research on the Net, and to have some archives in the
19     real video or real audio kind of stuff.  Those kinds of
20     things are very helpful to kids in terms of education
21     as well, and adults.  I would like that as well.
22  595                  Those are my comments.  Thanks.
23  596                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
24     Rev. Lehotsky.
25  597                  Mr. Krushen.
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 1                                                        1600
 2  598                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
 3     Commissioner Wylie.
 4  599                  I would now like to call
 5     Mr. Eric Pownall.
 6     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
 7  600                  MR. POWNALL:  Well, I want to start
 8     off by saying that the best way to protect Canadian
 9     culture would be to maintain the levels of Canadian
10     content within all broadcasting within Canada.  The
11     idea of maintaining a CBC for that purpose is not only
12     foolish and stupid, but an incredible waste of money. 
13     I mean, both CBC TV and CBC radio represent a costly
14     indulgence and misuse of taxpayers' money that the
15     Canadian public can no longer afford to subsidize to
16     the tune of $800 million a year.  With this, all we
17     get, all we buy with that money is a paltry less than
18     11 per cent market share, which is another way of
19     saying that over 89 per cent of the Canadian public is
20     saying they don't like what you offer at CBC.  It's
21     just worthless to them.
22  601                  You have to keep in mind that a lot
23     of that 11 per cent is based on a few very popular
24     programs.  They bring the average up, which means the
25     others -- there must be a great many programs on CBC
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 1     that have such a low rating they are barely above that
 2     of a test pattern, which is really not saying much for
 3     the bulk of CBC content with an average of less than
 4     11 per cent market share.
 5  602                  When I confronted Mister -- I think
 6     his name is Redekopp and Mr. Beatty and asked the
 7     question about what do they plan to do about the 11 per
 8     cent market share, the response I got was that it
 9     didn't matter.  They simply didn't care, or at least
10     that's the impression I got, that a less than 11 per
11     cent market share is perfectly acceptable to them,
12     which is the same as saying so what if we are flushing
13     money down the toilet?
14  603                  It also seems that -- and this issue
15     was also brought to their attention as well -- that the
16     CBC seems to cater to small but very vocal special
17     interest groups.  They seem to have the ear of the CBC. 
18     The mainstream doesn't seem to.
19  604                  It is highly politicized by a very
20     corrupt government, and a current government, since it
21     is being used by the government in power to reward
22     certain special interest groups for their political
23     support.  Whenever our government exerts influence or
24     control there is always a strong possibility that the
25     kind of corruption associated with cronyism, nepotism
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 1     and political patronage are likely to occur.
 2  605                  You only have to reference the
 3     comments made by Prime Minister Chrétien to
 4     Peter Mansbridge on a CBC TV interview shortly after he
 5     was first elected as Prime Minister in which he
 6     commented that the use of political patronage by the
 7     Liberal party was natural, normal and accepted and will
 8     continue to occur because they have to do it in order
 9     to survive politically.  Without it, they would never
10     survive.
11  606                  And CBC is not an independent
12     organization.  It may be a so-called Crown Corporation,
13     but it's -- I mean, when you consider the head of the
14     CBC is appointed by the government, effectively they
15     have say over its every function, in effect.  That
16     means that it can also be used as an instrument by
17     government to serve its purposes rather than perform
18     all the intended functions and the be self-supporting,
19     that is to say not be a burden to the taxpayer.
20  607                  It has had a very long time to get
21     its act together and it hasn't.  I think it is
22     blatantly obvious to anyone with an ounce of
23     intelligence they never will.  They have neither the
24     will, the intention or the ability to do so.
25  608                  I mean, after the comments I made
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 1     about the heads of CBC when I asked them those
 2     questions and got such a flaccid response, I was
 3     amazed.  And it tells me that the people running CBC
 4     have a lack of business acumen because of their lack of
 5     concern about their 11 per cent market share.  I mean,
 6     it should be run to a certain extent like a business. 
 7     They should try to make it self-supporting.
 8  609                  The Canadian content regulations
 9     should be sufficient to foster Canadian culture and
10     with time that should grow, but not when it's a burden
11     to the taxpayer to the tune of $800 million a year.
12  610                  CBC will become increasingly
13     irrelevant as time goes by.  It will be lost in a sea
14     of cable channels and satellite service.  I mean, there
15     are hundreds of channels.  Now you can -- I think as
16     long as you sign up for something like a 30-month
17     period you can get the satellite dish thrown in free,
18     and it's like $15 a month or something.  Some services
19     are offering it as cheap as that.  It's cheaper than
20     cable.  People in remote locations don't need CBC any
21     more, they can save a lot of money by taking the
22     $800 million and buy them all satellite dishes and tell
23     them to have fun.  It would be a lot cheaper and maybe
24     probably a lot happier.
25  611                  To make things even worse, or better,
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 1     depending on how you want to look at it, eventually the
 2     Internet will add more programming to the mix,
 3     especially when broadband service, brought about by
 4     fibre optic hook-ups to homes, will be made available
 5     in the future.  I mean, they offer an incredible
 6     broadband service that will put the satellite service
 7     to shame.
 8  612                  CBC will become so irrelevant.  I
 9     mean, all I hear here are the -- probably most of the
10     11 per cent of our audience in Winnipeg are probably
11     here.  That is a very small audience for CBC.  It's a
12     horrible waste of money, especially when it can be used
13     by so many other things.  I mean, you could probably
14     take a portion of the $800 million and do a lot more
15     for Canadian culture than CBC has ever been able to do. 
16     A lot of the programming they produce seems to be of a
17     generic bland nature, nondescript, not even so much as
18     to hide the Canadian aspect of the location so that the
19     programming will have appeal to an American audience
20     with a possible eye towards selling the programs to
21     Americans.  I begin to wonder:  Where is the Canadian
22     culture in that?  None.
23  613                  So the use of CBC as a -- it seems to
24     be the government tends to use CBC as an instrument of
25     government policy, at least this government does.  When
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 1     the CBC has a meagre 11 per cent market share, it seems
 2     to not only be foolish and pathetic but a horrible
 3     waste of money.
 4  614                  The only way to remove this stain of
 5     a very corrupt government would be to privatize CBC and
 6     maintain the Canadian content as would any other
 7     private station.  Having it Canadian owned and heavily
 8     subsidized by the Canadian government has done nothing
 9     at all to improve either the content or the quality of
10     the program or its market share.
11  615                  It doesn't seem to matter how much
12     you put into it, nothing seems to change at CBC, and
13     the only way to fix it is to privatize it.
14  616                  Thank you.
15  617                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
16     Mr. Pownall.
17  618                  Mr. Krushen.
18                                                        1609
19  619                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
20     Commissioner Wylie.
21  620                  At this point I would like to call
22     Ms Melinda McCracken to come up to the table.
23  621                  In addition, if there is anyone else
24     in the audience who has not yet made a presentation but
25     would like to do so, please come up to the table now as
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 1     well.
 2  622                  Thank you.
 3     --- Short pause / Courte pause
 4  623                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Please start when you
 5     are ready, Ms McCracken.
 6     PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
 7  624                  MS McCRACKEN:  Good afternoon,
 8     everyone, and thank you very much for accepting me,
 9     Mr. Krushen.
10  625                  I'm a writer and I'm also a CBC
11     junkie.  Unlike the previous speaker, I would like to
12     say the way to fix CBC is not to privatize it but to
13     keep it going because I think we all benefit very
14     deeply and broadly from the CBC.
15  626                  So my presentation is a more personal
16     and first-person singular kind of presentation because
17     I usually do this sort of thing.
18  627                  Winnipeg had its biggest snowfall of
19     the year yesterday.  I left my job at 9:45 p.m. and
20     went out into a silent world, muffled in a foot of
21     snowflakes.  I brushed the fluffy snow off my car, got
22     in and turned the key.  The radio came on.  I drove
23     home in my car cocoon treated to a conversation between
24     Eleanor Wachtel and Nobel Prize winning novelist
25     Tony Morrison.  A repeat, but what a repeat.  What
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 1     better company than Writers and Company when you are
 2     tired and snowbound in Winnipeg in March?
 3  628                  I got a hint of the importance of CBC
 4     radio to those of us living out on the prairies two
 5     summers ago when I drove from Winnipeg to Vancouver and
 6     back.  When I left the mountains and hit the flats east
 7     of Calgary before Medicine Hat, the roads straightened,
 8     the land flattened out and the sun blazed down in a
 9     vast empty sky.  I pointed the noise of the car toward
10     the east and held it there.  With no steering to do and
11     nothing to see I naturally switched on the radio.  The
12     sounds that filled the sky kept me awake and alive all
13     the way home.
14  629                  As a writer, I carry out many
15     solitary tasks.  I live by the CBC perhaps more than
16     most people.  On a bracing walk this morning I heard
17     Michael Enright talk to D.M. Thomas about Thomas'
18     biography of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  I eat lunch to
19     The Farm Report, paint my kitchen to the Richardson's
20     Roundup and marvel at how listeners to that program
21     have access to the airwaves via telephone and cell
22     phone, even calling in from the highway and honking
23     their car horns.
24  630                  Bill Richardson has taken
25     story-writing techniques from creative writing
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 1     workshops and adapted them to radio.  He asks people to
 2     call in with stories about their strange names or their
 3     worst jobs.
 4  631                  On Halloween this year, I raked my
 5     leaves to Bob Mcdonald interviewing a scientist about
 6     the nocturnal habits of vampire bats.
 7  632                  I eat dinner to CBC's 24 Hours and
 8     always watch Monday's when my friend, Ian Ross, the
 9     playwright, as Joe from Winnipeg gave his weekly shot
10     of wisdom and whimsy and asked:  What's up with that?
11  633                  I wrote and read a three-minute bit
12     on the CBC information radio's New Manitoba Voices.  I
13     was looking forward to doing more such pieces.  I was
14     just beginning to settle in to enjoy the CBC and to
15     marvel at the quality of programming we were getting
16     when the technicians struck.
17  634                  During the 1997 flood of the century,
18     I listened from dawn until dusk as reliable familiar
19     local CBC hosts fielded phone calls from farmers asking
20     for help with moving animals, requests for volunteers
21     to build dykes.  People out battling the flood were
22     able to relay their stories of acts of heroism to the
23     community at large.  Men with cell phones stopped on
24     the highway to report convoys of army trucks converging
25     on Winnipeg from the east and the west.
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 1  635                  During the flood, radio came into its
 2     own as a medium with hosts spelling off and fielding
 3     calls.  CBC's 24 Hours expert cameramen hauled their
 4     high-tech cameras up in planes and helicopters and with
 5     mobile uplink units seized the inspired shots of the
 6     Red Sea, water stretching far as the eye could see and
 7     beamed them around the world.  These were the shots
 8     that prompted the entire globe to give spontaneously
 9     from its heart to those in need.
10  636                  You just can't beat radio.  I'm sold
11     on it as a medium.  Sound is evocative and immediate. 
12     Recently I picked up some glossy coloured magazines.  I
13     noticed their news seemed strangely out of date
14     compared to the news I have been hearing on the radio. 
15     A steady dose of CBC radio, with constant news updates,
16     accustoms a listener to information that is on top of a
17     breaking story just as it happens, something print is
18     not capable of doing.  I have been spoiled by CBC
19     radio.
20  637                  CBC radio and TV binds Canada
21     together in one intelligent, thoughtful, responsible
22     community.  The image the CBC reflects to Canadians is
23     the image of ourselves we Canadians prefer.  CBC's
24     Radio broadcast journalism based in BBC traditions and
25     standards is top notch, fact-packed, up to date, on top
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 1     of events providing some documentaries that bring
 2     reality right into your home.
 3  638                  Even on a budget that is anorexic
 4     compared to what it once was, the CBC continues to
 5     deliver programming that reflects the talents and
 6     intelligence of the skilled people it employs and its
 7     commitment to excellence in public service
 8     broadcasting.
 9  639                  I'm grateful to the CBC for
10     steadfastingly continuing to deliver the values of
11     public broadcasting, honesty, responsibility, ethics
12     and intelligence without the undermining of the drive
13     for profit.
14  640                  I believe the CBC should be even more
15     objective, more critical of governments and politicians
16     and more diligent in its quest to expose corruption.
17  641                  How to improve the CBC?  Give it more
18     money, restore cuts in funding.  Let it develop more
19     This Hour Has 22 Minutes, more Kids in the Hall, more
20     Air Farce, more fantastic Witness documentaries, more
21     Fifth Estate investigations, more health shows, more
22     Market Places.  Let it nurture more Finklemans(ph),
23     both Danny and Ken; more Denis Foons(ph); more Norma
24     Baileys(ph); more Red Greens; more David Adams Richards
25     or Wendy Mesleys(ph); more Mark Styrowitzes(ph); Holger
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 1     Petersens; Terry MacLeods; Diana Swaines(ph); Ross
 2     Rutherfords; Al Rays; Ian Rosses; Dean Jenkinsons; Mike
 3     Beauregaurds(ph); Maurine Pendigrasses(ph); Robert
 4     Enrights; Laurie Browns; and Peter Mansbridges; Peter
 5     Gzowskis; Eric Sorensens; Joan Leichmans(ph); Jason
 6     Mochkovitches(ph); Ian Adam Mansings(ph); Don Murrays;
 7     more Sandy Colemans; more still cameramen and graphic
 8     artists; more great comedy, documentaries and drama.
 9  642                  The CBC is essential to Canada. 
10     Canada is a vast land mass with very few people.  The
11     CBC provides friendly intelligent voices telling us
12     what is going on, sharing jokes, stories, information,
13     drama and fun with thousands of solitary listeners
14     scattered across the continent.  Many of us are
15     engrossed in doing solitary tasks:  driving vehicles,
16     painting walls, carpentry and cooking, eating,
17     computing, all tasks we can do while listening to the
18     radio.
19  643                  We work alone with no one to talk to. 
20     With CBC we are never alone.  We may have no one to
21     talk to, but we always have someone to listen to.  CBC
22     broadcasters are some of our best friends.  The CBC
23     expands our community, gives us more friends.
24  644                  Does CBC serve the needs of the
25     people of Canada?  Yes, by keeping us on top of
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 1     late-breaking stories with great journalism, by
 2     allowing us phone-in access to air our views, by giving
 3     us great comedy to laugh at and great drama to cry
 4     about.
 5  645                  Yes, the CBC is a major contributor
 6     to the health and wellbeing of Canadians.  It is the
 7     most important link between Canadians.  It binds us
 8     together.  Rather than indulging in too much naval
 9     gazing, let's celebrate the CBC's great accomplishments
10     and support its enterprise into the 20th Century.
11  646                  So remember, if it ain't broke don't
12     fix it, and right now it's not broke.
13  647                  Thank you very much.
14     --- Applause / Applaudissements
15  648                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you,
16     Ms McCracken.
17  649                  MS McCRACKEN:  Thanks.
18  650                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Mr. Krushen.
19  651                  MR. KRUSHEN:  Thank you,
20     Commissioner Wylie.
21  652                  I would just like to ask once again
22     if there is anyone else in the room who has not yet
23     made a presentation that would like to do so, could you
24     please come forward now.
25  653                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  We will now take a
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 1     15-minute break, after which we will hear the comments
 2     of representatives of the CBC.
 3  654                  Nous prendrons maintenant une pause
 4     de 15 minutes, après quoi nous entendrons les
 5     représentants de Radio-Canada.
 6  655                  So we will be back in 15 minutes.
 7     --- Short recess at 1620/ Courte suspension à 1620
 8     --- Upon resuming at 1630/ Reprise à 1630
 9  656                  THE CHAIRPERSON:  Order please.
10  657                  We will now proceed to hear from
11     representatives of the CBC.
12  658                  Nous entendrons maintenant les
13     commentaires d'un représentant de Radio-Canada.
14  659                  M. FONTAINE:  Bonjour, Madame Wylie,
15     Monsieur Krushen.
16  660                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Bonsoir ou bonjour,
17     Monsieur.
18     REPLY / RÉPLIQUE
19  661                  M. FONTAINE:  Je m'appelle
20     René Fontaine et je suis le Directeur de la radio
21     française pour les régions des Prairies.  Au nom de
22     tous mes collègues de Radio-Canada, je tiens à
23     remercier le Conseil de l'occasion qui nous est donnée
24     d'entendre des commentaires du grand public sur la
25     programmation qui leur est offerte.
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 1  662                  Listening to the public's comments
 2     today are representatives of each of the CBC media, and
 3     among us are Carl Karp, Director of Programming for
 4     English Television; the Director of English Radio in
 5     Manitoba, John Bertrand; et il y a aussi le Directeur
 6     de la télévision française de l'ouest, Lionel
 7     Bonneville.
 8  663                  The issues and opinions that were
 9     presented today are of great importance to the CBC.  We
10     value input from our audiences and we appreciate the
11     opportunity to hear it directly.  We have noted the
12     numerous comments made here today and it is our
13     intention to address it directly with each intervenor
14     wherever there is any question that was left
15     unanswered.
16  664                  It is also our intention to respond
17     in writing to the CBC, if it so wishes, to any concerns
18     that have been brought forward and that require further
19     clarification.
20  665                  Je veux vous assurer que nous allons
21     accorder la plus grande considération à tous les propos
22     qui ont été avancés à cette audience et que nous
23     chercherons à y répondre dans la mesure du possible
24     lorsque nous présenterons nos demandes de
25     renouvellement de licence au mois de mai prochain.
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 1  666                  Today's presentations have raised
 2     many points that are worthy of further discussion and
 3     we will be pleased to follow up with these during the
 4     licence renewal hearings.
 5  667                  J'aimerais dire à quel point j'ai été
 6     particulièrement touché par la ferveur et l'intensité
 7     des propos de tous nos intervenants et aussi par le
 8     degré d'appréciation qu'ils ont -- c'était assez
 9     évident, je le crois -- degré d'appréciation qu'ils ont
10     pour la programmation à Radio-Canada.
11  668                  Once again, my colleagues and I would
12     like to thank you for today's opportunity to hear the
13     public's concerns and their appreciation of our
14     programming.
15  669                  Merci beaucoup.
16  670                  LA PRÉSIDENTE:  Merci,
17     Monsieur Fontaine.
18  671                  I would like to remind everyone that
19     a transcript is being made of the proceeding today and
20     all the presentations have been transcribed and will
21     become part of the renewal file in the May hearing.
22  672                  Alors, je voudrais rappeler aux gens
23     qu'il y a eu un procès-verbal créé et que toutes les
24     représentations donc feront partie du dossier du
25     renouvellement de Radio-Canada qui aura lieu à Hull
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 1     vers la fin du mois de mai, le 25 mai de fait.
 2  673                  Nous remercions tous ceux qui se sont
 3     présentés.  Il nous est très important évidemment
 4     d'avoir des réponses à nos invitations pour ces
 5     consultations et nous sommes toujours bien contents de
 6     voir autant de gens que possible.
 7  674                  So we thank you all who have answered
 8     our call.  We are always happy to see that people do
 9     respond to our attempt to give more Canadians the
10     opportunity to speak to us.
11  675                  Thank you again.
12  676                  Of course we will be back at 6:00 to
13     hear those who have registered to come and visit us
14     tonight.
15  677                  Merci.
16  678                  Merci, Monsieur Fontaine.
17     --- Recess at 1635 / Suspension à 1635
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