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Please note that the Official Languages Act requires that government publications be available in both official languages.
In order to meet some of the requirements under this Act, the Commission's transcripts will therefore be bilingual as to their covers, the listing of CRTC members and staff attending the hearings, and the table of contents.
However, the aforementioned publication is the recorded verbatim transcript and, as such, is transcribed in either of the official languages, depending on the language spoken by the participant at the hearing.
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:
Gallery I Gallery I
Landmark Hotel & Landmark Hotel &
Conference Centre Conference Centre
1400 Robson Street 1400, rue Robson
Vancouver, B.C Vancouver (C.-B.)
March 17, 1999 Le 17 mars 1999
Volume 2
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:
Cindy Grauer Chairperson / Présidente
Commissioner / Conseillère
ALSO PRESENT / AUSSI PRÉSENTES:
Carolyn Pinsky Commission Counsel /
Avocate du Conseil
Marguerite Vogel Regional Director,
Vancouver / Directrice
régionale, Vancouver
Sandra Caugh Regional Office, Vancouver/
Bureau régional, Vancouver
HELD AT: TENUE À:
Gallery I Gallery I
Landmark Hotel & Landmark Hotel &
Conference Centre Conference Centre
1400 Robson Street 1400, rue Robson
Vancouver, B.C Vancouver (C.-B.)
March 17, 1999 Le 17 mars 1999
Volume 2
StenoTran
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TABLE OF CONTENTS / TABLE DES MATIÈRES
PAGE
Presentation by / Présentation par:
Ms E. Bradley 387
Mr. Chris Haddock 394
Mr. J. Spark 398
Ms Catherine Murray 406
Ms Isable Minty 415
Ms Romney Grant 426
Ms Glynnis Whiting 429
Mr. Owen Underhill 433
Mr. Robert Anderson 441
Mr. Howard Grieves 450
Ms Mickey Rogers 453
Ms Nettie Wilde 458
Ms Judith Marcuse 467
Reply by: / Réponse par:
Ms Rae Hall 470
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1 Vancouver, B.C. / Vancouver (C.-B.)
2 --- Upon resuming on Wednesday, March 17, 1999
3 at 0900 / L'audience reprend le mercredi, 17 mars
4 1999 à 0900
5 1521 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning,
6 ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this public
7 consultation on the CRTC.
8 1522 My name is Cindy Grauer and I am the
9 CRTC commissioner for British Columbia and the Yukon.
10 We are here to gather your views and comments on CBC
11 radio and television, in your opinion, how should the
12 Canadian broadcasting corporation fulfil its role in
13 the coming years.
14 1523 CBC is a national public service,
15 broadcasting in English as well as in French. It plays
16 an important role in the Canadian broadcasting system.
17 Today many elements are constantly being added to the
18 broadcasting system as new technologies multiply,
19 converge, open up new horizons and increasingly offer
20 new services.
21 1524 In this context we want to know what
22 are your needs as viewers and listeners of the CBC.
23 Given that it is very important that the commission
24 hears what you have to say, we must not lose site of
25 the fact that the CRTC is a public organization that
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1 serves Canadian citizens. In this capacity we are
2 responsible to you. This is why my fellow
3 commissioners and myself find it vital to come and meet
4 with you to discuss these issues and why we are holding
5 this series of regional consultations from one end of
6 the country to the other in 11 Canadian cities from
7 March 9 to 18th.
8 1525 These consultations are designed to
9 give you a chance on the eve of a new millennium to
10 express your opinion on the CBC's role, the programming
11 it offers and the direction it should take at the
12 national, regional and local levels.
13 1526 Through these consultations we hope
14 to enter into an open dialogue with you and hear your
15 concerns. Your comments will form part of the public
16 record which will be added to the record of the public
17 hearing on the CBC that will begin in Hull next May
18 25th.
19 1527 At this upcoming hearing, the
20 commission will examine the CBC's application for the
21 renewal of its licences, including radio, television
22 and its specialty services Newsworld and RDI.
23 1528 You can also take part in that public
24 hearing by sending your public your comments to the
25 CRTC. If you wish to do so, please refer to the
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1 specific licence renewals being examined when you file
2 your comments.
3 1529 Now, I would like to come back to
4 today's consultations which is the last morning of our
5 Vancouver consultations which started yesterday.
6 1530 Please allow me to introduce the CRTC
7 staff who will be assisting us today. To my right is
8 Carolyn Pinsky, our legal counsel, and at the front
9 registration desk are Marguerite Vogel and Sandra Caugh
10 from the western regional office. Please feel free to
11 call on them about any questions you have on the
12 process today or any other matter.
13 1531 So that you all have the opportunity
14 to speak, we ask that you all limit your presentation
15 to ten minutes. As these consultations are a forum
16 designed to listen to you, and we want to listen to as
17 many participants as possible, we will not ask any
18 questions unless we need clarification.
19 1532 At the end of this session
20 representatives from the local CBC stations will have a
21 chance to offer their views as they are naturally very
22 interested in the issues we are discussing here today.
23 1533 Before we start, I would like to ask
24 our legal counsel to go over some of the housekeeping
25 matters regarding the conduct of this consultation.
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1 Thank you.
2 1534 MS PINSKY: Thank you, Madam Chair.
3 1535 I just would like to go over a bit of
4 the process today. We will be calling the presenters
5 up in groups to take their place around the table and
6 then I will be calling on each presenter individually
7 and he or she will have ten minutes to make his or her
8 presentation.
9 1536 Actually, we do not have that many
10 people around the table, so certainly if anyone else
11 wants to sit around the table, even if you are not
12 presenting, feel free to do so.
13 1537 For those who are here but do not
14 wish to make an oral presentation, we do have comment
15 sheets available at the front desk as you walk in.
16 1538 So if you would like to put some
17 thoughts in writing they will be put on the public
18 record.
19 1539 Without further ado, I will call the
20 first presenter, Ms Bradley.
21 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
22 1540 MS BRADLEY: Good morning. As I am
23 in the last flight of the intervenors, I have the
24 benefit of hindsight and I can concur wisely with all
25 of those eloquent people who have gone before in
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1 support of the CBC.
2 1541 There seem to me two obvious problems
3 for the CBC and the first, of course, is money. My
4 answer to this is that government must commit dollars
5 and adequate dollars for CBC radio and at the very
6 least for CBC television news.
7 1542 The CBC presents the only opportunity
8 we have for a mirror in this country by a medium not
9 owned by a large commercial entertainment network. It
10 must be funded. But the personal views of the Prime
11 Minister or of his wife should not feature in the
12 funding of the CBC, whether harmful to the CBC or
13 helpful. Such interference is harmful to the office of
14 the Prime Minister.
15 1543 Further, it is nothing but ridiculous
16 to suggest that the CBC be privatized. Where these
17 suggestions have come from private broadcasters it is
18 evident their aim is to inflate their already excessive
19 profits by eliminating the relatively small CBC
20 audience share. Where political, the Reform Party,
21 after all, is not a national party and should not
22 purport to speak for all Canadians in this matter any
23 more than the Bloc Québécois when in opposition or when
24 the opposition was legitimately a national party.
25 1544 So, to the funding. The money has to
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1 come from somewhere and I suggest the following
2 sources: The same place from which warships were
3 financed to send to the Gulf war, the same place from
4 which we got the money to pay off the investors in the
5 Pearson Airport, the same source for the $2 million or
6 so with which we paid off former Prime Minister Brian
7 Mulroney.
8 1545 In short, government has wonderful
9 resources to make reparation for its blunders while it
10 is our money, and let us use revenues to accommodate a
11 national broadcasting system.
12 1546 Like medicare, universal education,
13 the right to shelter if we want it, it will and it must
14 come.
15 1547 As with the other sad disparities in
16 that great socio-political culture to the south, must
17 we also emulate the U.S. in becoming the second
18 democracy in the western world that does not support a
19 national broadcasting system? Of course, the U.S. is
20 the only one at this time.
21 1548 I reluctantly concede that the second
22 problem we have is audience. That is only a problem
23 for those with different philosophies of what is
24 actually a public service. Yesterday and Sunday, on
25 "Cross-Country Checkup", I heard different view points
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1 for the necessity of appealing to many tastes, even the
2 obligation, as I heard with horror on "Cross-Country
3 Checkup", to give more air time to a more distinctly or
4 redder-necked point of view.
5 1549 I certainly agree that we make no
6 apologies for a recognized high standard of
7 entertainment and news production. Let us not try to
8 be all things to all people. A watering down that
9 becomes dumb and yet dumber inevitably. Let us be
10 educational, meticulous, well spoken, objective,
11 wide-ranging in news and public affairs. Let us be
12 witty where we are supposed to be and not differ with
13 Canadians' record of comedians record of critics. Let
14 us be original and Canadian where it fits in drama and
15 music.
16 1550 Are these sexy goals for the American
17 glutted schlock entertainment kids of today? No, and I
18 do not care. As a university instructor for 20 years,
19 a member of a family of farmers, thoughtful ones, and
20 four of the best print and electronic news editors in
21 Canada, as a writer myself, I have long since given up
22 on the idea that every Canadian young person, my own
23 three included, will read the classics, listen to
24 classical music or enjoy exclusively the work of
25 long-dead artists poets and philosophers.
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1 1551 However, we do not need to patronize
2 our youth by playing to their lowest common
3 denominator. Let us never dumb down the CBC for the
4 sake of ratings.
5 1552 I have finally come to the conclusion
6 that the tastes for what I cautiously deem good
7 entertainment and excellent news coverage may not be so
8 much cultivated as inherited. Like those children who
9 have been read to and become life-long readers, so the
10 offspring of CBC habitues may be osmotically or somehow
11 genetically programmed to become CBC people.
12 1553 No one programmed anything for me
13 other than "Just Mary" or, for my children,
14 "Razzle-Dazzle" and "Friendly Giant" when I could
15 barely follow the lightening literary and musical
16 references. I learned to love Nathan Cohen and Lester
17 Sinclair, as my children have the latter, and Marjorie
18 Doyle, Bob Kerr, Holger Peterson and so on.
19 1554 When Clyde Gilmore's beautiful
20 tribute was aired, I was thrilled to hear the young
21 voices lauding his memory. Let us not spoon feed our
22 youngsters in order to wean them away from more raucous
23 more violent American programs. After all, the way
24 "Coronation Street" is going, they can get enough sex
25 and violence right there, or on Mary Walsh's new show.
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1 1555 When all else fails, there are still
2 my young cousins on the Prairies whose best signal in
3 the summer with those hot shot ear phones in their posh
4 new tractor cabs comes from the CBC, they will soon be
5 addicted to quality. And all those kids in the subway
6 in Toronto, the Skytrain here, the ear phones are often
7 turned to CBC. And there are those captive kids who
8 ride around in mom's and dad's pick up or hold the
9 wallpaperer that is being stuck up or weed the garden
10 while mom's or dad's boom box is tuned to that that
11 steady outpouring of good stuff.
12 1556 And the summer cottages and ice
13 fishing huts and drilling rigs where you are stuck with
14 older and wiser hands, there are infinite variety of
15 ways in which we can prevail and inundate those
16 malleable little grey cells, or is it the hypothalamus
17 of the nation that you have to titillate.
18 1557 You can tell that science was not one
19 of might have great absorptions from the CBC. Anyway,
20 we can finally attune those listeners to great music,
21 the likes of Earl Cameron, the well-chosen words of and
22 sophisticated humour of Canadians from Alice Munro to
23 he who was Chief Dan George and the immortal Robertson
24 Davis. Maritime fiddlers and Gary Falgar and Moe
25 Kaufman, not least the Goldberg Variations which came
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1 out of CBC Toronto studios first.
2 1558 Once hooked, our audience is there.
3 It grows by that clever osmotic congenital process I
4 outlined. Numbers are not as important except to the
5 strange bottom liners who would pay taxes only to have
6 a concession at a bigger, more expensive Expo, as are
7 our few desperately important ways to know we are
8 Canadians.
9 1559 I will close with the last list.
10 These are some of the things and the names that as a
11 kid on the prairie a young mother in four Canadian
12 cities who could but rarely afford theatre, a
13 grandmother in a fifth, Toronto, and Vancouver now, I
14 would never have learned about or even based a career
15 on without CBC.
16 1560 Here is my list: Ovide,
17 Schopenhauer, Bertrand Russell, Victenstein, "Fortune
18 in Men's Eyes", "Mon Oncle Antoine", "Going Down the
19 Road", Greshen Gelena, Marie-Claire Blais, Maia, Louis
20 Amois, Duke Redburg, George Riga, the Pluff family,
21 Norval Morriseau and Allan Papp's paintings, both first
22 seen on television, CBC. Allan Ackborn, John Osbourne,
23 Beckett, Jeff McKenna reading Joyce, "Alibi", Pinter,
24 Andrew Allen's spectacular radio production of "Heart
25 of Darkness", Erica Ritter, Paul Sinclair, W.O.
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1 Mitchell's plays, Linda Griffiths, Oscar Peterson, the
2 Elmer Eisler singers, the Vancouver Symphony, "Thompson
3 Highway", George Grant, M.J. Caldwell, Desmond Morton,
4 Rachel Carson, Mark Kingswell.
5 1561 It is for the CRTC to realize this
6 potential for all those Canadians who come after us,
7 the potential to know, to grow, to change and to become
8 a part of Canada that we really recognize as our own.
9 Thank you.
10 1562 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms
11 Bradley.
12 --- Applause / Applaudissements
13 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
14 1563 MR. HADDOCK: Hi. It is hard for me
15 to be quite as articulate as that initial speaker. My
16 name is Chris Haddock and I am the executive producer
17 the creator and head writer of "Davinci's Inquest".
18 --- Applause / Applaudissements
19 1564 MR. HADDOCK: Thank you.
20 1565 Which is the CBC's number one rated
21 drama and the number one rated Canadian produced drama
22 on any of the Canadian networks. That is just an
23 indication that the numbers do come to quality, I
24 believe.
25 1566 Speaking as a citizen, a consumer of
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1 culture and as a TV audience member, I face when I turn
2 on the television a proliferation of great variety of
3 channels yet increasingly a monoculture. It is an
4 American culture and it is commercial. Unless I watch
5 the CBC. I watch the other private Canadian
6 broadcasters and they broadcast American culture with
7 the occasional Canadian produced, American looking show
8 hammocked between a couple of American shows. It all
9 looks very similar with rare exception. I certainly
10 recognize no one from my neighbourhood or any Canadian
11 neighbourhood I have ever been in.
12 1567 Speaking as a producer, I find my
13 experience in providing a show for the CBC to be
14 exceptional. I maintain a unique degree of creative
15 freedom. I write a show that is specifically Canadian,
16 specifically Vancouver, about specific Vancouverites in
17 specific neighbourhoods. I have found, as a writer and
18 producer, that the more specific you are and are able
19 to be, the more universal you become. This has been
20 proven in the Canadian audience embracing something
21 that is so specifically about Vancouver.
22 1568 This could occur only, I believe, at
23 this time in my career and certainly for this show,
24 only on the CBC. Certainly on no other network in
25 Canada.
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1 1569 The CBC in this regard, in embracing
2 something like this, is ahead of the trend
3 internationally as audience and elected officials
4 abroad rebel against pre-dominantly American fare on
5 their TV screens and begin to develop national content
6 and content regulations where their stories can be told
7 and their lives reflected.
8 1570 I believe that television is a place
9 where culture is formed and critiqued, where an
10 exchange between artists and citizens takes place. It
11 is vital that we have a venue where commerce does not
12 rule or will be our only ruler. This venue is the CBC.
13 Does the CBC fulfil its role as a national public
14 broadcaster well? No, not well enough and there is
15 always room for improvement. Should it fulfil its role
16 in a different manner, as in the past, but we cannot
17 mandate quality we can only recognize it and encourage
18 it.
19 1571 The CBC as a national and public
20 broadcaster has a mandate to licence produce and
21 broadcast Canadian culture, our ideas, stories and
22 experience. However, each year we see its budget
23 slashed and pilfered to the point where its voice grows
24 dim and weak.
25 1572 I would like to endorse everything
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1 that the first speaker said, unfortunately, I have not
2 heard what speakers yesterday or across the country
3 have said.
4 1573 Really, I recognize that what has
5 been given to me as a writer and an artist is a
6 tremendous opportunity. I think that really that the
7 only thing that where this kind of opportunity is
8 offered to people such as myself is on the CBC. I know
9 that people like myself who are writers who wish to
10 enter the world of television find it extremely
11 difficult and are often, you know, crushed at the gate.
12 1574 I think that it takes a great deal of
13 support which I have experienced not only on this show
14 but in my experience as a writer in Canada from the
15 CBC.
16 1575 Indeed, I have worked for all the
17 networks, all the American networks and I have worked
18 for the Canadian networks and my relationship with the
19 CBC is something that is unique and special and could
20 occur nowhere else.
21 1576 I believe that people who do not work
22 on the inside of the industry trying to produce it,
23 recognize the tremendous value of an organization such
24 as this and it is recognized internationally when I go
25 to international television markets, increasingly
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1 producers, individual producers and citizens look to
2 Canada and to the CBC specifically as a model where
3 people like myself citizens and artists can be
4 nurtured. I just want to say thank you very much for
5 letting me appear and speak.
6 --- Applause / Applaudissements
7 1577 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr.
8 Haddock and congratulations on the success of your
9 show.
10 1578 MS PINSKY: Mr. Spark is the next
11 presenter.
12 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
13 1579 MR. SPARK: Good morning, ladies and
14 gentlemen. Thank you very much for the opportunity to
15 speak this morning. CBC is an institution that is near
16 and dear to my heart. I have been a listener for a
17 long time. I come from Victoria. I am glad to see
18 that I came for some typical Vancouver weather this
19 morning.
20 1580 I am pleased to present my comments
21 here and add them to the others that are expressed
22 across the country in support of the CBC which I
23 believe to be a unique cultural entity. It has had a
24 significant impact on my own life as well as on the
25 lives of many Canadians across the country.
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1 1581 I grew up with the CBC in the '40s
2 and '50s in Ontario and I have fond recollections of
3 many programs that I think played a role in my own sort
4 of development. I think, particularly of programs like
5 and it does not mean very much, I guess, to B.C., but
6 the "Ontario Neighbourly News" was a program that ran
7 for years in Ontario. It was a collection of stories
8 from the weekly rural newspapers.
9 1582 There were lots of vignettes and lots
10 of insights into the lives of Canadians across the
11 country.
12 1583 Some of the great writers of this
13 country, John Grainey, W.O. Mitchell, "Jake and the
14 Kid" and so on. And I also remember the voices of the
15 news reporters in the war and from other parts of the
16 country and around the world.
17 1584 I also remember the programs of live
18 music and live drama in the '40s and '50s which
19 unfortunately have come and gone but nonetheless have
20 made a contribution to Canadian culture in general.
21 With a name like mine, "Spark", it was probably my
22 destiny to become a broadcaster.
23 1585 When I started my radio career, there
24 were two CBC networks in radio, Dominion Network which
25 I was young and I found frankly boring at times and the
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1 TransCanada Network which provided mandatory and
2 discretional programs programming to broadcasters
3 across the country.
4 1586 Many private broadcasters especially
5 those in the rural communities subscribed to CBC news
6 and other features through one or the other of these
7 two networks. For many years, Canadians were served by
8 a broadcasting system which was fashioned mainly out of
9 compromise between public and commercial broadcasting
10 objectives. That sort of demarcation seems to have
11 become a bit grey in recent years. I think there was
12 much more of a sense of broadcasting as a community
13 service in those days.
14 1587 During the '70s, while working at
15 places distant from Canada, I learned to count on Radio
16 Canada International for a uniquely Canadian
17 perspective on world and domestic events. Just one
18 sort of brief illustration of that was in Spain during
19 the Falklands conflict. I felt a bit isolated along
20 with other Canadians felt a bit isolated in terms of
21 getting information on a timely basis that was somewhat
22 objective.
23 1588 The Spanish language media were
24 clearly aligned with the Argentinian view and the BBC,
25 who has always had great respect in my books for its
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1 journalistic integrity and so on, became the propaganda
2 voice of the government of the time over night and it
3 was very difficult to get any objective information.
4 1589 At the time, RCI did provide a
5 welcome kind of insight into the events that were going
6 on and perhaps allayed some of our own anxieties at the
7 time.
8 1590 In Germany, while working with the
9 Canadian Forces Network, RCI provided program,
10 administrative and cultural support to the network. I
11 was able at that time to get some glimpses, as brief as
12 they might be, into the problems of funding support
13 from different ministries, whether National Defence,
14 External Affairs or the Treasury Board. And the impact
15 of successive budget reductions had not yet reached a
16 critical point, but they were certainly evident back in
17 the '70s.
18 1591 As a CBC northern service line
19 manager during the early '80s, I assisted in
20 presentations to the taskforce on broadcasting policy,
21 the Kaplin-Sojeau committee and in submissions to the
22 CRTC related to the renewal of the CBC radio network
23 licence.
24 1592 I worked in the Arctic at the time,
25 the Inuvik production centre was informally targeted
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1 for significant reductions at one point which really
2 would have been quite devastating for the thousands of
3 ordinary people many of them on subsistence incomes who
4 were native to the north who lived in settlements great
5 distances from civilization in one of the most isolated
6 and hostile elements on earth. Fortunately the service
7 was spared at that time due to many local interventions
8 and the CRTC, and a truly northern communication system
9 assistance began to develop.
10 1593 As a Canadian, I am concerned about
11 some of the changes that I have seen over the past few
12 years. I unfortunately gave up on television a couple
13 of years ago, after years of aggravation about the way
14 commercials are handled and every time I go back to
15 check it out it seems to be worse.
16 1594 Personally, I find the commercial
17 interruptions on TV like the clutter on the Internet
18 and the roadside signs going into some towns are about
19 equally tasteless and offensive.
20 1595 So I really cannot comment on the
21 direction of CBC television except to say that any huge
22 enterprise involving thousands of people and millions
23 of dollars in equipment is bound to be inefficient and
24 wasteful some of the time, but that is not
25 justification for CBC budget cuts.
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1 1596 I am concerned at this juncture that
2 the quality of national radio programs has suffered
3 without much comment from the top. Certainly, there
4 continue to be exemplary programs throughout the
5 different services of the CBC. Some of them are block
6 busters in intellectual and cultural terms, but they
7 seem to be fewer.
8 1597 I am also concerned about what might
9 be a trend toward a more authoritarian attitude to
10 government when it comes to dissent. Ordinary people,
11 especially at the community and regional levels have
12 more and more reasons for dissent as they are the ones
13 directly affected mostly by the socio-economic changes
14 of the '90s. It is a growing number and their concerns
15 are often poorly represented in the political process
16 and priorities of the country. Fewer of their stories
17 find a voice on the CBC which has lost much of its
18 journalistic edge and resources.
19 1598 The opening of our frontiers to free
20 trade will continue to present awesome challenges to
21 Canadian cultural and political sovereignty to say
22 nothing of the impact of the global business impact.
23 Just because someone says it is not so does not
24 necessarily make it so.
25 1599 The buck has been synonymous with the
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1 bottom line for so long that we seem to have forgotten
2 other values that are equally important to the quality
3 of life. While the ethics and values of the
4 marketplace hold sway through most of Canadian life, it
5 is the responsibility of every Canadian to safeguard
6 our cultural future even though the cost may be high.
7 The cost of not doing so leads us down the path of
8 manifest destiny.
9 1600 The corporation has been diminished
10 through neglect but it is still viable if there is a
11 will to reaffirm our own cultural values through it.
12 That is, as they say, the $64,000 question.
13 1601 Great numbers of cable and satellite
14 channels do not do it for me. From the point of view
15 of media consumer, what I call the orgy of
16 entertainment options has become a bit of a fetish in
17 this country.
18 1602 One of the things that I most admired
19 about the CBC when I worked for the corporation was the
20 vigorous assertion of programming as the main focus in
21 all its endeavours. That is what made it an exciting
22 place to be.
23 1603 As a listener, in 1999, that
24 commitment seems to have been lost in spite of the
25 restructuring of CBC Ottawa's bureaucracy. There is
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1 still a fairly large administrative infrastructure in
2 place which creating inefficiency and binds the
3 structure into a centrist, urban mode, I believe.
4 1604 The corporation's brief experiment
5 during the '80s into regional broadcasting never really
6 had a chance although I believe it was the right idea,
7 its timing and conception were unfortunate and it was
8 stillborn.
9 1605 There are many good arguments in
10 favour of decreased centralization of the CBC. In my
11 view, in a world where profit taking is unfettered,
12 public money must continue to support public
13 broadcasting in the interests of freedom of expression
14 and the exchange of ideas.
15 1606 Increasingly, control of public
16 services is devolving to the community level. The
17 corporation needs to re-examine its management model, I
18 think, develop more sensitivity to changes in Canada
19 and focus more on programming which is responsive to
20 national and community needs. It must maintain a good
21 journalistic infrastructure nationally and abroad,
22 acting as a conduit for news across the country. By
23 all means, set basic technical administrative and
24 programming standards nationally, but put the resources
25 and control where they will do the most good and be
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1 most accessible to ordinary Canadians in the regions
2 and in the communities.
3 1607 In conclusion, I would appeal to the
4 commission for leadership again and keeping public
5 broadcasting not only alive but viable and thank you
6 very much for the opportunity to present my views.
7 1608 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr.
8 Spark.
9 1609 MS PINSKY: Ms Catherine Murray is
10 the next presenter.
11 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
12 1610 MS MURRAY: Good morning and thank
13 you Commissioner Grauer and to the commission for
14 scheduling a second day here in Vancouver due to the
15 demand to appear. I was one of the late callers and
16 astonished at the lineup and at the fact that I could
17 not get in last night so thank you for getting up early
18 again this morning.
19 1611 I teach communications at Simon
20 Fraser university. I am on the board of a number of
21 agencies including B.C. Film here locally which invests
22 as "Davinci's Inquest" as a very small partner and a
23 number of other not-for-profit community entities.
24 1612 But I am speaking this morning as a
25 citizen and a concerned citizen. I have also been
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1 honoured and privileged to share, I think, many of the
2 concerns that have been expressed around the table.
3 But I thought what I could do this morning is address
4 the challenge of leadership, as Mr. Sparks has called
5 it, facing the commission in this very important period
6 of transition to the new millennium and fundamental
7 structural changes in our broadcasting environment.
8 1613 I think that the CRTC is going to be
9 faced with public demands coast to coast for leadership
10 of the sort that it exhibited and manifested in the
11 early '70s when really the CRTC under the then chairman
12 Pierre Juneau initiated the radio revolution which, in
13 fact, meant a reversal of advertising on the public
14 network -- public radio network and I think led to an
15 extremely interesting period of programming diversity
16 and innovation for that network.
17 1614 I think the challenge facing the CRTC
18 will be to redress its silence in the last six to --
19 well, really four critical years when cuts to the CBC
20 have really meant that it was at risk of compliance
21 with the terms and conditions of its last licence
22 renewal.
23 1615 So, like it or not, I think that the
24 commission's dilemma is that you will have to rule on
25 the impact of these cuts on public value for money
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1 within the CBC and the basis for my case this morning
2 is to encourage you to exhibit moral leadership and to
3 take risks in this next licensing hearing.
4 1616 I happen to be one of the ones who
5 believes that the commission is a very important part,
6 a player in holding the CBC to account on the part of
7 Canadian voters and taxpayers. But the CRTC is only
8 one player in a very important triad. The other
9 players in a public corporation like the CBC are the
10 Auditor General. And the Auditor General has been
11 silent for over four years on the corporation. And I
12 think the fact that the Auditor General has not had a
13 recent review of the CBC really sends the CRTC into the
14 next round of hearings with an unacceptable level or
15 lack of information on public value for money.
16 1617 I would encourage attention being
17 paid in the next decisions to do with the CBC licence
18 renewals to the accountability system and to the CRTC's
19 role in that system and perhaps to the idea that, in
20 future, the Auditor General's cycle review of the
21 corporation be conducted prior to the public hearings
22 around licence renewal. I think the links of
23 accountability are out of phase.
24 1618 The role of the Auditor General is to
25 rule on effective value for public money. Rules of
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1 internal accounting, validity of cost separation, a
2 range of issues that I think are fundamentally
3 important as a knowledge base for commissioner's and
4 citizens who wish to intervene effectively in the arena
5 to make value judgments.
6 1619 The role of the commission obviously
7 is going to be to rule on qualitative compliance with
8 the act on the part of the CBC. Important social
9 issues, market entry issues, intention of the CBC to
10 file for future licences, for example, in specialty
11 hearings or in the radio side for a youth new media
12 network.
13 1620 A range of questions to do with
14 impacts on other licensees and finally and perhaps most
15 importantly in today's highly contentious partisan
16 atmosphere around the editorial conduct of the CBC, I
17 think that the CRTC cannot back away from its role as
18 court of appeal for broadcast standards and complaints
19 of editorial bias. I think the other parallel hearing
20 which the commission is undertaking to do with
21 standards of self-regulation in broadcasting is an
22 equally important hearing to this one.
23 1621 In fact, I have argued in other
24 arenas it is time to really reassess who should be
25 accountable for very serious allegations of partisan
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1 political bias. I think that it is no longer
2 appropriate for the CBC's ombudsperson or officer of
3 media accountability to be the only one to hold the
4 bag, so to speak.
5 1622 The third area I think in the triad
6 for public accountability is the role of the
7 parliamentary committee. I have argued elsewhere that
8 we simply must change the way that we make public
9 appointments to the board of the CBC and in particular
10 how the president is appointed and the president should
11 not be appointed by the Prime Minister.
12 1623 So I think that the commission is
13 going to have to address the accountability structure
14 and questions to do with procedural reform to public
15 accountability of the CBC in order to enhance its
16 trust.
17 1624 Now, I think that the substantive
18 policy issues facing you are very serious indeed and I
19 understand, although I was unable to attend yesterday,
20 there continues to be burning concern coast to coast on
21 the public consultations as indeed we encountered a
22 couple of years ago in the mandate review committee for
23 viable, distinctive, local service.
24 1625 That local service does not have to
25 take the same formula for every province or every city
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1 or market. In fact, it should demonstrate editorial
2 difference.
3 1626 I think the second main issue facing
4 the CBC is its contribution to racial and cultural
5 diversity. I think here the CBC, while obviously
6 apparently ahead in hiring and promotion, for example
7 of minorities from other races and so on, compared to
8 the private sector, in fact, it would be very important
9 that this diversity is increasingly being felt in all
10 levels of prime time national and regional programming.
11 1627 I have also argued that the
12 commission will have to rule on the impact of the cuts
13 and I think the biggest issue facing the commission is
14 going to have to be to talk about the health of the
15 increasingly commercialized regime, especially facing
16 television.
17 1628 And I believe that the amount of
18 advertising revenues that the public broadcasting
19 television network must now raise in order to support
20 its activities has crossed the danger threshold. It
21 certainly several years ago was equivalent to 50 per
22 cent of its operation in television English and the
23 French language, it now presumably has increased from
24 that threshold and the danger is less from overt
25 censorship than a covert search to expand audiences and
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1 go for programs only that will attract the largest
2 numbers.
3 1629 So the biggest qualitative impacts
4 that I am concerned about as a citizen would be the
5 insertion of news in the national news and empirical
6 questions to do with the impact on length of news
7 items, quality of news items, soft versus hard news
8 items and the fundamental question if the tradeoff in
9 revenue is achieved has in fact been worth the change
10 or dilution of standards.
11 1630 The mandate review committee several
12 years ago found that the commercial thrust in
13 television was reflected in the over representation of
14 sports. My impression is that sports has been rolled
15 back somewhat but not enough.
16 1631 The new threat is that there will be
17 substitution of programming to other very popular items
18 to do with comedy and so on and a persistent
19 representation of children's arts and science
20 programming which is a cause for concern on the
21 television side.
22 1632 I think the mandate review committee
23 report was extremely controversial and indeed really
24 the recommendation to do with the tax drew such
25 visceral response from the private sector that, in
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1 fact, the report probably did not receive its due
2 public attention.
3 1633 I think that the main failure on the
4 part of the report was the failure to draw attention to
5 the problems of commercial revenues. The fact that
6 citizens have very little choice of non-commercial
7 programming, less than 5 per cent our research found at
8 that time, and my impression is that has diminished.
9 1634 We note with interest that even
10 advertisers are complaining about advertising clutter
11 in the TV policy hearing and have lobbied in the TV
12 policy hearing to cap the number of minutes and not
13 allow more as a very minimum.
14 1635 From an audience research
15 perspective, advertorials are becoming increasingly
16 hard to distinguish to the average citizen with
17 secondary and post-secondary education and ads, as I
18 think most citizens fail to realize, shape the length
19 of the news item and the flow in a very fundamental way
20 and there are fundamental social impacts of advertising
21 introduction and increased televisual aesthetic means
22 of product spilling into all kinds of program creation.
23 These impacts are increasingly being felt in shorter
24 attention span and other social costs to do with the
25 under representation of minorities, women and promotion
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1 of consumerism.
2 1636 I think the most important issue is
3 that advertisers create a system which responds to the
4 direct demand from advertisers not the true end viewer
5 or consumer. This is both manifestly inefficient and
6 subject to distortion of true viewer or citizen wants.
7 1637 So I think that there is no question
8 that the commission will be asked to rule on the
9 viability of the health of the public broadcaster and
10 in particular the impact of the cuts in forcing the
11 corporation to move increasingly to advertising and
12 that is, I think, a very important social question.
13 1638 In the future, the CBC will be
14 relying more and more on innovation and new services to
15 do with subscription or transaction services for earned
16 revenues from certain citizens.
17 1639 This may a bigger part in the
18 financial structure of public broadcasters worldwide
19 and, in fact, we see entities like the BBC increasingly
20 diversifying to new specialty channels and a range of
21 others.
22 1640 I think it is unfortunate that the
23 last round of licensing has significantly ignored the
24 CBC as a partner and/or sole licensee in entities.
25 1641 I think it is tragic that our public
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1 broadcaster, for example, has no share in the History
2 Channel which was launched which seems to me to be a
3 natural partner for a public broadcaster.
4 1642 It is very important that the
5 commission endorse the need for innovation and a social
6 audit of the public broadcaster in the future and that
7 there be new public benchmarks for the quality of
8 performance of the CBC.
9 1643 This really implies a renewal of the
10 CRTC's own mandate in research and providing a catalyst
11 for the development of an independent research media
12 monitoring agency which can, in fact, conduct
13 qualitative research on contents and audiences and so
14 on which really allow us to build our case that we are
15 receiving as taxpayers excellent public value for
16 public money.
17 1644 Thank you.
18 1645 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very
19 much, Dr. Murray.
20 --- Applause / Applaudissements
21 1646 MS PINSKY: Ms Isabel Minty is the
22 next presenter.
23 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
24 1647 MS MINTY: My apologies for not being
25 better organized. I also am appreciative of those who
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1 have spoken before me and I also would like to say what
2 I am going to say to you as people going around Canada
3 listening to us that I recognize that you have a
4 conflict of interest and it is very hard to tell
5 persons in that position to disregard your conflict of
6 interest, but I feel if you do not in this instance,
7 you are just going through a song and dance and there
8 is no consequence. It is an appearance of listening
9 but the intention to take action, if it is not there,
10 it invalidates what this process is. So I am prefacing
11 my remarks with that, because I just want that on the
12 record before I start.
13 1648 What does the CBC mean to me? To a
14 great extent, the CBC represents our country to me, our
15 beautiful land, its millions of diverse and charming
16 inhabitants, its contrasting seasons, its immensity,
17 its challenges and its rugged beauty. And I am not
18 going to be emotional, but I feel that this is what we
19 are at risk of losing because it is smart, it is
20 contemporary to disregard all of this because when that
21 window is closed, it will be closed forever and the
22 people who destroy it are killing our way of life of
23 being a Canadian.
24 1649 CBC is a great educator for all of us
25 about all of us, our past, our present. And it gives
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1 food for thought about our future. The research work
2 and the intelligence that goes into every piece of work
3 of presenters that they bring forward and that
4 excellence shines through reflecting the caliber of the
5 staff at CBC and never insults the listener or the
6 viewer and the expertise of these technical crews will
7 now be on the block because I think we have to
8 recognize that this is a step in the privatization of
9 this national service. And I appreciate what was said
10 earlier, because I, too, listened to CBC radio as a
11 young person at home with children, babes. And, to me,
12 all the thousands of Canadians that we have come to
13 know and have been introduced to would never have
14 happened without the CBC.
15 1650 But I am here to do more than sing a
16 love song to the CBC. I am here to lend my voice, a
17 sharply critical one to what I consider to be the
18 decisions that are destroying our federal
19 communications networks. I wrote a very critical
20 letter to CBC management in early March and I would
21 like to read a few paragraphs to let you know where I
22 am coming from:
23 1651 "Dear senior managers, cowards all,
24 also known as sell-outs of the CBC, including and since
25 Mulroney's leadership years: You have kept your
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1 paycheques coming because you have agreed to erode,
2 emasculate and destroy eventually our national
3 broadcasting corporation's both radio and TV. If you
4 were not willing participants, you would have walked
5 over the past 15 years as managers, you have been
6 willing and anxious to run the company that pays your
7 salary into the ground. You are supposed to be
8 exercising the mandate you hold in the name of
9 Canadians, not in the interests of whatever national
10 government may be in Ottawa. In the face of criticism
11 from the ruling party, you have steadfastly shown
12 timidity and acquiescence instead of the courageous and
13 straightforward responses needed to defend the company
14 and Canadians' interests. I do not want to list your
15 backslidings, but I do want to address the latest mess
16 you have caused."
17 1652 And then I discussed that any outfit
18 that had managed to rob their employees of their
19 salaries deserves to be fired especially when their own
20 salaries had been going in the opposite direction.
21 1653 "Then, when the employees finally say
22 they are prepared to go on strike, if management cannot
23 agree to a decent wage increase, they throw them out
24 onto the street. They will not come to the table and
25 come to a middle way to find a solution. Rather than
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1 come to the table to reach that situation, they stop
2 the wonderful continuation so that the ruination of
3 this magnificent institution will be moved forward and
4 you prove repeatedly your inability to do the jobs you
5 agreed to undertake. Over these years only one man in
6 a leadership management role had what it takes to
7 refuse to conspire in the destruction of the CBC. He
8 had to walk, because the creep bureaucrats like all of
9 you refused to stand with him. You are bought and sold
10 paper pushers who admire what your paycheques buy more
11 than you respect the integrity that belongs to the CBC
12 position that you hold."
13 1654 That is sort of the background for
14 what I am here to say.
15 1655 Why would a federal government in a
16 country as enormous and sparsely populated as ours
17 decide it is in the national interest to weaken our
18 most important communication links? We are told that
19 if CBC is to survive, it will be only a shadow of its
20 former self. Cutbacks must continue in all kinds of
21 programming: Documentary making, in news room staffs,
22 film making, live production of all kinds, et cetera.
23 1656 At the same time, we are told there
24 will be more partnerships with independent film makers
25 and commercial corporations who will bleed the CBC of
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1 their expertise and financial capital while making use
2 of CBC facilities and technology for their private
3 gain.
4 1657 We are told that the CBC TV should
5 undertake to develop new specialty channels that would
6 attract particular audiences and would be supported by
7 cable subscribers. We are told in addition to CBC
8 Radio One and Two, where we already endear more repeat
9 shows than should be considered a reasonable number,
10 CBC management is going to push for a CBC youth
11 station.
12 1658 We are reassured to know that scarce
13 insufficient tax dollars will be available for that.
14 Well, youth radio is hardly available on every
15 commercial frequency across the dial, regardless of the
16 chronological age of the listener. CBC needs to be
17 reminded that adult listeners of every chronological
18 age seek out the CBC.
19 1659 In response to every appeal to get
20 our late local CBC TV news moved back to 11 o'clock,
21 when most of the viewers look forward to seeing it, we
22 are told no, no, you must have another opportunity to
23 see the national, your third since nine o'clock. We
24 are told wait 'til 11:30 to see your local news. We
25 are told to wait 'til 11:30 to see our national news.
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1 Then you can watch it in competition with the two
2 better funded news rooms. They have the funding to pay
3 for the staffing needed to cover evening events. And
4 so our local CBC news room at 11:30 is in competition
5 with far better funded news rooms and it might have, if
6 it stayed at 11 been in competition with the poorest,
7 next to CBC, attended funded news rooms.
8 1660 What we can understand from that,
9 that is not to be done because CBC management wants
10 local news rooms dead and buried. But cover youth
11 radio stations, yes, sir, specialty TV, oh, that is a
12 really great idea, financially support commercial
13 channels oh, that is a winner. It is just not good
14 enough. It will not wash.
15 1661 Now, as we well know, the undermining
16 of all our public institutions followed in the wake of
17 the Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA.
18 1662 They had to be harmonized with those
19 existing in the U.S. and, as we know, many of our
20 national publicly funded institutions are non-existent
21 down there. Dismantling and eliminating had to occur
22 very quietly, incrementally, because similar to the
23 frog who remains unconcerned in the gradually warming
24 pot, the transnational corporations wanted Canadians to
25 remain passive and oblivious of the cut backs a
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1 population aroused to fighting the cut backs is not and
2 it is still not wanted. It was to be avoided at all
3 costs to the point of political and bureaucratic
4 bare-faced lies and deceptions.
5 1663 That is what I am wondering if that
6 is what this process of pretending to listen, taking
7 the concerns of Canadians is an exercise to let us
8 too-polite Canadians feel that we have an opportunity
9 to say rather than being massively out on the streets
10 which is where we all should be taking on the
11 criminality of this kind of conduct.
12 1664 The liberal government's willingness
13 to accommodate U.S. transnational corporations' desire
14 to implement the MAI has put new pressure on the CBC.
15 The dismantling of our national communication network
16 is a must-do first. Disconnecting Canadians one from
17 the other on a daily basis is essential to pave the way
18 for an easier path to achieve -- to wreck, to break
19 Canadians allegiance one to the other.
20 1665 After all, the taxpayer has been sold
21 the bill of goods, has been dished the mantra for years
22 that we can no longer afford any of the these national
23 treasures, especially our CBC.
24 1666 Now, I must apologize because I have
25 to find where I go next.
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1 1667 In these days when nine conglomerates
2 own all the international media, a thinking populace
3 would probably agree that an independent national media
4 would be well worth spending tax dollars on to keep it
5 independent and objective. Canadians deserve to see
6 and hear what is going on in the world through Canadian
7 reporters' eyes who are not subject to the whims of the
8 management of a few cartels that dominate the
9 international media. The Ted Turners, the Conrad
10 Blacks and the Rupert Murdochs. Yes, Conrad Black's
11 media empire is one of these nine.
12 1668 These empires -- and we all know
13 it -- sell themselves by creating division promoting
14 division amongst the citizenry, ethnic, religious,
15 economic, racial, political, et cetera, infotainment
16 substitutes for, and is called the news.
17 1669 Sections of the printed press are
18 devoted to professional sports, the more violent the
19 better, films and entertainment, the more skin the
20 better, food and wine, the more gourmet and expensive
21 the better. That is the direction that the
22 international media want us to be in because as we have
23 been told by people who observe the media and are
24 students of the media, that in this way, they are
25 managing consent as the man par excellence has told us
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1 and the other thing they create is a mindlessness that
2 is needed in order that they can make the advances they
3 want. And we have to understand.
4 1670 We are being led to our nation's
5 demise by Mammon bewitched, shrewd, well organized
6 rapacious plunderers. These people want it all. And
7 if we do not stand up and say what we have and value is
8 worth spending money on, we have rocks where our brains
9 are supposed to be.
10 1671 I do not know whether anyone
11 yesterday drew your attention to the absolutely superb
12 Darryl Duke editorial in our local paper. Did you
13 receive a copy? Because if you did not, I would like
14 to leave you one.
15 1672 THE CHAIRPERSON: By all means, you
16 can leave it. It has certainly been brought to our
17 attention. If you would like to leave it, it will go
18 on the record again.
19 1673 MS MINTY: Because he has pointed out
20 that this mantra that we have been dished that we
21 cannot afford it, that it is totally expensive is
22 totally exploded.
23 1674 In Canada, the taxpayer for our
24 national broadcasting system pays by far the least by
25 multiples than other nations across the world and the
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1 lies and the deceits that we are told and expected
2 politely to accept is outrageous and has to be turned
3 around. We pay $27 per citizen as Darryl Duke points
4 out, $27 to keep this wonderful system going. Belgium
5 pays $58, the U.K. $60, Japan $56 and Switzerland $109.
6 I do not think anyone has ever suggested that the
7 people of Switzerland do not know exactly what is the
8 benefit way to conduct their nation's business.
9 1675 Thank you.
10 --- Applause / Applaudissements
11 1676 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms
12 Minty. I wanted to clarify for you what your concerns
13 were with respect to the conflict of interest in your
14 opening. I think you said you acknowledge we had a
15 conflict of interest. I am not quite sure what you --
16 1677 MS MINTY: Well, I know you are
17 young, but I did not know you are that young. The
18 thing is, when you come out and listen to people and I
19 do not care what the issue is, someone has employed you
20 to do that. You have to make a report and you make the
21 report to the folks who have hired you.
22 1678 MS PINSKY: Actually, I will just
23 explain a bit of the process.
24 1679 Commissioner Grauer is here to
25 collect the comments that presenters are making and
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1 these comments will form part of the record of the
2 proceeding which are considered by all commissioners
3 including Cindy Grauer when they make their decisions
4 on the CBC renewal applications.
5 1680 The record does not form a report, if
6 you are thinking of to government or to something like
7 that. It is part of a record that the commissioners
8 themselves, including Commissioner Grauer consider when
9 making their decisions.
10 1681 MS MINTY: Well then, I will respond
11 to that. I have read and responded mentally to CRTC
12 news coverage of hearings they have been through and I,
13 as a reader and listener, am constantly amazed at how
14 they can proceed with what decisions they come to after
15 they have heard what citizens who come before them have
16 to say.
17 1682 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mrs.
18 Minty.
19 1683 MS PINSKY: Romney Grant is the next
20 presenter.
21 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
22 1684 MS GRANT: I am here to speak in
23 support of the CBC as both a consumer and an
24 independent producer. CBC has always provided the
25 primary pipeline to Canadian culture to me and my
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1 family. It is the safe and intelligent haven from the
2 extraordinarily powerful American entertainment machine
3 which looks, feels and sounds not very real.
4 1685 CBC provides constant reminders of
5 our regional diversity and talents. It shares the
6 values of the thinking public, a quality not often
7 found in the private broadcaster. As a consumer, I
8 look forward to the continued presence of a strong
9 public broadcaster to educate and entertain me and my
10 family.
11 1686 As an independent producer, I can
12 only comment on my own experience with the CBC and it
13 has been overwhelmingly positive. Currently, our
14 company is producing a series for pre-schoolers called
15 "Scoop and Doozy", it is a national series produced in
16 this region. I originally pitched it to CBC Vancouver
17 who invested funds to start development. After some
18 coaxing, CBC Toronto moved it to the top shelf and
19 contributed to more development and ultimately to
20 production.
21 1687 Needless to say, the combined support
22 of CBC Toronto and CBC Vancouver to the financial
23 package made the project viable.
24 1688 For a small producer building
25 relationships with broadcast partners is key. It is
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1 difficult although not impossible to build a
2 relationship with a team that is thousands of miles
3 away. The presence of CBC Vancouver regional support
4 has been essential in the development and continued
5 good health of the series. They have been mentors
6 without being intrusive, offered technical information
7 and assistance when asked, worked hard to monitor the
8 smooth running of the production, remedied problems and
9 quickly and actively sought feedback and I suspect they
10 were able to provide CBC Toronto with comfort regarding
11 the nature of this small producer.
12 1689 Without a strong regional team "Scoop
13 and Doozy" may well not have happened or may not have
14 happened as well. It is always easier to deal with
15 people you know.
16 1690 CBC Toronto has also been good to
17 work with and pleasant to deal with. From a creative
18 perspective, they have respected our creative integrity
19 and independence. They have facilitated rather than
20 interfered. From a business perspective, I believe
21 they balance their own interests with that of a
22 producer, no pushovers but not inflexible, not
23 unreasonable. From a creative and business perspective
24 there was an ongoing willingness to do what was
25 reasonably required to make the production happen,
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1 their contribution to the production demonstrates their
2 level of support.
3 1691 And finally, in closing I would like
4 to say, unlike many private broadcasters, CBC has
5 demonstrated its willingness to support independent
6 production with creative heart and not always mass
7 market support.
8 1692 I hope my children continue to
9 benefit from the distinctive voices and enlightened
10 entertainment showcased on CBC.
11 1693 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms
12 Grant.
13 --- Applause / Applaudissements
14 1694 MS PINSKY: Perhaps I will just run
15 through the list again. I do not have anyone marked
16 here who would like to make a presentation in addition
17 to those who have done so this morning, so I will just
18 go through in case someone is here. Mr. Rogers, Ms
19 Whiting -- oh, sorry, that is in the marked out, great.
20 If you want to make your presentation now.
21 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
22 1695 MS WHITING: My name is Glynnis
23 Whiting. I would like to thank the CRTC for being here
24 to listen to what we have to say.
25 1696 I am a producer, writer, director and
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1 have also worked in affiliation with the CBC as a
2 trainer going back many years. My first experience
3 with the CBC is -- goes back almost 20 years when I
4 first won a national radio drama competition that gave
5 me the legs to move forward and follow my dreams.
6 1697 I have been an audience member all my
7 life and, addressing what Ms Bradley said earlier, I
8 remember one day visiting my mother and the CBC being
9 on the radio when I was -- when I was visiting or
10 getting into my car, turning the radio on which
11 automatically went to CBC and going directly to my
12 daughter's house, going to her apartment and CBC radio
13 being played when I went in. So it certainly is
14 something that follows from generation to generation.
15 1698 This morning I would like to address
16 two points in regard to CBC television which has been
17 the arm of CBC that I have been most involved with in
18 the last decade or so.
19 1699 The points I would like to make are
20 in regard to the evolving role of the CBC as well as
21 the CBC as the purveyor of Canadian culture. I will be
22 brief.
23 1700 The CBC is a national treasure but at
24 the same time I think there is no question that there
25 is need for change. Responding as best they could to
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1 the battery of cut backs, it is time to step back and
2 examine what remains.
3 1701 When CBC first went to air, it had a
4 daunting role. There was no television programming
5 available. It took responsibility not only as a
6 broadcaster but also as a producer and a trainer and
7 was highly successful. Successful to the point that
8 now, in its maturity, and existing among a mature
9 industry, the mother corp. can assume her role as the
10 title suggests as the Canadian Broadcasting
11 Corporation, a broadcaster leaving the production of
12 content that will reflect Canada to Canadians up to the
13 Canadians for whom the corp. has intentionally laid the
14 groundwork.
15 1702 That brings me to the second point.
16 Since its inception, the CBC has been the strongest
17 mechanism available to Canadians to know ourselves.
18 From head to toe, inside out. It is vital that our
19 national self-image also include from sea to sea.
20 Having produced documentaries for CBC, I have seen the
21 pride of the individuals who have been profiled in the
22 documentaries as well as the individuals in the
23 community, the audience members seeing stories about
24 their region reflected across Canada. And I think it
25 is an important point that we look at the need for the
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1 regional programming to be reflected across the
2 country.
3 1703 There is no better tool from which to
4 forge national unity. We seem to be in a heyday of CBC
5 participation in British Columbia.
6 1704 The current administration sees value
7 culturally and politically in ensuring that our voices
8 are heard. But we have seen that before. We have also
9 seen the opposite, an almost total silence of regional
10 voices depending on the mercurial will of the CBC
11 administration.
12 1705 The ideal CBC will be a public
13 broadcaster with a clearly regulated mandate to give a
14 national window to interpretations of Canada and her
15 people in documentary and drama, in arts and
16 entertainment programming which are created and
17 controlled from a regional base.
18 1706 The changes that the CBC faces demand
19 support from our government to be a public broadcaster
20 they cannot also be serving the master of commercial
21 industry. It is an unfair position to put the CBC in
22 to expect both.
23 1707 I loudly applaud the CRTC for
24 examining the entire CBC at this time in its history
25 and ask you not to shy away from major change but to
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1 welcome it as an opportunity to shape the strongest and
2 most meaningful public broadcaster in the world.
3 1708 Thank you.
4 1709 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms
5 Whiting.
6 --- Applause / Applaudissements
7 1710 MS PINSKY: I just notice that we
8 have another presenter who is at the table if you could
9 introduce yourself, please.
10 1711 MR. UNDERHILL: My name is Owen
11 Underhill, from Vancouver New Music.
12 1712 MS PINSKY: You can make your
13 presentation now.
14 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
15 1713 MR. UNDERHILL: My name is Owen
16 Underhill. I am artistic director of Vancouver New
17 Music, a performance organization originally formed in
18 1973 and one of Canada's largest three new music
19 groups. I am also a composer and a conductor and a
20 former vice-president of the Canadian League of
21 Composers and Canadian Music Centre.
22 1714 My comments today will be focused on
23 CBC radio and the essential role that it plays in
24 broadcasting and promoting Canadian culture to
25 Canadians in the regions and across the country.
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1 1715 Canadians do have a vibrant, distinct
2 and multifaceted culture. It is essential if that
3 culture is to be nurtured and if that culture is to
4 have maximum number influence and impact that the
5 citizens of this country have the opportunity to
6 experience it on a day-by-day basis.
7 1716 This is because a cultural experience
8 is a participatory experience, an interactive
9 experience. Radio is a facile and effective medium to
10 amplify that process. To bring the concert from the
11 Winnipeg New Music Festival or the Vancouver
12 International New Music Festival to an audience across
13 the country, radio and CBC radio in particular serves
14 as a networker.
15 1717 When a concert of Vancouver New Music
16 is broadcast, not only does our audience increase, but
17 our effectiveness as cultural ambassadors is greatly
18 multiplied. When CBC Two's weekly show, "Two New
19 Hours" or daily evening show "In Performance"
20 broadcasts our concert, I hear about it often months
21 and years afterwards from those who are listening.
22 1718 As a matter of fact, as a member of
23 the CBC Two newshour's e-mail list, I can hear about it
24 the very next day from listeners across the country a
25 group who is for the most part non-music practitioners
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1 who are passionate about Canadian music and the place
2 of Canadian music in our culture.
3 1719 As an artist who is dedicated to the
4 promotion of contemporary musical expression through
5 concert, opera, theatre and recorded media, I can say
6 without hesitation that CBC radio has more than any
7 other disseminator of culture played an integral role
8 in bringing the work of the Canadian composer to the
9 Canadian public. This is an historical fact when one
10 looks at the role of the CBC in supporting and
11 broadcasting the music of composers of the generation
12 of John Vinzwag, John Beckwith or the recently departed
13 Harry Summers.
14 1720 In comparing those golden years of
15 the '40s and '50s to the present, it is amazing to
16 consider how Canadian compositional activity once
17 largely centred in Toronto and Montreal now flourishes
18 in every corner of the country.
19 1721 The variety, distinctness and
20 excellence of Canadian music is truly a good news story
21 and CBC radio, through its national and regional
22 broadcasting has done a creditable, even admirable job
23 in reflecting this extraordinary transformation in
24 Canadian cultural activity.
25 1722 In referencing the positive role of
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1 CBC radio in the past and present, I must extrapolate
2 to the future with the hope that the resources and
3 wisdom will exist to ensure that the CBC and CBC radio
4 in particular will continue to reflect and participate
5 in the Canadian cultural identity some 40 years hence.
6 1723 As a composer, I have a particular
7 interest in Canadian content and specifically Canadian
8 content which includes the primary creator or composer.
9 1724 In the case of the composer of
10 serious music, as our national royalty organization
11 SOCAN refers to it, CBC radio has been far and away the
12 major player in broadcasting Canadian composer content.
13 This is how it should be and is what should be expected
14 from a national broadcaster. I firmly believe that
15 Canada's national broadcaster does have a special role
16 in presentation of Canadian programming.
17 1725 In the case of Canadian serious
18 music, there are many success stories where this music
19 is asserting its relevance and reaching a wider public
20 in the orchestral concert hall, in the development of
21 Canadian opera, through Canada's international
22 leadership in technological areas such as
23 electro-acoustic music, through new music festivals
24 that are something of an international phenomenon, in
25 Canadian choral music, et cetera, et cetera.
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1 1726 I am happy to say that CBC radio has
2 in large part been a major player in transmitting these
3 success stories to the Canadian public, thus
4 celebrating and informing our people about our culture.
5 1727 In looking to the future, I believe
6 that CBC radio should play, if anything, an even larger
7 role in broadcasting the music of the Canadian composer
8 in all its splendid diversity and in a manner that will
9 keep and even enhance the listening audience.
10 1728 I would be remiss if, as a Canadian
11 composer, I did not say a few words about the CBC
12 Vancouver orchestra. This orchestra last year having
13 celebrated its 60th anniversary has done more than any
14 other Canadian orchestra in performing and developing
15 Canadian repertoire and presenting that repertoire to
16 an international audience. Of course, statistics back
17 that up. In records since 1962, the CBC Vancouver
18 orchestra has played 318 Canadian works, total number
19 of Canadian performances 448, just from 1962.
20 1729 As a radio orchestra and the only
21 remaining radio orchestra of the national broadcaster,
22 it is a jewel that should continue to be supported.
23 The discography of this orchestra on CBC records is
24 world class and the representation of the CBC orchestra
25 on air through in-house broadcasts, concerts and CD is
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1 one of the most outstanding distinguishing features of
2 CBC radio.
3 1730 And now, if I may speak as a
4 performer, the CBC Vancouver orchestra has done more
5 than any other orchestra to nurture Canadian conductors
6 and give opportunities to Canada's most talented
7 soloists. In so doing, it has at the same time
8 preserved standards of the highest excellence and
9 served as a stepping stone for Canadian conductors and
10 soloists who have gone on to success elsewhere on the
11 national and international stage.
12 1731 In addressing the issue of national
13 and regional interests, one of my fears is that CBC
14 radio, and here I am talking of the English network,
15 will become even more pre-dominantly based in Toronto
16 to the detriment of the regions.
17 1732 Although it is clearly a challenge
18 from the point of view of stretched resources and
19 shrinking budgets, I think it is critical that CBC
20 radio be able to maintain both a strong national and a
21 dynamic regional presence.
22 1733 The great advantage of national radio
23 shows, as I have personally experienced them is that
24 they do an invaluable service in speaking to the whole
25 country, drawing it together, allowing one aesthetic
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1 voice to speak to another.
2 1734 Regional programming is equally
3 effective. It gives an opportunity in the case of
4 music broadcasts to present distinctive aesthetic
5 stylistic and cultural identities particularly to given
6 areas.
7 1735 For example, especially fascinating
8 has been the series of broadcasts on "West Coast
9 Performance", a weekly regional show here in British
10 Columbia on CBC stereo of the music of brilliant
11 Vancouver ensembles and musicians representing various
12 ethnic musics as they exist in Vancouver, Chinese,
13 south-Asian, Korean, Vietnamese, et cetera.
14 1736 It is my belief that both the
15 national and regional programming must continue to be
16 maintained if the CBC is to flourish as a relevant
17 broadcaster in the various communities of this country.
18 1737 In coming to a close, I must, in
19 speaking on behalf of radio, argue for continued and
20 enhanced funding. Although I can certainly be
21 supportive of extrapolating many of the principles here
22 to CBC TV, I would hope that there be recognition on
23 the part of the CRTC, CBC management and government
24 that CBC radio if properly supported can be as relevant
25 in the 21st century as it has been in the 20th.
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1 1738 Finally, although I have talked here
2 from the personal experience of a composer, conductor
3 and artistic director who has been fortunate enough to
4 be broadcast on many occasions on CBC radio, I wish to
5 reinforce that my submission should not be understood
6 as arising out of self-interest. Rather, my emphasis
7 is on serving the broad interests of the Canadian
8 public.
9 1739 If Canadian cultural expression is to
10 continue to play an important part in the lives of
11 Canadians, then we must be active in ensuring that the
12 voices of Canadian performers and composers are playing
13 their way into the living rooms and kitchens of
14 Canadians. If our generation is to be a wise partner
15 in this ongoing legacy, one thing it should ensure is
16 that CBC radio continues to survive and even better
17 thrive well into the future. This is in my opinion in
18 the public interest.
19 1740 Thank you very much.
20 1741 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr.
21 Underhill.
22 --- Applause / Applaudissements
23 1742 MS PINSKY: I will continue to go
24 through the list in case there are other presenters
25 here who have not identified themselves to the front
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1 desk.
2 1743 Mr. Michael Bociurkiw.
3 1744 Ms Mavis Jones.
4 1745 Mr. Robert Anderson.
5 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTAITON
6 1746 MR. ANDERSON: Madam Chairman,
7 members of the commission, I would like to speak to you
8 this morning exclusively about radio. I invite you to
9 focus on two functions of CBC radio both of which need
10 to be strengthened. These two functions will be needed
11 more and more as the demographic distribution of
12 Canadian society changes and as our economy and
13 population become more and more international.
14 1747 The first important function is
15 radio's delivery of an alternative in small towns and
16 reflection of local situations. The second important
17 function is radio's reflection of Canadian interests
18 and diversity to international audiences and conversely
19 its delivery to Canadians of the widest possible
20 interpretation of world news.
21 1748 The enhancement of both these
22 functions is going to cost money and that means that
23 the CBC simply cannot achieve them and save money at
24 the same time.
25 1749 It is time to stop seeing CBC radio
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1 as a place where the government can save money. Of
2 course, in the matter of radio, we are talking about
3 very small amounts of money. So what is being saved is
4 nickels and dimes, unfortunately.
5 1750 The enhancement and achievement of
6 these two functions will reap benefits and that
7 ultimately means money. Put the other way, failure to
8 achieve these two functions will cost Canada plenty.
9 1751 What is important about CBC radio's
10 two functions of local reflection and global
11 interpretation? And why will their importance
12 increase? Let us start with local reflection and the
13 delivery of the sound of alternatives.
14 1752 The gradual demographic drift back to
15 small towns spilling over and away from large urban
16 areas is the wave of the future.
17 1753 Some people are fed up with life in
18 the cities.
19 1754 Our national economy needs durable,
20 small-town economies within rural hinterlands.
21 1755 These towns have gradually begun to
22 try to attract people with the skills which can make
23 them work. People in these situations need to know
24 that they are not alone. They need to know that other
25 people are telling their story in similar
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1 circumstances. CBC radio can reflect that and thus
2 strengthen their confidence.
3 1756 A significant population who have
4 always lived in or are moving to small towns is an
5 important part of our economy. There are literally
6 thousands of such places. They all have a similar
7 arm's length relationship to cities like Montreal or
8 Vancouver.
9 1757 What is more important, they live in
10 small places where, if it exists, private radio creates
11 an acoustic desert, providing little more than road
12 reports and occasional talk shows. There are oases in
13 this desert, but they are very, very few. The acoustic
14 desert in small towns proves that market failure
15 operates in radio, too.
16 1758 Not only do those people pay for and
17 need CBC's radio reflection of their local situation in
18 a wider context, but they also need to hear alternate
19 sounds, the sound of jazz and blues, world music,
20 renaissance instrument and the new music composed by
21 Colin Brown who recently spoke to you.
22 1759 The lonely but aspiring fiddler in
23 Canoe Creek needs to hear the violin played a dozen
24 different ways and not just by Ashley McIsaac.
25 1760 The young high school student in
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1 Comox needs to hear about exciting Japanese or Russian
2 research projects at home and not have to wait until
3 she goes to university.
4 1761 The solitary writer in Cranbrook
5 needs to hear someone talk intelligently about Danté or
6 the Booker Prize while he drives to his job that pays
7 his rent.
8 1762 There are doctors, accountants,
9 visionaries and mechanics who all want to move into
10 small towns. They hesitate to do so because, as we all
11 know, small towns are both very supportive and very
12 limiting. The winter is long, there is isolation,
13 drinking and suicide. People need an alternative.
14 1763 Now, all these people need to be
15 reached by the CBC, but they themselves need to reach
16 beyond Canada through the CBC. They need CBC radio not
17 just because they might eventually be world famous as
18 fiddlers, writers or scientists, they indeed might;
19 they also need CBC radio because they might be very
20 good, but not be world famous and their towns and
21 regions need them as much as the national collective
22 identity needs them. Simply by living there and doing
23 what they do well, they make their towns and regions
24 habitable, interesting, richer and thus more
25 sustainable. If they cannot survive there, they will
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1 have to move and become aspiring and lonely in Toronto.
2 1764 A country cannot fully develop that
3 way, as the CRTC has known for years. Communication
4 and broadcasting have to be decentralized for Canada to
5 work. Therefore, the entire landscape of the people I
6 am describing, its valleys, hills, fields and canyons
7 should be bathed in the three main CBC radio signals,
8 two English and French. Perhaps other languages will
9 join them. All Canadians pay for the CBC radio in
10 their taxes and there should not be a place in this
11 country where one cannot receive those three signals
12 very well.
13 1765 It cannot be argued that the audience
14 for classical music in little towns is small and,
15 therefore, the expensive commercial broadcasting is not
16 justified. In the same way the local culture
17 achievements and problems of small town needs
18 reflection across the country so the benefit the world
19 offers in radio should be available to them.
20 1766 I make these observations to you
21 having been a CBC listener for 40 years. I have
22 listened in little places you might never have heard of
23 like Horse Fly and Canoe Creek.
24 1767 I have been a Radio Canada
25 International listener and a news junkie for years.
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1 1768 So I have wanted to hear the CBC in
2 India, in Bangkok, Rangoon, Calcutta, Shanghai, Manila,
3 Bombay, where I have been working and studying since
4 1961.
5 1769 I have also studied the attitude of
6 those populations to Canada's trade and diplomatic
7 interests and Canada's diversity. I have been a steady
8 listener to French language Radio Canada from Montreal
9 and just completed a year and a half participation in
10 the BBC radio audience by living in Cambridge, England.
11 1770 I also have regular contact in the
12 university with some of the best and the brightest
13 young Canadians. Thus, I study the grasp of the larger
14 world and attitude of these younger Canadians and my
15 concern for the collective interpretation of the world
16 arises from my study.
17 1771 I am sometimes chilled to see the
18 narrow range of sources used by people who do not know
19 where else and who how else to look. This is in a
20 supposedly information rich environment like Vancouver.
21 1772 The other function I am stressing
22 today, and I will close, is the international one,
23 reflecting the interests and diversity of Canada to
24 foreign audiences and bringing the widest possible
25 interpretation of world news to Canadians.
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1 1773 I want to focus on news and
2 interpretation of news that shapes our national
3 intelligence and our regional consciousness. The CBC
4 should not diminish its search for news across the
5 world. Of course, this costs money, so CBC radio
6 should look for imaginative ways to achieve this
7 function and contain its cost.
8 1774 I understand the historic distinction
9 between RCI and the CBC. I understand they are
10 separately funded, but to address those potentially big
11 international radio audiences including in their
12 languages, the CBC requires a serious increase in
13 capacity in order to be effective.
14 1775 We must expand our capacity, not
15 reduce it. We need to continue to maintain our bureaus
16 around the world, perhaps holding down costs by
17 combining television and radio reporting or by
18 utilizing bilingual Canadian reporters. CBC may need
19 to share reporters, too. For example there are
20 long-time reporters like Lise Ducette in Jerusalem who
21 works for both the BBC and the CBC radio.
22 1776 We need also to find long resident
23 journalists in these places who know the language there
24 plus French and English. The CBC could cultivate and
25 develop their understanding of Canada for relatively
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1 low costs, thus enabling them to make interpretations
2 that are meaningful to Canadians. If such people are
3 rare, we can train them.
4 1777 We need continuing interpretation of
5 news in Canadian terms to assist a young generation of
6 Canadians including in small towns to grasp of the
7 world. This is a grasp they cannot get through the
8 Internet.
9 1778 I am not advising a parochial
10 Canada-only angle on the news broadcasting inside
11 Canada, that is a tendency that must be arrested. Nor
12 am I suggesting that the CBC should restrict our voice
13 to international audiences simply to stories about
14 Canada. Frankly, other people do not find us that
15 interesting to listen to Canada-only news. But these
16 foreign audiences appreciate our interpretation of news
17 that matters to them if they can find it on their
18 radios. They have spoken to me about their desire to
19 know about Canada in a matter-of-fact and daily way.
20 Radio is ideal for that.
21 1779 The CBC has to reach the elites in
22 other countries, that is true. We must overcome our
23 misunderstandings of the world as well as our
24 disassociation from the world and our indifference to
25 the world. All of these tendencies are found among
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1 many Canadians.
2 1780 Since the world reach of our other
3 media, our television, our cinema, our other cultural
4 representations is necessarily limited, the
5 international power of radio becomes more attractive.
6 These are the reasons my two recommendations to the
7 CRTC are simple but important. One is that the CBC
8 should rebuild its ability to reflect local situations
9 and provide an alternative sound to small towns. This
10 means bathing the entire country in universal
11 broadcasting with all CBC radio signals going
12 everywhere.
13 1781 The other recommendation is that the
14 radio should expand its coverage, interpretation of
15 world news for Canadians, provide a reflection of
16 Canadian interests and diversity to international
17 audiences. This means that when we go to negotiate our
18 interests and problems with people who make up those
19 international radio audiences, we will feel better
20 understood and conversely we will understand the world
21 much better and thus feel at home in it.
22 1782 Thank you.
23 --- Applause / Applaudissements
24 1783 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr.
25 Anderson.
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1 1784 MS PINSKY: I will continue through
2 the list to see if any other presenters have arrived.
3 Mr. Howard Grieves.
4 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
5 1785 MR. GRIEVES: Good morning. My name
6 is Howard Grieves and I have been involved most of my
7 working life with educational publishing and I greatly
8 regret in the last few days I have not had the expected
9 time to prepare to the depth I wanted and I feel that
10 particularly after the previous presentation. But I am
11 going to just go with a few initial points here. At
12 least it will be short.
13 1786 My remarks will deal with radio in
14 view of the massive availability of popular U.S. fare.
15 The function of CBC TV has to be radically rethought
16 and I have a great deal of trouble doing so. All I can
17 say is I find it hard to think of a country without its
18 own TV service, but I find few reasons that it has to
19 be around.
20 1787 The big dilemma, of course, is that
21 all pay for the CBC but few take advantage of the
22 service. And I believe that CBC must be able to accept
23 this and not feel they must pursue the majority which
24 is served by a multitude of stations anyway. To try to
25 compete would surely be very costly and something the
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1 private stations would be very antagonistic to, by the
2 way, I think.
3 1788 The private stations seem to direct
4 just about all their efforts to the 18-to-34
5 demographic with all its disposable income. To the
6 rest of the population that seems like a tyranny of the
7 majority. The CBC must be allowed to serve an
8 otherwise quite disregarded market with confidence.
9 1789 While it is probably too late to do
10 anything about it, the provision of the magnificent new
11 CBC headquarters building in Toronto seems like an
12 ill-directed use of minimal CBC funds in a time when a
13 singer can record his track while listening to a band
14 playing their contribution in Los Angeles as his
15 co-singer records simultaneously in New York, it seems
16 that the broadcasting services could be diversified
17 across the country with interoffice communication via
18 phone, e-mail, computer TV or video conferencing.
19 1790 The concentration in Toronto does
20 rather remind one of the episode in the BBC's "Yes,
21 Minister" when deputy minister, Sir Humphrey scotched
22 the idea of moving the war office for good reasons of
23 economy to Manchester since the general's wives would
24 not be able to shop at Harrod's.
25 1791 As a school textbook salesman, I
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1 spend much time in schools and find little awareness of
2 the CBC there amongst teachers or pupils. I know from
3 the CBC website that the CBC is beginning to make
4 available its tapes from past programs to schools.
5 1792 I hope this intervention into schools
6 can be done in such a way that it will be used to
7 generate curiosity and direct towards the regular CBC
8 programs and thus help develop a new audience.
9 1793 I was glad to see on the website that
10 English as a second language was being seriously noted.
11 1794 General promotion of CBC programming
12 through the inclusion in "Saturday Night" magazine is
13 appreciated but could it not be much more generally
14 available?
15 1795 Thank you.
16 1796 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr.
17 Grieves.
18 --- Applause / Applaudissements
19 1797 THE CHAIRPERSON: We will take our
20 morning break now and reconvene at 11. Thank you.
21 --- Recess at 1040 / Suspension à 1040
22 --- Upon resuming at 1105 / Reprise à 1105
23 1798 THE CHAIRPERSON: We will reconvene
24 now.
25 1799 MS PINSKY: I will just go through
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1 the list to see if there are additional presenters
2 here.
3 1800 Ms Mickey Rogers, if you are here,
4 you can come up to the table. Mr. Michael Bociurkiw,
5 Ms Mavis Jones, Ms Nettie Wilde, she's here. And Ms
6 Judith Marcuse.
7 1801 Also, for those who have just
8 arrived, I will remind everyone that they have ten
9 minutes to make their presentation.
10 1802 So the first presenter will be Ms
11 Mickey Rogers.
12 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
13 1803 MS ROGERS: My name is Mickey Rogers
14 and I am one of the founders and partners of Forefront
15 Entertainment here in Vancouver. And we do both
16 production and distribution and I worked at CBC radio
17 many, many years ago, so I have worked at the building
18 as people here in Vancouver like to call it and I am
19 really glad to be here now as opposed to a year ago
20 where it would be a variation on "Sleepless in
21 Seattle", it would be "Whining in Vancouver" about the
22 CBC. So I am very happy not to be whining.
23 1804 I think it is important to see the
24 changes that the CBC is making and we have been
25 involved in some of those things in terms of producing
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1 a half-hour comedy called "The 11th Hour". And it has
2 been done in partnership with the CBC and I think it is
3 a really good example of a model of working with the
4 infrastructure of the CBC and working with the
5 independent production community to create a new way of
6 being in terms of production.
7 1805 And we are also fortunate that we are
8 working as co-producer on Phil Savitz' "These arms of
9 money" and also as distributors of "Edgemont Road",
10 which is a teen drama. So, as I said, I am really
11 happy that I am here today as opposed to a year ago
12 where I would have been quite whiny.
13 1806 I guess I also have to preface my
14 remarks by saying that I am a strong supporter of
15 public broadcasting and especially in the context of
16 the world media if I can take it out into a larger
17 forum.
18 1807 You know, as your probably aware, the
19 international media is being controlled by fewer and
20 fewer people, the Rupert Murdochs and his sons and
21 daughters, the Beitelsmans, the Warners and not to
22 mention the Disneys. So there is increasing media
23 ownership by very few people.
24 1808 Yesterday, I was at a conference and
25 someone suggested that the tenets for private
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1 broadcasters, there are four tenets actually and they
2 are profit, profit, profit and then the laws and
3 regulations.
4 1809 So when I go to international
5 television markets, you can see the consolidation
6 happening every spring and every fall and there is
7 fewer and fewer players.
8 1810 And so it is within this context that
9 I think the CBC is a very important player in Canada
10 and needs to be strengthened to reflect us as
11 Canadians, us within the broad community also within
12 the CBC itself to show our ideas and our aspirations.
13 And, again, within a global context.
14 1811 The other thing that came very
15 strongly at this conference yesterday was the need to
16 be technologically ready to adapt to the convergence
17 that will occur in the next decade and I think that is
18 certainly what the CBC needs to be ready to do as well.
19 1812 So I have five points that I think
20 the CBC has to do if I ruled the world. First of all
21 it has to get itself a really good leader, someone who
22 has visions, someone who is not harnessed by political
23 needs or desires and really someone who can lead the
24 corporation as a lean and mean machine into the future
25 to give Canadians a voice and a forum.
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1 1813 And I really think that part of this
2 person's mandate has to be to hire a very strong lobby
3 group or a lobbyist or whatever to ensure that
4 politicians are not wowed by private broadcasters for
5 their own gain.
6 1814 And I think that is really important
7 that as a group there are strong voices to be heard in
8 Ottawa so that when moneys are being taken away from
9 the CBC that someone is there to defend them.
10 1815 Also, I think that the CBC needs to
11 go back to its roots of really nourishing Canadian
12 talent and innovation in all aspects of the media and
13 to give us the quality that we deserve and I think
14 certainly feature film is in there, drama, sports.
15 1816 To be a little self-serving, I think
16 that the regions really have to be seen as an integral
17 part of any kind of programming decisions that the CBC
18 makes that all shows in all aspects of the service come
19 from Canada's different parts, to give us a really
20 strong sense of community that I think we desperately
21 lack at times and desperately seek as Canadians. And I
22 think that, again, it is using the talents much like we
23 have with "The 11th Hour" and the infrastructure that
24 the CBC has to build a strong base of operation within
25 the independent community as well.
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1 1817 And I think that the CBC needs to be
2 spending more money on young people's programming. I
3 think that right now, the CBC spends very little on
4 children's programming and I know they need to spend
5 their money in prime time and I also think that it
6 ignores its youth at its peril, that people do not get
7 into the habit of turning their remote to the CBC at
8 all. And we have to see young people as a regenerative
9 audience. And that it is almost like using the
10 Molson's Canadian "I am Canadian" cool logo, they had
11 to hire the ad team from Molson's Canadians, although I
12 know that is supposed to be beer drinking and all that
13 kind of stuff, but I think that that is really
14 important. Because I think, without young people, the
15 people who are supporters of the CBC right now are too
16 old.
17 1818 Also, I think they need to look at
18 selling off some of the real estate that they have and
19 use those savings for new technology. And I guess, for
20 me, I have always had a bit of a love-hate relationship
21 with the CBC, I must admit.
22 1819 And so I was sort of waving back and
23 forth in terms of the comments I wanted to make. As I
24 was writing, I just became more impassioned about how
25 important it was for us to have that strong voice in
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1 media, that it is becoming increasingly more fragmented
2 and that I think it is really important to support the
3 CBC and the kinds of moves that it is making in its
4 path to be a multifaceted service.
5 1820 I am sure that many programmers at
6 the CBC would like to see the $400 million put back
7 into their coffers now and to be able to do the kind of
8 programming that they have visions of. So those are my
9 remarks.
10 1821 Thank you.
11 1822 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms
12 Rogers.
13 1823 MS PINSKY: The next presenter is Ms
14 Nettie Wilde.
15 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
16 1824 MS WILDE: My production company is
17 Canada Wilde Productions. We make feature length
18 documentary films. All of our productions, all of our
19 feature length documentaries have been aired as
20 90-minute or two-hour prime time programs on the CBC.
21 The last film is called "A Place Called Chiapas", it
22 was produced in association with the CBC.
23 --- Applause / Applaudissements
24 1825 MS WILDE: Thank you very much. It
25 just won the Genie award for best documentary in Canada
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1 and it is being released around the world and right now
2 in 18 cities it is being released theatrically in 18
3 cities across the U.S. I say this because it has been
4 a success and part of that is, of course, the CBC's
5 success.
6 1826 To put it into context, this film
7 could not have been made without the CBC.
8 1827 TVO, for instance, was interested.
9 They could offer only a one-hour time slot and
10 financing which would trigger a final budget of
11 approximately $300,000 to $350,000.
12 1828 This film ended up as a two-hour
13 television, in a two-hour slot with a budget of
14 $870,000. It could not have been made without a public
15 broadcaster behind us.
16 1829 I am going to speak strictly from the
17 perspective of a documentary film producer in
18 Vancouver. I need to back up a little bit. Vancouver
19 has become in the film and television industry in
20 general, a service industry. It services other
21 people's dreams. We are terrific technicians, we spin
22 other people's dreams, American dreams and Toronto
23 dreams and I think one of the ways of changing a very
24 serious situation with a few exceptions like Mickey
25 just touched on is to really and truly enforce the
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1 regional programming of our public broadcaster.
2 1830 I think that it is important that the
3 mandate of the CBC, that CBC be given the mandate to
4 make stronger regional programming, that it be funded
5 to do so and what will happen is that if that happens
6 is a more realistic working relationship is going to
7 start develop between the film makers and the CBC.
8 1831 Now, again, keep in mind that I am
9 speaking as a documentary film maker. I think that the
10 CBC is starting to make more inroads in the dramatic
11 front than it is in the documentary front. I think
12 documentaries, however, are something that we are all
13 proud of and they are in trouble. So I want to speak
14 directly to that.
15 1832 I would also, overall, recommend that
16 the CBC keep an eye -- program an expandable slot for
17 documentaries such as myself because -- such as ours,
18 because right now, when you have a great big
19 documentary project like this, the CBC is forced
20 basically to stick it somewhere in the program where it
21 will fit because it does not -- there is not a slot
22 that accommodates it and so you end up with these
23 bigger projects going up like we did, being stockpiled
24 at the beginning of the season.
25 1833 I want to make an overall statement
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1 here in that I really support public television with a
2 strong base in the regions. I do not support
3 dysfunctional public television. I think that CBC,
4 which I have worked with, is a dysfunctional family and
5 I think it is in trouble. And I do not think that this
6 should be a surprise.
7 1834 I think that CBC has been traumatized
8 by enormous cut backs and by an equally enormous
9 political will of our government. So what do we
10 expect? I do not think it should be any surprise to
11 us, but I want to offer these stories which are
12 personal ones to give some kind of an insight into my
13 experience with this dysfunctional family, both good
14 and bad. And I also want to express my belief that I
15 believe that a vital regionally-based public television
16 network is possible.
17 1835 The first story has to do with a
18 $1,000 cup of coffee. It exists. The CBC, to the
19 degree that it can within the situation right now, does
20 send producers out to talk to the likes of me, but of
21 course those people come out on a once or maybe
22 biannual basis. If I have an idea that falls between
23 those trips, I have to somehow get myself to Toronto.
24 1836 Within the structure of co-producing
25 a production with CBC, there are some really pragmatic
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1 realities. They are called rushes, rough cut, fine
2 cut. The CBC has to be able to be in the room to take
3 a look at my work, to be able to give me the nod so
4 that I can be paid and we can move on to the next
5 stage.
6 1837 Right now that great big building on
7 Hamilton Street does not have one individual who can
8 walk down to my cutting room and say, "You know,
9 Nettie, that shot does not work" or "I do not get it,
10 maybe we could the work together to try to come up with
11 some kind of solution", or pat me on the back and we
12 can move on to the next stage.
13 1838 I think this is something which is on
14 the one hand a small detail, but it reveals a big
15 problem. I think it reveals a lack of confidence and a
16 lack of money and a lack of programming that is based
17 in the regions. I think this can be changed and I
18 think it should be.
19 1839 The second story has to do with
20 contracts. My sense is that co-production contracts
21 should build a healthy relationship and not a feudal
22 one. As independents at this point in time, we are
23 bullied into signing contracts that make no sense for
24 us or, I might add, for the other agencies that are
25 involved in the finances that go behind making a
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1 co-production with the CBC. I think that there should
2 be an increase of the CBC envelope at Telefilm. I do
3 not support that envelope being cut down, but I think
4 it should be on the condition that CBC contracts get
5 more realistic.
6 1840 At this point, the 24-page
7 co-production contracts, I think, should grant creative
8 and editorial control to the director, not take it
9 away. And I think that the current clauses relating to
10 distribution and recoupment of the money to the
11 funders, including the CBC, but the other funders, is
12 not realistic.
13 1841 I think that currently, my contract,
14 for instance, with the CBC hinders the distribution of
15 the film and its ability to make money and I think that
16 the contracts -- now I am now speaking as a film maker,
17 not a lawyer, but when I am actually out there trying
18 to work the film, I am finding that this contract is,
19 in fact, in conflict of interest with other financial
20 partners in the project.
21 1842 I want to give you an example of
22 this. When our film was completed, we were accepted
23 into the Berlin Film Festival. This was seen as a good
24 thing by everyone, including the CBC. Why? Because
25 not only is it prestigious, but it is also an
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1 opportunity to get the film out into the second biggest
2 market in the world. There is other film makers, there
3 is other film festivals, there is other broadcasters,
4 there is other theatrical distributors who are there.
5 But when it actually came down to the dollars and cents
6 of how in the world we were going to get to Berlin, we
7 had no money. And Telefilm Canada one of our other
8 investors came on board with $14,000 to get us to
9 Berlin on the condition that Telefilm be paid back on
10 the first line of recoupment.
11 1843 All the investors agreed except for
12 CBC. CBC at this particular point in time, it is
13 important to note, was a 7 per cent equity investor in
14 our film. This is apart from the broadcast licence.
15 At this point, we had the tail wagging the dog.
16 1844 It got to the point where it got so
17 close to our deadline that Telefilm said, "Get on the
18 plane, Nettie, we will duke it out with CBC later."
19 1845 This is a small story, it is a
20 picayune story, but it reveals a working relationship
21 which is very taut between independent documentary
22 producers and the CBC. And I think in great part it
23 has to do with not having the ability to build up
24 strong working relationships with our producers.
25 1846 Think for a moment of our other
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1 funders. They all had offices and operating producers
2 in Vancouver. They got it much better than the CBC
3 did. So when we talk about increasing regional
4 programming and increasing a regional relationship with
5 our film makers, it is not hocus-pocus touchy feely
6 stuff, it has to do with really concrete working
7 relationships that create not just good working
8 relationships but good movies. I think this attitude
9 can change. And I think these contracts can change.
10 1847 My third story that I would like to
11 end on is a success story. It starts with problems,
12 however, with the contract. CBC current affairs and,
13 again, this is quite different from what I understand
14 is evolving within the drama program, but at this point
15 CBC current affairs does not allow theatrical release
16 of a film before the film's air date. Theatrical
17 release being when we go into the theatres if you have
18 a film that is in film and has the legs to do so.
19 Historically, CBC has been resistant to what I think is
20 the common sense of using the press coverage of a
21 theatrical release to promote the broadcast.
22 1848 But here, the regional head of CBC,
23 Rae Hall, got it. She understood that when "A Place
24 Called Chiapas" was finished, that it was, in fact,
25 very important for it to go theatrical to whatever
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1 limited degree that we could work it out. Why? I
2 think it is because she lives here.
3 1849 Because she knows, she had a sense
4 that this was a sorry of a film and a crew that was
5 based out of Vancouver that had done good and that
6 there was potential to exploit that.
7 1850 I would have preferred to have had
8 this kind of treatment right across the country, but
9 because we had the relationship with Rae, she was able
10 to do what she could within the CBC at least
11 regionally. What she did is she got together with
12 myself and with Leonard Shine, who is the owner and
13 programmer of Festival Cinemas and we worked out a
14 co-launch of our movie so that "A Place Called Chiapas"
15 was launched in public on the big screen a few days
16 before the broadcast and then went to air and, in fact,
17 the theatrical launch went right through the broadcast.
18 1851 What happened was a bunch of things.
19 First of all, CBC was seen not only as the producer,
20 Rae actually introduced the film at its opening at the
21 5th Avenue Cinema, but it was seen to be honouring the
22 players, it was seen to be in the real world in terms
23 of publicity and distribution and CBC was celebrated.
24 It was a win-win situation.
25 1852 Again, this is just a small story,
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1 but I think it is a real hands-on example of how a
2 regionally based broadcaster can actually work versus
3 what we have now. I think we have a situation of a
4 building under great stress and a somewhat hollow
5 political mandate which is not basing our regional
6 broadcaster in the regions.
7 1853 I think a strong regional CBC will
8 rescue us from a city of technicians spinning the
9 dreams of others and I think that a strong regional CBC
10 will help us to tell our own story.
11 1854 Thank you.
12 --- Applause / Applaudissements
13 1855 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms
14 Wilde, congratulations on the success of your film.
15 1856 MS PINSKY: Ms Judith Marcuse is the
16 next presenter.
17 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
18 1857 MS MARCUSE: I am a choreographer and
19 producer. I work in live theatre. I work in
20 television and in film and I am just going to make a
21 very short statement which is global and then reduce
22 down to a particular.
23 1858 In these times of economic and
24 cultural globalization, the unique roles of public
25 broadcasting become even more important as part of our
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1 fight, our defence of our cultural sovereignty.
2 1859 Until the CBC has a board which can
3 truly support an inclusive vision, one which is
4 responsive, innovative and integrating, and until there
5 is some possibility and sense of stability within the
6 corporation, many constituencies, communities,
7 individual voices will continue to be marginalized,
8 left out of that dialogue we need in order to create a
9 new consciousness or a richer consciousness of who we
10 are culturally as a country.
11 1860 We need places where we can hear
12 ourselves and that includes young people. I really
13 reiterate Mickey's statement about the lack of support
14 for those voices, those disenfranchised voices. We
15 need to hear those voices within the regions and from
16 those regions back and forth with the rest of the
17 country. There are virtually no other places other
18 than broadcasters, public broadcasters to go.
19 1861 Here is a particular. As far as I am
20 aware, my organization created the last locally
21 produced-for-television dance for the network in 1984.
22 In 1993, we produced a live stage-to-TV dance
23 production which was shot here but produced in Toronto.
24 1862 I believe this was the last time any
25 substantive dance work was created west of Winnipeg for
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1 any network across the country. I want to reiterate
2 Nettie's thousand-dollar cups of coffee. I have had
3 several, many of those thousand-dollar cup cups of
4 coffee in Toronto.
5 1863 It is almost impossible to develop
6 working relationships with someone who is 3,000 miles
7 away. We need to reinforce the power of the regions to
8 be responsive to the voices within their own
9 communities, it is absolutely critical. And the larger
10 argument I make in terms of our own identity as a
11 country is the most relevant part of that argument.
12 1864 I am certainly not here to knock the
13 CBC, but I am here to support a vision for our public
14 broadcaster and to argue for an end to political
15 interference and to an acknowledgement that the CBC is
16 part of the essence of Canada and needs no more
17 attacks.
18 --- Applause / Applaudissements
19 1865 MS MARCUSE: And needs no more
20 attacks, but needs to be celebrated and strengthened.
21 1866 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms
22 Marcuse.
23 1867 MS PINSKY: I will call to see if
24 there are other presenters here, is a Mr. Michael
25 Bociurkiw here? Ms Mavis Jones?
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1 1868 THE CHAIRPERSON: Well, we have no
2 more presenters I guess that concludes the Vancouver
3 consultations.
4 1869 What I would like to do is thank all
5 of you for coming to share your views and helping to --
6 oh, I forgot CBC, sorry.
7 1870 I would like to invite CBC to come
8 up -- you would think that after sort of a day and a
9 half I would remember that.
10 REPLY / RÉPLIQUE
11 1871 MS HALL: Thank you, Madam Chair and
12 thank you, again, to the CRTC for letting the CBC be a
13 part of these public proceedings. My name is Rae Hall
14 and I am the regional director for television for CBC
15 British Columbia.
16 --- Applause / Applaudissements
17 1872 MS HALL: Thank you. I am speaking
18 on behalf of Susan Engelbert, my colleague, who is the
19 director of radio here and also several distinguished
20 colleagues in the room.
21 1873 As we normally spend our days
22 involved in getting programs to air, both on radio and
23 TV, and dealing with how to do that effectively with
24 fewer resources, it is rare that we get the opportunity
25 to spend two days listening and watching the people who
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1 are usually watching and listening to us. And, as you
2 have told your stories, and you have relived moments,
3 you have remembered about the CBC, let me tell you, you
4 have given us some moments to remember. And on those
5 days when it is tough working at CBC, I am going to
6 remember them.
7 1874 Your observations have been
8 insightful. Your caring and passion is appreciated
9 more than you realize. And all of it will be important
10 to us and, of course, to the CRTC as we look at our
11 picture of the future and figure out a way to move
12 forward.
13 1875 Several of you have made specific
14 representations and we will be responding to you each
15 personally at a later date and time. You have
16 mentioned your concerns about the staff of CBC. And I
17 can tell you that, as our labour difficulties continue,
18 we are all working hard to find a solution that will
19 have us all back working together soon and working
20 towards the future.
21 1876 Now, there are a few observations
22 where there are factual issues that I would like to
23 deal with. So this is not substantive, it is just to
24 put a few things on the record.
25 1877 There have been many comments about
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1 commercials, your support for a non-commercial CBC
2 radio. Just one factual point about commercial revenue
3 on television. That revenue as a proportion of the
4 English television budget continues to be well under 50
5 per cent. And just as a point of information, all of
6 that revenue, or that revenue goes back to support all
7 the services of CBC, not just television but radio as
8 well.
9 1878 There have been comments made this
10 morning and yesterday regarding our foreign bureaus
11 given the recent news about closures. I can tell you
12 that CBC is not withdrawing from international
13 coverage. We are committed to a Canadian perspective
14 on the globe.
15 1879 We are, however, examining methods to
16 do that as efficiently and effectively as possible and
17 Mr. Anderson's presentations certainly give us some
18 food for thought today.
19 1880 Finally, I can tell you that all of
20 that myself and all of my CBC colleagues here today
21 work every day to make programs happen. You are right,
22 it is more difficult at times to keep our eye on that
23 central core, but you need to know that that is where
24 we spend most of our time and that is where our hearts
25 lie and that is what we pay the most attention to.
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1 1881 And there has been good news in the
2 case of CBC television in an industry where audience
3 share is increasingly fragmented, CBC television is one
4 of the few networks in North America where our share in
5 this last season has stayed much the same. In almost
6 every other case, Canada and the United States, that
7 share has gone down. And we have done that with a
8 schedule that in prime time is almost completely
9 composed of Canadian drama, comedy, information
10 programming and documentaries.
11 1882 Let me just say, in closing, that as
12 all of you have spoken from the heart, it has been
13 received the same way and it has been extremely
14 heartening to hear from all of you. Because, you are
15 right, it is sometimes a challenge working inside the
16 CBC, but let me tell you it is always a privilege and
17 it is certainly a privilege to serve an audience like
18 you.
19 1883 Thank you very much.
20 --- Applause / Applaudissements
21 1884 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms Hall.
22 1885 I would also like to just notify
23 every one that we have comment cards at the desk. If
24 people have comments additionally, or if you did not
25 present and want to make comments, please fill them out
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1 and you can leave them with us.
2 1886 Additionally, we will be issuing a
3 public notice towards the end of March announcing the
4 proceeding which will consider the actual licence
5 renewal application. Those hearings will begin May
6 25th, in Hull. But the public will have until the 30th
7 of April to make any further submissions you may wish
8 to with respect to the licence renewals.
9 1887 The public notice will set out the
10 issues and will identify the locations where the
11 applications can be examined.
12 1888 So in closing what I would like to do
13 is thank each and every one of you. I think over 150
14 people appeared here in Vancouver. Yesterday we had
15 the chair of the commission, Françoise Bertrand was
16 here and the two of us were able to listen to what
17 everyone had to say and I just want to reiterate how
18 important it is for those of us on the panel to who
19 will be on the panel for the licence renewals to hear
20 from people right across the country. It informs our
21 views and our understanding of the issues that are
22 facing us and the CBC as we head into the next
23 millennium.
24 1889 So thank you again to each and every
25 one of you for taking the time.
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1 1890 And thank you to Carolyn Pinsky, our
2 legal counsel and Margaret Vogel as well as to the
3 staff, the translators, court stenographers and
4 technicians. So that concludes this consultation.
5 1891 Thank you.
6 --- Whereupon the consultation concluded at 1140 /
7 Le consultation se termine à 1140.
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