ARCHIVED - Transcript, Hearing 21 January 2010

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS BEFORE

THE CANADIAN RADIO-TELEVISION AND

TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

SUBJECT:

Review of campus and community radio

HELD AT:

Outaouais Room

140 Promenade du Portage

Gatineau, Quebec

January 21, 2010

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.

Canadian Radio-television and

Telecommunications Commission

Transcript

Review of campus and community radio

BEFORE:

Michel Arpin   Chairperson

Rita Cugini   Commissioner

Marc Patrone   Commissioner

Suzanne Lamarre   Commissioner

Louise Poirier   Commissioner

Peter Menzies   Commissioner

Stephen Simpson   Commissioner

ALSO PRESENT:

Jade Roy   Secretary

Crystal Hulley   Legal Counsel

Michael Craig   Hearing Manager

HELD AT:

Outaouais Room

140 Promenade du Portage

Gatineau, Quebec

January 21, 2010

- iv -

TABLE OF CONTENTS

   PAGE / PARA

PRESENTATION BY:

Association des radios régionales francophones   842 / 4920

CACTUS   921 / 5293

ELAN   944 / 5399

CFUV 101.9 FM    973 / 5548

CJSW 90.9 FM   1005 / 5742

CJAM Student Media/University of Windsor   1045 / 5963

   Gatineau, Quebec

--- Upon resuming on Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 0906

4916   LE PRÉSIDENT : À l'ordre, s'il vous plaît.

4917   Madame la Secrétaire.

4918   LA SECRÉTAIRE : J'inviterais l'Association des radios régionales francophones à faire leur présentation.

4919   S'il vous plaît vous présenter et nous présenter vos collègues, après quoi vous aurez 20 minutes pour votre présentation. Merci.

PRESENTATION

4920   M. PAQUIN : Merci beaucoup.

4921   Bonjour, Monsieur le Président, membres du Conseil et personnel du Conseil. Je m'appelle Mario Paquin et je suis le président du conseil d'administration de l'Association des radios régionales francophones, autrement connue comme l'ARPIF.

4922   Avant de débuter notre présentation, permettez-moi de vous présenter notre panel. En plus d'être le président de notre Association, je suis directeur général et copropriétaire de CHEQ FM 101,3 à Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce.

4923   À mon extrême gauche se trouve Marc-André Lévesque, trésorier et secrétaire de l'Association. Monsieur Lévesque est le président et chef d'exploitation du Groupe Radio Antenne 6, une division de RNC Media qui dessert la région du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean-Chibougamau-Chapais.

4924   À ma gauche, madame Renée Giard, ancienne présidente de notre Association. Renée est actionnaire et vice-présidente des ventes du Groupe Radio Simard, qui exploite des stations de radio à Rivière-du-Loup, Rimouski, La Pocatière et La Beauce.

4925   À ma droite, madame Annie Labbé, membre de notre conseil d'administration et présidente du Réseau des Appalaches, qui regroupe trois stations à Thetford et à Victoriaville.

4926   Monsieur le Président, nous sommes devant vous aujourd'hui parce que cette audience pourrait avoir un impact important sur le fonctionnement de nos stations. Dans certains cas, le suivi de certaines d'entre elles pourrait même être compromis. Mieux que quiconque, nous sommes en mesure de comprendre la réalité de ces stations communautaires car elles s'apparentent à la nôtre à plusieurs égards et qu'elles sont en concurrence avec nos stations dans plusieurs marchés.

4927   Permettez-nous d'élaborer en vous dressant le portrait de nos membres. L'ARRF représente 33 stations régionales francophones. Nos membres exploitent des stations au Québec, au Nouveau-Brunswick, dans les communautés isolées comme l'Abitibi, Chibougamau, dans des marchés régionaux de petite et moyenne taille comme La Pocatière et dans la communauté avoisinante les plus grands centres.

4928   Comme nous vous l'avons déjà exposé à plusieurs occasions, plusieurs de nos membres exploitent leurs stations dans des régions qui vivent une situation économique difficile et préoccupante. Un examen des tendances économiques de nos régions démontre en effet que la plupart d'entre elles connaissent une croissance (sic) continue importante. C'est à cause de cette fragilité que les décisions que vous prendrez suite à cette audience sont des plus importantes pour nos membres.

4929   Parlons maintenant de la situation dans laquelle nous nous trouvons.

4930   Tout d'abord, nous opérons dans un contexte de plus en plus concurrentiel. Plusieurs de nos membres font face à la concurrence des grands réseaux directement dans leur marché. Dans d'autres cas, les réseaux pénètrent dans leur marché avec des signaux régionaux. Avec les couvertures de tout le Québec, les grands joueurs de notre industrie reçoivent la part du lion de l'assiette publicitaire nationale, en laissant peu pour les petits joueurs.

4931   Dans certains marchés, nos membres se font concurrence entre eux. En région, les annonceurs n'ont qu'un seul budget pour la publicité, et ce, quand ils en ont un. Leurs décisions se prennent à partir du prix des messages. Les stations de télévision nous font directement concurrence avec des tarifs souvent égaux, parfois même plus bas que les nôtres.

4932   Nous subissons également la concurrence des quotidiens, des hebdomadaires, des pages jaunes, de l'affichage, des portails Internet locaux et régionaux, tous à la recherche d'une pointe de la tarte publicitaire.

4933   Le personnel du Conseil nous a fourni les résultats combinés des stations membres de l'ARRF. Nous en avons inclus une copie à notre présentation. Comme vous pouvez le constater, les résultats ne sont pas reluisants.

4934   En 2008, avant même la récession, la marge de bénéfice d'exploitation se situait à 7.2 pour cent, alors que le BAIIA n'était que de 1.4 pour cent. Cette marge de BAIIA est plus basse que n'importe quelle autre catégorie de radio au Canada et, plus spécifiquement, que celle affichée par les radios communautaires, tel que démontré par le tableau qui suit.

4935   Dans le mémoire soumis conjointement par l'ARC du Canada et l'ARC du Québec et par l'ANREC, le paragraphe 49 parle du besoin d'assouplissement des exigences pour la radio communautaire, en disant :

« La radio commerciale avec laquelle nous devons concurrencer pour l'auditoire et la publicité n'a pas autant d'exigences réglementaires. » (Tel que lu)

4936   Les données fournies par le CRTC dans l'Avis de consultation 2009-418-2 démontre que, à travers le Canada, les radios étudiantes et communautaires tiennent déjà 40 pour cent de leurs revenus de la vente et de la publicité locale et nationale.

4937   Si on réfère encore au mémoire des trois associations, on peut voir dans le tableau présenté à la page 21 qu'en moyenne les membres de l'ARC du Québec tirent 52 pour cent de leurs revenus de la publicité. Par contre, dans le cas des radios communautaires des régions, ce pourcentage grimpe à 66.8 pour cent. Ce sont donc ces diffuseurs dits régionaux qui font directement compétition à nos membres.

4938   Pour élaborer, je passe la parole à Renée Giard.

4939   MME GIARD : Merci, Mario.

4940   Lorsque les radios communautaires s'en tiennent à leur mission de base, elles apportent une diversité de son et l'accès aux ondes radiophoniques par la communauté. Elles comblent les besoins spécifiques de groupes qui sont difficiles à desservir par la radio d'état et par la radio privée, tels les minorités de langues officielles ou ethniques, les Autochtones et la jeunesse. Elles diffusent des genres de musique qui touchent des goûts uniques comme le jazz, le blues, la musique du monde et la musique expérimentale.

4941   Dans les grands marchés, elles occupent des créneaux qui sont importants, tout en étant difficiles à desservir par une radio commerciale. Dans les régions éloignées des grands centres, elles peuvent fournir un service de communication pour des collectivités qui n'ont pas de station de radio.

4942   Tous les commentaires soumis au Conseil en réponse à votre Avis de consultation 2009-418 sont d'avis que la radio communautaire et étudiante devrait jouer un rôle de diversité dans le système de radiodiffusion canadienne. Ce qui diffère de l'un à l'autre, c'est la définition de cette diversité.

4943   Dans le document « Rencontres informelles », à la page 13, le Conseil précise que la diversité est d'offrir « des émissions dont le contenu verbal et musical diffère. » Or, dans certaines des communautés desservies par nos membres, il peut être difficile de faire la différence entre la radio communautaire et la radio commerciale.

4944   Au paragraphe 19 de leur mémoire conjoint, les trois associations décrivent le rôle de la radio communautaire comme étant d'offrir une diversité de programmation axée sur les besoins de la population en proposant des services d'information locale et régionale, de diffusion et de promotion culturelle et artistique, de promotion des talents émergents canadiens, de diffusion de contenus locaux et régionaux d'intérêt social, économique et communautaire. Tous nos membres offrent exactement ce type de programmation.

4945   Dans les faits, les stations communautaires qui opèrent dans les petits marchés déjà desservis par une radio privée ont tendance à se comporter comme des radios commerciales, et c'est précisément dans ces petits marchés que les radios privées connaissent une situation économique fragile.

4946   Nous comprenons mal comment une station communautaire peut présenter une programmation distincte de la radio commerciale lorsqu'elle embauche un morning man et des animateurs qui offrent exactement le même genre d'émissions que la radio privée indépendante, soit la musique populaire tirée des palmarès nationaux, les nouvelles locales, régionales et nationales souvent fournies par les mêmes agences que nous utilisons, les petites annonces, la météo, les conditions routières, la publicité nationale et locale.

4947   Bien que le règlement assujettisse le stations communautaires à des exigences musicales et de création orale, certaines refoulent ces éléments de diversité en soirée et en fin de semaine. Ce faisant, elles sont libres d'offrir une programmation très semblable aux radios commerciales pendant les heures de pointe, et c'est précisément durant ces périodes que les radios indépendantes régionales vont chercher la plus grande portion de leurs revenus.

4948   De plus, les radios communautaires, tel que noté dans leurs mémoires, ont de plus en plus recours à un personnel en ondes salarié et souvent à temps plein. Pour convertir leur cote d'écoute en revenus, elles embauchent également des représentants à temps plein.

4949   Ce qui est, selon nous, surprenant, c'est que la radio communautaire vous demande d'assouplir encore plus les éléments en place pour assurer la diversité de la programmation, et, pour comble, elles proposent que nous soyons obligés de contribuer financièrement à nos propres concurrents.

4950   Marc-André va vous présenter nos recommandations.

4951   M. LÉVESQUE : Merci, Renée.

4952   En élaborant nos recommandations, nous avons tenu compte de l'importance de maintenir le rôle de la radio communautaire, qui est d'offrir une diversité de programmation aux communautés qu'elles desservent et spécialement en région.

4953   Tout d'abord, nous ne partageons pas la perception qui veut que le mot « communautaire » est une connotation négative, mais nous ne nous objectons pas à la recommandation des trois associations de changer le nom pour la radio de communauté. Pour nous, la désignation a peu d'importance en autant que la radio communautaire respecte son rôle de diversité.

4954   Par contre, nous nous opposons fermement à la suggestion que la différence entre les types A et types B soit éliminée. Tel que décrit par le ministère de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition féminine du Québec, les contextes de ces radios sont très différents. Dans son programme d'aide à la radio communautaire, le MCCQ reconnaît quatre types de radio communautaire selon la grandeur du marché.

4955   Nous suggérons un assouplissement aux règles qui gouvernent les radios de premier service, c'est-à-dire de type A. Ces radios desservent habituellement des communautés difficiles à rejoindre, qui n'auraient autrement aucun service radiophonique.

4956   Nous recommandons même que le Conseil se montre ouvert à des collaborations entre les groupes communautaires et la radio privée ou d'état si de telles collaborations aboutissent dans un service local là où il n'y en avait pas.

4957   Par contre, nous préconisons que le Conseil retienne les éléments qui distinguent la radio communautaire de type B de la radio commerciale, en particulier, l'implication des bénévoles dans la programmation et la participation de la communauté dans la production des émissions.

4958   Nous notons que plusieurs des intervenants de ce secteur reconnaissent l'importance des bénévoles.

4959   Par exemple, dans son mémoire soumis séparément, l'ANREC dit au paragraphe 19, et je cite en anglais :

« Stations feel that volunteer engagement is what ensures that their program content is truly representative of the community. » (Tel que lu)

4960   La station montréalaise CIBL parle également dans son mémoire de l'importance des bénévoles à accomplir sa mission en disant, et je cite :

« Or, la mission de notre radio communautaire n'est pas uniquement de faire de la radio, mais c'est aussi et surtout de le faire en donnant aux citoyens un accès aux ondes, en faisant office de radio école, en produisant quantité d'émissions thématiques spécialisées, et en offrant à tous les citoyens un outil de diffusion facilement et en tout temps accessible. » (Tel que lu)

4961   Vancouver Co-op Radio, pour sa part, partage ces sentiments quand elle dit à la page 11 de son commentaire, encore en anglais :

« We are concerned that without the engagement of volunteers there is no assurance that the content is truly representative of the community. » (Tel que lu)

4962   Nous notons que les trois associations parlent de la difficulté de recruter, de former et de gérer des bénévoles, mais il y a des modèles de radios communautaires à travers le Canada qui ont réussi au fil des années à impliquer la communauté dans leur programmation. Nous croyons, tout comme les trois groupes cités, que cette implication est l'une des caractéristiques qui permet à la radio communautaire d'être vraiment une radio de communauté fidèle à sa mission.

4963   Nous suggérons au Conseil de permettre au Fonds canadien de la radio communautaire de subventionner les associations de radios communautaires en vue de développer des outils pour aider au recrutement, à la formation et à la gestion des bénévoles.

4964   On pourrait même considérer l'octroi de subventions directement à des stations pour le développement d'initiatives visant le recrutement et la formation des bénévoles.

4965   Nous recommandons donc que le Conseil indique dans sa politique que le recrutement et la formation de bénévoles, ainsi que leur implication dans la programmation, est un rôle fondamental de la radio communautaire et que les titulaires de licence de radio communautaire de type B soient tenus de démontrer cette implication lors de leur renouvellement.

4966   C'est pour cette raison que nous avons suggéré que la définition de la radio communautaire soit modifiée en ajoutant la phrase qui suit :

« La programmation produite principalement par des bénévoles devrait refléter la diversité du marché que la station est autorisée à desservir. » (Tel que lu)

4967   Chaque requérante pour une nouvelle station de radio communautaire de type B devrait faire état de ses plans d'impliquer des bénévoles dans sa programmation. Elle devrait aussi être tenue de dresser un portrait de sa communauté et de prendre des engagements à l'égard des services offerts aux groupes minoritaires. Ces engagements devraient être traduits en conditions de licence.

4968   Monsieur le Président, quand les requérantes pour des nouvelles licences de radio communautaire présentent leur demande, elles tentent de démontrer l'engagement de leur communauté au niveau du financement des activités proposées. Souvent, les prévisions financières proposent peu de publicité. Malheureusement, il est fréquent que les plans ne se concrétisent pas comme prévu. C'est souvent dans ces situations que les stations oublient l'apport du milieu et se tournent vers la publicité.

4969   C'est ainsi qu'on se retrouve avec la situation actuelle où les membres de l'ARC du Québec dans les régions tirent les deux-tiers de leur financement directement de la vente de la publicité.

4970   Dans notre mémoire écrit, nous avons suggéré que le Conseil adopte la règle en force au Royaume-Uni voulant qu'une radio communautaire ne tire pas plus de 50 pour cent de ses revenus d'une seule source. Nous aimerions légèrement modifier cette suggestion en recommandant que les radios communautaires de type B ne puissent pas retirer plus que 50 pour cent de leurs revenus de la publicité, ceci dans le but de protéger les stations commerciales dont c'est l'unique source de revenus.

4971   Cette recommandation n'impliquerait aucune conséquence pour la grande majorité des stations communautaires, mais contribuerait à protéger les stations commerciales des petits marchés.

4972   Les données financières dévoilées par le Conseil dans l'Avis 2008-418-2 démontrent que, en moyenne, l'ensemble des stations du secteur tire 40,8 pour cent de leurs revenus de la publicité, les stations étudiantes n'en tirent que 13,5 pour cent, les stations dans les marchés de plus d'un million de population en tirent 25,4 pour cent, et celles des marchés de population entre 100 000 et un million en tirent 35,3 pour cent.

4973   Maintenant, je passe la parole à Annie Labbé pour vous parler des exigences de programmation.

4974   MME LABBÉ : Merci, Marc-André.

4975   Les exigences de programmation ont été introduites par le Conseil en vue d'assurer que les radios communautaires offrent une diversité aux marchés qu'elles desservent, plutôt que de copier la programmation déjà disponible.

4976   En ce qui concerne les stations de type A, nous ne voyons pas d'inconvénient à ce que le Conseil assouplisse la réglementation qui les gouverne.

4977   Mais pour les radios de type B qui offrent un service là où il y a des radios commerciales, pour la plupart en place avant leur arrivée, nous croyons que les exigences actuelles devraient être renforcées, tel que stipulé dans notre mémoire.

4978   Les exigences de 5 pour cent de musique de catégorie 3, 20 pour cent de musique autre que la sous-catégorie 21, et 25 pour cent de créations orales sont d'importants outils et, quant à nous, un minimum afin d'assurer que la radio communautaire se distingue de la radio commerciale et offre une véritable diversité de programmation.

4979   Les stations communautaires peuvent facilement se comporter comme les radios privées en diffusant de la musique de catégorie 21 aux heures de grande écoute et en reléguant la musique plus diversifiée aux soirées et aux fins de semaine. C'est pourquoi nous recommandons que le Conseil exige que la musique diversifiée, que le contenu canadien et la musique vocale de langue française soient répartis équitablement à travers la semaine de diffusion, incluant les heures de grande écoute.

4980   Certains ont suggéré que la radio privée soit obligée de contribuer au financement de la radio communautaire. Le Fonds canadien de radio communautaire recommande que le Conseil exige une contribution annuelle des radios privées en augmentant le pourcentage dédié au développement de contenu canadien et des contributions obligatoires lors des changements de propriété ou d'octrois de nouvelle licence.

4981   Nous trouvons cette recommandation inacceptable. Il est, quant à nous, illogique de financer la présence ou l'arrivée de radios concurrentes qui se disent elles-mêmes concurrentes. Dans certains marchés, les radios communautaires livrent aux radios régionales une concurrence féroce pour l'auditoire et le revenu. Ce serait inconcevable pour nous de devoir, en plus, les subventionner.

4982   La plupart des stations membres de notre Association dégagent de très faibles bénéfices. Une nouvelle obligation de subventionner nos compétiteurs ou l'ensemble de la radio communautaire, en plus d'être aberrante, réduirait nos faibles profits encore davantage.

4983   Lorsque le Conseil reçoit une demande pour une station communautaire dans un marché déjà desservi par une station indépendante, il devrait émettre un appel de demande, comme c'est fait dans le cas d'une demande pour une radio privée.

4984   En examinant la demande pour une station communautaire, le Conseil devrait évaluer la capacité du marché à supporter une nouvelle station. Il ne sert pas bien les communautés de perdre les services d'une radio commerciale pour permettre l'arrivée d'une station communautaire. C'est précisément ce qui est arrivé dans au moins un marché de nos membres.

4985   Enfin, pour conclure, je passe la parole à Mario Paquin.

4986   M. PAQUIN : Merci, Annie.

4987   L'ARRF reconnaît le rôle de diversité et de service que la radio communautaire peut offrir aux communautés qu'elle dessert. Nous reconnaissons également qu'elles font face à certains problèmes, tout comme nous, mais nous ne croyons pas que la solution soit d'assouplir les règles qui assurent qu'elles se distinguent de la radio commerciale.

4988   De tels changements mèneraient inévitablement vers une commercialisation accentuée de leur programmation, au détriment de nos membres, et aurait pour effet de diminuer le niveau de diversité de la programmation offerte en région.

4989   Affaiblir nos membres par une plus grande concurrence de la radio communautaire et une obligation de contribuer à leur financement mènerait inévitablement à une réduction du niveau de service offert par les radios privées qui desservent leur communauté depuis longtemps.

4990   La tarte publicitaire n'est pas élastique. Ce qui est ajouté aux poches de la radio communautaire dans les marchés où nos membres sont présents proviendrait directement des nôtres. On ne devrait pas résoudre les problèmes du secteur communautaire en vidant les poches du secteur de la radio qui affiche les profits les plus bas.

4991   Le Fonds canadien de la radio communautaire vient tout juste de finir sa première année d'opération. Laissons au secteur communautaire le temps de travailler avec ce nouvel outil.

4992   Si la radio communautaire est une priorité pour le gouvernement, ces derniers devraient jouer un rôle dans son financement, et si une communauté considère importante la présence d'une radio communautaire, la base de son financement devrait provenir de cette communauté.

4993   Nous vous remercions et nous attendons vos questions.

4994   LE PRÉSIDENT : Merci, Monsieur Paquin. Merci, Mesdames. Merci pour votre présentation.

4995   Comme vous terminez, Monsieur Paquin, avec un certain nombre d'enjeux, je vais commencer peut-être par vous.

4996   Vous dites à la toute fin de votre texte, à la page 20 :

« Affaiblir nos membres par une plus grande concurrence de la radio communautaire et une obligation de contribuer à leur financement mènerait inévitablement à une réduction du niveau de service offert par les radios privées qui desservent leur communauté depuis longtemps. La tarte publicitaire n'est pas élastique. »

4997   Et vous avez dit un peu plus tôt que dans certains... à la page précédente, vous avez fait état d'au moins... Ce n'est pas vous, mais c'est madame Labbé qui a fait état que dans un marché, il y avait eu au moins une station de radio commerciale qui avait été obligée de fermer suite à l'arrivée d'une radio communautaire.

4998   L'ACR en avait fait état, d'ailleurs, au moment de sa comparution. Monsieur Lévesque l'avait mentionné. Malheureusement, il n'avait pas pu nous dire de quel marché on parlait. Il a mentionné que c'était peut-être au nord du Nouveau-Brunswick.

4999   Est-ce que vous êtes en mesure de nous répondre plus spécifiquement?

5000   M. PAQUIN : Justement, je vais laisser Marc-André vous mentionner la station en question.

5001   M. LÉVESQUE : Merci, Mario.

5002   En fait, Monsieur le Président, lorsque j'ai comparu avec l'ACR au début de la semaine, vous m'aviez donné un petit devoir avant de quitter.

5003   LE PRÉSIDENT : Oui.

5004   M. LÉVESQUE : Alors, j'ai fait un peu de travail, effectivement, avec mes confrères et consoeurs. En fait, vous m'aviez demandé s'il existait des études économiques qui pouvaient démontrer l'impact de la radio communautaire sur la radio commerciale, en région particulièrement.

5005   Vous comprendrez que notre Association a très peu de moyens. Il y a une personne qui comparaissait devant vous cette semaine au nom de l'ANREC, qui venait de la Colombie-Britannique, et qui vous signifiait qu'elle était ici à ses propres frais. C'est la même chose pour nous quatre ici ce matin. Nous sommes ici à nos propres frais.

5006   L'Association n'a pas le moyen de payer ce genre d'étude là. Par contre, nous avons fait une recherche pour vous démontrer l'impact que peut avoir la radio communautaire sur la radio commerciale en région.

5007   Le premier point que je voudrais souligner -- ça été mentionné dans notre présentation -- c'est d'abord que notre secteur, en fait, la radio régionale francophone a les plus faibles profits de tout ce qu'on peut segmenter dans notre industrie. On l'a démontré par un tableau.

5008   Les revenus moyens par station entre 2005 et 2008 se sont accrus de 20 000 dollars au total, ce qui veut dire 2,8 pour cent sur trois ans. Son BAIIA moyen est passé de 49 300 à 10 300. C'est une baisse de 80 pour cent du BAII par station, alors que les communautaires font beaucoup mieux, au moins le double puisqu'ils font à peu près 17 000,00 $ par station.

5009   Nous avons parlé dans notre présentation, j'en avais fait état avec l'ACR, d'une station membre qui a fermé suite à l'arrivée d'une station communautaire. Il s'agit de la station CJVA qui était à Caraquet et qui, lorsque la station communautaire de Pokemush est arrivée, a dû se résigner finalement à convertir sa... d'abord, à mettre à pied 13 personnes qui travaillaient dans cette station-là a Caraquet et à convertir sa station locale en une station répétitrice de celle de Bathurst.

5010   Et la radio Péninsule qui est la radio communautaire en question a déclaré le 31 août 2008 des revenus de 1.3 millions de dollars dont 647 000,00 $ proviennent de la publicité.

5011   En 2007, ces revenus étaient de 1.2 millions de dollars dont 675 000,00 $ provenaient de la publicité. J'ai les états financiers pour le démontrer si vous y tenez.

5012   Je veux aussi faire une démonstration dans un marché que je connais bien, celui du Saguenay. Dans ce marché-là, Astral contrôle à peu près 70 pour cent des parts de marché et d'écoute commerciale avec ses deux stations, Énergie et Rock Détente, et il reste quatre stations, la station de CORUS, CKRS, la nôtre, CICK-FM, la station... une petite station à La Baie, CKGS, et une station communautaire avec les lettres d'appel CKAJ qui est à Jonquière et CKAJ dans ce marché-là est troisième dans les parts de marché, avec 14 pour cent de parts de marché.

5013   Ils vont chercher plus ou moins annuellement, je dirais, entre 400 000,00 $ et 500 000,00 $ de revenus. Je dirais l'essentiel vient de la publicité parce que je n'ai pas eu connaissance trop trop de démarches ou d'activités de financement qu'ils ont pu tenir dans le milieu.

5014   Ils ont trois vendeurs à temps plein, il faut quand même les payer trois vendeurs à temps plein, c'est ce que j'ai avec ma station au Saguenay.

5015   Il faut comprendre que dans un contexte comme ça Astral qui contrôle le marché, le marché de l'écoute, contrôle également le marché... les revenus publicitaires dans une bonne partie. Astral c'est le « must buy » dans cette région-là.

5016   Un annonceur qui veut faire de la radio ne peut pas faire autrement que d'acheter d'abord une des stations ou les deux stations d'Astral et s'il reste un peu de budget, bien, le deuxième budget, bien il se partage parmi les quatre autres joueurs.

5017   Alors, plus il y a de joueurs, plus on s'affaiblit parce que ce budget-là, ce deuxième budget se partage parmi le nombre de joueurs qui sont là. Alors, la radio communautaire va en chercher, là, entre 400 000,00 $ et 500 000,00 $, selon nos estimations, annuellement.

5018   Si les règles de la radio communautaire sont assouplies, si la radio commerciale est appelée à financer la radio communautaire, bien, c'est comme empirer un peu la situation des radios commerciales de ce marché-là et des autres marchés qui font face à la même situation.

5019   Renée Giard a d'autres exemples à vous donner de l'impact de la radio communautaire sur la radio commerciale.

5020   Mme GIARD: Oui. Un de nos membres qui est à Edmunston, CJEM que vous connaissez bien, nous disait que de 1991 à 2005, alors avec l'arrivée de la radio communautaire CFAI, CJEM a vu ses revenus baisser de 35 pour cent et directement, ce qu'il nous disait, c'est que les sous qui vont à la radio communautaire viennent directement de la radio commerciale, des revenus de la radio commerciale.

5021   Et ce qu'on nous disait là-bas, c'est qu'ils ont sept à huit employés salariés, la radio communautaire, leur format musical est jeune et actuel. Ils diffusent une programmation commerciale faite par le personnel rémunéré. Ils ont développé une philosophie de radio commerciale.

5022   Et pourtant, la station communautaire est subventionnée par le gouvernement du Nouveau-Brunswick et supportée par l'Université de Moncton à Edmundston. Donc, malgré l'aide gouvernementale, ils vont quand même dans le marché chercher de bons revenus publicitaires et ça a nui directement à la station CJEM à Edmunston.

5023   Je voulais aussi peut-être vous parler d'un cas qui me concerne peut-être un peu plus, la station de LaPocatière qui a desservi pendant près de 50 ans le marché de Charlevois.

5024   Charlevois a maintenant, depuis quelques années, une radio communautaire, mais malgré nos... on a des installations dans Charlevois, à Baie-St-Paul, entre autres, pour notre radio de LaPocatière et la station communautaire de Charlevois pénètre très, très bien sur la rive sud et leur programmation est assez semblable à ce que fait la radio de LaPocatière.

5025   Donc, dans certains cas, ce qu'on vous disait, c'est que c'est de plus en plus difficile de voir vraiment une diversité ou une différence entre... dans certains marchés, ce que les radios communautaires font et ce que la radio commerciale fait, surtout dans les régions et dans les petits marchés.

5026   Et, d'autre part, nous avions un correspondant sur la rive nord qui était en même temps un représentant à temps partiel et nous avons dû depuis trois ans éliminer ou mettre à pied cette personne-là parce que nous ne pouvons pas supporter la dépense qui était plus élevée finalement que les revenus.

5027   Alors, ça, c'est un cas qui a touché directement une radio commerciale de petit marché.

5028   À Rimouski, il y a une radio communautaire et nous avons maintenant une radio de premier service qui est là-bas, une radio indépendante et quand on fait des parallèles, on se rend compte qu'ils ont dix employés à temps plein qui sont rémunérés, une quinzaine de bénévoles et là-dessus quatre représentants publicitaires, ce qui fait que la radio n'est pas déficitaire.

5029   Mais ce qu'on veut vous dire aujourd'hui c'est en élargissant les règles, il sera plus difficile d'avoir vraiment de la diversité et des produits différents parce qu'on sent très bien dans les recommandations que les radios communautaires vous ont faites qu'ils veulent de plus en plus modifier leur programmation et, nous, on juge que les demandes qu'ils font vont ressembler de plus en plus à ce qu'on tente de faire, les radios indépendantes, dans les petits marchés.

5030   LE PRÉSIDENT: C'est évident qu'on a eu plusieurs témoignages, là, de différentes natures et vous en avez cités dans votre présentation, mais vous avez cité des radios communautaires qui sont essentiellement dans des grands marchés, Montréal et Vancouver, pour les citations que vous avez utilisées.

5031   Mais on comprend bien, et je pense que le conseil saisit bien qu'il y a trois... comme le Gouvernement du Québec d'ailleurs le fait lui-même, qu'il y a trois ou quatre types de radio communautaire et c'est celles qui sont dans vos marchés qui sont les plus concurrentielles parce que les stations communautaires des grands marchés servent soit de pépinière pour les entreprises de médias existants parce que je ne vois rien dans la liste des talents qui ont travaillé à CIBL, qu'il y en a qui ne sont pas nécessairement allés en radio, ils sont allés soit en télévision, et d'autres même dans les médias écrits, mais qui ont commencé par une carrière comme bénévole à la radio communautaire.

5032   Mais, est-ce que c'est réaliste dans vos marchés de se fier, de bâtir une infrastructure de radiodiffusion qui ferait appel à autant de bénévoles qui... parce que ce que vous notez, notamment, en citant CIBL et Vancouver Coop, c'est le nombre de bénévoles et l'activité de bénévoles qui tourne autour de ces stations-là.

5033   Mais dans les témoignages qu'on a entendus de plus petites radios communautaires, le recrutement et surtout le maintien du nombre de manière continue à travers des ans, des bénévoles, c'est... à cause effectivement de la petite taille de vos marchés, c'est à peu près... c'est relativement limité.

5034   Hier, on a entendu le témoignage de la station de Maniwaki qui nous a parlé... qui parlait d'un succès avec neuf bénévoles en ondes parce qu'ils disaient bien que les bénévoles servaient aussi à d'autres fins, là, quand vient le temps de vendre des cartes de membres et puis de faire des activités de cette nature-là qui sont, elles, très, très, très ponctuelles.

5035   Mais de manière soutenue, à partir des expériences que vous avez dans vos propres stations même d'avoir du personnel, même rémunéré dans certains cas, vous avez du « turn over » quand même assez important en général dans vos stations et est-ce que c'est pensable qu'une station de radio communautaire dans des marchés de votre taille puisse avoir une programmation, parce que c'est ce que vous dites dans votre mémoire, essentiellement faite par des bénévoles?

5036   M. LÉVESQUE: Monsieur Arpin, si je peux me permettre, d'abord quand vous dites que les radios communautaires sont une pépinière pour les stations des grands centres, je peux vous dire qu'on en est une également, nos représentants et nos stations.

5037   Et les réalités dont vous faites part pour les stations communautaires dans des marchés comme les nôtres, ce sont nos réalités à nous également. Nous vivons la même difficulté de trouver des gens, de les conserver, de faire une programmation locale. On vit la même chose qu'eux.

5038   Alors, s'il y a déjà une station locale qui fait ce travail-là dans un marché, oui, la justification et la pertinence d'avoir en plus une station de radio communautaire et comment va-t-elle se distinguer de la radio commerciale le cas échéant, c'est ça qui nous préoccupe.

5039   On considère, nous, que quand on est déjà dans un marché, on remplit toute la place qu'un communautaire pourrait prendre, si en plus il en arrive un, bien, au moins assurons-nous que cette station-là va vraiment se distinguer et il faut qu'il y ait en place un mécanisme qui fasse en sorte que les gens qui la « promouvoient », qui veulent la mettre en place puissent vous démontrer au Conseil sa réelle nécessité, son réel support dans le milieu et que ce n'est pas quelque chose qui va être éphémère.

5040   Parce que c'est souvent... malheureusement, c'est souvent les rêves de quelques gens qui adorent le média puis une fois que ce goût-là est passé puis qu'ils passent à autre chose, bien là, la radio communautaire, elle demeure, mais c'est d'autres gens qui prennent la place puis qui sont moins peut-être sensibles à l'importance du volet communautaire et tentent d'imiter la radio commerciale parce que c'est plus simple.

5041   LE PRÉSIDENT: Et la professionnalisent, c'est ce que vous dites essentiellement?

5042   M. LÉVESQUE: Absolument.

5043   LE PRÉSIDENT: Pour devenir des concurrents. Parce que l'origine des radios communautaires dans vos marchés n'est pas nécessairement... était ce que vous avez décrit à l'origine, mais peut-être dans bien des cas c'est arrivé, ce sont des rêves qui...

5044   Mais la difficulté effectivement, ça a été de maintenir le personnel, l'intérêt des bénévoles à programmer alors que dans les grands centres, évidemment, comme Montréal avec la population que Montréal peut avoir, je peux comprendre que CIBL ait, lui, plutôt des problèmes d'élaguer même le nombre de bénévoles qui se présentent parce qu'il s'en présente trop.

5045   Comme il disait, il y en avait cinq groupes de bénévoles par semaine qui soumettaient des projets. Donc, c'est une dynamique un peu différente, je présume, de vos marchés.

5046   M. LÉVESQUE: Absolument. Vous comprenez bien la réalité de nos marchés, là, à écouter vos explications et c'est pour ça que c'est important que le Conseil, avant d'accorder une nouvelle licence dans un marché où il y a un joueur commercial, un petit joueur commercial...

5047   LE PRÉSIDENT: Mais l'objectif de la révision qu'on fait, c'est de s'occuper aussi des stations existantes, pas seulement des futures stations, et on cherche des approches qui sont à la fois bénéfiques pour eux et bénéfiques pour vous.

5048   Je vois bien que dans votre présentation vous avez dit très bien les types A, plus de flexibilité. Mais les types B, vous leur mettez davantage même de contraintes qu'elles ont présentement en disant que la programmation devrait être essentiellement faite par des bénévoles. Il ne devrait pas y avoir plus de 50 pour cent de leurs revenus qui proviennent d'une seule et même source.

5049   Est-ce que vous savez pourquoi au Royaume-Uni, on a choisi cette règle-là du 50 pour cent?

5050   M. LÉVESQUE: Non, pas vraiment.

5051   LE PRÉSIDENT: Non. Mais c'est parce que je vais vous le dire. C'est que le gouvernement britannique ne voulait pas que les syndicats prennent contrôle des stations communautaires.

5052   M. LÉVESQUE: Mais ce n'est pas bien, ça.

5053   LE PRÉSIDENT: Et qu'ils les financent à 100 pour cent, comme devenant un outil de propagande et, donc, c'est une réalité.

5054   C'est vrai que c'est bien de citer Offcome, là, ici, et de sa politique de la radio communautaire au Royaume-Uni, mais les motifs sous-jacents étaient des motifs tout à fait différents de ceux que vous mettez de l'avant.

5055   Est-ce que c'est pensable qu'une station de radio communautaire, dans un marché de votre taille, puisse aller chercher auprès de la communauté, par toutes sortes de moyens, que ce soit des bingos ou de la sollicitation, de la vente de cartes de membres, suffisamment de revenus pour maintenir une opération décente?

5056   M. LÉVESQUE: Si vous me demandez mon opinion à moi, je vous dirais que...

5057   LE PRÉSIDENT: Bien, enfin, vous êtes quatre là.

5058   M. LÉVESQUE: Moi, je vous dirais que si elle n'est pas capable, si la communauté n'est pas capable de soutenir sa radio communautaire, elle n'a pas vraiment de raison d'être.

5059   LE PRÉSIDENT: D'accord.

5060   Mme GIARD: Et si la radio communautaire doit de plus en plus... veut de plus en plus se comporter comme une radio commerciale, c'est qu'elle ne tient pas son... nous autres, on considère que ce n'est pas ça son mandat.

5061   Et la question que vous posiez tout à l'heure, j'avais envie de vous dire, finalement, cette question-là, est-ce que vous allez avoir assez de bénévoles pour maintenir la radio communautaire, c'est aux gens qui vous font des demandes, à qui vous devez poser la question.

5062   Et c'est pour ça qu'on vous dit, en plus... en plus, ce qu'on vous demande quand vous avez des demandes pour des radios communautaires, de vérifier si le marché peut... puis surtout dans les cas où principalement dans les cas où il y a déjà des radios indépendantes qui, pour nous, ont un statut privé différent d'autres stations radios privées, ça devient drôlement important de vérifier si le marché commercial peut supporter cette station communautaire-là.

5063   Mais vous disiez tout à l'heure: est-ce qu'une station peut vivre avec peu de gens ou je vous dirais qu'à l'exemple de LaPocatière cette station-là est maintenue avec sept employés et que c'est à ces gens-là qu'on demande de faire en plus du bénévolat, si on veut être capable de maintenir la qualité du service qu'on donne pour la clientèle de Kamouraska-L'Islet actuellement.

5064   LE PRÉSIDENT: Vous avez parlé dans votre mémoire de programmation, notamment de programmation musicale. Notamment vous faites, vous dites que vous nous demandez de nous assurer que... en disant: « Nos recommandations que le Conseil exige que la musique diversifiée ainsi que le contenu canadien de musique vocale de langue française soit réparti équitablement à travers les semaines de diffusion. »

5065   Est-ce que vous avez des évidences que les radios communautaires ne font pas ça?

5066   Parce que ce qu'on a entendu hier et au cours des trois derniers jours en terme de témoignage, c'est que la musique canadienne dépassait souvent le 50 pour cent de teneur. On mettait beaucoup d'accent sur même des talents locaux. Dans le cas du Québec, la notion de local qu'on donnait souvent c'était provincial quand même, alors dans le cas du Québec, du côté francophone, il n'en manque certainement pas.

5067   Mais est-ce que vous... alors que le Conseil exige par règlement que la musique canadienne et la musique de langue française soit distribuée de manière raisonnable à l'intérieur de la grille, même avec des pourcentages qui sont indiqués dans le règlement, est-ce que vous avez des évidences qu'à la radio communautaire on ne se comporte pas comme tel?

5068   M. PAQUIN: Moi, pour répondre là-dessus, pour avoir une station communautaire qui n'est pas tellement loin de chez nous à Sainte-Marie, qui est au Lac Etchemin, ça fait que c'est à peu près à trois-quarts d'heure de nous, c'est une station qui au niveau du quota pourcentage canadien puis francophone, ça, je ne peux pas dire s'ils dépassent ou bien...

5069   Mais la seule chose que je peux dire, c'est que... puis ce n'est pas seulement cette station-là, c'est que de plus en plus les stations communautaires vont avoir un format, vraiment un format bien précis. C'est qu'eux se définissent, bon, une station un peu style Rock Détente et puis surtout que...

5070   Même je connais des gens qui ont voulu travailler là-bas comme bénévole et puis on leur a dit: bien, écoutez, vous ne rentrez pas dans le format. Nous, c'est un format musical plus style catégorie 5 qu'on fait. La personne voulait faire du jazz, les gens ne voulaient pas.

5071   Ça fait que c'est tout ça qui fait en sorte que, à un moment donné, les stations communautaires sont de plus en plus formatées et puis je pense que ce n'est pas du tout ça. Les gens s'attendent à ces stations-là justement, nous on ne fait pas tourner de jazz, on ne fait pas tourner de blues, on ne fait pas tourner de...

5072   Eux, c'est à eux à le faire toutes ces petites choses-là, ces programmations-là. Si on se réfère à certaines... il y a certaines stations qui le font très bien, mais de plus en plus on s'aperçoit que, bon, on va aller chercher des ventes, on va aller chercher... on veut concurrencer certaines stations et tout ça.

5073   Et puis même plusieurs stations communautaires qui vont même acheter des émissions « packagées » qui proviennent de Montréal, des productions deviennent... et je trouve que ce n'est pas tout à fait leur mandat. Ils devraient eux-mêmes produire des choses.

5074   Mme GIARD: Monsieur Arpin, vous vous rappelez quand il y a eu les audiences pour le renouvellement de la radio commerciale, on était présent d'ailleurs, on avait fait des représentations, et je me rappelle puis vous me direz si je suis dans l'erreur, que les gens des radios communautaires s'étaient présentés aussi et avaient présenté un document et étaient venus aux audiences et qu'ils avaient dit qu'ils étaient les seuls à présenter autre chose que les 100 seules « tunes » qui jouent apparemment dans toutes les radios commerciales du Québec et qu'ils avaient une programmation musicale très différente et qui revendiquaient que ça faisait partie de leur quotidien.

5075   Et aujourd'hui quand on parle avec nos membres qui sont en région où il y a une radio indépendante et une radio communautaire, pourquoi les gens nous disent de plus en plus la programmation musicale entre 6 h 00 et 19 h 00 ressemble de plus en plus à ce que les radios commerciales font?

5076   Alors, il faut se poser la question: quelle est la raison qui fait que dans les régions où il y a une radio indépendante et une radio communautaire, la radio communautaire modifie sa programmation musicale et va de plus en plus présenter une programmation qui ressemble, où il y a le moins de différence... de moins en moins de différence avec ce que la radio indépendante fait?

5077   La question qu'on se pose, nous, c'est: si c'est comme ça la tendance et si c'est vers ça que les radios communautaires veulent se diriger, ce qu'on veut vous dire aujourd'hui c'est qu'on n'est pas d'accord puis qu'on considère qu'ils ne respectent pas leur mandat ou leurs conditions de licence.

5078   Et on se pose la question: est-ce que ce n'est pas justement pour avoir un son plus commercial qui va permettre d'aller chercher plus de vente locale?

5079   Et vous dites et vous répétez que la radio c'est un média local, donc, nous on ne pose la question: pourquoi de plus en plus les gens veulent ouvrir et avoir une musique plus commerciale dans les radios communautaires? Est-ce que ce n'est pas parce que, justement, ils ont jugé que c'était le moyen d'aller chercher plus de revenu dans leur communauté?

5080   LE PRÉSIDENT: Parce que... enfin, c'est parce que, essentiellement, ce que vous dites, c'est que toutes leur activité est essentiellement dirigée à générer davantage de revenus et pour assurer la pérennité de leur existence.

5081   Elles deviennent, en fait, si je fais une analogie, là, ce que j'entends de vous c'est que les radios communautaires deviennent en réalité des coopératives d'employés, de travailleurs, plus ou moins ça.

5082   Mme GIARD: Oui. Puis l'obligation d'avoir des émissions particulières faites par des gens de la communauté, ce qu'on voyait...

5083   LE PRÉSIDENT: Non, non. Ça, c'est votre demande, oui.

5084   Mme GIARD: Oui, mais ce qu'on voyait avant puis je me rappelle d'avoir entendu des choses comme ça, c'est que la radio communautaire pouvait faire une émission pour parler de, je ne sais pas, moi, des problèmes avec le CLSC régional ou local, on pouvait voir ça entre 6 h 00 et 19 h 00, mais là on n'entend plus ça, là. On entend ça en fin de soirée ou le week-ends, mais la période de grande écoute, de plus en plus on voit une tendance à devenir avec une programmation de radio commerciale parce que c'est...

5085   LE PRÉSIDENT: Formatée.

5086   Mme GIARD: Formatée. Et tantôt Mario parlait d'une station à Lac Etchemin qui achète une émission faite par un artiste de Montréal. Mais cette émission-là passe dans une des stations de Marc-André. Alors, c'est un produit commercial. Et de plus en plus les radios communautaires font des émissions du matin d'affaires publiques avec des « morning men » et, bon...

5087   Alors, on se rend compte que de plus en plus ou de moins en moins de différence dans les petits marchés où il y a une radio indépendante puis une radio communautaire. Et c'est pour ça qu'on est ici aujourd'hui, parce qu'on veut vous sensibiliser à ça et parce qu'on dit, puis on a toujours dit depuis qu'on existe, l'ARF, on a une réalité différente quand on parle de radio privée commerciale. On est dans des marchés différents, nos finances sont différentes puis ça n'a pas l'air à s'améliorer. Je ne pense pas que 2010 on va battre des records. Les chiffres qu'on vous présente aujourd'hui sont des chiffres du CRTC.

5088   Alors, c'est notre réalité et c'est pour ça qu'on veut vous dire, vous démontrer qu'on est là, qu'on est important et qu'on a même des stations qui sont là depuis 72 ans dans des marchés régionaux.

5089   LE PRÉSIDENT: Puis il y a des radios communautaires qui sont là depuis 40, 50 ans, donc...

5090   Mme GIARD: Donc, ils ont vécu jusque là.

5091   LE PRÉSIDENT: Oui, mais vous...

5092   Mme GIARD: Ils se sont financés jusque là.

5093   LE PRÉSIDENT: Oui, mais lâchons le financement pour deux instants parce que vous avez aussi parlé de programmation puis de vos attentes puis de vos exigences de maintient de 25 pour cent de créations orales d'émissions qui donnent accès aux minorités de langues officielles ou ethniques, aux autochtones, à la diffusion de jazz, de blues, de musique du monde, de musique expérimentale.

5094   Dans vos marchés, y a-t-il des bénévoles? Il y a suffisamment de bénévoles pour... Est-ce que, premièrement, il y a suffisamment d'autochtones dans vos marchés? J'exclus monsieur... parce que dans son marché il y a en a, mais est-ce qu'il y a suffisamment d'autochtones dans vos marchés pour faire de la... pour que la radio communautaire fasse de la programmation autochtone?

5095   Est-ce qu'il y a suffisamment de communautés ethniques ou de minorités de langues officielles dans vos marchés pour que la radio communautaire puisse maintenir de manière décente une programmation de ce type-là de manière soutenue?

5096   Mme LABBÉ: C'est une généralité. Quand on le dénombre, c'est une généralité. Mais dans des petits marchés, quand il y a une demande, je crois, moi... quand, nous, on fait une demande au niveau du privé, vous nous posez la question si on considère que le marché est capable de nous soutenir.

5097   Normalement on vous dit, oui, parce qu'on a fait soit une étude de marché, soit qu'on a évalué avec la communauté qu'on était apte à répondre à leurs besoins et nous considérons que la radio communautaire c'est la même chose. Quand eux font une demande, ils sont allés voir le Conseil de ville, ils sont allés voir les organismes, ils ont tâté le terrain d'une certaine façon.

5098   Donc, à partir de ce moment-là, ils sont aptes à poursuivre leur voie avec des bénévoles. Il faut qu'ils se donnent les moyens, il faut qu'ils soient créatifs, il faut qu'ils se rapprochent de leur communauté. Ils sont toujours à la recherche de ces éléments-là comme nous on est à la recherche aussi.

5099   M. PAQUIN: Également, monsieur le président, quand vous parlez de programmation et tout ça, je comprends très bien qu'on ne ferait pas jouer, nous, dans la Beauce, on ne ferait pas jouer de la musique autochtone parce que je pense qu'il n'y en a pas beaucoup, à part qu'un petit village qui s'appelle « Abénakis ». Je ne sais pas s'il reste quelques autochtones dans ce coin-là.

5100   Non, mais on parle de musique de jazz, de blues, musique... peu importe, musique locale, justement des talents locaux. On ne les entend pas ou presque pas. C'est nous qui souvent font jouer ce genre de musique-là, la musique je parle de nouveaux talents. Mais jazz, blues, et tout ça, si on ne le fait pas jouer... eux, ils pourraient très bien faire un peu ce genre de musique-là. La musique du nouvel âge, il y en a tellement. Et puis faire jouer pas seulement que des succès, les Top 10 de palmarès, c'est ce qu'on entend.

5101   Ce qu'on aimerait entendre justement c'est des chansons qui sont appelées peut-être à devenir des succès ou peu importe, mais...

5102   LE PRÉSIDENT: Les talents émergents?

5103   M. PAQUIN: Oui.

5104   LE PRÉSIDENT: Mais la radio communautaire se targue de dire qu'elle est la grande... est le grand diffuseur de musique émergente et puis...

5105   M. PAQUIN: Bien, ce n'est pas tout le temps ce qu'on entend en tout cas.

5106   LE PRÉSIDENT: Ce n'est pas ce que vous entendez dans vos marchés.

5107   M. PAQUIN: Non.

5108   M. LÉVESQUE: Mais dans notre région au Saguenay, c'est une station qui joue de la musique gold, de nostalgie, alors il n'y a pas trop de talents émergents dans ça, là.

5109   J'aimerais juste préciser une chose, monsieur Arpin. C'est que ce que nous demandons au niveau programmation...

5110   LE PRÉSIDENT: C'est eux les Souvenirs Garantis?

5111   M. PAQUIN: Oui. Non, ça, c'est CORUS.

5112   LE PRÉSIDENT: Oui, je sais.

5113   M. LÉVESQUE: Mais ce que nous demandons dans notre mémoire, c'est uniquement le maintien des règles actuelles.

5114   LE PRÉSIDENT: Oui, oui.

5115   M. LÉVESQUE: C'est uniquement ça.

5116   LE PRÉSIDENT: Mais les témoignages qu'on a c'est que 25 pour cent de créations orales et puis la musique particulièrement de catégorie 3, c'est extrêmement difficile à réaliser dans des marchés de la taille de ceux dans lesquels vous êtes et puis une des raisons pour lesquelles ils prennent des émissions d'autres sources comme Montréal, comme vous avez mentionné, mais même quand on a entendu les gens de Winnipeg, ils nous ont dit qu'ils en prenaient aux États-Unis parce que, effectivement, 25 pour cent du temps d'antenne, 25 pour cent de... c'est une quarantaine d'heures par semaine, ça.

5117   M. LÉVESQUE: Oui, mais ils peuvent faire de la répétition et ils en font déjà d'ailleurs, là. Et s'il n'y a pas suffisamment de gens pour permettre de répondre à ce besoin-là, bien, je pense qu'on peut se poser la question: est-ce qu'il y a vraiment un besoin pour une station communautaire à ce moment-là?

5118   LE PRÉSIDENT: Parce que, autrement, c'est de les pousser à faire des lignes ouvertes puis, là, vous allez dire, bien, c'est ça qu'on fait nous autres aussi parce que c'est une façon de faire du contenu verbal, ça, de faire des lignes ouvertes.

5119   Mme LABBÉ: La musique de catégorie 3, ce qu'on demande, c'est qu'elle peut être diversifiée aussi toute la journée. Ça fait que ce n'est pas obligé de faire une émission. Ça peut faire partie...

5120   LE PRÉSIDENT: Bien, ça prend souvent dans la musique de catégorie 3 une certaine connaissance puis une certaine expertise et puis on a même entendu comme témoignage que dans bien des stations de radio c'est le bénévole lui-même qui fournit la musique à partir de sa propre discothèque et puis si on la distribue après ça de manière générale dans la programmation, le bénévole, il va finir par demander à être payé parce qu'il va être obligé d'être à la station de 6 h 00 à minuit.

5121   M. LÉVESQUE: Monsieur le président, si on enlève ces règles-là...

5122   Mme LABBÉ: Mais c'est enregistré, là.

5123   M. LÉVESQUE: Si on enlève ces règles-là de musique de catégorie 3 puis qu'on assouplit d'autre chose, qu'est-ce qui va distinguer la radio communautaire de la radio commerciale dans un marché comme ceux dans lesquels on évolue?

5124   LE PRÉSIDENT: Bien, c'est ce qu'on cherche. C'est pour ça qu'on écoute votre témoignage avec beaucoup d'attention.

5125   Mme LABBÉ: Monsieur Arpin, à Rimouski, la radio communautaire, là, puis si on ouvre l'Almanach du Peuple, là, ils sont bien identifiés et c'est marqué « du lundi au vendredi c'est retro et les fins de semaines c'est country. »

5126   M. PAQUIN: Puis comme on parlait tout à l'heure, au niveau des lignes ouvertes... Il n'y a aucun problème pour moi, qu'il y ait des lignes ouvertes, mais dans le contexte communautaire. Ils peuvent parler de certaines choses de leur communauté, pas nécessairement commencer à parler... à avoir des invités de sports puis des concours en ondes, puis et cetera, faire la même chose que nous. C'est...

5127   Ils peuvent très bien le faire mais dans un contexte un peu plus communautaire, dans leur propre... Ils peuvent parler du CLSC qui ont des petits problèmes, puis ils font venir la... Ça, il n'y a aucun problème.

5128   Mais à un moment donné, faire des lignes ouvertes puis faire de l'opinion, c'est une autre affaire.

5129   LE PRÉSIDENT: Faire de l'humour?

5130   M. PAQUIN: S'ils veulent en faire quelquefois, il n'y a aucun problème, mais de là à présenter des capsules qui viendraient de d'autres... de producteurs privés, ça, je serais peut-être moins d'accord avec ça.

5131   LE PRÉSIDENT: Bien, un des éléments de discussion qu'on a eu avec l'ACR, notamment, et puis c'était des... Parce que l'ACR elle-même a suggéré de considérer comme des dépenses de contenu canadien des -- ce qu'on dit en anglais -- des contributions en... « in kind », de matériel.

5132   Parce que vous, vous dites... vous écrivez dans votre mémoire de demander... ça serait inconcevable pour vous de devoir, en plus de ça, les subventionner. Mais est-ce que vous avez des relations avec les radios communautaires, dans vos marchés? Est-ce que vous faites des choses?

5133   On a entendu, même, des beaux témoignages. À un moment donné, même, il y en a un, une radio communautaire, qui est venue nous dire qu'elle vendait du temps d'antenne conjointement avec une station locale dans un marché, puis ils se partageaient le revenu, donc... selon une formule qu'ils ont établie entre eux.

5134   M. LÉVESQUE: En ce qui me concerne, cette année, j'ai vendu à la radio communautaire de Jonquière un appareil -- on appelle ça un rotophase -- dont ils avaient besoin pour changer de site, pour mettre l'électricité en trois phases -- à un prix minime, un appareil qui valait pas mal de sous, qui était neuf parce qu'on avait dû l'acheter, nous autres, pour une installation que finalement avait pas donné les résultats attendus; on avait dû changer. Donc, on avait cet appareil-là de disponible. On leur a laissé pour un prix très raisonnable.

5135   Mais à part ça, les relations... Ils ne nous ont pas demandé grand chose, sincèrement. Puis c'est la seule fois où ils ont eu des... j'ai eu une demande de leur part. Puis quand ils ont demandé une répétitrice à La Baie, quand ils ont demandé d'être relocalisés, on s'est jamais opposé à leurs demandes.

5136   LE PRÉSIDENT: Bien cependant, vous dites que... Mais vous dites clairement que vous ne voulez pas que les contributions de soutien du contenu canadien puisse éventuellement servir à pérenniser l'existence de la radio communautaire?

5137   M. LÉVESQUE: En fait, on ne veut pas que le 40 pour-cent sur lequel on a une marge de manouvre pour donner localement à des organisations dans notre contribution au développement du contenu canadien soit utilisé pour la radio communautaire, parce qu'en ce qui nous concerne, ce ne sont pas des très gros montants et ils sont utilisés localement.

5138   Actuellement, moi, mes stations... l'ensemble des sommes sont regroupées pour donner en bourses à des étudiants en radio et en journalisme au département d'art et technologie du collège de Jonquière. Alors si je suis obligé de prendre une partie de ces bourses-là pour les donner à la radio communautaire, je...

5139   LE PRÉSIDENT: Ça serait...

5140   M. LÉVESQUE: Je ne trouve pas ça logique, là.

5141   LE PRÉSIDENT: Ça, c'était la position de l'ACR. La position que j'ai entendue de la part de l'ARRF, c'est : rien. Et là--

5142   M. LÉVESQUE: Mais là, on n'a pas le moyen d'en donner plus!

5143   LE PRÉSIDENT: Hein?

5144   M. LÉVESQUE: On n'a pas le moyen d'en donner plus.

5145   LE PRÉSIDENT: Non, non, non, non, mais... Je comprends, mais là, la position de l'ACR c'est : touchez pas notre 40 pour-cent. Si vous touchez à quelque chose, bien, touchez aux contributions MUSICACTION/FACTOR ou Fonds RadioStar... Starmaker. Mais ne touchez pas à l'argent qu'on investit localement.

5146   Ça, c'était la position de l'ACR.

5147   La position de l'ARRF dans son mémoire, puis même dans sa présentation orale, c'est : rien.

5148   M. LÉVESQUE: On trouve inacceptable de financer une radio qui se dit concurrente.

5149   LE PRÉSIDENT: D'accord.

5150   MME GIARD: Et nous, on en fait une question de principe, aussi.

5151   LE PRÉSIDENT: Mais, monsieur Lévesque, vous avez fait... Je veux m'assurer que vos collègues partagent votre opinion parce que vous avez apporté une nuance qui pourrait s'avérer importante.

5152   M. LÉVESQUE: Quelle nuance j'ai apportée?

5153   LE PRÉSIDENT: À l'effet de ne pas toucher au 40 pour-cent. Vous n'avez pas parlé de l'autre... du reste.

5154   MME GIARD: C'était l'ensemble.

5155   M. LÉVESQUE: Non, c'est l'ensemble.

5156   MME GIARD: Non, non... Ce que les collègues pensent, de Marc-André, c'est que c'est une question de principe. On considère que la radio privée n'a pas à financer la radio communautaire, d'autant plus qu'elle est concurrentielle dans certains de nos marchés.

5157   Et, d'autre part, comme la radio est un média local on a de la difficulté à justifier qu'on participerait financièrement à un fonds national. On considère qu'il n'y a pas de logique.

5158   Puis aussi, le 40 pour-cent dont on peut faire bénéficier nos artistes locaux dans nos régions est diminué par rapport à ce que c'était avant, parce qu'il y a eu une modification. Puis de plus en plus, les artistes viennent nous voir puis comptent sur nous.

5159   Mais dans nos régions, ce qu'on peut faire pour eux maintenant... Les budgets sont quand même diminués, par rapport à ce qu'ils étaient. C'est moins important, là.

5160   LE PRÉSIDENT: Je vais demander maintenant à ma collègue, madame Poirier, de poursuivre.

5161   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Oui.

5162   J'ai trouvé très intéressants les points de vue que vous avez apportés et je les ai écoutés avec attention. Mais avant de tomber dans quelques questions, par curiosité je suis allée voir la station de radio CJVA, celle dont vous avez parlé, à Caraquet. Et quand je regarde la programmation, on me dit :

« Retransmission des émissions de CKLE à l'exception des émissions suivantes... »

5163   Puis il y a une série d'émissions qui semblent être des émissions produites directement par la station, donc, ça ne serait pas uniquement une répétitrice.

5164   M. LÉVESQUE: Selon l'information que moi, j'ai, ce serait uniquement une répétitrice, maintenant.

5165   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Oui? Je vous dis qu'en consultant, en tout cas, le site Web, ce n'est pas l'information que j'ai.

5166   M. LÉVESQUE: Il n'est peut-être pas à jour.

5167   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: C'est possible. Ça serait peut-être à clarifier, si jamais vous pouvez la clarifier, parce que c'est une affirmation que vous avez faite, et ici, ce n'est pas du tout ça qui se passe. Il y a une série d'émissions, surtout la fin de semaine, en tout cas, que je vois.

5168   M.. LÉVESQUE: Je suis certain que le propriétaire, Armand Roussy, nous écoute actuellement...

5169   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Oui.

5170   M. LÉVESQUE: ...et il doit déjà préparer la réponse.

5171   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Bien, en tout cas, je le dis parce que je l'ai devant moi. C'est marqué : du lundi au dimanche, de 18 heures... Il y a de la musique country, il y a les souvenirs... Il y a « Bonjour dimanche! » avec Albert Dugas, de 9 h 00 à 9 h 30. Bon... et ainsi de suite.

5172   Alors c'est pour ça que je vous invite tout simplement à nous confirmer l'information que vous avez dite.

5173   M. LÉVESQUE: Alors Armand peut attendre notre appel, après l'audience.

5174   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: (Rire.) J'espère qu'il nous écoute.

5175   Une question... Vous avez répondu que vous avez donné quelque chose aux radios communautaires, Monsieur Lévesque, je me demandais...

5176   Moi, j'ai été visiter une douzaine de radios communautaires et de campus. Et comme je dis, j'en ai visité aussi, des radios commerciales dans ma vie. Et juste à rentrer dans l'édifice, il y a une différence.

5177   Êtes-vous déjà allé dans une radio communautaire?

5178   Alors, si vous êtes déjà allé, quand on regarde les chiffres que vous nous donnez à la page 4 -- et je veux quand même vous pousser un peu plus loin -- vous dites qu'en 2008, 7,2 pour-cent du baillat. Ils en ont eu 7,2, le baillant, et vous, vous en avez eu 1,4.

5179   Je le sais qu'il y a eu des façons de comptabiliser qui ont été différentes, semble-t-il aussi, en 2008, et que les chiffres de 2008, à ce qu'on nous a dit, étaient peut-être un petit peu différents de ceux de 2007, peu importe. Mais hier, madame Morissette nous a dit que nous, la différence -- et je prends à peu près ses paroles -- c'est que l'argent retourne à la communauté directement, tandis que dans le commercial, l'argent retourne aux actionnaires. Est-ce que de faire une affirmation comme celle-ci, pour vous, reste une affirmation aussi forte, considérant les éléments que je viens de vous dire, là?

5180   L'argent retourne à la communauté dans la communauté dans le communautaire.

5181   M. LÉVESQUE: Bien, je vous dirais que les profits que je peux faire dans les stations que j'exploite, ils retournent dans ma communauté aussi, parce que moi, je vis dans cette communauté-là et j'investis, j'achète dans cette communauté-là. Puis je pense que c'est la même chose pour tous les gens qui sont membres de notre organisation. Alors... c'est pas un péché, de faire des profits.

5182   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Ce n'est pas dans ce sens-là, mais c'est de comprendre que l'argent, les profits qui sont faits, généralement -- premièrement, ils sont rares, les surplus. Et les surplus retournent directement dans la communauté.

5183   MME GIARD: Parce qu'on peut considérer que quand une -- je prends mes stations de Rivière-du-Loup où les deux stations sont dans la même bâtisse, si on considère qu'il y a 24 employés, est-ce qu'on peut considérer qu'en maintenant au travail 24 personnes, c'est un retour dans la communauté? Moi, je pense que oui. Et je veux juste vous dire que pour mon cas en tout cas, à ce moment-ci, depuis près de trois ans les profits qui arrivent dans les stations qui vont bien servent à supporter la nouvelle station de Rimouski. Alors, elle va pas dans les mains des actionnaires.

5184   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Oui. J'ai bien compris le point qu'il y a des similitudes entre votre type de radio et les radios communautaires et je suis sensible à ça. Je l'entends bien. Est-ce que cela pourrait vouloir dire -- et vous me le confirmerez -- que si jamais le Conseil suggérait qu'une partie du CCD puisse aller aux radios communautaires qu'on devrait exclure les petites radios comme vous et qu'on devrait demander que l'argent ne provient que des grands groupes de radios?

--- Pause

5185   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Comprenez-vous bien le sens de ma question?

5186   MME GIARD: Tout à fait. Et on en a discuté. Et nous, on considère que c'est une question de principe, que les radios privées n'ont pas à financer les radios communautaires. D'autre part, on constate aussi qu'on est les seuls éléments (les radios privées) à ne pas bénéficier d'un fonds canadien. Alors, on se disait que si ça arrivait qu'on ait l'obligation de financer le fonds pour la radio communautaire, à quand la venue d'un fonds canadien pour aider les radios indépendantes de régions ou dans les petits marchés?

5187   Mais sur la question de principe, nous, on considère que ce n'est pas aux radios privées de financer les radios communautaires et que tout le monde devra être imaginatif pour maintenir les radios communautaires qui sont là, mais que si elles répondent à un besoin dans la communauté, bien, c'est à la communauté et au gouvernement à soutenir ces radios-là; c'est pas aux radios privées.

5188   M. LÉVESQUE: Moi, j'aimerais ajouter un point. C'est : si la radio privé, les plus gros joueurs de notre industrie, donnent des fonds à la radio communautaire, ça va normalement renforcir la radio communautaire dans des marchés même comme les nôtres. C'est donc leur donner des moyens de nous concurrencer davantage.

5189   Si... L'ouverture qui pourrait être faite par le Conseil était minime, parce que ce que j'ai cru comprendre, depuis le début de l'audience, c'est qu'il pourrait peut-être finir par arriver qu'on demande, effectivement, aux plus gros joueurs de donner un peu d'argent. Puis les sommes dont il semble se parler actuellement ne sont pas nécessairement énormes.

5190   Moi, ce que je pense, c'est qu'avec le temps, ces sommes-là et les besoins du communautaire vont grandir. Je vous dirais aussi : si on ouvre cette boîte-là, c'est comme ouvrir une boîte de Pandore. Il y a combien d'autres organisations qui vont demander d'être financées par la radio privée -- et d'aussi bonnes organisations, avec des buts aussi louables...? Alors...

5191   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Mais, monsieur Lévesque, je l'ai dit lors de la première journée d'audience. On est là pour la Loi de la radiodiffusion, nous. On n'est pas là pour les autres types de demandes qui peuvent être faites par d'autres types d'organisations. Et la Loi de la radiodiffusion stipule bien qu'il y a le secteur public, privé, et le secteur communautaire. Et c'est dans ce cadre-là qu'on fait les audiences; pas dans le cadre de subventionner toutes les organisations qui pourraient vous demander de le faire.

5192   M. LÉVESQUE: J'ajouterais pour finir que si, dans sa grande sagesse, le Conseil décidait de demander à la radio privée et donner de l'argent au fonds de la radio communautaire...

5193   Je m'étais pris une note là-dessus, ici, alors que vais vous la lire :

« L'argent devrait être orienté vers des projets qui ont trait au recrutement ou à la formation de bénévoles, ou à la formation sur les façons d'organiser des campagnes de levées de fonds, afin de vraiment aider les médias communautaires dans les secteurs où ils rencontrent davantage de problèmes. »

5194   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER: Vous voulez qu'on aille dans un sens de beaucoup de flexibilité du côté des radios communautaires de type A, mais qu'on reste assez strict pour celles qui sont de type B, si j'ai bien compris. Je ne sais pas. On n'a pas ce chiffre-là (et on va tenter de l'avoir), mais vous savez qu'il y a beaucoup de radios communautaires de type A qui se retrouvent maintenant avec des compétiteurs. Ça arrive, souvent. Et c'est un privilège qu'elles maintiennent malgré le fait qu'il y a à ce moment-là une radio commerciale.

5195   Alors, maintenez-vous cette information-là, tout en sachant cela, parce qu'aussi, l'inverse, on n'a pas de chiffre, c'est à dire des endroits où il y aurait eu des radios communautaires qui ont obtenu un type B, mais que la radio commerciale aurait fermé -- à la limite, peut-être, à Caraquet, si c'était la réalité aussi. Alors, il y a quand même des fluctuations dans ça. Alors, tout en sachant ce que je viens de vous dire, vous maintiendriez la différence entre le A et le B dans votre demande?

5196   Comprenez-vous bien l'essence de ma question? C'est que, bien souvent, on accorde des licences... on accorde toujours les licences de type A quand il n'y a pas de compétiteur commercial. Cependant, dans le temps, il finit par s'installer des compétiteurs avec des radios communautaires. Alors, elles se retrouvent dans la même position presque que des radios de type B, mais elles ont la catégorie de type A.

5197   M. LÉVESQUE : Mon point de vue là-dessus, moi, c'est que, évidemment, ce n'est pas quelque chose qui a dû arriver extrêmement souvent là, parce que, normalement, une radio communautaire de type A qui s'installe dans un marché où il n'y a pas de radio, c'est parce que la radio commerciale n'a pas vu d'opportunité d'affaires là.

5198   Mais je vous dirais que, dans un marché où il existe déjà une station de type A et qu'une radio commerciale décide d'entrer dans le marché, si quelqu'un décide de partir une station de radio commerciale dans ce marché-là, bien, il est conscient qu'il existe déjà une station de radio communautaire et qu'elle va garder ses privilèges. Alors, conscient de ça, bien, ça fait partie de l'évaluation qu'il fera dans son plan d'affaires là.

5199   Mais que la radio communautaire garde ses privilèges, moi, à prime abord... on n'en a pas discuté ensemble là, mais, à prime abord, je trouve ça logique, moi.

5200   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER : C'est un chiffre qu'on va tenter d'obtenir pour voir s'il y a vraiment une si grande différence dans le nombre entre le type A, qui a des compétiteurs maintenant, qui n'en a pas.

5201   Mon dernier sujet, Monsieur le Président, c'est l'idée que vous avez soumise à la page 16 du 50 pour cent de leurs revenus de la publicité. J'aimerais que vous m'en parliez davantage. Qu'est-ce qui vous a amené à dire que les revenus ne pourraient pas être plus de 50 pour cent?

5202   Je trouve ça intéressant, cette avenue-là, parce qu'il y a des radios communautaires qui nous ont dit, effectivement, que 60 pour cent de leurs revenus venaient de la communauté. Alors, d'appliquer le principe qui est appliqué au Royaume-Uni serait négatif pour certaines radios qui tirent leurs revenus en majorité de la communauté, c'est-à-dire des levées de fonds, du membership, et il y en a plusieurs, entre autres, des radios campus et ainsi de suite.

5203   Alors, pourquoi 50 pour cent? Pourquoi ça ne serait pas 30 pour cent, 40 pour cent, 60 pour cent? Comment vous avez fait pour arriver à ce chiffre-là et à cette proposition-là?

5204   MME GIARD : Sincèrement, au départ, on pensait tous que le principe de la radio communautaire était... les revenus étaient partagés de trois façons, presque en partie égale. C'est-à-dire le tiers des revenus était le membership, les bingos, une autre partie pouvait être subventionnée, et la troisième partie était des revenus publicitaires.

5205   On s'est rendu compte en lisant ce qui se faisait ailleurs, en prenant connaissance de ce qui se faisait dans les autres pays à partir du document qui était disponible puis des données du CRTC, que plusieurs stations avaient des revenus importants de publicité locale et nationale. Et ici au Québec, entre autres, le gouvernement du Québec s'est créé l'obligation de remettre au système de radios communautaires 4 pour cent de ses dépenses en publicité pour ses services gouvernementaux.

5206   Donc, on se disait, ça va devenir de plus en plus important qu'il y ait une limite, s'il n'y en a pas, puisqu'il y a des gens qui ont près de 60 pour cent et plus de revenus publicitaires.

5207   Donc, on se dit, nous, ça serait normal que ce système-là puisse avoir des barèmes qui font qu'il y a une limite publicitaire à ne pas dépasser ou que le financement d'une des catégories de financement ne soit pas plus de 50 pour cent. Ça nous apparaissait une limite raisonnable, tenant compte des données qu'on a eues, qu'il y en a que c'est plus de 60 pour cent, d'autres, c'est 30 pour cent. Alors, ça nous apparaissait raisonnable que 50 pour cent de leurs revenus puisse être de la publicité, des revenus de la publicité autant locale que nationale.

5208   M. LÉVESQUE : Au premier jet de notre démarche, c'était même un tiers là.

5209   MME GIARD : Oui.

5210   M. LÉVESQUE : Et lorsqu'on a pris connaissance des chiffres, de la situation des radios communautaires, on a dit, c'est illogique là, c'est une proposition qui ne pourra jamais passer puis qui n'est pas logique là. Alors, on l'avait augmenté jusqu'à 50 pour cent.

5211   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER : Oui. Et est-ce que cette règle-là du 4 pour cent du gouvernement du Québec vous fait mal à vous beaucoup ou est-ce que vous considérez que c'est appliqué depuis de nombreuses années, que c'est une règle qui, à la limite, pourrait être une solution à travers l'ensemble du Canada si les autres provinces l'adoptaient et si le gouvernement fédéral décidait de l'adopter?

5212   M. PAQUIN : En tout cas, pour nous, on voit... Non, pour nous, 4 pour cent, je sais que ça existe depuis plusieurs années là. Non, absolument pas, ça n'a aucune conséquence grave. Ça fait partie du 50 pour cent qu'on demande, bien sûr.

5213   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER : Oui. Tout à fait!

5214   MME GIARD : Ce que ça met en relief à ce moment-là, ce n'est pas que le 4 pour cent est nuisible, c'est surtout de voir qu'il y a quand même plusieurs façons de financer les radios communautaires, et ce genre de façon-là, en tout cas, cette subvention-là ou ces façons de faire là, le type de radio privée qu'on fait, nous, ça n'existe pas là.

5215   On vit à 100 pour cent de la publicité et à 85 pour cent de la publicité locale. Il ne faut pas l'oublier. Il y a à peine 15 à 18 pour cent de publicité nationale. Puis il y en a de moins en moins, d'ailleurs, ces années-ci. Donc, le 85 pour cent de publicité locale, pour les radios privées indépendantes, est drôlement important.

5216   Dans des communautés, comme vous disiez, est-ce que les radios communautaires peuvent, avec des bénévoles, faire vivre leurs stations?

5217   Nous autres, la question qu'on se pose, c'est en allant chercher 100 pour cent de nos revenus, nous, en publicité, et 85 pour cent là-dessus en publicité locale, est-ce qu'on va être capable de continuer de financer le type de radio qu'on fait? Et qui fait que, en plus, on fait de l'opinion, et de l'opinion, ça prend des gens capables de le faire. Alors, le type de radio qu'on fait dans nos communautés coûte cher et le service qu'on donne est différent, puis on veut qu'il soit différent puis qu'il demeure différent.

5218   Quand on parle d'implication dans la communauté, je voulais juste vous dire puis vous donner un exemple, c'est les problèmes à Haïti actuellement. Je vous dirais que nos stations ont été mises à contribution pour une campagne de promotion avec les caisses Desjardins dans nos régions pour récolter des sous pour Haïti, et dans le marché de Saint-Georges en Beauce et de Rivière-du-Loup, on est à organiser des spectacles bénéfices...

5219   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER : Parfait!

5220   MME GIARD : ...entre autres, à Saint-Georges pour brasser la communauté...

5221   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER : Et vous n'avez pas à me convaincre là-dessus, je n'ai pas de doute.

5222   MME GIARD : Et ça, c'est des exemples d'implication dans notre milieu et c'est des exemples de ce qu'on fait dans notre communauté. Donc, quand on parle d'un retour de nos revenus ou de nos surplus dans la communauté là, il y a plein d'exemples comme ça qu'on pourrait vous donner, des initiatives qu'on prend dans notre communauté qui démontrent qu'on est bien collé à nos réalités, mais qu'on a un retour sur... qu'on a un retour financier dans nos communautés de différentes façons.

5223   CONSEILLÈRE POIRIER : Merci beaucoup. Merci à tous.

5224   THE CHAIRPERSON: Commissioner Patrone.

5225   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Yes, thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair.

5226   I will be asking my questions in English, I apologize, but you can, of course, answer in French.

5227   By the way, I thank you for your presentation today and I would certainly encourage you to continue to collect whatever data and economic information that you have access to going forward because anything you can supply to us in the way of data is always helpful in formulation policy for the CRTC going forward.

5228   You have been very clear in stating categorically that you do not think that private radio should be basically funding community.

5229   However, I will ask this hypothetical question. Do you see any potential or foresee an opportunity for cooperative levels of private support for Type B stations -- and I am speaking of core funding, technical support, support in areas of fundraising -- in exchange for agreements to go commercial-free and air higher rates of Canadian and specifically local Canadian music content?

--- Pause

5230   MME GIARD : Excusez, un micro est ouvert. On s'interroge, on n'est pas certain d'avoir bien compris le début de la question. Je m'excuse, est-ce que vous pourriez reformuler, s'il vous plaît?

5231   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Sure.

5232   M. PAQUIN : Les appareils grincent beaucoup. On a un peu de difficulté...

5233   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: No problem.

5234   M. PAQUIN : Il va falloir augmenter la puissance.

--- Laughter

5235   LE PRÉSIDENT : Vos BlackBerrys sont ouverts.

5236   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: We must be on low power at the moment.

5237   LA SECRÉTAIRE : C'est peut-être vos BlackBerrys ou vos téléphones cellulaires.

5238   MME GIARD : Non.

5239   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: You have stated all along that you do not agree that there should be any more funding from private sources going into community radio. In other words, in your case, you feel that you would be basically funding your competition because you see a high level of commercial competition between the two types at the moment.

5240   Do you see any opportunities or potential for cooperative levels, however, of private support for community stations in cases where and in certain markets where there is an agreement for that Type B station to go commercial-free, to air higher rates of Canadian content and specifically local content?

5241   So in other words, if they were less of a competing factor to your sector, to your representatives, to your group, would you find it more palatable to have a level of corporate private support for the sector I am referring to? And this could be on a market-by-market basis.

5242   MME GIARD : Quand vous parlez de soutien de la radio communautaire, vous faites référence à strictement un soutien financier ou toute autre sorte de soutien ou type de soutien?

5243   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: The first time I asked the question I actually asked it and included areas of technical support, support for fundraising, perhaps equipment exchanges, upgrades that may help a community station in cases where certain equipment is deemed superfluous or maybe not up to snuff anymore for commercial purposes, training cooperatives, areas of technical briefs, all these things that cost community stations a bundle and they find onerous in many cases and can't afford it.

5244   You know, do you see levels of cooperation on that level? But clearly, there's also a need, as they have presented to us, for funding. So I'm going to leave that for -- does that clarify my question for you?

5245   MME GIARD : Sincèrement, moi, je suis portée à penser qu'à partir du moment où la radio communautaire maintient un format très différent de ce que nos membres font dans les régions où elles sont, il n'y a pas de problème même si une partie de leurs revenus, c'est de la publicité locale.

5246   Là où ça devient problématique, c'est quand la différence n'est pas suffisamment grande ou que les auditeurs ne la voient pas, la différence, parce qu'on ne poserait pas cette question-là si vraiment les radios communautaires dans les marchés où sont nos radios indépendantes avaient un format différent, faisaient un travail différent. La question ne se poserait même pas. Elles pourraient avoir accès aux revenus publicitaires local et national, et je suis certaine que ça ne causerait pas de difficulté aux stations indépendantes dans les mêmes régions.

5247   C'est pour ça qu'on vous redit que souvent dans les régions où sont nos membres, les radios indépendantes, où il y a une radio communautaire, la différence n'est pas suffisamment grande, et on sent que, de plus en plus, on glisse vers une sorte de radio qui ressemble à de la radio commerciale, autant au niveau de la programmation qu'au niveau de la musique.

5248   Alors, c'est pour ça que je ne peux pas répondre à votre question, mais je vous dis que la question ne se poserait même pas si vraiment, dans un marché, la radio communautaire et la radio indépendante privée, le type de radio qu'on fait, c'est totalement différent puis ça répond à des besoins différents. La question ne se poserait même pas.

5249   M. LÉVESQUE : Monsieur Patrone, tous les frais dont vous parlez qui sont onéreux pour la radio communautaire le sont également pour nous. Les ingénieurs nous coûtent très cher, puis toute la technique nous coûte très cher à nous également.

5250   Je vous dirais que de faire un espèce d'échange où la radio communautaire renonce à vendre de la publicité localement contre des compensations monétaires ou en support quelconque, sincèrement, je ne sais pas comment ça pourrait être applicable.

5251   Puis ça va s'arrêter où? Si on accepte un principe comme ça, à ce moment-là, les radios commerciales vont devoir en financer combien de radios communautaires? Il va en apparaître combien dans les marchés, une dans chacun des villages, puis on va devoir toutes les financer?

5252   Je ne sais pas comment on peut mettre en place une pareille organisation, un pareil projet là. Je ne vois pas que ça soit réalisable.

5253   M. PAQUIN : Non, c'est ça. Également, de soutenir ces gens-là au niveau technique, au niveau de formation, au niveau... c'est le temps aussi. Nos employés actuellement, on les utilise à 100 pour cent. S'il faut leur demander en plus de faire de la formation pour les animateurs et tout ça, il faudrait avoir d'autre chose, on doit aller chercher d'autre genre de revenus.

5254   Pour ce qui est de l'équipement technique, c'est sûr que ça, là-dessus, je suis entièrement d'accord. Si, un moment donné, on a de l'équipement technique, un moment donné, qui peut servir à des stations communautaires, que nous, on n'a pas besoin, il n'y a aucun problème là-dessus, je pense qu'il peut avoir une collaboration.

5255   Mais de là à former des gens, je pense qu'on n'est pas tout à fait une école là, mais ça serait peut-être plus difficile. C'est quand même une business qu'on a, et puis, déjà là, on va chercher le maximum de nos employés.

5256   MME LABBÉ : C'est difficile aussi de concevoir des petites stations comme... je prends, moi, dans mon marché, oui, nous, nous avons trois stations de radio, mais j'ai des stations à la périphérie de mes marchés. Je prends Asbestos qui a 5 000 de population qui a une station de radio, Lac Mégantic qui a 5 000 de population qui a une station de radio. Je ne suis pas sûre que leur poser la question s'ils ont de l'argent à donner à des stations communautaires qui sont dans un marché similaire, je ne crois pas qu'ils seraient fiers de nous ce matin là.

5257   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: My question was pretty much hypothetical. I throw it on the table for your consideration and I certainly appreciate your comments about the need for these stations to be distinct. What we're hearing from them, of course, is that the more distinct they are and the more different, the more uncommercial they are, then obviously that has an impact on their revenues.

5258   So I thank for your comment and for your presentation.

5259   LE PRÉSIDENT : Conseillère Lamarre.

5260   CONSEILLÈRE LAMARRE : Merci, Monsieur le Président.

5261   Bonjour, Messieurs, Dames.

5262   D'abord, un tout petit point de clarification parce que je crains que vous ayez une mauvaise surprise peut-être quand vous allez lire la transcription, et je veux être certaine que vous soyez cité dans le bon contexte à l'avenir.

5263   À la page 3 de votre présentation, au deuxième paragraphe, vous dites qu'un examen des tendances... ce qui est écrit, c'est que :

« Un examen des tendances économiques de nos régions démontre en effet que la plupart d'entre elles connaissent une décroissance continue importante. » (Tel que lu)

5264   Mais je crois vous avoir entendu dire « croissance. » Alors, je veux qu'on le précise correctement. C'est bien « décroissance » qui aurait dû être dit à ce moment-là.

5265   MME GIARD : Ce matin, j'entendais le premier ministre Charest parler de vieillissement de la population. Donc, c'est décroissance. C'est les jeunes qui vont vers les plus grands centres, le vieillissement de la population, et quand on parle à nos gens dans nos commissions scolaires, ils sont très inquiets en rapport aux services qu'ils vont pouvoir continuer à donner dans les écoles à cause de la décroissance au niveau de la région.

5266   Donc, c'est vraiment de la décroissance.

5267   CONSEILLÈRE LAMARRE : C'est vraiment décroissance.

5268   MME GIARD : Et ça, ce n'est pas une nouvelle tendance. Depuis un certain nombre d'années, on parle de décroissance dans les régions du Québec, en tout cas.

5269   CONSEILLÈRE LAMARRE : Mais je voulais qu'on clarifie le dossier là pour pas...

5270   MME GIARD : Oui, oui. Vous aviez raison.

5271   CONSEILLÈRE LAMARRE : ...que quelqu'un vous cite à dire le contraire de ce que vous pensiez.

5272   M. PAQUIN : Absolument.

5273   CONSEILLÈRE LAMARRE : Maintenant, la seule question que j'ai à vous poser... Vous n'êtes définitivement pas obligé d'y répondre maintenant. En fait, je préférerais même que vous y pensiez.

5274   Ce qui se dégage, selon moi, de ce qu'on a entendu, de ce qu'on a lu et de ce que vous nous dites ce matin, c'est que, avec les radios communautaires et de campus, vous vous entendez quand même sur un point très important, et c'est celui voulant que les radios de communauté, communautaires et de campus -- appelons-les comme on veut -- doivent être soutenues par des bénévoles et par la communauté. Et ça, c'est récurant là. Je pense que tout le monde s'entend là-dessus.

5275   Ce sur quoi on ne s'entend pas, c'est la manière d'y arriver et quoi mettre en place, quel cadre mettre en place pour que ce soit la meilleure solution possible pour tout le monde.

5276   Dans votre soumission et aussi un peu dans votre présentation ce matin, vous nous avez dit ce que vous ne vouliez pas qu'on fasse. Maintenant, j'aimerais ça que vous réfléchissiez peut-être, pour votre soumission finale du 1er février, à savoir si vous avez des suggestions sur comment est-ce que les assouplissements qui nous sont demandés par la radio communautaire et radio de campus... ils le sont parce qu'ils veulent justement que ça soit plus facile d'aller chercher des bénévoles, plus facile d'impliquer la communauté.

5277   Si vous avez des idées à nous soumettre, plutôt que de nous dire qu'est-ce qui devrait rester tel quel, mais qu'est-ce qu'on pourrait peut-être assouplir ou modifier ou créer pour que ça aide justement les stations communautaires à bien se développer, et ce, dans le respect de vos contraintes à vous aussi dans vos marchés particuliers, ça serait apprécié.

5278   Alors, Monsieur Lévesque, vous avez rapidement fait le devoir que je vous ai demandé la dernière fois. Alors, c'est pour ça que je ne me gêne pas de vous en soumettre un autre.

5279   M. LÉVESQUE : Ça, ça sera tout le monde à ce moment-là?

5280   CONSEILLÈRE LAMARRE : Ça sera tout le monde à ce moment-là, oui.

5281   Je vous remercie, Monsieur le Président. C'est tout.

5282   LE PRÉSIDENT : Conseillère juridique.

5283   Me HULLEY : Merci beaucoup.

5284   J'ai deux engagements pour cet intervenant : premièrement, confirmer l'information donnée concernant la programmation sur CJVA; et deuxièmement, donner les suggestions comment est-ce que la Commission peut aider les radios communautaires pour avoir plus de bénévoles et le support de la communauté.

5285   CONSEILLÈRE LAMARRE : Dans le respect de vos contraintes. Évidemment, c'est de votre point de vue.

5286   Me HULLEY : Oui. Et ils doivent être déposés le 1er février.

5287   LE PRÉSIDENT : Mesdames, Messieurs, merci pour votre présentation ce matin.

5288   Nous allons prendre une pause de 15 minutes. De retour à 10 h 50.

--- Upon recessing at 1036

--- Upon resuming at 1051

5289   THE CHAIRPERSON: Ms Secretary.

5290   THE SECRETARY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we will just wait a second for Madam Edwards.

--- Pause

5291   We will now hear the presentation of the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations, (CACTUS). Please introduce yourself and your colleague, and you have 15 minutes for your presentation.

5292   Thank you.

PRESENTATION

5293   MS EDWARDS: Thank you, and thank you to the Chairman and the panel.

5294   As was just mentioned, My name is Catherine Edwards and this is Robin Jackson. We are here today to speak for the Canadian Association for Community Television Users and Stations, or CACTUS.

5295   CACTUS is a national bilingual association whose members include independent community television channels and corporations, cable co-op community television channels, and the public who uses and watches them.

5296   We believe in citizen access to media. More specifically, we believe that individual members of the public and community organizations should be able to participate in public discourse using any and all technological systems of the day on an equal footing with larger entities in the private and commercial sectors.

5297   We focus primarily on television, because our membership includes individuals who currently operate or use community TV channels or would like to do so, but no longer have a community access TV channel in their area.

5298   But we are here today to support the submission by the National Community Radio Association by reinforcing several general principles that apply equally to community television, community radio and new media within the community sector.

5299   In particular, we support paragraphs 11 through 13 in the NCRA submission, which deal with defining community media. Community radio and community media, in general, cannot be defined in terms of media produced by Canada's public and private broadcasting elements.

5300   While it is true that the programming that results on community media generally does represent an alternative to that produced in the private and public sectors, often it is more local.

5301   Usually it caters to niche groups not served by more mainstream sources and generally allows a wider range of experimentation in content, format and message. But it is dangerous to define community media or assess its value only in terms of content or in terms of what other organizations produce.

5302   As the NCRA has told you, community media is as much about process as product. Community media offers citizens a meeting place to develop media literacy and production skills so that they can participate fully in the wider debates of the day, develop dialogues with each other about key issues, and express local culture.

5303   Community media centres fulfil a basic public service, like libraries. Where libraries help users to find information and inform themselves, community media centres provide the infrastructure for those same individuals to have a voice within the community and in the larger culture. So while one of its tangible benefits may be a programming service, it is much more than that.

5304   Several prominent think tanks and bodies have recently recognized this vision of community media centres and their essential public service role in democracies, such as the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, the 2008 European Parliament resolution on Community Media in Europe, and the 2009 Knight Commission report to the FCC on Democracy in a Digital Era.

5305   As is identified as a key principle in all three of these documents, for individuals, communities and nations to benefit fully from technological progress there has to be equal access to those technologies and the knowledge of how to use them. This is the service that community media centres, including radio, television and new media provide. They are basic public resources.

5306   So since process matters as much as the broadcast content for community media, and because community media cannot easily set longer-termed targets in the same top-down way of the public or private elements in our broadcasting system, community media cannot be defined in terms of the public and private broadcast sectors. It must, instead, be defined in terms of community access, community participation, and community focus.

5307   MS JACKSON: Moving to our second point, we support the NCRA's comment in paragraph 19 of its written submission, in which it recommends adopting a requirement for volunteer engagement in production. CACTUS would go further than the CRTC in paragraph 9 of the community radio notice.

5308   In relation to community access to stations' day to day operations, we strong believe that such stations should not only enable access by volunteers to the day to day operations of the stations, but access to the means of production to make programs for themselves. This is the goal of community access, this is how most Canadians can and should have access to the broadcasting system they own, according to Canadian law.

5309   The term "volunteer" can be misleading when defining community media. Volunteer often implies that community members are helping someone else make something, that staff are really doing the programming while volunteers just assist. In fact, community access occurs when community members create content on a voluntary basis and staff provide assistance where needed. CACTUS, therefore, prefers the term "community producers," to make their role as the content initiators clear.

5310   That said, it is gratifying to note the importance that the Commission places on the composition of the boards of community-run radio stations in paragraph 9. We applaud the Commission for recognizing the necessity of wide representation by a variety of community stakeholders.

5311   CACTUS would also like to take this opportunity to observe that the same expectation should hold for community television channels. As a distinct element of our broadcasting system, they should also be administered by the communities they serve, not by corporations in the private sector. Channels administered by private media companies belong to the private sectors, not to local communities.

5312   MS EDWARDS: Regarding broadcast spectrum, CACTUS also supports paragraphs 38 through 43 in the NCRA submission regarding spectrum allocation. The Broadcasting Act states that Canadians own the broadcasting system. Some of the frequencies should be held in reserve therefore for use by its citizen owners.

5313   Other countries recognize this principle. Uruguay, for example, distributes frequencies equally among the private, public and community sectors. In Canada, access by the community has actually decreased overtime as a percentage of bandwidth.

5314   For example, where cable operators were once required to offer a community TV channel as one channel among 10 or 20, the number of channels offered by most cable BDUs has grown to several hundred, but the number reserved for community use has not.

5315   And community radio's must-carry status on cable will end next year. CACTUS, therefore, supports the NCRA's request for frequency protection in paragraphs 110 through 118 in its submission. Since it relies on volunteers, community media is far more sensitive than other broadcasters to the administrative burden that a channel reassignment can entail.

5316   In any event, since community channels care, by definition, focused on community service and are part of the permanent fabric of communities, should this not merit a higher priority for carriage and distribution. We know that private companies leave or change services if their audiences or revenues shift, but community media invest for the long-term.

5317   Those who invest in community sacrifice their unpaid time to make it work. That time and effort is a valuable resource that deserves respect. We therefore urge the CRTC to support stability, choice and protected frequencies for community media.

5318   We were frankly a little disturbed to hear in the preceding presentation by the Association des radios régionale francophones that community radio is characterized by dreamers whose interest -- as if commercial interests have a more long-term interest in communities than the people that actually live there.

5319   And also to hear communities being talked of just as markets, and that there is more than one station in that market, can that market support it? It is communities that lives in those markets, the community will always be there and the community will always need a voice regardless of whether that community can yield a profit for a commercial entity.

5320   And if these radio stations are competing for the same ad dollars in a "market," the community where their people live, it is because at present they don't have a reliable source of non-commercial funding. It think if you ask the radio channels themselves, they would be more than happy to give up some advertising if somebody would give them some public funding.

5321   And that brings us to funding. Insofar as short, medium and long-term funding for community radio is concerned, CACTUS notes that a widely held misperception holds that community media is run entirely by volunteers.

5322   In fact, most of Canada's close cultural and linguistic neighbours, including England, the U.S. and Australia, provide more stable sources of public funding for community radio. This frees our stations from excessive reliance on advertising and from focusing on more commercially viable content, and permits these stations to hire staff to facilitate wider community use of the facilities. And this is the potential problem that was raised by the ARRF.

5323   It is usually a small core of paid staff who provide the training, technical support and coordination to build a channel into a reliable and viable local platform for local expression. While community producers, aka volunteers, do make programming, and that is the goal, they can reach higher levels of professionalism, more meaningful dialogue, public discourse and cultural expression when they can rely on a well-funded backbone of staff to support them. But this does require steady sources of operational funding.

5324   The amount may be a fraction of what the private and public sector need to hire staff to make all their programming, and this is true, but that amount is nonetheless crucial to the ability of the sector facilitate the community to program for itself. Without adequate staffing, state of the art facilities may sit idle, their investment wasted.

5325   Since new media platforms such as the internet are bringing together traditional media as well as opening up new possibilities for community broadcasting, CACTUS will be proposing at the community TV hearing in April that a new Community Access Media Fund, or we are calling it CAMF for short, be encouraged to created to encourage the creation of multiplatform community access production centres.

5326   Located in places where communities already congregate and from which events can be easily distributed, such as libraries, communities centres and theatres, these centres could simultaneously operate over-the-air radio and TV licences, web stream and distribute new media, including to wireless devices or podcasting.

5327   We mention this proposal at this hearing because CAMF has the potential to provide stable operational funding for community radio stations, that we would like to explore this collaboration with other conventional and new media. CACTUS will present its financial model for this new approach in the community TV proceeding.

5328   Finally, we would like to support the NCRA's statement that then need for community media is just as great in the new media environment as it was in the old one. In the 1960s and 1970s Canada's National Film Board showed that community media hold a mirror up to communities with which they see themselves and, in seeing themselves, they are able to act.

5329   New media compliment and extend the reach of community-produced content, but do not replace the need for over-the-air accessibility of community media, nor for distribution on other platforms, such as cable and satellite.

5330   YouTube's great, but a soapbox where content producers act in isolation and in relative anonymity doesn't permit the cross-fertilization of ideas and debate that occur when people from the same community meet to decide what their next program will explore.

5331   It is through this process of meeting, producing programs, committing to a schedule, and seeing those programs debated and distributed publicly that people take responsibility for the issues in their communities. That is what community media is.

5332   This is why community media must be present and central on the multiple platforms Canadians now use, so that it functions as a genuine meeting place for the community and is not relegated to the fringes.

5333   Merci pour votre attention. Nous sommes prêts à répondre à vos questions.

5334   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms Edwards and Ms Jackson.

5335   I was thinking of asking you if you had followed the previous intervener and had some questions, but you already answered them. So thank you for the efficiency.

5336   I will now ask Commissioner Menzies to question you.

5337   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: Thank you. I just have a couple of questions.

5338   What specifically would you recommend in terms of how community radio should be defined in terms of its programming expectation?

5339   I understand your argument, which was reasonably eloquent on its purpose, but we are regulators and we need to take these ideas and put them into practical guidelines. So do you have anything specific you can offer to us that would define community radio in terms of the regulations, separate from public or commercial?

5340   MS EDWARDS: To do with the programming content?

5341   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: Yes.

5342   MS EDWARDS: Community TV and community radio are extremely different, as you know, although they --

5343   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: I can't talk about community TV.

5344   MS EDWARDS: No, I know, but it is by way of saying that I am not an expert in community radio, so my usefulness and my comments are going to be limited on what the content should be. I think it is better for the NCRA and the community radio sector to answer that question.

5345   But again, I don't think it should be defined necessarily or limited by saying, well, the minute it starts to -- you know, people start to listen to it or we think it looks like commercial content it is not doing its job.

5346   I think if it is community-owned and that it is volunteers making their time to bring those -- whether it is music or it is a talk program, whatever format -- forward, the fact that they are doing it unpaid, to me, says that, you know, this is the way that they want to use that platform. And I think that they should be given as much freedom to use that platform the way they want as possible.

5347   I think if they are underfunded and that forces them into a position where instead of, you know, honouring all of the little voices that want to come forward, they too have to jump into that commercial marketplace and start to find masses of viewers, then you can run into problems.

5348   I think it is essentially a problem of funding, that if the community is funded well enough and that community can make the program it wants, then that is what the platform is for. So I think you should give them maximum freedom to do that.

5349   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: And in terms of funding formulas, what would be the best measure of accountability? There is CKUA's proposal yesterday and Vancouver Co-op spoke in favour of that theoretically funding should be based on the sort of funding support that community radio stations each receive from their community, a sort of matching grant type of -- you raise $100,000, a fund would contribute $100,000.

5350   Do you agree that that's the most sensible way to measure community support for community radio?

5351   MS EDWARDS: I agree that it is prudent. And I think that the Quebec community TV sector has demonstrated this, that if you can, to try to get funding from different sources because then, you know, that is going to lead to better long-term stability.

5352   I think that there is a good argument to be made, that matching funds from a community demonstrates support. I also think it is important to remember that the public airwaves, again, are meant to be public. So if, on the one hand, we are leasing parts of that public spectrum to private entities to make money from it.

5353   And in many cases, and much more we are seeing this lately, those entities don't necessarily live in those communities and the money is flowing out, that it is reasonable to expect some of those companies to contribute back. I think that that principle applies more than it ever did in such a hyperconcentrated, you know, media environment.

5354   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: In paragraph 18 of your written response you propose a tariff on BDUs and ISPs to fund... How big do you see that tariff being and what would..? Yes, that is the first part of the question, how big do you see that being?

5355   MS EDWARDS: Obviously, we will deal with this more in our written comments to the community television hearings. But we have calculated that in order to reintroduce an access to based community TV system to Canada, that there is about 170 communities across Canada that make up about 90 per cent of Canada's population.

5356   There is about 85 communities over 30,000 people and there is also interestingly about 85 communities between 10,000 and 30,000 people. And that with those 170 channels, if you budgeted out what you need for a channel in a small community versus a large community, on this multiplatform model we are proposing where there would be multiple technological platforms present we have calculated that you need somewhere in the neighbourhood of $90 million to $100 million to do it.

5357   So that amount of money is adequate to bring back access on these multiple platforms to 90 per cent of Canadians. So it is roughly what the cable industry is currently spending on, as Peter Miller said in his report posted on your site, they are all former community channels, but which they have now positioned as competitors for the public and private professional broadcasters.

5358   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: So about one and a half to two per cent of cable revenues.

5359   How would you --

5360   MS EDWARDS: There is an alternative though. Excuse me for cutting you off, but I wanted to make sure you had this information too before we move on.

5361   We did intervene before Christmas to say that if a value-for-signal or a fee-for-carriage regime is introduced that the sorts of numbers that are being kicked around for that --between 20 cents and 50 cents per subscriber -- if, and I think it should, if community television is included in that, because they produce more local programming than any other sector, it is roughly in the same ballpark, it is the same kind of size. So that could be another way of funding community TV.

5362   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: Right, be we are only talking about community radio. So the fund you were envisioning is a general community media fund, right?

5363   MS EDWARDS: The idea is that it would be for multiplatform production centres, that is right.

5364   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: Okay. And my last questions is more philosophical. I mean, I understand that spectrum is a public entity, so within that context. But the purpose of community access to media historically, its philosophical purpose, its democratic purpose, seems to me is so that citizens have direct access to media and wouldn't have to go through the traditional gatekeepers of corporate or public radio.

5365   That also goes back to an era when, you know, one of your best chances of having your voice in the public square, if it wasn't for community radio, was maybe having a letter to the editor published in a local newspaper. And that world is gone. The internet has changed that dramatically. There is a blogosphere out there where citizens freely access all their friends and all their community groups, all their demographic, their psychographic, their geographic communities that they live in.

5366   And I am trying to get my head around how, in the 21st century world where people freely comment and block back and forth, and build Facebook groups and all that sort of stuff, what still is the democratic purpose of community media within the traditional broadcast system?

5367   MS EDWARDS: There is even more need for community media than before, because of the hyperconcentration of corporate media. It is even more important that people have ways they can enter the system. And as you pointed out, there is all these new tools available.

5368   But in order to be able to use them effectively so that you can actually get your voice heard -- you know, for example, if I have a small company or a small NGO and I want to design a website and I can't afford to design a website or I can't afford to pay a web specialist to get my site found by search engines or I can't afford bandwidth to have people downloading from my website, you know, videos or storage.

5369   It has become a much more complex media universe actually, and it is even more important that small groups and individuals -- and it is not just about which button to push, it is how do you make a message that will effectively be found by people?

5370   The internet is great at creating, you know, this semblance of a global village in cyberspace where we can find other people that think in a particular way. But Canadians still live in communities, the world still lives in communities, and they need a place that they can meet, learn those tools, and then know that their messages are going to be found.

5371   So if I give you one example, you guys live in the Ottawa area for some of the time or spend time in the Ottawa area. The big debate before Christmas about what are we going to do with Lansdowne Park?

5372   I was really interested in that debate. All I got on the local corporate news was little sound bytes from a couple of the councillors raising, you know, issues about how they thought this was going to end up in the long term being a debt for taxpayers and they had reservations.

5373   But, you know, there was half a sound byte. I thought, well, gee, that's an interesting story, where do I go to hear more about that?

5374   Unless you're actually able to go down to Lansdowne Park and listen to it, where can you find the full -- you know, full coverage of that meeting.

5375   When you have community media in a place it's possible for people to go to a media centre, somebody can send a camera, it can then be distributed and everyone can watch it, but if it's all carved up in cyberspace, how do you find that stuff?

5376   There needs to be a recognizable centre where people can meet and we know that there's -- you know, let's go see what the community channel is saying about that, they're actual people, they're a studio, we can invite people in there, have a discussion and then we know where to find that.

5377   You can't create community media, isolated people in basements. And the people even on the Internet that manage to mobilize significant responses I guess to public events are media -- are very media savvy people that have had training.

5378   You know, your average Joe in a basement can't get a huge public response organized. You know, even for participating in hearings like this, it's relatively difficult to get messages out to lots of people that a hearing is even going on.

5379   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: Okay. That said. just one last question.

5380   MS EDWARDS: Yeah.

5381   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: The viewership, the consumption rates for this, and this is separate from the argument I articulated as the democratic purpose of community radio, is very small, somewhere between half a percentage point and -- put it this way, I mean, probably 98 percent anyway of Canadians aren't accessing it on a regular basis.

5382   MS EDWARDS: Sorry, you're talking about community radio now specifically?

5383   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: Yeah, community radio specifically, in those terms. And I don't say that to diminish its importance or its value in that sense.

5384   But how do you convince -- help us with this, how would one convince the 98 percent of people who don't consume it that they have to pay more on their cable bills and their monthly Internet bills to support this?

5385   MS EDWARDS: Can you just elaborate on your figures? One to two percent watches per week, per month, per year, ever?

5386   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: Weekly, let's call it weekly, it doesn't matter. We can make it five percent, say five percent consume it.

5387   The point is, how do you convince the overwhelming majority of people who aren't consuming it that it is valuable enough that their cable bills and their Internet bills need to go up to support it, that's the argument?

5388   MS EDWARDS: I think that with the variety of options out there, I know that in television land, for example, if you have a couple of percent watching every week, that's not bad with 200 channels. That means that, you know, in a city the size of Ottawa with a million people, what's one percent, you know, a couple of percent per million, that's 10 or 20,000 people hearing a message about something important and that's each week. It might be a different 10,000 the following week.

5389   But this is one of the reasons why (a) these channels need better funding so that they can get more visibility in communities, they're drastically under funded right now; and, secondly, it's another reason why we're proposing that in order to get -- to not be on the fringes, that community media has some way if communities want to to consolidate some of those resources so that they can be in public places and they get more traffic and more visibility.

5390   COMMISSIONER MENZIES: Okay, thank you.

5391   THE CHAIRPERSON: Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Jackson, thank you very much for your presentation this morning.

5392   Madame la Secrétaire. Ms Secretary.

5393   MS EDWARDS: Thanks very much for listening.

5394   THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

5395   We'll just take one minute to connect with Montreal.

--- Pause

5396   THE SECRETARY: I will now invite ELAN who is appearing via videoconference from Montreal to make its presentation.

5397   Please introduce yourself and your colleague, and you have 10 minutes for your presentation.

5398   Thank you.

PRESENTATION

5399   MR. RODGERS: Thank you.

5400   Good morning, Chairman and Commissioners. Thank you for this opportunity to speak on this topic and especially thank you for letting us do it by videoconference.

5401   My name is Guy Rodgers, Executive Director of the English Language Arts Network of Quebec. I'm accompanied by my colleague, Hugh Maynard, President of Qu'anglo Communications & Consulting who has previously worked with the Quebec Association of Anglophone Community Radio in the area of information and communications technologies for community and rural development.

5402   Together we will present some ideas and proposals for the CRTC to consider that will, we believe, contribute to the development of community and campus radio and the English-speaking community as well.

5403   These proposals are made within the context of key CRTC finding that community and campus radio stations and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation play a most important role in official language minority communities and the community reflection in the programming of the services available in the Canadian broadcasting system can be improved.

5404   Repeatedly surveys and studies of the English-speaking communities in Quebec show that information and communications in English is one of its top priorities. Although anglophones in Quebec are more bilingual than in the past, there is a cultural and informational preference to receive and process information in one's own first language.

5405   There is certainly an abundance of English-language material and media available to English speakers in Quebec, but there is a relative dearth when it comes to material "produit chez nous".

5406   CNN may be pervasive, but it doesn't do much reporting from Gaspé or Trois-Rivières or even Montreal.

5407   Thus, there is need to ensure that production and delivery of English language information and artistic and cultural material that is vital to the everyday lives of English-speaking Quebecers, a need that is not being adequately met.

5408   With the demise of print media and the growing concentration in the commercial radio and television sectors, the situation is not about to improve without concerted effort, and that includes the CRTC.

5409   Community and campus radio have been viewed in the past as the poor cousin of the various media that serve local communities, almost as a media service of last resort.

5410   Community and campus radio have not fared well in comparison to commercial radio or, until recently, weekly newspapers.

5411   We would like to see that change because community and campus radio still have unfulfilled potential. They are locally run, easily accessible, affordable and adapted to a wide range of information, artistic and cultural programming.

5412   In these days of media concentration and decline in service to local communities, community and campus radio are more important than ever because they serve audiences in markets that are not as profitable as the mass markets. Changes need to be made to assist and facilitate further development.

5413   Now why not just the Internet? Internet can do as much, maybe even more than community and campus radio, why not just move on to the newer technology?

5414   Perhaps one day this will be possible but, in the mean time, a period which may be decades rather than just years, there are some serious deficiencies in an Internet-only approach to community broadcasting.

5415   Too many people, particularly in rural areas, do not have access to affordable and adequate broadband Internet. Despite continual promises from telecommunication companies and governments, the last mile is still very much a factor for some.

5416   The promise of wi-max and other new distribution mechanisms looks to be, in its nascent stages, no different than land-based broadband Internet delivery. It will be installed where capital investments can be paid back. Areas with little market potential will only get the new technology some time in the future. Not everyone has the budget or the technological prowess to set up wireless audio distribution throughout a household, not everybody has a computer in the house.

5417   While multi-media delivery via the Internet is a reality for those connected to fibre-optic networks in head offices, for those with a desire to spend significant sums on new technologies, the vast majority of people still access their audio communications via radio.

5418   Now, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Hugh Maynard, to talk about micro community radio.

5419   Thank you.

5420   MR. MAYNARD: Thank you, Guy, and thank you for this opportunity.

5421   We'd like to address in a way sort of a development aspect that we've been working on with the English-speaking community and that may be of interest to the CRTC in response to some of the questions that we've been listening to as you've raised.

5422   And starting with complementarity over convergence, the much touted convergence of different media has not fared well despite numerous attempts since the emergence of the digital age.

5423   On the other hand, as newspapers have discovered, complementarity has worked quite nicely. A print publication supplemented by a website, for example, rather than everything stuffed into one single digital medium.

5424   A complementary approach to broadcast programming using community and campus radio and the Internet offers some interesting and cost-effective potential for the small and niche markets that community and campus radio typically serve.

5425   Rather than just being a radio station or an Internet radio site, community and campus radio stations can effectively use the Internet to link communities together as well as to allow for the presence of a local radio outlet where a full-fledged community radio station does not have the critical mass or the resources to survive.

5426   This concept we have dubbed micro community radio stations where low power FM stations are linked together to other larger community radio stations and between each other using the Internet and digital technologies.

5427   In some communities with the necessary critical mass and resources, a micro community radio station would operate on a daily basis as any low power station would do, but the connection with the Internet would allow each micro station to tailor its programming to its audience and to its resources.

5428   Thus, in some locales the micro station may just broadcast news and local events for an hour each morning and perhaps in the evening as well, with the remainder of the day re-broadcasting the signal from one or more other micro or regular community radio stations' switching mechanisms managed by computer software freely downloadable from the Internet.

5429   Or the communities running the micro station may decide they will re-broadcast regular programming on a daily basis and only use the local broadcast capability of the station for special events such as festivals, a ceremony of note or performances of local artists.

5430   There are many possible variations on these themes, but the main point is that the combination of community radio and the Internet, rather than one or the other, will allow local communities affordable and easily operated access to meaningful programming and content in their own languages from their own communities.

5431   For your further information, we have attached action research studies on this concept that have been recently carried out with financing from the official languages support program of Canadian Heritage to demonstrate its functionality and viability as a community broadcast resource.

5432   Our vision is to create a network of micro community radio stations serving local English-speaking communities across the Province of Quebec. These would be anchored in the facilities of local institutions, connected to the existing regular community radio stations for programming and technical support and supplemented with programming contributions from other micro radio stations - a live feed via the Internet of the fiddle contest in the Gaspé but of much appeal along the lower north shore, as would an Indie band concert from Montreal.

5433   And other sources, such as the CBC which we shall touch on in a minute, could also contribute because the distribution mechanism of the Internet facilitates this to a great deal.

5434   Of course our challenge is how to get it done, and this is where we need the collaboration of the CRTC as well as other institutions such as the CBC.

5435   Looking at this in a general sense, regulatory amendments. First and foremost, we would recommend that the CRTC amend the provisions related to developmental licences for community radio stations and that would be removing the three-year limit that's currently in place.

5436   In addition, provisions would need to be put in place to facilitate the creation and operation of permanent low power FM stations so that they can become micro community radio stations and, of course, at the moment those provisions more or less are related to festivals, mining camps and other short-term events that do not allow a permanent situation for these stations.

5437   Suggestions on how this might be accomplished are also contained in the documentation that we put together for the research study and also we've included the recent adoption by the U.S. Senate of amendments to low power FM radio stations regulations that will remove a number of restrictions on their licensing and ability to operate in the U.S. following FCC recommendations. This may prove as a useful reference in this regard.

5438   Secondly, as we pointed out in our submission responding to the specific questions posed by the CRTC in preparation for these hearings, there are a number of general items that the CRTC could address in fostering facilitating the development of the community and campus radio sector.

5439   Many of these have been addressed by other presenters and they are, amongst others, reserving spectrum. We believe that some spectrum should be reserved to ensure that the minimum number of community and campus broadcasters can survive into the future and that spectrum is simply not auctioned off to the highest bidder.

5440   In addition, in relation to official language minority communities, we believe that the CRTC should ensure that minimal spectrum space is reserved and that these communities have the resources to take advantage of new media distribution options which would allow for the emergence of the micro community radio station network.

5441   The regulatory burden to complement the improved access to spectrum, we also believe that redesigning and lessening the regulatory and reporting burden for community and campus radio stations will assist in creating new space for these important community institutions to flourish.

5442   And, again, this would be particularly important for micro, I think as the name implies, very small institutions in terms of being able to function largely on a volunteer basis.

5443   Increased funding is also a necessity for community and campus radio to reach its full potential through capital purchases, better training, a larger market for local and other talent and reduced over-reliance on the stressed volunteer labour by hiring needs for services such as accounting, engineering, audience measurement and also the very basic necessity of being able to afford decent salary for staff.

5444   In our submission we've made a number of recommendations as to how that funding may be acquired, including provisions for community and campus radio stations, in particular, those from the official language minority communities to receive allotments from the Canadian Content Development Fund and from radio licence renewal fees to be distributed via the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

5445   The last mile of course is very important in terms of this concept that we're proposing. Aside from the general benefits that would accrue from universal and affordable broadband internet access for rural and remote communities, it will be particularly important for the further development of community and campus radio, especially the micro community radio network.

5446   While the CRTC has already declared the urgency of adopting and implementing cost-effective technologies in official language minority communities in remote and rural areas to ensure access to broadband Internet in the short term, we would urge the CRTC to take action within its powers to make this a reality as quickly as possible.

5447   Lastly, we would wish to remind the Commission that CBC not only provides an important radio service to the official language minority communities in Quebec, it could potentially be a significant supporter and contributor to community and campus radio.

5448   For many anglophones, the CBC is the local radio service, but for some it is not accessible at all. The entire Outaouais, for example, receives its English CBC radio signal from Ontario and there are black holes across the Province of Quebec where English language CBC radio signals cannot be received by communities at all.

5449   And on an ongoing issue for more than 30 years, the CBC is no closer to being able to address the question of coverage because its ability to fulfil its mandate to the English-speaking communities of Quebec has declined with its funding. The CBC could, in part, address these coverage issues while, at the same time enhancing local content and programming by working in collaboration with community and campus radio.

5450   Discussions in this regard with the CBC have been very positive, particularly with the added coverage potential that would be afforded through a network of micro community radio stations.

5451   Therefore, we recommend that the national broadcaster should be sufficiently funded to enable it to work in collaboration with the official language minority communities in fulfilling its programming and coverage obligations.

5452   That may seem like a Christmas wish list for Santa Claus, but anyway, it's an important point to register.

5453   So, in conclusion, we would reiterate the CRTC's pronouncement that community and campus radio stations and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation play a most important role in official language minority communities and that community reflection in the programming of the services available in the Canadian broadcasting system can be improved.

5454   We would also reiterate the fact that ELAN and other English-speaking organizations and their communities agree whole heartedly with this position and we look forward to working with the CRTC to realize the ambition inherent in its wording.

5455   We believe we have not only raised some important issues with regards to the further development of community and campus radio, but have also put forward some concrete suggestions as to how these issues may be addressed by the CRTC.

5456   We believe that these recommendations for action will have a positive impact on the further development of community and campus radio and we would indicate our willingness to continue to work in collaboration with the CRTC to find efficient yet effective ways to ensure their implementation for the benefit of the official language minority community of Quebec.

5457   So, thanking you in advance for your consideration of these recommendations, for the time today to be able to present to you and we can, at this time, respond to any questions that you may have.

5458   Thank you.

5459   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Maynard.

5460   In your oral presentation you're referring to two studies. I guess they are those that are titled, Micro Radio Station Network Advancing A Community Communications in OLMC and the other one is titled Qu'anglo.

5461   Are these the studies you were referring to?

5462   MR. RODGERS: There's two studies. One was done in 2006 by Qu'anglo about micro radio, the other was done in 2009.

5463   THE CHAIRPERSON: And --

5464   MR. MAYNARD: Yes, those are the two studies.

5465   THE CHAIRPERSON: And are those studies currently part of the record or are you --

5466   MR. RODGERS: Yes.

5467   THE CHAIRPERSON: -- or are you filing them so that they be considered part of the record?

5468   MR. RODGERS: This is the first time we're filing them, yes, indeed.

5469   THE CHAIRPERSON: So, this is a filing that you're making at this stage?

5470   MR. RODGERS: We would like you to take these into consideration, yes.

5471   THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes. Well, we will take them into consideration and put them on the public record.

5472   MR. RODGERS: Thank you.

5473   THE CHAIRPERSON: I will ask Commissioner Suzanne Lamarre to ask you the first round of questions.

5474   Thank you.

5475   MR. RODGERS: Thank you.

5476   CONSEILLÈRE LAMARRE : Merci, Monsieur le Président.

5477   Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you for visiting our Montreal office.

5478   I'll first start with the question of the definition of community and campus radio. I don't know just how much time you've been able to devote listening to this hearing this week, so I'll quote the definition that was provided by the joint submission by Larche Canada, Larche Quebec and CRA as to how they view community and campus radio.

5479   And they gave us a definition in their oral presentation. They said, and I'm quoting:

"A community-based radio station is owned and operated by a not-for-profit organization whose structure empowers members of the community to play a role in its democratic governance, management, operation and programming. It provides programming according to the needs and interests of its community, including local and regional information and services, cultural and artistic broadcasting and support, promotion of Canadian emerging talent, local and regional content related to social, economic, environmental and community issues." (As read)

5480   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: Are you in agreement with this definition, or would you like to comment on it or tell us your view?

5481   MR. MAYNARD: No, I think I would agree with it in all aspects and I believe that we've read that before.

5482   I don't think there's any question that the substantial difference with community radio versus commercial or that of the CBC as a public broadcaster, I know there's some dispute over that description, but that it is community owned and governed and, most importantly I think, then has an interest on supporting or allowing or facilitating or bringing forth from that community the different aspects that you've mentioned in terms of the arts, the culture, the information and items of relevance.

5483   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: And, Mr. Rodgers, you're in agreement?

5484   MR. RODGERS: Indeed.

5485   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: Thank you.

5486   MR. RODGERS: Yes.

5487   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: I'm going to move on to the subject that you have introduced a little bit more at length this morning, the question of micro community radio stations.

5488   I have a few very focused questions and then a few more that are broader in a sense.

5489   First of all, when you're talking about a network of low power FM stations and you're also using the term micro community radio stations, I can't help but ask, you know, what level of powers are you talking about here?

5490   Are you talking about the basic 50 watts or are you talking about powers that would be even lower than that?

5491   MR. MAYNARD: The basic 50 watts is the general -- I don't know if it's the definition, but the standard around what a low power FM community radio station generally operates at.

5492   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: Okay. So, you're not talking about very small power, very low power stations of five watts or one watts, you're talking about generally a 50-watt coverage?

5493   MR. MAYNARD: Well, I mean, it could be and I think this is the points that need some continued discussions.

5494   The example that I'd like to use, if you look at the Gaspé coast, there are two French-language community radio stations, one in Gaspé and one in Carleton and they're what I call regular community radio stations and they broadcast into the middle of the very long peninsula which is about 500 kilometres in length.

5495   Along that peninsula there are pockets of English language communities and if you -- one-tenth of the total population, so they cannot support what would need to be two community radio stations, English language, to cover that whole coast.

5496   But what you could do with a micro community radio station connected -- provided, of course, there's some broadband access -- is to locate the micro station say at the school or community centre to serve the local pocket because most of the English-speaking community lives within a certain radius of that particular location.

5497   So, it may only be necessary for certain locations. The English-speaking community of the Magdalen Islands, 95 percent of them live on Grosse Îles which is very -- I think eight or nine kilometres in width. So, you wouldn't need necessarily a 50-watt transmitter to cover that particular distance, but you could then with a 50-watt transmitter cover the whole of the Magdalen Islands probably because it's very flat surface, so that entry island and other places where individuals live could be covered.

5498   So, it could -- I think it could be tailored -- or should be tailored to the needs of that particular individual community.

5499   The question becomes: What is the maximum I guess that this could reach up to and at the moment that's 50 watts as defined by the low power FM standard.

5500   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: And I'm glad to see because you mentioned the CBC as being maybe a source of programming of collaboration, and I'm glad to see you also mentioned that you started discussions with them.

5501   At the same time, have you also -- in order to be able to provide service to anglophones within Quebec outside the main urban areas where they're definitely getting good services, have you tried the approach of collaborating with francophone community stations so that to have part of the programming in English on those stations that already exist? Has this been done?

5502   MR. MAYNARD: That has been done by some communities and has been done on a case-by-case basis.

5503   So, for example, on the Magdalen Islands there is a daily news and information broadcast from the French-language community radio station based in -- forgive me I forget the principal town -- but it broadcasts across the whole island.

5504   But, of course, the priority is the French-language programming and, so, that broadcast is done at five o'clock, whereas the best time to do it would be at six o'clock, at supper time when everybody is home and, second of all, is very much dependent on the resources of the station whose primary focus is to deliver French-language broadcasting. So, the ability to hire, attract and keep an English-language reporter, journalist or broadcaster is very difficult.

5505   And, so, whereas this has been accomplished to some degree and there has been good intentions on both sides, it is very difficult to manage both in terms of available resources as well as competing time slots.

5506   And this becomes the difficulty that if you want to have a daily news broadcast, for example, or if you want to have a special event, finding a time slot.

5507   And I'd speak to my experience in the past that working with TeleQuebec where we did some English-language informational broadcasting for the agricultural community and the only time slot we could get was 2:30 on Friday afternoon.

5508   Well, it was an immense success to achieve that, but at the same time our listening -- our viewing audience was pretty small because how many farmers and rural residents are going to be in their living room watching TV at 2:30 on a Friday afternoon.

5509   So, these are the daily reality of having to deal with this and, so, I think the answer is that it would be -- working together is always good, but if there could be the ability to broadcast at the particular times that is necessary with the particular information, I think the Internet can help us do that if we do it in a coordinated way.

5510   And really, in essence, these micro radio stations for a lot of their particular operations would be, not necessarily repeater stations, but they would be structured in that way and that they would be able to cover a particular community that otherwise would not be reached by a larger community radio station.

5511   Eastern townships has a mountainous region, for example, has a station in Lennoxville but it only reaches about a third of the geographical area and would need a significant boost in its wattage and its antenna at considerable cost in order to cover the whole area, which even indeed might not be possible, but linking it in to micro or low power stations would enable all the particular individual communities to access English-language programming of a local nature.

5512   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: So to summarize your answer, would it be fair to say that while currently there are initiatives undertaking with French community radio stations to provide some English programming, it would be a much preferable solution in your mind to have a fulltime micro-community English station network implemented?

5513   MR. MAYNARD: Yes. But the nuance there is that those micro stations would have to be, by necessity, connected through the internet so that the programming for music, repeats of a CBC show, would come in via that connection.

5514   The ability that it gives them then is to click the switch on the computer and go to local programming at their time or preference of choosing and of course with the information and programming resources they have at hand.

5515   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: And when you are talking about linking them with the internet, you are talking about the public internet or dedicated transmission lines?

5516   MR. MAYNARD: The public internet. We have done, as you will see in the report that we have submitted, testing with regular what we call high-speed internet. In fact, the testing that we did was with -- not DSL, it is with satellite delivery, so there were some issues around latency and others, but we were still able to make it work.

5517   Because it is an audio medium and with compression and codecs and those kinds of things, a good quality of audio transmission can be carried out in close to real time. And so I think with the advance in technology, it is what makes this sort of adaptation of the community radio model possible.

5518   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: With your answer I realize you are fully conscious of the reliability issues associated with your proposal, so I am satisfied with your answer.

5519   Now, when you are talking about regulatory amendments, you refer to an expression here. You talk about provisions to facilitate the creation and operation of permanent low-power FM stations. Can you define what you mean by "permanent?"

5520   MR. MAYNARD: Well, as I understand it at the moment, is that the CRTC -- and I am sorry, I am not familiar with the dates -- but at a certain point amended the community radio regulations to allow developmental licences.

5521   And the intention there was to allow low-power FM stations to be created without the full-fledged process and hearings and regulatory aspects that would enable small communities to be able to establish a radio station and get if off the ground without having to, you know, bite off the whole thing right off the thing right at the beginning which, as you are aware, takes considerable capital investment.

5522   And by being able to operate a low-powered FM station over a number of years, three years, they would then be in a position to move forward to make it a regular community radio station at some point in the future. And that is fine, I think it was a good approach.

5523   The problem with that is that with the current regulations, is after the developmental licence is over those stations would have to make a choice of whether they then stop their status as a lower-power station and become a full-fledged community radio station. They could still stay at 50 watts or less, but they have to change the nature of their operations or, as with the other ones that I mentioned, there are derogations within that for festivals, short-term events, camps and other events like that.

5524   And so I think the suggestion -- of course, we are not being specific, we haven't written it out -- but we have, in the paper, the study, submitted some suggestions that it would -- I don't know whether it would become a class or whether it would become a subclass, I guess this is best for the CRTC to decide. But that the low-power, the micro radio station, would be something that could be setup on a permanent basis, that it wouldn't be limited by three years.

5525   And also discussed in our study is the aspect of what if in the English-speaking community -- I guess dreaming a little bit here -- that there were 50 of these micro radio stations? Which easily could be done from the geographic basis, because it is over 2,000 kilometres from the Gaspé out to the western end of the Pontiac in a linear fashion. It is a multitude of applications and submissions and hearings and so on and so forth. Maybe there is a collective way to organize those licences so that we are approaching it from a network aspect rather than an individual station.

5526   And that is certainly something that we would like to continue discussions with, because we would understand that if you are a small station in an isolated community, your volunteer and staff resources to be able to dedicate to filings and reports and so on and so forth is going to be very limited. And if that was approached on a network or an associative basis, that may be a way to approach this.

5527   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: On the regulatory burden issues you do ask that, you know, we should be redesigning and lessening the regulatory and reporting burden for community and campus stations. Do you have one or two examples to give me as to what that reporting or regulatory burden you would like to see reduced on community and campus radio?

5528   MR. MAYNARD: Well, I don't work in the stations. But in the conversations that I have had with the people that manage the stations, it always comes up as to the amount of paperwork. Now, they may be paperwork adverse because they are in the audio business, but there is a constant need to file information on a repetitive basis. And unfortunately, we don't have anybody here who is working directly in the stations to respond to that into the detail that you have requested. But this is something that we have received in our interaction with the stations.

5529   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: Okay, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something very specific in mind that you did not dare put in writing, but were willing to share verbally with us.

5530   MR. MAYNARD: Right. I think it is just a general sentiment, is less is better.

5531   COMMISSIONER LAMARRE: Thank you.

5532   Those are all my questions, Mr. Chairman.

5533   Thank you very much, gentlemen.

5534   MR. MAYNARD: Thank you.

5535   THE CHAIRPERSON: Only for those who are listening through the internet and will read the transcript, those who have comments to make on the two studies that are being filed into the record will have until February the 1st to make their comments.

5536   Legal counsel, do you have any questions?

5537   MS HULLEY: I have nothing to add to what you just said.

5538   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

5539   So gentlemen, thank you very much for your participation this morning. And we surely will take great care in reading your two studies.

5540   Thank you, Mr. Maynard --

5541   MR. MAYNARD: Thank you very much.

5542   THE CHAIRPERSON: -- and Mr. Rogers.

5543   Madam Secretary.

5544   THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

5545   We will now connect with the Vancouver office.

5546   We will now hear the presentation of CFUV 101.9 FM appearing via videoconference from Vancouver.

5547   Please introduce yourself, and you have 15 minutes to make your presentation.

PRESENTATION

5548   MR. GELLING: I am Randy Gelling, the Station Manager at CFUV in Victoria, British Columbia.

5549   I would like to thank the Commission personally and on behalf of my board of directors for this opportunity to address these issues of concern to our station and our sector.

5550   CFUV is a campus community radio station that has broadcasted for 25 years from the University of Victoria and covers the majority of the Victorian community and reaches some parts of the Gulf Islands. We provide an eclectic mix of music with over 40 per cent of that being in Category 3, public affairs and over 12 per cent of our schedule's ethnic programming.

5551   Approximately 10 per cent of our ethnic programming is delivered in a third language, including Cantonese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish, Polish and Portuguese.

5552   In addition, we carry the only Aboriginal program in Victoria and have the longest running French-language radio program in the city.

5553   Our volunteer membership is approximately 60 per cent community, 40 per cent student. We have policies in place to maintain and grow student and female representation on-air. Currently, our female representation is 36 per cent and, although there is still room for improvement, this is up significantly from the less than 10 per cent in the early 2000s.

5554   Our board is also currently drafting a policy to review and increase diversity in the station's programming. Although we have strong third-language component at the station, we want to ensure that we are reflecting the diversity of the campus and the wider community.

5555   We believe it is an important function of the station to not only reflect the campus through which we receive a student fee levy that provides a base for our funding, but also the community that we broadcast to throughout Victoria. This includes integrating and working with marginalized groups like the special needs community. As mentioned in our written comments, we have over a dozen special needs volunteers involved at the radio station on a weekly basis.

5556   Regarding the question of the current programming requirements, including spoken-word and category limitations for music, we don't have any major issues with the current regulations that are in place. We feel it is important to maintain many of these requirements to ensure that campus community radio remains distinct from commercial broadcasters.

5557   So, for example, we fully support keeping the current Category 3 requirements in place, as well as the spoken word requirements with some clarification of this requirement for campus and community broadcasters. We believe that the current hits policy should also remain in place as an important buffer against attempts to commercialize campus community radio, particularly under pressure from student societies.

5558   As to the question of how the Commission can help ensure the presence of linguistic duality in the broadcasting system and the availability of content to official language minority communities, we outline in our written comments how CFUV played a role in the development of our own local francophone station, CILS.

5559   Campus/community radio stations can be a powerful source of funding and development for official language communities. But it is important that some funding be made available to make this a reality for more stations in the campus/community sector. To further this goal, Heritage Canada should be willing to fund campus/community stations outreach, training and development of official language minority programming on campus/community stations.

5560   So now this leads to a major area of concern for all campus/community stations and my board of directors, funding. With the massive fee increases students have experienced in the last decade, it is not realistic for CFUV to approach students for an increase to their current student fee levy.

5561   Currently, we collect $5 from each student over a term. And while this has provided a steady source of funding as the years pass, the rate of inflation and the ballooning overhead expenses have made it clear that we cannot rely solely on student funding indefinitely.

5562   As an example, our formerly free janitorial, utility and other fees that were once absorbed by the student society that runs the building that we are tenants in have grown by 50 per cent every five years over the last decade. Any notion that advertising could be a major source of revenue, if only the current advertising limits were lifted, is simply not true for a medium-sized market like ourselves.

5563   Advertising revenue for CFUV rarely exceeds 8 per cent of our gross revenue. In 2004 we eliminated our advertising department, as the ad director position, over a 20-year period, had proven incapable of generating enough revenue to cover their salary costs, let alone commission payments.

5564   If anything, due to not having to deal with the deficits that were created by delinquent accounts, CFUV is now in a stronger financial position because we don't have an advertising department. Now, all the advertising funds we do bring in are real revenue for the station, since the Station Manager doesn't take any commission.

5565   CFUV, similar to other campus/community stations, does have an advertising policy, it is posted and available on our website. Our policy doesn't exclude advertisers just on the basis that they are large multinational corporations, but this policy has rarely come into effect as few of those large advertisers have approached us through our national ad agency target. The majority of our national advertisers have been non-profits, like the Breast Cancer Society of Canada or the federal government.

5566   CFUV has had some success receiving subsidization of staff wages through programs like Worksource or Canada Summer Jobs. But we have hit a brick wall in outreach for other grant funding.

5567   As previously mentioned, Heritage Canada has told us that they will not consider us for funding, neither did the provincial government accept us for direct access funding. The local municipal Capital Regional District, CRD as it is known in Victoria, also rejected CFUV out of hand because of our association with media. Consultations with the CRA about the possibility of applying for charitable status has not been promising.

5568   We consulted with the Provincial Gaming and Enforcement Branch about applying for a bingo affiliation grant and were told not to bother, as there were no open spaces for new organizations and there were unlikely to ever be any in the future.

5569   As I am sure the Commission is aware, the grant market has not been too well recently, as corporate clients have been cutting back drastically on their contributions. We recently applied to TELUS for a grant to create a summer media camp for young girls and Aboriginal youth and were rejected. So we don't see individual stations pursuing individual grant funding as a realistic solution for the long-term health and growth of the sector.

5570   We therefore support the proposal that commercial radio be mandated to devote portions of its CCD contributions to the Community Radio Fund of Canada. We would also request that Heritage Canada reconsider its funding policies towards the campus/community sector in recognition of the significant role our stations play in local talent and cultural development.

5571   In addition, if in future any financial support is considered for the private and public sector to move into new media or digital technology, a reasonable amount of funds should be set aside for the campus/community sector to do the same.

5572   Thank you.

5573   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Gelling.

5574   I will ask Mr. Patrone to go over the first round of questions.

5575   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair.

5576   And I wish you a good morning, Mr. Gelling. I know it is still morning where you are on the west coast.

5577   Before I get to the funding issue, which is clearly your greatest concern relative to this presentation, I am going to ask you a programming question. And you have been fairly clear, both in your written and in your oral presentation, that you have no issues with the current programming requirements.

5578   Some interveners from your sector, however, are at odds with that view as you are probably aware and have stepped forward with recommendations relative to relaxing spoken-word levels or more flexibility in terms of Category 3, special interest music.

5579   Do you have any views beyond what you have already expressed relative to those matters?

5580   MR. GELLING: Well, one thing with spoken-word content, I think, is I know in discussions in Montreal it came to light I think that maybe some campus/community aren't clear on what spoken-word content requirements really mean. The 25 per cent requirement doesn't mean, in my understanding in conversations with people from the CRTC, that 25 per cent of your program has to be, you know, public affairs programming with interviews and, you know, news coverage.

5581   That is obviously, you know, a very important part of campus/community radio and people should endeavour to create as much original content in that area as possible. But that many stations could also help meet their requirements by simply, as part of their training, using the mosaic format of music programming where people would provide background material regarding the music that they are playing, that that can contribute towards your spoken-word content.

5582   I am not sure that everybody in the campus/community sector is actually aware of that, that it is actually considered part of your spoken word content.

5583   So I think that the 25 per cent, we haven't had an issue meeting it because we also, you know, use mosaic formatting and training with our programmers so that even when they are doing music programs, you know, they are speaking three minutes for every 15 minutes of music programming is what our rule of thumb is that we do in our training.

5584   So that would, I think, alleviate some of the concerns around the spoken-word content perhaps for a lot of stations, because I am not sure how many -- I mean, I am sure some of them do know that and still have issues with it. I don't want to make that assumption, but I do know in conversations that not everybody is aware of that.

5585   Category 3, I mean, I can only speak to our own experience and we are a medium-sized market. Victoria, maybe it is the fact that, you know, we have a large retiree population, but we have not ever had an issue meeting the special interest requirement.

5586   I mean, we often I know in the past had even more special interest programming than we currently have, I mean, it has only shrunk by a small amount because we have increased the student representation on-air as a correction.

5587   But yes, we have never had an issue with it. I mean, jazz, blues, folk music, these are very broad, very rich areas of music. So again, I don't want to, you know, judge other stations, everybody has very different communities and different markets that they are operating in, but definitely it has never been an issue for us to meet that requirement or exceed it.

5588   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Thank you. Thank you for that, I do appreciate it.

5589   I see you are up to 40 per cent in Category 3. But I guess there are other stations who feel that their current levels are somewhat onerous.

5590   Do you think that there should be minimum levels dedicated to what has been termed emerging artist music, 20 per cent for instance? And I realize that your levels are probably beyond that, but do you think that that is a good idea and a way of encouraging diversity in the system?

5591   MR. GELLING: Well, I think that it is not a bad idea. Like you said, I think most campus/community radio stations are probably already far exceeding that requirement. I know that often, you know, if something is going to be put in place with commercial broadcasters, that it helps if, you know, it is kind of applied across the board.

5592   I think it would be an important thing to bring in the emerging artist idea, I think is an important thing for radio, it is a good idea for radio, it won't affect, I would think, or significantly impede most campus/community radio stations that I have ever encountered.

5593   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: In your written submission you -- carrying on with the programming category -- you say, "In our view, to define campus and community radio in complimentary relation to the CBC and for-profit sectors is too reductive and restrictive."

5594   MR. GELLING: M'hmm.

5595   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: That is on page 3 of your submission.

5596   MR. GELLING: Yes.

5597   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Could you expand on that a little bit more? Just help me understand why you feel that it is the way it is.

5598   MR. GELLING: Well, I think that it is kind of always the question of, you know, do we have to change our programming because the CBC or a mainstream radio station changes their programming?

5599   So, for instance, the CBC -- at least in Victoria this was very big news, when Radio 2 I believe it was, was cutting back some of their classical programming and bringing in more jazz and world programming. And we had several people approach us saying, oh, well you need to now carry more classical music, because the CBC is going to carry less classical music.

5600   And I think that that is not necessarily true. Like, that our programming -- and now, that may only have been, you know, people's maybe general impression. But I think that the way the policies are written, maybe that is the impression that people get, that somehow our job is to respond to the changes in programming that the CBC makes. And I don't believe that that is really our job, that our job is to, you know, respond to our community and to the campus interests that fund us.

5601   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: But there is a need t be diverse I guess and to provide an alternative, would you not agree with that?

5602   MR. GELLING: Oh, yes. Yes, for sure. Yes, I think that there is definitely that requirement, it makes perfect sense.

5603   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: I just want to deal with your oral presentation for a minute, Mr. Gelling.

5604   MR. GELLING: Yes.

5605   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: You speak in paragraph 8 of "ballooning overhead."

5606   MR. GELLING: Yes.

5607   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Can you be a little bit more specific? What areas of your operation are ballooning in terms of expenses? Are we talking about staffing, are we talking about engineering costs or, you know, technical issues with equipment or all of the above?

5608   MR. GELLING: No. Mainly with us it has to do with fees that were formerly free or subsidized through the Student Society, which is -- yes, so mainly rent, utilities, those kind of expenses. They are growing very significantly, by leaps and bounds.

5609   And so it is becoming a bit of a concern because, you know, we have a static source of funding with student fees, but our overhead costs just for the space that we are in are growing and growing and becoming a larger percentage of our budget. And that means we have less money for staffing or, you know, pursuing more outreach, doing more of the things we want to do.

5610   You know, more, it is just spending our money to, you know, stay alive, to keep where we are. We are kind of running in place a lot more I think. So that is a little frustrating. Those are the expenses I mean.

5611   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Keeping the lights on basically and keeping the heat place heated and --

5612   MR. GELLING: Yes, exactly.

5613   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: -- all those types of things.

5614   Is there any room for cooperative ventures with private companies, private broadcasters, relative to some of the issues that other community stations have certainly raised? And I am talking about engineering challenges, technical issues, equipment upgrades, that kind of thing.

5615   First of all, has there been any outreach concerning those types of issues that you have been able to take part in? And secondly, do you see any room for improvement as far as that is concerned?

5616   MR. GELLING: Well, with the commercial broadcasters, to be honest but respectful, they generally just don't return your phone calls, so there hasn't been much interaction. I mean, we have occasionally done some outreach and spoken to them about, you know, a few things. But generally, yes, there hasn't been a lot of response I would say when we have been outreached.

5617   Regarding actual equipment and technical expenses, our station is a bit of an exception in that area I have to admit, because we have a capital fund that we have fundraised on an annual basis. We used to get matching funds from the provincial government when they actually used to give you grants, and that was years and years ago. So we have been able to build up a good-sized capital fund that allows us to, you know, repair and replace equipment and think about larger capital projects.

5618   Also, the University of Victoria has been very generous to us over the years as a partner, they are one of our corporate members of our board, they have done a lot of -- like our current transmitter space and antennae space cost us nothing to run because they are located on campus.

5619   So our station is an exception I think though compared to most other stations. Definitely I have realized, you know, when you meet people from other stations and you talk about how things are run there, we are very lucky in many ways compared to a lot of other stations.

5620   They don't have those resources, they don't have the same sort of beneficial relationship with their university administration or a long-term capital fund established, which was actually -- also, by the way, the capital fund was established through UVic and that capital fund is held by UVic.

5621   So again, that is really a product of the beneficial relationship that we have of our university administration, which not everybody -- I think we are probably -- it is quite safe to say we are the exception on that. I am not sure if I have actually met another station that has those same benefits, at least both of them.

5622   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: The capital fund is Administered by UVic or is it..?

5623   MR. GELLING: Well, I administer it.

5624   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: You administer it?

5625   MR. GELLING: I mean, our board of directors administers it, but it is held in trust by the University of Victoria so that essentially the capital fund can't be used for anything, except for capital expenses and repairs, technical repairs. So you know, there is no trying to take the fund and, you know, take a trip to the Bahamas or something with it. It is controlled through -- there is controls through UVic, but it was established --

5626   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Well, it is interesting that you have access to a fund, Mr. Gelling. You are right, I have not heard that many other outfits have access to such a fund that can be dedicated towards the kind of expenses that other operations have great difficulty paying for.

5627   In paragraph 9 of your submission you say -- this is interesting about your advertising, your views about --

5628   MR. GELLING: Yes.

--- Laughter

5629   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: "If anything, due to not having to deal with the deficits created by delinquent accounts, CFUV is now in a stronger financial position because we don't have an advertising department."

5630   MR. GELLING: I know, it sounds counter-intuitive, sorry.

5631   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: No, it's okay because, you know, counter-intuitive isn't necessarily a bad thing. And I am just wondering if you could expand on that. So you are in better shape as a result of not having an ad department?

5632   MR. GELLING: Yes, it is true. It was the Station Manager before me, Sharmeen Khan, me and her discussed it together and decided to fold it. Because looking at it over the years, often the deficits had been created at the station by, you know, advertising accounts that were taken out and people that weren't paying us, that we were chasing these accounts and then the money was being carried over into the next year. And so, technically, it was creating a deficit.

5633   And also of course we weren't generating enough money in advertising to even pay the wage of our advertising director. So, I mean, that's a pretty simple mathematical equation, so it wasn't too hard to fold it.

5634   And when we did that, what happened was it freed up money that was being used in that department for the station, so we were able to hire a full-time volunteer coordinator instead and that very much contributed to a better station, a better ran station, better volunteer recruitment, better outreach. It made a huge difference in the way that our station was ran.

5635   And my philosophy was that we had to stop thinking of ourselves as a small -- some sort of, you know, small commercial station, because we weren't and we weren't a successful small commercial station, that we had to think of ourselves as a non-profit and run ourselves more as a non-profit.

5636   So, that's why I also looked into, you know, grant applications, funding ideas. I thought my time would be better spent doing that than pursuing accounts that often were more trouble than they were worth.

5637   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Yeah. You've written that advertisement restrictions on campus stations should be maintained.

5638   We've had some divergence of opinion on that matter, as you're probably aware --

5639   MR. GELLING: Yeah.

5640   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: -- from those who would like some more flexibility relative to how those four minutes per hour are designated.

5641   Do you take any issues with that?

5642   MR. GELLING: I don't have an issue. I mean, if you're just talking about how it's designated within an hour. I just don't think that that could be a cure-all or a solution for funding within our sector, you know.

5643   Oh, well, we'll lift the advertising. I'm not sure that that's -- I'm not saying that that's the intention, but I wouldn't want to give the impression that, oh, if we lift advertising -- these advertising restrictions, then that makes it a more viable thing, because I think for medium sized markets like our own advertising, as I've said, isn't a significant source of funding.

5644   So, that's not going to make a big difference for us. I don't think -- giving a little bit of more flexibility in terms of, yeah, of the distribution of the minutes wouldn't hurt us.

5645   But I do want to make sure that student -- often campus community stations -- campus stations' relationships to their student societies can be very political and it's very much to our benefit that we can say, you know, we have these advertising restrictions so we can't carry, you know, as much advertising as you want or something.

5646   Because often student societies get into financial trouble and then they go looking for other sources of revenue.

5647   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: M'hmm.

5648   MR. GELLING: And often that means their campus community radio station, they start looking at them as some sort of source of revenue rather than a non-profit partner.

5649   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Can you provide me with a breakdown of where your revenues come from, how your revenues are generated?

5650   MR. GELLING: Yeah. This would just be off the top of my head.

5651   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Yeah.

5652   MR. GELLING: It's I'd say 90 percent student fees.

5653   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Okay.

5654   MR. GELLING: We collect about $150,000 in student fees. Then we collect, I'd say on average somewhere between four thousand to maybe $8,000 in advertising, depending on the year.

5655   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: M'hmm.

5656   MR. GELLING: On our luck basically. Then we get donations, we have some fund raisers.

5657   The capital budget is considered separate from our operational budget, so really I exclude that.

5658   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: I understand.

5659   MR. GELLING: Like our technical expenses, that's all -- that would all be considered separate.

5660   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: The capital fund doesn't pay for your --

5661   MR. GELLING: It's about --

5662   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: The capital fund doesn't pay for your operating expenses; does it?

5663   MR. GELLING: No, no, no.

5664   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: I mean --

5665   MR. GELLING: We only use capital fund -- 20, $25,000 a year is what we spend on our capital fund to repair equipment. Repairing equipment's about $5,000 a year at least.

5666   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Okay.

5667   MR. GELLING: Plus, you know, purchasing and replacing old equipment. So, that's considered -- that would be separate from our operational budget.

5668   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Understood.

5669   MR. GELLING: Yeah.

5670   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: And relative to advertising, you mention that the majority of your national advertisers are non-profit organizations like the Breast Cancer Society.

5671   MR. GELLING: Yeah.

5672   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: And you did give me a number on that, you said between four and eight thousand in ad dollars per year.

5673   MR. GELLING: Yeah.

5674   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: But you say you --

5675   MR. GELLING: I think -- we do have some -- oh, sorry, go ahead.

5676   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: No, that's okay. You say you hit a brick wall for grant funding. Have you applied --

5677   MR. GELLING: Yeah.

5678   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Have you applied for grants through the Community Radio Fund and that sort of thing?

5679   MR. GELLING: Yeah, we did. We did -- I think I mention -- I'm pretty sure I mention in my written comments we did get funding --

5680   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Yeah, okay.

5681   MR. GELLING: -- through the CFRC and, you know, first year that they existed I think we got funding and it was really -- it wasn't a -- it doesn't take a lot of money to have a big impact on us I think, so it was very beneficial.

5682   We received around $3,500 which doesn't sound like much, but it was -- even that small amount of money, just the fact that we could hire an extra person for the summer to do outreach to young women was the main goal and she helped organize some summer one-day off collaborative media camps that we were hoping to get the Telus funding for but we never did to do full week camps.

5683   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: M'hmm.

5684   MR. GELLING: But because we got that funding we were still able to do one-day camps with some Aboriginal youth, some young women from the Science Ventures organization and University 101, collaboration with the university as well.

5685   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Mr. Gelling, in paragraph 14 you mention that you don't see grant funding as a long-term solution, but you do see the idea of the commercial stations being mandated to devote portions of their CCD contributions to the sector.

5686   How would you feel if this was tied to say commitments towards Canadian content, for instance, being increased say to 50, 60 percent or -- in other words, what if they -- or even going commercial free, you know, these types of things, these types of possible offsets, because as you're probably --

5687   MR. GELLING: I think --

5688   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Yeah.

5689   MR. GELLING: I think --

5690   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: As you're probably aware -- oh sorry, go ahead.

5691   MR. GELLING: No, no, it's okay.

5692   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: I'll shut up, now you go ahead. I'll let you answer the question.

5693   MR. GELLING: Okay. I mean, those specific ideas, you know, I can see that being negotiated. Like, I think that that makes -- I could see that that would actually be possible, it would depend on the level of funding that that actually means, you know.

5694   I know that my station wouldn't be too concerned about going commercial free, but other stations would.

5695   But I think we would be open to that, obviously some sort of, you know, quid pro quo obviously if we got some core funding.

5696   I think that what would be the benefit would be the fact that it would be core funding, like some sort of steady reliable funding.

5697   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: M'hmm.

5698   MR. GELLING: Because the problem with grants is that they're project oriented and you never know, as I'm sure -- I think Commissioner Simpson's from B.C.

5699   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: M'hmm.

5700   MR. GELLING: You know, in B.C., you know, just because you got grant funding this year doesn't mean you're going to get grant funding next year.

5701   Direct access funding which we were denied because of our association as a student organization, it was completely eliminated in B.C. so, you know, that's put a lot of arts organizations in our province in a very bad situation. So, I think that's kind of one of the issues of grants programming, is that you don't -- it's not steady, it's not reliable, unfortunately. It should be perhaps more so than it often is, but...

5702   So, yeah, I think that something like that my station at least would be open to, you know, ideas to hear proposals on that.

5703   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: I don't have too many more questions for you, Mr. Gelling. My colleagues may have.

5704   I did have one regarding spectrum in markets. Do you have any views about that, where applicable, where a spectrum is available; do you think that frequencies -- spectrum should be set aside for community stations?

5705   MR. GELLING: Yeah, I think that I do think that campus community stations are perhaps not given the consideration they should in those situations, or at least from what -- my impression from conversations with people who are, you know, pursuing those spaces on the spectrum.

5706   I think the campus community stations should be given some kind of priority, if there isn't already an existing campus community station in particular and also, you know, if they have something that they're presenting that's unique to the community that they're in.

5707   I know that in Victoria it's a very -- even though we're a medium sized market, there's loads of radio stations in Victoria. I know that some commercial broadcasters think that there's too many radio stations in Victoria, commercial radio stations because of the competition.

5708   And, you know, there's the Camosun, our sister station at Camosun, CKMO, you know, they are definitely, you know, going to be concerned about that whole question of spectrum in the future.

5709   I don't think they've actually been able to come and speak, so I'll mention that, that definitely in our area I know that that's come up as a concern.

5710   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Just a couple more questions, Mr. Gelling.

5711   You have a weekly hour-long French language program and you've had for many years; is that correct.

5712   MR. GELLING: Yeah.

5713   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: But you in your written mention that you've failed to receive much financial support through any official language minority initiatives, that kind of thing.

5714   MR. GELLING: Yeah.

5715   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: And did you want to address that quickly, or...

5716   MR. GELLING: Well, basically when we called up Heritage, Heritage I mean just told us not to even bother applying.

5717   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Yeah.

5718   MR. GELLING: I mean, I'm not -- I don't mean to be, you know, I don't know -- I don't mean to be speaking ill of anything, it's just that's a fact.

5719   We called them up, we didn't even get to the door. They just said, no, you guys are a media organization, we're not going to fund you.

5720   So, that's basically the reality, is that I often found when we approached, you know, certain organizations they don't even see you as an arts community or cultural organization, they associate us with media and reject us out of hand.

5721   I understand that there is funding for OLM stations and I totally support the funding that CILS has received, but it does seem strange that Heritage would fund an OLM station in our city, but not our program which, as I mentioned, helped develop that station in some ways: their radio operations coordinator, I looked up his official title, used to be with us, several of their board members and some of their DJs were trained through that radio program at CFUV.

5722   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: A final question is related to new media. Can you talk about your initiatives relative to increasing your presence on the Internet and what future there is relative to migration to the web if, in fact, you do see a future in that regard.

5723   MR. GELLING: Well, I think that right now it's more potential than reality. Definitely -- I mean, when you look at the number of listeners you have on the web, it's great that we have that, we stream, but it's not nearly the same numbers that we have for terrestrial radio.

5724   So, it's really more of a potential at this point. I mean, until radio becomes -- Internet radio could become, say, wireless and people could get it in their cars, I still think it's a supplement as opposed to a placement for terrestrial radio.

5725   So, and I mean, as you know, I don't think anybody in the industry really knows what's going to happen in terms of formatting, you know, is it going to be digital radio, satellite doesn't seem to be working. So, is Internet radio going to go wireless?

5726   I think that that's -- it's not a replacement though, I think at this point definitely a supplement to terrestrial radio because you reach far more people, in our experience, still through terrestrial than through an Internet stream.

5727   As well, we do do some podcasting, but due to, you know, the grey area with SOCAN and music royalties, we podcast only public affairs programs where we cut out the music.

5728   That's, you know, an unfortunate restriction because I know that a lot of listeners would like to be able to come and download music programming as well as the public affairs programs from our website.

5729   The main thing with new media for us is finding the time to really pursue it and explore it to the degree that we would like because of, you know, resource restrictions. We've got to keep running a radio station and then, you know, there's new things that of course keep coming along, new social media as well which we want to be part of, but it's definitely a challenge because you're stretching already thin resources to do it.

5730   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: There's only so many hours in the day.

5731   MR. GELLING: Yeah.

5732   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Well, thank you, Mr. Gelling. I really appreciate your answers and enjoy the rest of the day.

5733   MR. GELLING: All right.

5734   COMMISSIONER PATRONE: Pass it along to the Vice-Chair.

5735   MR. GELLING: Thank you.

5736   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Gelling.

5737   We will adjourn -- we will take a pause for lunch and get back at 1:45. Nous prendrons une pause pour le lunch, et de retour à 13 h 45.

--- Upon recessing at 1230

--- Upon resuming at 1346

5738   THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

5739   We will now hear the presentation of CJSW 90.9 FM who is appearing via videoconference from Vancouver.

5740   Please introduce yourself and you have 15 minutes for your presentation.

5741   Thank you.

PRESENTATION

5742   MR. SAUNDERS: Thank you.

5743   Good morning, everyone and Chairman, Commissioners of the CRTC.

5744   It is a pleasure to be with you today to discuss our submission for the Community Radio Review.

5745   My name is Chad Saunders and I'm the station manager at CJSW Radio in Calgary, Alberta. I've been involved in campus and community radio since I was 17 years, unfortunately some time ago and I've been station manager now for nine years.

5746   I've also been fortunate to have served on the NCRA Board of Directors as Treasurer and President, 2005 through to 2007.

5747   I wish to expand on my written comments and clarify our position on a number of issues that have been discussed this week.

5748   I want to begin by saying that this sector, this medium of community radio is truly an amazing industry. The diversity of programming delivered to listeners each and every day by campus community broadcasters across this country is unmatched to anything found in anywhere in the world.

5749   Examples have been shared with you this week and many more will go unreported. We're a humble group and our remarkable achievements should be pronounced and celebrated more proudly and perhaps more often.

5750   This humility has probably led us to the position from which we have had somewhat to scramble to share our experiences and our stories with you, to show that we are an important and necessary pillar of the Canadian broadcast system.

5751   The campus community radio sector can grow with the support of our commercial radio partners, instilling a renewed sense of optimism and faith in our stations' ability to fulfil our mandate of connecting our communities through radio.

5752   CJSW defines ourselves by the way we serve our community and our presence in the community. In our written submission we provide a quick snapshot of who CJSW is. I've also attached a fax sheet in an appendix attached to the back of my presentation for you to review.

5753   I would also like to add a few last remarks about CJSW.

5754   Although CJSW is located on campus, the University of Calgary does not have a journalism program from which our spoken word department could draw support. Our student volunteers complement their degrees by volunteering at CJSW, sometimes at the expense of probably getting good grades.

5755   These same volunteers go on to start festivals and theatre companies, become engineers, lawyers, doctors, professors, accountants, brew masters and geographers and others pursue careers as journalists in campus community radio, commercial radio and the CBC.

5756   The important question that you've been pondering during this review is probably the same one I ask myself each day when I get up and start at CJSW. How do we do it? How do we manage to broadcast 24 hours a day live every day of the year with all of those volunteers with only limited number of staff members?

5757   How do we convince our listeners to donate and financially support us during our fund-raising campaigns?

5758   What would happen to CJSW if we ever lost our student levy, no longer qualified for summer student funding or other financial resources that we need to cover our operations?

5759   What would happen to the station if I leave and take away my knowledge that is stored upstairs in my mind and not easily found in a file folder back at CJSW?

5760   When I first took over at CJSW as station manager November of 2000, the outgoing station manager left me a list of things I would need to do.

5761   Number one on the list was find a new radio tower site. I soon learned that our tower lease had expired and we had less than three weeks before the property owner was going to limit access to the site.

5762   After intense negotiations and a bit of luck, CJSW managed to find a temporary site for a back-up tower that would keep us on the air until we could find a new permanent home for the main transmitter. It would take us three years to secure the location where we now broadcast from.

5763   How could this have been prevented? CJSW missed an opportunity in 1995 to move to a new frequency and increase our wattage. Four station managers over the next five years negatively affected our institutional memory in dealing with this matter. Even if we were organized, CJSW still did not have the money in the bank at that time to invest in a technical brief, a new transmitter and tower site. Worse, no one really knew how important moving frequencies would be 15 years down the road.

5764   CJSW's frequency has had interference from a neighbouring commercial station now for the past two years. This broadcaster's solution to the problem was to buy new radios for people who complained, assuming that these listeners know that they would be receiving our signal in the first place.

5765   This is an ongoing problem that we hope to remedy in the next coming months.

5766   As we've submitted, greater communication and coordination between the CRTC and Industry Canada may alleviate problems such as this. Managing available radio frequencies, like one would manage a valuable limited resource may be a solution to spectrum management issue. It would be based on the needs of all broadcasters, the CRTC, Industry Canada, NAVCON and public need. They could look at securing spots on the FM dial and all Canadian markets for campus community radio, actively addressing the challenges of stations that are looking to move from low power status and gain frequency protection and even suggest options for stations to better reach the community, such as frequency swapping, something that my colleague from CJAM in Windsor did this past year -- and he'll be presenting next -- and relocation to a better position on the FM dial.

5767   Both commercial radio and the CBC need campus and community radio. This, of course, is mutually reciprocal. We need them too. They depend on us for listeners, for content, for future employees, for credibility and for long-term stability. A healthy radio system benefits all of us.

5768   I will only touch briefly on what CAB presented as I feel that they missed an opportunity here at this review to share tangible and workable options to partner with our sector.

5769   Campus and community radio needs to be recognized as a broadcaster first and perhaps second, third, maybe even fourth, recognized as a non-profit or charity.

5770   Many of us are non-profit organizations and there are some stations within our sector that have attained charitable status and it works well for them. For others, it is not a suitable option.

5771   A significant number of challenges need to be taken into consideration when looking at becoming a charitable organization.

5772   Administrative costs increase at stations are now required to issue tax receipts and file new reports and forms to the CRA. Fund-raising options such as pledge drives need to be changed to meet CRA regulations associated with charitable status.

5773   Station administrators may need to seek training in becoming professional fund-raisers and perhaps accountants.

5774   All this assumes that we can get this status, as many of us have tried and were unsuccessful in our attempts.

5775   One idea I thought of while trying to figure out ways for commercial radio to support our sector was through CCD initiatives.

5776   One example is to look at qualifying tower partnerships for CCD funding. If the campus community radio station needed to find a new home for their tower and transmitter and could partner with a commercial broadcaster, that broadcaster could use a portion of their CCD funding to help that station.

5777   Commercial stations have the benefit of being able to write off the purchase of a new transmitter as a capital expenditure, something non-profit and campus community radio stations cannot do. Tower rent utilities could be allowed as CCD benefits as well.

5778   The possibilities of matching the value of this CCD initiative through a financial contribution to the Community Radio Fund of Canada should also be explored and mandated, as a partnership such as this would work on both local and national levels.

5779   This has been an interesting process for me and CJSW. As I read you my presentation today, I actually can't help but feel a little bit of pressure, even though I'm here in Vancouver via remote, but I have a lot of ideas about campus and community radio.

5780   All these successes that I personally had and CJSW's had, finding a new tower home, working with hundreds of dedicated volunteers to make Calgary radio sound good each and every day, navigating the difficult road of finding the financial resources and mental stamina to, after eight years of set-backs, finally move our radio station to a new home in campus, should be carefully noted as it can be surprisingly easy to watch it all disappear rather quickly.

5781   I conclude with the comment on the idea of the power of one and how it can affect CJSW and any other campus community radio station in Canada.

5782   It only takes one misinformed student government or municipality to cut levy funding or hold up a development permit. Just ask CKMS, Sound FM in Waterloo.

5783   It only takes one missed opportunity to move a radio tower or missing a grant application deadline to affect a station's ability to deliver programming to their community.

5784   However, it also only takes one committed leader to take over a struggling station and turn it around to make it great again. It takes just one dedicated programmer to produce their show to shape the future of the culture of their city.

5785   Thank you for this great opportunity --

5786   THE SECRETARY: I'm sorry, can you just a little bit slow down because the interpreters have difficulty following.

5787   MR. SAUNDERS: Sure. Should I go back to any particular number?

5788   THE SECRETARY: No, it's okay. You can continue.

5789   MR. SAUNDERS: Okay. All right.

5790   Thank you very much for this opportunity, I will slow down in my responses, and thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity.

5791   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Saunders and welcome to our Vancouver facility.

5792   What is bringing you to Vancouver rather than somewhere in Alberta, Calgary or Edmonton?

5793   MR. SAUNDERS: I was a little bit worried I might get stuck in Red Deer or on the highway driving to Edmonton if a snow storm came up, so it was just as easy to come to Vancouver, surprisingly.

5794   THE CHAIRPERSON: I see. My colleague Rita Cugini will ask you some questions, but in your written submission and at your paragraph 12 and 13 you are dealing with third language programming by campus community radio station and you're the first -- the only one that has come up with the cost of such an operation.

5795   Could you elaborate on that?

5796   MR. SAUNDERS: Yeah. Well, we -- I mean, it's really hard to I guess put a value to programming, you know, how much is it worth to play a particular song, but when it comes to our multicultural programming, there's a commercial broadcaster in Calgary who actually charges multicultural communities to do broadcasting.

5797   We inquired and it's anywhere between 150 to $200 for an hour of programming, and a lot of these programmers will in turn go and sell advertising to pay for that time and then broadcast.

5798   So, what we did is we sort of broke out, you know, based on all the hours of programming that we do have on CJSW, how much is this valued? And, so, for one hour of third language programming on CJSW it's about $10,000 a year to bring that programming, based on what's been asked of a multicultural community to broadcast on a commercial broadcaster.

5799   THE CHAIRPERSON: So, you use the formula that Fairchild is using for and selling its own air time?

5800   MR. SAUNDERS: Yeah. And I would feel really -- I think it would be really a step backward for the mandate of community radio to have to say to a particular community, hey, you have to pay to come on to the radio.

5801   A really good example at CJSW is the Vietnamese radio program who's been on the air now probably for -- I'm going to hazard a guess -- over 15 years, probably 17, 18 years where that community has grown from people who came to Calgary with nothing and they're one of our more successful funding drive radio programs.

5802   I think their first funding drives were a couple of hundred dollars raised and now they raise a couple of thousand. So, it's been great for us to grow with that community.

5803   So, yeah, it's a pretty important thing. And obviously the money they do raise to pay for their program and the theory of the community spirit of our funding drive, it still falls significantly short to cover the cost of putting that show on the air.

5804   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

5805   I will ask Commissioner Cugini to ask further questions.

5806   Thank you.

5807   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair, and good afternoon, Mr. Saunders.

5808   MR. SAUNDERS: Good afternoon.

5809   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: One of the advantages of being on on the last day of the hearing is I get to ask you questions that refer back to what others have presented to us throughout the week.

5810   So, if I do refer to something that you either didn't follow or simply aren't aware of, do let me know.

5811   MR. SAUNDERS: Sure.

5812   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Because there are obviously some similarities in your presentation with what we have heard to day, and just as a point of reference, are you a member of the NCRA?

5813   MR. SAUNDERS: Yes, we are.

5814   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Okay. And do you for the most part agree with what they have submitted and what they presented to us at this hearing?

5815   MR. SAUNDERS: Yeah. I mean, there's some fine tuning and some of the nuances that are a bit different, but the spirit of what the NCR's presenting is certainly a component of what we believe in as well, yeah.

5816   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: As a campus station and you do refer to the student levies, what percentage of your overall revenue do the student levies represent?

5817   MR. SAUNDERS: Sure. I think I broke this down a little bit here.

5818   So, here's a quick breakdown. I guess the levy accounts to about 45 to 50 percent of our budget. Donations to the station, which includes funding drive and, say, setting up a booth where people can buy ear plugs at rock shows and things like that, 35 to 40 percent. On-air advertising amounts to less than 10 percent. I don't think we have ever broken that barrier.

5819   And summer student grants to help cover the cost of students to work four months during the summer is about 5 percent, no more than that.

5820   And then there's other supplementary funding we get. For example, in Alberta there's the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission and so there's some granting out of that every 18 months that we may qualify for but that's sort of a top-up.

5821   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: And that's the only grant that you would qualify for?

5822   MR. SAUNDERS: Well, it starts with the student grants. So we apply for grants both through an Alberta government program and the SCIP program federally.

5823   And then grant-wise the Alberta government has just introduced the Community Spirit Grant. So if you raise X amount of donations in the province they use a formula to both cap and have a minimum amount of money to give back to charities in Alberta, non-profit societies, to sort of match that if you're able to go out into your communities and raise money.

5824   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Okay.

5825   MR. SAUNDERS: And then like I said, the casino is sort of a double-edged sword type funding because you have to apply in advance what you will use the money for and then they will grant you a casino licence.

5826   But it's totally separate from bingo. Bingo doesn't really exist as an option ever since smoking has sort of left the building. Yes, it's almost a non-starter for a lot of groups as a charitable fundraiser.

5827   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Okay. We have heard from other campus stations that the student levy could be in jeopardy and that some universities are moving more towards a voluntary contribution to the campus radio.

5828   Is that the case with your station at all or is the student levy pretty much a guarantee?

5829   MR. SAUNDERS: Well, it's guaranteed as long as there's not a political conflict. I'll give you an example. We've gone for two increases in our levy over the past 10 years and were successful. In fact, the last increase we went from $4 to $5 per student per semester. It was probably our best ratio of student support. I think it was around 56-57 percent.

5830   But when we were trying to raise the levy back in the 80s to raise money for our transmitter, to go from $2 to $3, it was actually a tie in the vote and an overzealous chief returning officer cast the final vote to no, but it turned out that he voted twice as a student and we won by one vote.

5831   So that's why I guess the democracy deficit is always very interesting. I guess it does really count for one vote --

5832   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: The power of one.

5833   MR. SAUNDERS: -- in particular in CJSW's case.

5834   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: The power of one.

5835   MR. SAUNDERS: That's right, the power of one vote.

5836   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Have you applied for funds from the recently established Community Radio Fund?

5837   MR. SAUNDERS: Yes, we did.

5838   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: And did you receive it?

5839   MR. SAUNDERS: No, we were unsuccessful.

5840   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Okay. We have heard throughout these proceedings a couple of different models for accessing that Fund and I don't know if you are aware of the two in particular -- well, of course, the one from the NCRA.

5841   But just yesterday, Mr. Regan proposed another model and that is a matching funds model. Are you aware of that model?

5842   MR. SAUNDERS: I'm aware of Mr. Regan's position on a lot of things --

5843   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Okay.

5844   MR. SAUNDERS: -- as he shares the province we broadcast in, yes.

5845   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Of course. And, of course, you're aware of therefore the other models that have been brought forward?

5846   MR. SAUNDERS: Yes.

5847   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Which, in your opinion, would work best for your station?

5848   MR. SAUNDERS: Well, starting with the matching grant opportunity, it's -- you know what, it's going to be great for stations like CJSW and CKUA because I think we have some successful funding drives, and if that was to be the case, then it might work out pretty good. However, I can't see the Fund getting to a size that would actually sustain that.

5849   Second of all, I would probably, as sort of a brother/sister of our sector, probably not feel too comfortable in saying, oh, look, this station in this province is just trying to get off the ground, however, we're entitled to a significant amount of that Fund.

5850   So I guess my politically safe answer is I think it's a balance of everything. I think if stations are proactive in utilizing the revenue sources that they have in their communities, then the complement would be certainly the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

5851   I was actually fortunate enough to be president at that time and present that to the commercial radio hearings with my colleagues at that time and in support with the ARCs and everybody, and I think it works.

5852   It works in a lot of western nations around the world, although probably being cut back due to alibis of economic crisis, which I kind of have trouble believing sometimes. I know it's tough times but when you look at the economics of our sector and what we're able to pull off, I think it's a shortcut, I think it's cheating a little bit.

5853   But I will say that the funding model is -- I mean if stations are doing what they can and the perception to commercial radio is that it's not a handout and it's not used to compete with them, I think there's a lot of non-monetary and monetary things that can be combined both locally and nationally.

5854   I think if there was an effort to expand a news wire nationally for campus community radio, great. I think if you look at an example of making sure that a station can maintain its presence, then yes, I would probably forego not applying for a certain grant if I knew it could go towards that. But again, it's all situational.

5855   But I think the Community Radio Fund of Canada is a very important part of the whole equation. You're sort of getting into interesting territories when you break into each province.

5856   As Randy was talking about just before me, you know, there's not many return phone calls even on the government level to try to get funding, and we partner with so many groups that get Canadian Heritage funding, like dance groups and theatre companies and festivals, the whole works. We partner with them and we have sponsorship arrangements and such but it's often very difficult to access government funding that complements those relationships.

5857   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: And you do speak both in your oral presentation and of course in your written presentation about a partnership with the private sector --

5858   MR. SAUNDERS: Yes.

5859   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: -- and that perhaps that is another avenue to bolster your sector.

5860   And in particular, in your oral presentation, I wanted to talk to you about your concept of looking at qualifying tower partnerships for CCD funding. I am just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on that for me because you say:

"The CC station needed to find a new home for their tower and transmitter and if it can partner with a commercial broadcaster, that broadcaster could use a portion of their CCD funding to help that station." (As read)

5861   How would a portion of their CCD funding help a station in the tower and transmitter example that you gave us this afternoon?

5862   MR. SAUNDERS: Okay. I'll sort of speak from a personal experience that we're about to enter.

5863   A commercial broadcaster in the City of Calgary is entertaining the idea of erecting a new tower site. How much rent is, I don't know yet, but if I would be able to approach this private broadcaster and say, we would really like to be on your site, which they really want us on that site, if there was an opportunity to maintain our capital which is cash, which is often hard to come by, if it qualified that a $50,000 transmitter and some engineering fees and probably some assurance that rent would be either free or a significant campus and community rate could be given and they could then qualify that to say, look, this is kind of what we're doing to help out our sector, that could be an option. That's kind of where I'm coming from.

5864   I guess, second of all, it kind of ties into the spectrum management issues that we have, where the consolidation of a lot of radio stations on one tower could probably alleviate a lot of technical briefs, to say, all right, we've got seven stations that are potentially moving to this, including a campus community broadcaster, let's do the brief and figure out how much wattage and where they can fit into the whole design of that facility so that they can actually broadcast.

5865   We're currently at the CBC Radio tower site and we don't have our own location on the tower. We're in what's called a combiner. So if anything happens to the commercial radio stations, they would unplug us and we would go to our standby site until that problem was fixed. And fortunately for us, it has only happened for about two hours over the past seven years.

5866   But there we have somewhat of a partnership. I don't know if CBC wants me saying what kind of deal we have but we certainly worked out a --

5867   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Probably not.

5868   MR. SAUNDERS: Yes. We worked out a proper relationship with them to make it work.

5869   We still pay a lot of money for rent and tower utilities but in Calgary because we love sprawl, that tower location is actually fully surrounded by communities that the land is becoming more valuable than the tower leases. So that tower site might not even be an option and we may have to move in the next five or 10 years. So where do we go?

5870   And if we could partner with these companies that own towers, then that might be a solution nationally for some stations that are looking to increase wattage, secure their place on the FM dial and maybe even get an increase in wattage to better deliver their signal.

5871   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: So in your example, whether their contribution is in kind or with an actual outlay of cash, you're suggesting that that should qualify as part of their CCD contributions?

5872   MR. SAUNDERS: I think it would be a relatively painless way for them not to have to give us money but it would save us -- in our case it could save anywhere between -- if you're taking a year where you're setting it up and paying tower rent and utilities, that could be up to $100,000. So yes.

5873   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Okay, thank you.

5874   Just one other area that I have a couple questions to ask and that is the whole issue of reserving frequencies.

5875   You say every city, town and region should have two frequencies reserved for community campus radio stations to offer an alternative to the CBC and commercial radio.

5876   I think it's a laudable goal and my comment -- and therefore your reaction is what I'm looking for -- is just how realistic is that for Industry Canada to do or for this Commission to recommend that Industry Canada do this?

5877   MR. SAUNDERS: Well, I think the three-legged chair is always best, with three really strong legs, and two positions is, I think, maybe a little bit low even. But I think two would represent -- I mean look to Winnipeg, which has a population more than half the size of Calgary and yet has five non-profit broadcasters. Yet, in Calgary there's two, maybe three.

5878   So I think that setting that position to reserve two, I guess that's the precedent. It's like real estate, you know. We all have to share room around the table but we should all be seated at the table on the same chair and I think --

5879   To sort of jump back a bit, when I first started in campus community radio, I was always under the assumption that ironically enough the left side of the dial was always reserved for campus and community radio, you know -- whatever people want to read into that.

5880   But I think that was the idea behind it, was that, oh yeah, there's lots of room down here for, you know, these types of opportunities. And, you know, we're at 90.9 and at 90.3 we're having interference with a commercial broadcaster, and still there's three or four frequencies even further to the left of us on the FM dial.

5881   I look at television a little bit and say how come there isn't two to three public television stations that the public can learn to work a TV camera and do their own programming on television?

5882   I sort of look at the community access point as probably the most important thing to recognize because it is a bit of a public resource and I like watching people in my community make content, in particular in TV and listening on the radio.

5883   We just moved to the third floor in our building and our neighbour is the campus television station, which was once accessible at channel 10. It is now at channel 94 and inaccessible unless you have cable and I don't think that's appropriate.

5884   I think having two on the FM dial and maybe one or two on the AM, as CAB suggests, moving it up to four, would be fantastic.

5885   The Internet is a complement -- I don't mean to jump ahead. But the Internet -- we have a really great listenership on our Internet stream, which is about 100 people, 200 max, and that's huge. Yet, that's -- on commercial it's unmarketable, it's whatever. But it's people accessing it that way. I don't want to jump ahead but I just think it's fair to Canadians to have that much access to community radio and television.

5886   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: And I did ask the NCRA this question, so I'm going to ask you as well.

5887   Should your proposal be accepted, would these FM or AM frequencies be reserved -- for how long?

5888   MR. SAUNDERS: Well, I would say probably infinitely until broadcasters can get their, I guess, act together, and, you know, maybe you want a number. I would say it's probably reasonable for five years.

5889   But our cohorts in Lethbridge spent probably eight or nine years to get to FM and I saw probably seven or eight station managers go through that process.

5890   So, you know, without revenue coming in you're relying on the charity, if you will, of dedicated individuals. I mean Gabriola has given their example. CIRO in Kelowna is a CJSW alumni, Cam, who's trying to get that started and he's having difficulty securing a space. It's probably been three years for those groups of a serious attempt and probably another year and a half, two years just to actually maybe reach their goal if everything kind of works out. So it's almost five years is a minimum.

5891   That said, you know, somebody securing a frequency and not doing anything with it, that could be argued too but I think if there's mechanisms, maybe we have to jump back a bit.

5892   Are there mechanisms that allow stations to go through a process that will make sure that if they get to a certain point they don't fall all the way back to the beginning and they're able to pick up once that dedicated person moves on?

5893   I think that's the key. It seems to be a slope where if someone leaves they slide back quite a bit and if we can kind of remove that problem, we might have a solution that maybe we don't need five years or 10 years or something ridiculous as something infinite. But I think right now it has to be somewhat infinite because there's a lot of challenges to get it all going.

5894   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Well, as you know, definitely in most markets in this country where this Commission hears applications for new radio stations, whether they are commercial or community or campus, a fair bit of analysis goes into not only the preparation of the applications but as well, from a Commission point of view, market impact and market need. And I say the word "need" with a bit of emphasis because you referred to public need in paragraph 10 of your oral presentation this afternoon.

5895   So my question to you is: How would this Commission assess public need? I mean, is it as clearcut as saying, well, this market doesn't have a community and/or campus station, therefore there's a public need for one, and how do we weight that when we would also presumably have applications for commercial stations to use that same frequency?

5896   MR. SAUNDERS: Okay. To start, I would say the technical experts are going to know exactly what you can and can't do within the bandwidth, and so Industry Canada is probably the best but I'm pretty certain that there's maybe half a dozen at most companies in Canada that stations would access to get a technical brief put together.

5897   And it would be curious to sort of maybe look at saying to these companies, going, you know the FM band, and Industry Canada going what's allowable. It's almost like setting up a blueprint to say, look, this is the design, this is the geography of the FM bandwidth, what can we put in here and what's easily to be moved around?

5898   There's countless stories of stations swapping frequencies to allow a community broadcaster in and I think that's something where it shows that it works.

5899   But I also am hesitant to say that gauging public need can mean so many different things. I was surprised to find out how much Scandinavian influence is in Victoria, based on Randy's presentation.

5900   Can we look at Stats Canada and figure out which communities are represented? Again, going to our sector and the stations that we have or the languages and cultures that we have represented on CJSW, you know, is that based -- is there a need for the Caribbean community to have a voice on the radio? Absolutely. How commercially viable is it?

5901   I don't put a lot of faith in a commercial broadcaster to recognize those community groups or those genres of music and coming forward with a viable commercial model. It's always left to us to pick up those pieces. I've seen a lot of stations flip-flop but, you know, it's all for money, and I can respect that from the commercial radio standpoint.

5902   But I would say that, you know, working with community radio to ensure that they, again, have a seat at the table and that they have a chunk of real estate, which I thought sort of existed but I guess I was wrong when it came to how many stations came to the left side of the dial. But I think it's important for that. I think Canadians appreciate that stuff.

5903   We might not measure in BBM and I don't think we're supposed to but I think a lot of people know about community radio and if it's strong, then it's an important place to find out a differing opinion and just kind of go, oh, those campus kids are up to no good again or wow, the community is bringing in ferry reports and there's a really great show on there and this blues guy that lives down the street does an amazing show.

5904   I think it's really important to have that set. I don't know, someone might argue, well, it's an empty lot but it's an empty lot that one day a crazy old mansion will go up and it will be amazing.

5905   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Just a final question and it has to do with the level of spoken word required currently on campus. You're at 25 percent, correct?

5906   MR. SAUNDERS: Yes. We didn't calculate -- in the appendix that I sent we didn't really calculate our announcer's back-talk but yes, we're probably about 20 on a bad day -- maybe I should rephrase that -- on a good day, 20 percent and when DJs don't be quiet, 25.

5907   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: And do you think that that is sustainable going forward for campus stations?

5908   MR. SAUNDERS: Yes. I have listened to a lot of stations comment on the difficulties in producing spoken word. CJSW right now is going through a trial period of hiring a full-time news director. Now again, it's sort of more on the public affairs side of programming but seeing how Citytv recently laid off all their news people, it's becoming increasingly important to have some local terrestrial perspective.

5909   So I think there certainly should be a sliding scale a little bit, and as Randy pointed out earlier, I think some stations don't realize that back announcing, which our stations don't just say, oh, that was song so-and-so and artist so-and-so, people give background, they talk about the musicians, they talk about the context of the song, which I think is valuable spoken word.

5910   So I think a lot of stations might go back to their stations and go, ah, you know what, actually we're probably okay when it comes to the requirement. So once they realize that, maybe we're okay.

5911   But I think it's really important for our station, for example, to broadcast all the shows and I outlined some of them in that appendix, which, you know, we have a women's show. We take for granted -- when I first joined the station it was in 1990. For only about a year or two we had a gay and lesbian program and at the time it was revolutionary. It was crazy to have that type of programming.

5912   And I remember as a volunteer answering the phone. Threatening phone calls, why do you have those people on the radio? And now it's a given. For a lot of our campus stations, that's a super important part of our programming.

5913   But that said, you know, a small community of only 200 people, they're probably going to do news and spoken word and what have you but they might not be able to hit that maximum.

5914   We import a little bit of spoken word programming from the States with speaker series like "Alternative Radio" and "Democracy Now" and such. But we also partner with our pals in Nelson who do a really great cooking show but it's not even a cooking show. It's -- what's it called again -- "Deconstructing Dinner" and you might not look at your plate the same way. So we partner with all these people.

5915   So the short answer to your question is I think stations might have more spoken word than they think and I think that it's a really key component to hear people share an idea through their spoken word to their radio stations -- to their communities that they broadcast to. Yes.

5916   COMMISSIONER CUGINI: Mr. Saunders, thank you very much. Thank you for taking the time to travel to Vancouver for your presentation here this afternoon.

5917   Those are all my questions, Mr. Chair.

5918   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

5919   MR. SAUNDERS: Thank you.

5920   THE CHAIRPERSON: We will go to Commissioner Poirier who has a few questions.

5921   COMMISSIONER POIRIER: Hello, Mr. Saunders. I find in today's presentation that you became an engineer, so I will ask you an engineer question.

5922   CAB mentioned in their presentation, and I quote them:

"Given the scarcity of FM spectrum and issues related to this congestion, we consider that the use of AM frequencies or Internet radio stations for campus and community radio represents a more viable alternative." (As read)

5923   Could I get your comments on this statement, please?

5924   MR. SAUNDERS: Sure. With due respect to my colleagues at CAB and commercial radio, I don't believe that's a viable option.

5925   First off, AM radio is becoming increasingly talk radio. You look at the trend in the United States. Anyone who has driven across our neighbours to the South know that there's some pretty interesting dialogue happening on the AM dial down there and increasingly it's becoming more and more spoken word programming and I just think it's a step backwards.

5926   When FM was sort of introduced to Canadians and people who like the radio, it was seemingly revolutionary. It was clear. It was an amazing quality. Even the programming was revolutionary and I believe it still is on campus and community radio.

5927   So I think to go to AM is basically a step backwards.

5928   Internet doesn't have the volume, as one would think. I know everyone loves the Internet but I think that it complements and there's a number of challenges: music rights, copyright. We podcast but only spoken word programming for fear of a bill that could come through a tariff.

5929   And as I mentioned, we have an average of 100 to 200 people maxing out our listenership online. I mean the audience isn't there as much as we would like.

5930   I think one thing to sort of look at Internet is that the Canadian consumer, if you will, the listener probably likes certain programming on commercial radio and community radio and the CBC, but it sure is convenient, if they have missed the show, they can download it onto their iPod and then they can listen to it on their way to work and they might be working when their favourite show is on.

5931   So I think that needs to be explored but there's a lot of barriers that we have to overcome. And me as a manager, I'm a little hesitant to put music on our podcast for that reason.

5932   So to recap, AM is certainly not an option and the Internet is, I think, still in its infancy, to be totally honest. It was pointed out by somebody that iPhones and iPods now have FM adapters you can put on so you can pick up. So they're actually coming to FM for some content. So I think that should be noted as well.

5933   COMMISSIONER POIRIER: Thank you, it's very clear.

5934   I have another question. If the CRTC would support the new approach presented by the Community Radio Fund, yesterday I guess, based on outcomes -- have you heard about it?

5935   MR. SAUNDERS: A little bit.

5936   COMMISSIONER POIRIER: A little bit.

5937   MR. SAUNDERS: It was sort of like a deliverable?

5938   COMMISSIONER POIRIER: Yes, that's it. What should be, in your viewpoint, the outcomes the Fund should take into account?

5939   MR. SAUNDERS: Well, I think a lot of -- the Fund right now is it's in its infancy and hopefully matures. Our sector has. I think right now a lot of it's project-based.

5940   So measurables, outcomes, if you will, will be things like programming delivery. You know, a number of examples have been given, to hire a particular student or community member to carry out a mandate, deliver that program.

5941   Accountability is huge. I know if I was in the shoes of commercial broadcasters and I was giving a lump sum to an organization that didn't have that accountability, I would be -- I would certainly have questions, you know, as much as if CJSW got in a position where we can help out stations.

5942   I know my colleagues at the NCRA are snickering somewhere because I was the one who became treasurer because I didn't trust where the money was going and our budget was like $40,000 or something ridiculous.

5943   But I think stations are more accountable. There's been some lamenting about the paperwork associated with it but I think it's not all that arduous, to be totally honest, with some of that paperwork.

5944   I mean if you got -- and again, using CFUV, as I just heard their example, and Winnipeg CKUW, the money they got, they did have deliverables, they hired somebody, they did an outreach program to get more women to work and volunteer at the radio station. CKUW has done some amazing stuff with some of the project funding.

5945   So I think there's measurables that would include obviously delivery of a product. I mean we fill out -- for our casino funding we have to go into detail showing invoices and summaries of how we spent our money and it usually takes me about a day and a half.

5946   COMMISSIONER POIRIER: And what about volunteer involvement, should it be taken into account?

5947   MR. SAUNDERS: I think there should be a value associated with volunteer hours, for sure. The Alberta government -- we just applied for a grant to try to extend our news director, a six-month trial period, and one of the tables they asked us to fill out was how many volunteer hours are associated with this portfolio and they value volunteer hours at $15 an hour for this grant.

5948   If you allow me for a moment, the news director position, if we hire them on an above average minimum wage, we'll say $10 an hour minimum, the amount of volunteers that that paid person can coordinate through our news department is about 10 people on a regular basis and I've seen meetings where there's 25 volunteers wanting to get involved with news. Well, if those 20 -- we'll say 10 volunteers that are really core are spending, you know, 20 hours a week putting together a one-hour news program, there's a significant value with that.

5949   So I think the volunteer hours should be equated into the "cost" of everything but that's not to say that we're doing it all for free. You need the money to facilitate that.

5950   And outlining, again, those deliverables like programming and the hiring of somebody and perhaps even winning an award, I think those things could be easily measured.

5951   COMMISSIONER POIRIER: And my last question because I heard many times that the community and campus radio need predictable and stable funding.

5952   So if ever you can access new money, would you prefer it to be given to you on a yearly basis, a two-year basis, three years, how long, so you can employ new employees?

5953   MR. SAUNDERS: For employees, I think three-year is a really good window. One year to whet the appetite of that employee, a second year to deliver what they wanted to do in their first year and maybe didn't get finished, and perhaps the third year to not wrap up but to set the stage for the next three-year period. I think that's probably a minimum. A year is too short. Two years is probably fine but I think three would be good.

5954   COMMISSIONER POIRIER: Thank you.

5955   MR. SAUNDERS: Thank you.

5956   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Saunders, that will be it for you today. Have a nice return to Calgary, and I hope you don't have any distraction while returning back.

5957   Thank you very much.

5958   MR. SAUNDERS: Thank you very much.

5959   LE PRÉSIDENT: Madame la secrétaire.

5960   THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

5961   I would now invite CJAM Student Media/University of Windsor to make its presentation.

5962   Please introduce yourself, and you have 15 minutes. Thank you.

PRESENTATION

5963   MR. FOX: Thank you. That is a tough act to follow, but I will do my best.

5964   I would like to first thank the Commission for granting our station the opportunity to present our perspective on a variety of issues relating to the sector.

5965   My name is Adam Fox and I have held the position of Station Manager at CJAM for almost three years, but I have been working in campus and community radio for almost six years in a variety of capacities.

5966   I would like to echo the sentiments expressed by many of my peers during this public process, mostly notably the NCRA/ANREC. Kevin Matthews and Freya Zaltz are not only experts in assessing our sector, but they are people of high integrity. I want the Commission to understand that my station's stakeholders trust their judgement and hold their opinions in high esteem.

5967   The presentations this week have demonstrated our sector's prime strength and value to the broadcasting system of Canada is diversity. Campus/community radio, I will argue, is the only broadcasting mechanism ensuring diversity in Canadian radio.

5968   And yet despite the intrinsic diversity in our sector, I think we have been unequivocal, our sector needs funding, our sector needs protection, our sector needs insurance that Canada's varied and rich communities will have a stake in our country's constantly evolving broadcasting system.

5969   Having the benefit or burden of being the final panellist I must express some mixed feelings. I don't have the experience of Rob Schmidt, Chad Saunders or the breadth of knowledge demonstrated by presenters like Stephanie Kepman or John Harris Stevenson. I defer to these figures for larger, more nuanced questions.

5970   What I can tell you about is a struggle that community radio faces thanks to commercial consolidation of spectrum, specifically in my community. I got a crash course in that last year.

5971   You can't talk about Windsor without talking about Detroit. Frequency doesn't respect international borders. And I realize, of course, the Commission isn't worried about how far our signal reaches American audiences. But as someone who grew up with Detroit market FM radio, I can tell you that there is no conversation about Windsor radio without talking about Detroit and vice versa.

5972   CJAM has been reaching American audiences since we went FM. Our antennae is 1.6 kilometres from Joe Louis Arena. Go Wings!

--- Laughter

5973   And in 1983 our northern neighbours have been actively involved as programmers from the very beginning. And currently 10 to 20 per cent of our donations come from American listeners and a fraction of our advertising revenue as well.

5974   In 2009 we celebrated our 25th year on FM. Our terrestrial signal covers the City of Windsor and portions of surrounding suburban areas, including LaSalle and Tecumseh, as well as neighbouring portions of Essex County. Our signal still effectively covers all of Metro Detroit and south-western suburbs, including Deerborn and Downriver.

5975   We have 150 active volunteers, 120 programs and three permanent staff; two fulltime and one part-time.

5976   We boast incredibly diverse programming. Our music shows are devoted to genres and artists that are underrepresented or ignored by mainstream radio and the CBC, including local artists.

5977   Our spoken-word programs, which comprise 26.6 per cent of total programming, 66 per cent of which is produced in-house, are likewise diverse in nature and focus on local politics, animal rights, local environmental issues, a program focusing on issues affecting differently-abled people, which we now --

5978   THE SECRETARY: I am sorry.

5979   MR. FOX: Sorry, too fast?

5980   THE SECRETARY: Yes, a little bit.

5981   MR. FOX: Okay.

5982   THE SECRETARY: Thank you. Take your time, you are the last presenter.

5983   MR. FOX: Yes, I should learn from Chad.

--- Laughter

5984   Sorry. A program focused on issues affecting differently-abled people, which is now being syndicated through the NCRA as well. LGBTQ issues, feminist issues and women's rights, a program devoted to dispelling the misconceptions about Islam, a program devoted to local labour issues, et cetera. And we also bring University of Windsor Lancer sports and campus news to the community.

5985   Our weekend programming brings a true reflection of the community we serve with programming in over 10 languages, including Polish, Mandarin, Macedonian, Amharic, Ukrainian, et cetera.

5986   CJAM, like many campus/community stations in Canada, draws the majority of its revenue from a student levy. Despite our city's high unemployment and sputtering economy CJAM has enjoyed increases in fundraising and advertising revenue compared to figures previous to 2006.

5987   We attribute our success to a more professional approach. We have higher standards and expectations of our programmers and volunteers and we work hard to give them quality training and resources within the limitations of our sector.

5988   There is no shortage of issues to discuss, but I think I can be most helpful in describing some of the challenges facing our sector relating to spectrum scarcity and protection.

5989   As some of you may be aware, CJAM's place on the FM band in Windsor was recently challenged. Despite broadcasting at 456 watts since 1997, and at 50 watts since 1983, we were not considered a full-power radio broadcaster in the eyes of the CRTC. This was due to pressures from the FCC during our most recent application for a power increase in 1997.

5990   The FCC were concerned about CJAM's potential interference with a first adjacent station in Ann Arbor, Michigan, WUOM. The FCC were satisfied by the Commission's decision to approve the increase from 50 to 456 watts with the caveat that CJAM must retain its LP status, effectively leaving the station unprotected from applications for the channel.

5991   Things were quiet for 11 years. But in November of 2008 I received a letter from the CBC informing us that they were applying for our protected frequency in order to find a home on FM for CBC Radio 1.

5992   This resulted in many anxious phone calls from a still green station manager with little knowledge relating to spectrum, protected status and station classifications. And I think it is really important to note here that many community radio stations aren't staffed by people with extensive training in these kinds of matters that you are likely to see in commercial or the public broadcasting sector.

5993   Despite holding a journalism diploma from Humber College, I can only characterize my grasp of spectrum as spectral at best. Many staff at campus/community radio stations are more likely to be former programmers who work their way up through the station gaining knowledge and graduates from broadcasting schools.

5994   Luckily, the NCRA provides an incredible resource. And Kevin Matthews was able to get me in touch with some really skilled radio veterans with experience related to frequency challenge issues. And I'd like to say thank you to Freya Zaltz for all her help.

5995   Skipping some bureaucratic details, but an intervention was filed and the CBC eventually withdrew their application, likely for technical issues with the signal, WUOM, which I referenced earlier, rather than altruism.

5996   During this process, however, we discovered that the FCC had conditionally granted a licence to a commercial radio station to broadcast at 91.5 FM, which was our signal and channel at the time, in neighbouring Chinatown, Michigan, which is northeast of Detroit.

5997   In discussions with Industry Canada we learned that when that station went on the air we would be forced to vacate our home at the same channel. So we employed a broadcast engineering consultant to figure out if we could find a new home, and we did. We were very lucky to find a frequency that could squeeze us in. Detroit's FM band is incredibly congested.

5998   And in March of 2009 the CRTC approved our move to 99.1 FM granting us full power status and the validation and protection we have always needed. Our community is very fortunate that we were able to find a place on the dial. And at midnight on October 5th CJAM ceased broadcasting at 91.5 and the work began on our new antennae. At 2:15 p.m. October 7th CJAM went back on the air at 99.1 FM.

5999   The community is also very fortunate that CJAM had enough money in the bank to deal with this. Thanks to years of modest surplus and conservative spending and an account that was held with the Alumni Association at the University of Windsor, we were able to bear costs exceeding $26,000; that is the new antennae installation and freight and consulting and administrative costs associated with assembling the engineering brief for application to Industry Canada and the CRTC.

6000   I think it is also important to note that the cost of this project was high in terms of human resources as well. Some short-term projects, including special events and programming related to celebrating our 25th year on FM were either put on the shelf or kyboshed as the small staff worked on gathering community support and input for the application.

6001   It is my belief and the feeling of the members of our station and our community of listeners that the previous scenario can be easily avoided through regulation. The CRTC tends to defer to Industry Canada on questions of spectrum. While I understand the divisions between the two bodies, the CRTC has an obligation to uphold the Broadcasting Act of Canada. The Broadcasting Act states that the Canadian broadcasting system should reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.

6002   What would the radio landscape look like without the diverse programming of community radio? We are home to over 63 different languages of programming. As I've outlined here today our struggles in securing a frequency, I ask the Commission who will recognize the need to broadcast this programming if no one is able to find a radio signal to do so? Who will recruit and train the volunteers who host these shows if CJAM and campus radio is no longer able to?

6003   The assumption that we have to do this on our own with very limited resources, the resources we have at hand, I think needs to be changed if campus community radio is to deliver on its mandate.

6004   If radio frequencies are indeed public property and you consider that campus and community radio is the only opportunity most folks will have to actually access those airwaves, I think the conclusion is pretty clear. If the CRTC is obligated to uphold the Broadcasting Act, then they must ensure the presence and strength of campus and community radio.

6005   THE SECRETARY: I am sorry.

6006   MR. FOX: Is that too fast still?

6007   THE SECRETARY: Yes.

6008   MR. FOX: Okay.

6009   THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

6010   MR. FOX: Can I start that paragraph again, is that all right?

6011   THE SECRETARY: Yes, no problem.

6012   MR. FOX: Okay. If radio frequencies are indeed public property and you consider that campus/community radio is the only opportunity most folks will have to access those airwaves, I think the conclusion is pretty clear. If the CRTC is obligated to uphold the Broadcasting Act, they must ensure the presence and strength of campus/community radio.

6013   This extends not only to issues of funding, but to spectrum management as well, and protection.

6014   It is our feeling that the CRTC needs to work together with Industry Canada to ensure that there is always a place on the FM band for non-profit community access radio in every market. And in communities, no campus/community station currently exists on the band at places held for it. We feel these considerations need also apply to any and all emerging technology and media. Radio is changing and community radio must have a stake in all relevant forms and methods of content delivery.

6015   Any arguments suggesting relegation of community radio to less popular or inferior systems of content delivery, in my opinion AM, cable and streaming internet, are suspect. It is also our feeing that the Commission should protect low-power or developmental campus/community radio stations for the above-stated reasons, especially in situations, areas and markets where there is no other community radio provider.

6016   And quickly regarding the concept of community radio as complimentary. We do not compliment commercial radio by offering something contrary or polar, we compliment the broadcasting system by bringing accurate reflections of our respective communities. Community radio is defined by the communities they serve. We should not be defined by or forced to adjust to the whims and caprice of commercial programming.

6017   In closing, we have seen huge strides in our sector in the past decade and we are, in many ways, a stronger and louder voice for the communities we serve. However, our limited and tenuous resources will continue to threaten our ability to represent our communities.

6018   Considering that private broadcasters have long enjoyed profiting on public property, we feel commercial radio is obligated to financially support our sector. The radio airwaves are public property and community radio is, with all due respect to the CBC, public radio in the truest and most literal sense.

6019   Before closing, I would like to again express my gratitude to the Commission for granting our station the opportunity to tell our story and bring our ideas and comments to this proceeding. It is my hope that the Commission recognizes not only the challenges reported by members of sector this week, but also the various successes and positive outcomes.

6020   I am proud of what our station accomplishes and it is my hope that the Commission will recognize the vital importance of a stronger community radio sector in Canada.

6021   Thank you for your time, and I welcome any questions.

6022   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Fox.

6023   I will ask Commissioner Simpson to go first with the first round of questions.

6024   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Thank you very much.

6025   What would you say is the average number of years that you would experience with management of the station? Is the station totally volunteer or do you have some paid management?

6026   MR. FOX: Oh no, we have paid staff; we have two fulltime and one part-time. And what would I say average has been for our organization?

6027   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Yes.

6028   MR. FOX: It is varied in the different capacities. I think, on average, the managers have been longer. So I think like the Station Manager position generally between three to six years, I guess on average four years or so. And the program director -- well, we had a music director that was there for seven to nine years. Windsor doesn't have a lot of job creation going on, so people that can get an average paycheque are likely to stay. So I think probably longer than most other stations around the country, but I would defer to Kevin on that.

6029   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Where I am coming from is the volunteer turnover is predictably shorter, the burnout shorter..?

6030   MR. FOX: Yes, absolutely.

6031   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: In a campus environment it is more skewed to the term that they are at the campus as a student.

6032   MR. FOX: Sure.

6033   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: So I was trying to get a better understanding for the record of the longevity of management and how much accumulated knowledge you have to draw on when you get situations like that.

6034   MR. FOX: Yes. Organizational memory has been a gigantic challenge for our station and I think, speaking broadly, for the sector. Because, for the reasons I think referenced in my report, that we just don't have the training. And I have had to learn a lot of tasks that I wasn't prepared for in this job. And a lot of that was associated with digging through unorganized files and records that weren't kept correctly and, you know, doing the back work that I needed to do.

6035   I mean, the wheel, we continually have to reinvent it in this sector.

6036   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Congrats on having a bank account to be able to get yourself out of the dilemma you illustrated earlier with your challenge to your spectrum.

6037   Is your new frequency, 99.1, is it low-power still or are you protected --

6038   MR. FOX: No, we are full power now, yes.

6039   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Really? Well, that is another bonus.

6040   MR. FOX: That is huge, yes. The actual -- the range, it is different though. Because in the middle of the dial there is more interference from larger commercial radio broadcasters. So some segments that we hit much clearer before we are not hitting as clear. But it has had a positive impact in other areas too, so I guess it is somewhat even.

6041   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: The $26,000 for the costs to do the changeover, did that include the engineering costs as well?

6042   MR. FOX: Yes.

6043   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: It did? That was the whole -- good deal.

6044   MR. FOX: Yes, we shopped around.

6045   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: The help that you got from NCRA was -- I can well imagine that any help would have been welcome, but was it as complete as you would have liked or did it simply just add to the arsenal of what you were trying to gain in terms of resources?

6046   MR. FOX: You know, when I got that FedEx letter from the CBC we were actually just kicking off our annual fundraiser, which is a time of year where we are just colossally busy, you know, long hours, overtime, whatever, we are just -- we are there. So, you know, the timing couldn't have come at a worse time.

6047   But I called Kevin, you know, and I think Kevin would be the first to say that he -- you know, he didn't necessarily have every answer right at the get-go. But as, you know, his job is to kind of direct me to the resources I need. And Freya Zaltz is -- I mean, she is just a champ, right? And he got me in touch with her and, yes, she had all the answers I needed, and when she didn't, she put me in touch with the right people.

6048   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Terrific.

6049   The line of questioning that I am getting into, just so you will know where I am going, is we have heard consistently and we have seen through the history of this category that funding is an issue. And while a lot of dialogue and a lot of regulatory effort goes into the content and the service side of the sector, the pain that seems to keep management and volunteers awake at night is more on the issue of infrastructure and operational costs.

6050   MR. FOX: Yes.

6051   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: And in my asking about the help that you get from associations, they are working with what funding is available to them. And again, it seems to be coming with the attachment of content development and service.

6052   So you seem to be able to fly in the face of the trend, in that your funding for operation is going up. First of all, why is that? And number two, what is your percentage of fundraising as opposed to your total operating budget, you know, as a total nut?

6053   MR. FOX: Well, I will get to the fundraising percentage in a second.

6054   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Sure.

6055   MR. FOX: But I can attribute our ability to survive, you know, a $26,000 bill to the fact that we -- you know, we don't have to rent tower space, we have a great relationship with our student union, management. The only costs we have monthly that come in are coming from our telephone bill and our mailing costs.

6056   So, you know, if you added up all of the value in the services that we receive, we would be I think just as in trouble as anybody else. We just -- we happen to have a great situation.

6057   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: You are keeping your costs down or they are less then par?

6058   MR. FOX: Yes, exactly.

6059   And our fundraising has gone up. Right now, you are looking at about 10 to 15 per cent of our funding comes from fundraising. Previous to 2006, I think the record we had for a fundraiser was around $15,000, but it was more on average of about $12,000 to $13,000, and now we routinely raise between $22,000 and $28,000 a year. And I think, you know, why -- I mean, it flies in the face of the finances, the figures in our communities for sure.

6060   But I think in the last four or five years we have had some incredible -- we got really lucky with hiring great people, and we have people that do more with less, and that is a terrible cliché in a private industry, but it is true. We have got really talented people, we have caught lightning in a bottle and we have volunteers that are better equipped and better trained to make better radio and the community has responded in kind.

6061   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: On the external funding sources. Take, you know, the top of the heap, which is CCD. How much of that do you go after? How much do you get?

6062   MR. FOX: We went after a CRFC grant this summer, we didn't get it, we pitched two different granting ideas. And I have to be honest, we weren't all that excited to make the pitch, because they are project-based grants, which means more work for two fulltime staff members.

6063   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Sure.

6064   MR. FOX: Cassandra Caverhill is our Program Coordinator and the amount of work that she does in her office is mindboggling. She coordinates 150 plus volunteers, she handles all the production, the training, the orientation, recruitment, you know, just an incredible amount of work.

6065   You know, we talked about it long and hard and I didn't really want us to apply for it, to be honest, because I didn't think that she could handle the strain and burden of training a new employee and managing another employee in her department. But we did it anyway, because we feel the grants -- we feel it is important, if there is money available, we need to prove that we need it, so we went ahead and did it.

6066   Was I necessarily crestfallen that we didn't get it? Maybe not but, you know, it still would have been positive. But we would like to see more grants -- you know, if we could remove some of the project-based outcomes out of the grant itself, I think we could be much more successful.

6067   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: In other words, it is a zero sum game, it creates extra work --

6068   MR. FOX: Yes, make work.

6069   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: -- it gives you extra revenue, but it creates extra costs.

6070   MR. FOX: Exactly. You know, we need to be able to hire people, we need more human resources.

6071   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Right. A question I asked throughout the week to the organizations that support community and campus radio, was whether there would be an appetite at the station level and the management level if the application of CCD money was widened somehow. I don't know if this is achievable, but it has -- you know, it is sticky money right now and there are a couple of conditions, as you have just indicated. But if it had the potential of being able to apply itself to broader issues.

6072   The area I am going here, is in its ability to be able to pay for other services you may need like engineering --

6073   MR. FOX: Right.

6074   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: -- like brief writing for regulatory compliance and that sort of thing. Does that have an interest?

6075   MR. FOX: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the more ways we can apply the funding to the various needs we have would be great. You know, obviously you need the flexibility and you need I understand, you know, accountability and being able to show how we are spending the money and how it is having a positive outcome.

6076   But for us, it is just a question of, yes, the resources are the huge thing. The human resources are something that we need to find funding for.

6077   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: On spoken-word you are right up there in the percentage category. Two questions. First, are you finding that that is a strain? And, second, is that your ratio of spoken word is about two-thirds originated, one-third approximately --

6078   MR. FOX: Yes.

6079   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: -- outside sourced. Could you tell me where that source is coming from or sources?

6080   MR. FOX: Yes. I will echo the sentiment or actually the facts of some of our other presenters. Chad Saunders mentioned Alternative Radio, Democracy Now, we carry both of those programs as well. And some nationally Canadian syndicated programs like Let's Get Baked with Mat and Dave, which is a baking show. So we carry stuff like that.

6081   But yes, it is difficult. We have found, you know, one of the things that we would love to hire is someone that was charged with a news department. We have wanted a news department forever. And it is just so much work to actually get journalism on the air, it just requires an incredible amount of time and energy and we are always struggling to...

6082   Yes, I mean, I wish that 100 per cent of our spoken-word programming was locally produced. But the bottom line is we just -- you know, you get some volunteers that come in and they want to do a show and they are excited, you know. And they do a good show for a week or two weeks but then, you know, retaining spoken-word programmers is incredibly difficult.

6083   We are actually going through a spate right now where we are losing I think two or three shows in the span of a month, and it is just -- you know, it is just part of the nature of volunteerism, it is difficult to maintain.

6084   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Sure. On the subject of carriage of your signal. You have gone through the slings and arrows of a frequency change. We are at a diminishing return situation with spectrum.

6085   MR. FOX: Right.

6086   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: But at the same time we are seeing doors opening up through the internet. And then in the middle there is cable carriage as well.

6087   Now, your station started out, if I recall, as pretty much a closed-circuit station a long time ago.

6088   MR. FOX: Yes. Yes, Canada Student Radio Windsor, CSRW.

6089   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Yes. And then you went to an AM frequency, which I will be you wish you still had or it's got to be good for something.

--- Laughter

6090   Anyway, my question is, out of your student base, what percentage do you think would or do listen to your signal through cable carriage? I am presuming that you also stream?

6091   MR. FOX: We do stream, yes.

6092   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Okay. So what do you think the split would be between cable and internet? You can guess.

6093   MR. FOX: Guess? I don't know if any of our students listen cable. You know, we have seen -- I know what our peak number is as far as listeners online, it is 11, you know, and that is not an appreciable number or a significant number.

6094   So I feel like these are -- I think Chad mentioned the notion of like these are complimentary services, you know, and I think that they are. I think it is important that we have a stake in whatever methods of dissemination are available. But again, I think these are kind of ancillary methods.

6095   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: On the internet side of things, assuming that the destination we are all headed to is a converged world --

6096   MR. FOX: Yes.

6097   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: -- do you see at any point in the immediate future where you might see the merit in having, for the entire community and campus radio industry, or let's just say the campus industry in Canada, the campus stations, a web portal so that they would be easier to find? So that student bodies from one campus could listen to another, for example. Would this be something that would be a good service? Something like --

6098   MR. FOX: Assuming like if NCRA had a web portal from where you could access all..?

6099   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Yes.

6100   MR. FOX: I mean, that kind of already exists, to a degree.

6101   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Yes.

6102   MR. FOX: Yes. I mean, absolutely. I think we have to -- like, you know, it is the wild wild west, right? Like, who knows how this media is going to be used by the consumers and listeners but, yes, I mean I think that would be great.

6103   But I think what we are seeing is, you know, I think internet stream is a nice thing to have, but increasingly the way people are consuming media now, I think it is headed towards on-demand content.

6104   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Yes.

6105   MR. FOX: And it has less to do, I think, with -- I mean, to me it is kind of sad, because I feel like live radio is live radio. But, you know, consumers have so much choice now, they can listen to stuff whenever they want to. And making sure that we are not -- that gate keeping doesn't keep us out of that equation is critical, so that our programs can be available on-demand.

6106   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Oh, believe me, if you think the on-demand challenge is looming over your head --

6107   MR. FOX: Oh, I know, universal.

6108   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: -- you should see the industries that are sweating the same bullets.

6109   I guess I have just a couple more questions. Being that this is the last session of the day, and by your own admission, I would love to just -- you know, let's just take the gloves off and have some fun here and learn.

6110   MR. FOX: This is what I am worried about.

--- Laughter

6111   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: The first question I want to ask is, almost to a man or woman, we hear from the broadcasters, they bristle at the suggestion that the Commission should wring our hands to make sure, through regulatory restrictions, that community and campus stations serve markets that are not being served by the public broadcaster and that this seems to be an unreasonable request.

6112   Why is that? Is that shared by you? And if it is shared by you and others, tell me more.

6113   MR. FOX: I don't think it is the Commission's responsibility necessarily to, you know, start-up community radio station markets that aren't being served. I think the most important point is that if a community decides it wants one, you know, that they have every opportunity to do so.

6114   You know, it is not incumbent on the Commissioners to purchase equipment or make sure, okay, we have to start one, there is a radio frequency here, you know.

6115   But just to make sure that should a community get their stuff together and decide that they want to do that, because the airwaves are public property, that they have an opportunity to fulfil it. That is all.

6116   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: If a community station is given more latitude -- and, again, one of the things we were talking about this week is thinner, lighter legislation and regulatory requirement and more imposition of self-jurisdiction, self-management through some kind of mechanism.

6117   Do you think, given the turnover of the volunteer side of the stations, that that is a realistic objective or realistic scenario?

6118   MR. FOX: I think that's only going to work if we have some secure funding for human resources; you know what I mean?

6119   Because organizational memory is so tenuous and difficult to maintain in the sector, I think that question almost needs to be answered first before the other one; do you know what I mean?

6120   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: M'hmm.

6121   MR. FOX: I'm torn in a couple of ways on this because I understand the Commission's perspective and I can understand how the private sector would want some kind of assurances or outcomes that can be demonstrated from the money that they contribute.

6122   But at the same time, you know, I have to echo the sentiments expressed by NCRA and some of the other interveners who, you know, at the centre of what we do is we are a media outlet for the community and ultimately every community's different and I think, yes, self-determination is important so that the accurate communities can be reflected, the real communities that are in these areas can get on the air and do it.

6123   So, I'm in favour of whatever regulation or deregulation supports that.

6124   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Do you think that the private broadcasting industry is out of economic necessity or hardship losing its ability to engage and serve the community as well as it could or should and that this is an opportunity for community and campus stations?

6125   MR. FOX: Yes, I do. I don't think that that's necessarily something -- you know, I know it's part of their licence agreement to do those things, but obviously it's not their first concern but it is ours and that's why, you know, we are complementary in that way.

6126   I think we're complementary in how this sector fulfils the Broadcasting Act of Canada. I don't think we're complementary from a programming perspective necessarily, or should be defined complementary as far as the programming is concerned.

6127   Does that make sense?

6128   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Yeah, it does. That's good.

6129   Last question or questions. Democracy. Particularly in my view, I shouldn't say that, not in my view, but in my observation, the campus station community is very proud of the fact that it represents what they consider to be a true democracy; you know, whether that's through its access to the public spectrum or just, you know, what creates voluntarism.

6130   How realistic is that? From a purely democratic standpoint, you as a programmer, is it just as likely or capable that interest groups or views that are not necessarily shared by the community that run a station can find its way through the -- I don't want to say the politics -- but the guidance of the management at the community station?

6131   Like, for example, if the United Empire Loyalists or the Monarchist League or the Libertarian party or the Pro-Life Movement --

6132   MR. FOX: Sure, yeah.

6133   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: -- came forward, would you give them fair shake, or would they have a -- I shouldn't say you --

6134   MR. FOX: Program director or --

6135   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: -- but would they get a fair shake in the campus environment?

6136   MR. FOX: Yeah. You know, I think our program coordinator takes balance and fairness seriously. We're going through a little bit of that right now with some specific things that we're dealing with as far as religious programming is concerned and folks blurring the line with some of the things they're doing.

6137   So, I feel like yeah and, you know, I think the decision-making process, because community radio stations have, you know, elected board of directors, I think you've got every opportunity for democratic leadership to guide the radio station and make hiring decisions and over arching policy decisions and through that mechanism, to hire people that, you know, are entrusted to exercise the policies of a given radio station in these fair and equitable ways.

6138   So, yeah, I mean it's difficult. I was talking with Kevin over this at lunch. It's like, you know, it's our job to represent our communities as accurately as possible, but that's an ideal and a concept that's never probably totally realized. So, I think our goals are achieved through the pursuit of that goal.

6139   Does that make sense?

6140   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Does it make sense to you?

6141   MR. FOX: I think so.

6142   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Okay. I'm finished. I'll just leave you with two words. Go Mustangs.

--- Laughter

6143   COMMISSIONER SIMPSON: Thank you very much.

6144   MR. FOX: Thank you.

6145   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Fox.

6146   Madame la Secrétaire.

6147   MR. FOX: Thank you.

6148   THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

6149   For the record, the interveners who did not appear and were listed in the agenda will remain on the public file as not appearing interveners.

6150   This completes the agenda of this public hearing.

6151   Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

6152   THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much to everybody who have participated in this public hearing. I know that there are still representatives of the associations around. I think the briefs that you submitted, all of the associations and all of the interveners, were very comprehensive and will allow the Commission, I hope, to come up to the right solution, but at least we have a full record.

6153   I think it was a great hearing and every one of you contributed to the best of your knowledge and we appreciated it very much.

6154   Thank you.

6155   Ceci complète l'audience publique. Merci à tous les participants. Comme je l'ai dit tantôt en anglais, je tiens à souligner la qualité des mémoires déposés, ainsi que des présentations que nous avons entendues au cours de cette audience. Merci.

--- Whereupon the hearing concluded at 1507

   REPORTERS

____________________      ____________________

Lynda Johansson         Jean Desaulniers

____________________      ____________________

Monique Mahoney         Madeleine Matte

Date modified:

2010-01-21