Transcript, Hearing 11 February 2025

Attendees and Location

Held at:

Explorer Hotel
4825 49th avenue
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

Attendees:

• Hearing Chairperson: Nathalie Théberge
• Members: Joanne Levy, Commissioner, Manitoba and Saskatchewan
  Nirmala Naidoo, Commissioner, Alberta and the Northwest Territories
• Legal Counsel: Samuel Beaumier
• Hearing Secretary: Sonia Gravelle
• Hearing Manager: Line Joyal

Table of Contents

PHASE I

Presentations

22 506992 N.W.T. Ltd.

426 Vista Radio Ltd.

PHASE II

Presentations

826 506992 N.W.T. Ltd.

863 Vista Radio Ltd.

Undertakings

248 Undertaking

415 Undertaking

Transcript

Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
11 February 2025
Opening of Hearing at 10:00 a.m.

Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

‑‑‑ Upon commencing on Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 10:00 a.m.

1 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning, everyone. Please take your seats. We’re about to begin.

2 So good morning and thank you to everyone for being with us in beautiful, warm Yellowknife along with the people joining online. My name is Nathalie Théberge, and I’m the vice‑chair of Broadcasting at the CRTC, and I will be the Chair of this Committee for this public hearing. Welcome. Very excited, thrilled to be here. My first time in Yellowknife.

3 So before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered today in Chief Drygeese Territory. From time immemorial, it has been the traditional land of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. We respect the histories, languages, and cultures of all other Indigenous peoples in the area, including the North Slave Métis Alliance, and all First Nations, Métis, and Inuit whose presence continues to enrich our vibrant community. Those joining the hearing online may be on different Indigenous lands, and I would encourage you to do the same with respect to the lands from which you are joining us today.

4 So as many of you know, the CRTC is an independent quasi‑judicial tribunal that regulates the Canadian communications sector in the public interest. We hold public consultations such as this one on telecoms and broadcasting matters and make decisions based on the public record.

5 We have convened today’s public hearing to discuss the broadcasting needs of Yellowknife, and in particular, to consider two applications for a new commercial FM radio station to serve this community.

6 Let me start by providing some context for our discussions today. Early last year, the CRTC issued a call for application for a new radio station to serve Yellowknife. In doing so, the CRTC acknowledged that recent crises like those caused by the COVID‑19 pandemic and the wildfires demonstrated that increased radio content in the territory and in the North more generally would benefit those who live in the region.

7 The CRTC received two applications for a new commercial radio station in Yellowknife, one from 506992 N.W.T. Ltd., operating as Cabin Radio, and the other from Vista Radio Limited. The CRTC will consider each proposal, including the plans and commitments of both applicants regarding local programming, their commitments to reflect the interests and the needs of the community, and the sustainability of their business plans. In addition, the CRTC will consider the valuable input provided by the members of the Yellowknife community. We are pleased to have so many of you taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak with us today.

8 So I would like to take a moment now to introduce the rest of the Panel. Joining me today, we have Nirmala Naidoo, commissioner for Alberta and the Northwest Territories, and Joanne Levy, commissioner for Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Thank you both for being here today.

9 Let us now turn our attention to the hearing process and how things will proceed over the next two days. I plan to hold a tight schedule, but we’ll have enough time to hear everyone. Bear with me.

10 So I will now turn to our hearing secretary, Sonia Gravelle, for some housekeeping.

11 Sonia?

12 THE SECRETARY: Merci.

13 Before we start, I would like also to take a moment to introduce the Commission staff assisting us today: Line Joyal, our hearing manager, and Samuel Beaumier, our legal counsel.

14 I will now go over a few housekeeping matters to ensure the proper conduct of the hearing.

15 Please note that simultaneous interpretation services in English and French will be available throughout the duration of the hearing. We would like to remind participants that during their oral presentations they should provide for a reasonable delay for the interpretation while respecting their allocated presentation time. If someone needs an interpretation device, they are available in the back of the room.

16 Veuillez également noter que l’audience est retranscrite mot pour mot par le sténographe. La transcription de chaque journée sera affichée sur le site Internet du Conseil le jour ouvrable suivant. Veuillez de plus noter que les documents seront disponibles sur X, sur le compte du Conseil à @CRTCaudiences en utilisant le mot‑clic #CRTC.

17 We would like to remind you that pursuant to section 41 of the Rules of Practice and Procedures, you must not submit evidence at the hearing unless it supports statements already on the public record. If you wish to introduce new evidence as an exception to this rule, you must ask permission of the Panel of the hearing before you do so.

18 Please note that if parties undertake to file information with the Commission in response to questioning by the Panel, these undertakings will be confirmed on the record through the transcript of the hearing.

19 The hearing is expected to last two days. We will advise you of any scheduling changes as they occur. Participants are reminded that they must be ready to present on the day they are scheduled. Also, when you are in the room, we would ask that you take the time to familiarize yourself with the emergency exits. Finally, please make sure to speak clearly in your microphone and, if you are not speaking, to put your microphone on mute.

20 We will now begin with Phase I of the hearing with the presentations from applicants. We will hear item 1 on the agenda, which is the application by 506992 N.W.T. Ltd., operating as Cabin Radio, for a broadcasting licence to operate an English‑language commercial FM radio station in Yellowknife. Please introduce yourself, and you will then have 20 minutes to make your presentation.

21 MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you very much.

Presentation

22 MR. WILLIAMS: Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning, Commission staff. Thank you so much for being here in Yellowknife. We’re glad you’re getting the authentic experience out there this morning.

23 We, too, are grateful to be on Chief Drygeese Territory, home since time immemorial to the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. Home, too, to vibrant Métis and Inuit communities here, and of course there are representatives in Yellowknife as well of many Indigenous peoples from across the North.

24 My name is Ollie Williams. I’m a former BBC senior broadcast journalist. I’ve been the editor and news director at Cabin Radio since our foundation, about eight years ago now. I’m one of five owners of Cabin Radio, all Yellowknife‑based, and I’ll be leading today’s presentation on the company’s behalf.

25 Before we begin our formal presentation, I’ll take you through our representatives on the panel here this morning. To my left is Andrew Goodwin, the general manager of Cabin Radio and one of five co‑owners alongside myself, Jesse Wheeler, Scott Letkeman, and Sarah Pruys. Sarah, I’m afraid, can’t be with us on this panel today as intended, owing to medical travel, which is a fact of life, I’m afraid, in the North, and of course we have to abide by that.

26 Andrew has been our general manager since Cabin Radio’s inception. He’s spent most of his life in Yellowknife aside from short periods in Australia. His business experience comes from years spent working within sales in the North’s mining and construction industries. He oversees Cabin Radio’s sales and accounts as well as many of the technical sides of our operations.

27 To Andrew’s left is Jesse Wheeler, co‑owner and co‑host of our daily morning show, Mornings at the Cabin. Jesse was born and raised in Yellowknife. His dad, Ross Wheeler, was one of the city’s best‑known and most loved physicians for many years. And his mum, the late Gail Cyr, who only recently passed away, was one of Yellowknife’s first Indigenous city councillors and made decades of contributions to arts, civics, and reconciliation. Gail was inducted into the Order of Canada in 2022. She would have loved being here. We are very much here in her spirit and with her blessing. And Jesse has harnessed his career as an actor to lead our morning show for two hours of live broadcasting each weekday, as he has for the past seven years.

28 To my right is Sarah Erasmus, the owner of Erasmus Apparel here in Yellowknife and the host of a two‑hour weeknight show alongside another broadcaster of ours who I think is in the audience, Camilla McEachern. Sarah is the daughter of former Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus and comes from the community of Ndilo, one of two Yellowknives Dene First Nation communities, which is just to the north of Yellowknife’s Old Town, a couple of kilometres from here. Sarah has built a thriving clothing business, and she’ll address you shortly about her on‑air role for Cabin Radio.

29 Directly behind me is Scott Letkeman, now Cabin Radio’s program director, who has worked in Yellowknife broadcast media for more than a decade and before that did so in Winnipeg. Scott and his wife Nicole have just welcomed their first baby here in Yellowknife, and young Porter Letkeman is the first Cabin kid among our ownership group, and is I believe to the back left of the panel in the very obvious position of being in the stroller. That’s a source of great excitement to us. I mean, that’s a milestone in itself in Cabin Radio’s growth and its history. It’s fantastic for us. Scott controls our music programming and all aspects of station sound as well as leading some of our creative campaigns and events.

30 On Scott’s left is Andrew Forsyth, who has been Cabin Radio’s broadcast consultant for the past six years, along with Rita Cugini, who is our regulatory consultant.

31 And I’ll just complete the introduction to our ownership group. Sarah Pruys has been a resident of the North for just about a decade. She has been with Cabin Radio since 2018, and she plays a key role across our commercial and multimedia operations. As I say, she can’t be with us today.

32 I’d also like to quickly recognize before we start our remaining members of staff, though they don’t form panel members today: our assistant editor Emily Blake, our reporters Aastha Sethi and Claire McFarlane, and our host and account manager Sam Pitre. And with that, I’m ready to begin our formal presentation, if the Panel is ready.

33 Cabin Radio is not a new entrant to the market. We have been operating a live audio stream online as though it were an FM frequency since March 2018. And we have done so with a lineup of broadcasters, music, spoken‑word content, and advertising that almost exactly replicates the FM service that we intend to offer. The only difference is the FM service will be even better, with commitments from us to increase our spoken‑word offering to deliver even more current affairs broadcasting than is already the case. And we are the city’s market leader in that.

34 To begin, I’m going to present an overview of highlights from our past seven years of operations. We think these also speak directly to how we intend to act as an FM broadcaster.

35 Firstly, Cabin Radio has won the Canadian Association of Journalists’ national award for daily excellence for our coverage of the NWT’s 2023 wildfires. That is a major award won against the likes of the CBC and other national networks. You will find hundreds of letters of support and interventions in this proceeding endorsing our journalism as the reporting they have relied on through crises and that they want to hear on FM.

36 We have invested heavily in the welfare of our audience through inventive rapid‑reaction programming during the COVID pandemic and the wildfires that no other Yellowknife broadcaster attempted, as is documented in the letters of support from multiple territorial politicians. One of them, who is now a government minister, said in the legislature that without Cabin Radio there would be no effective crisis communications in the Northwest Territories.

37 During COVID, we had half‑hour live nightly programming, reaching thousands each day, featuring the premier alongside the chief public health officer on multiple occasions. With FM, that could have reached so many more. We offered free advertising to the many businesses in Yellowknife that needed help in the immediate aftermath of 2023’s wildfires. With FM, that support could have reached many more.

38 Cabin Radio has invested in tens of thousands of dollars worth of support for northern performers: live broadcasts at festivals, on‑air appearances, promotional work. And you can see that in letters of support from Folk on the Rocks, from Carmen Braden, Grace Clark among others. And we have literally gone the extra mile: we have dug up festival sites; we have placed cable underneath the ground to provide the kind of cutting‑edge live broadcasting of music that you might normally find only in major southern centres.

39 And Cabin Radio has raised huge sums for community initiatives. Extreme Duck Racing, where we send fifteen hundred ducks over Northwest Territories waterfalls, has raised tens of thousands of dollars for NWT youth in partnership with Canadian Tire. Our Adult Spelling Bee raised thousands for literacy. Burger Week has raised more than $30,000 for food security while helping Yellowknife restaurants. You’ll find our logo on the boards of hockey arenas, on the brochures of charities, and on the backs of young athletes as well.

40 We have lifted the business community around us and developed a whole new segment of the market, by which I mean our audio live stream and website have attracted local and regional advertisers who previously had little or no presence at all in the city’s broadcast market. We’ve had those advertisers for years and are an existing market force that’s profitable, growing, and offering new jobs and new choices. Letters of support included in our package from more than two dozen companies in the first two of six binders alone all state plainly that those companies are prepared to increase their advertising spend with the advent of Cabin Radio on FM. We are growing Yellowknife’s broadcast economy.

41 We have overwhelming community support. Thank you to the people here today. And in this public hearing, you will hear from two media companies who will each tell you how much they offer to Yellowknife, to Ndilo, to Dettah. We invite the panel to determine where the public interest lies by listening to the audience and to the public response as documented in the 700‑plus letters of support and interventions filed as well as by those intervenors appearing tomorrow.

42 After seven years, Cabin Radio is thriving and prepared to take the next step. And I’d like to invite my friend, my colleague, and co‑owner Jesse Wheeler to walk you through our programming commitment to the community.

43 MR. WHEELER: Thank you, Ollie, and good morning.

44 Cabin Radio’s target audience is people aged 18 to 64 who live in Yellowknife, Ndilo, and Dettah, and as of 2021, that made up about 68.5 per cent of the population. And on FM, Cabin Radio will continue to play rock and pop standards from 1960 to 2025, while exploring a vast archive of popular indie, alternative, and folk music. And that’s the format we’ve had since 2018. We’ve augmented that with spoken‑word programming like my show, Mornings at the Cabin, where the music is mixed with up to an hour daily of live, local talk anchored by multiple hosts. Mornings at the Cabin is a rich, engaging and funny and lively daily discussion that is not offered by any other broadcaster in Yellowknife. We’re unique in that way.

45 Our daily podcast is the number one download for 700 people and in the top 10 for thousands more according to Spotify’s 2024 data. That’s a big chunk of the city’s podcast audience, but it also shows that there is room for growth on FM.

46 We will devote 40 per cent of our category 2 music selections to Canadian artists, and 35 per cent of that to emerging artists. The Northwest Territories is full of emerging artists, and one of the things that we wanted to achieve at the outset was to help them emerge. We’ve been doing that since we started through our commitment to music festivals like Folk on the Rocks and the Longshadow music festival. That commitment is now worth $21,000 in Canadian content development per year, and that is one we have enshrined in this application, though we invite the Panel to note that this is something that we are already doing.

47 Our playlist includes northern and Indigenous artists daily. You don’t have to wait for a special hour or a special program. We have them interspersed within our daily log, and you can hear them throughout the day, every day. And our hosts, like me, are local as well. And after 6 p.m. and on weekends, you can listen to them curate a range of specialist shows about classical music, jazz, metal, soul, and many more.

48 And I’d like you to meet one of those hosts now, down to my right, Sarah Erasmus, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and a local business owner who co‑hosts a weekly music and talk show Clams ‘n’ Moose with Camilla McEachern.

49 MS. ERASMUS: Hello. I’m here to talk about my role as a Cabin Radio broadcaster and the contribution I believe we can collectively make to the communities we will reach as an FM station.

50 My co‑host and I pitched our show to Cabin Radio more than five years ago. Cabin Radio supported us and allowed us to gain a huge amount of broadcast experience that neither of us previously possessed. We are now able to create live broadcasts each week that reach a dedicated audience and tell stories nobody else here is telling, like documenting the growth of women’s hockey in Yellowknife through the eyes of people who were playing in the ‘90s and kids who are just starting now.

51 I’ve also been able to produce special broadcasts to mark events like National Indigenous Peoples Day, and once Cabin Radio has an FM licence, I’m excited to begin work on a new show designed to bring more Indigenous voices onto the air locally.

52 The reason FM is important is that it’s still the best way to reach a lot of residents here across a wide age demographic. People do find other ways to listen, but I keep hearing from people around me that they want to hear my work, the shows we spend so much time putting together, on their FM radio. That’s where our audience wants us to be, and that’s where I think we can reach a young, Indigenous demographic that is not otherwise well served by FM radio in Yellowknife.

53 In the North, we want our stories told by our voices ‑‑ northern and Indigenous voices who relate to us and understand our way of life. People listen to Cabin Radio because they know and understand us, and we know and understand them. We’re excited to make that relationship even stronger on FM.

54 MR. WHEELER: Thank you, Sarah.

55 We have a strong belief that the North needs more broadcasters like the two of us who can represent Yellowknife, Ndilo, and Dettah authentically on the air. And that’s why Cabin Radio invests in the training and the development of the next generation. We already run workshops with First Nations in high school classrooms and in our studios after school. This year, we’ve been coaching an elementary school class in how to produce broadcast news, and we’ve worked with the Northern Journalism Training Initiative to offer membership for a young Indigenous broadcaster.

56 This month, we’ll be bringing in three young NWT residents from Indigenous and racialized backgrounds for paid spring internships. We hope that this will be an annual exercise that allows us to give northerners an introduction to broadcast media in a part of Canada where access to formal journalism and broadcasting programs in academic institutions is extremely limited.

57 Meanwhile, once on FM, we pledge to increase our combined total of news and spoken word programming to 600 minutes weekly. Ollie, our editor, will spearhead that through the expansion of our daily afternoon spoken‑word programming to include current affairs broadcasting backed by live and taped interviews and debriefs with reporters.

58 I’d like to now hand it back to Ollie to talk about how the programming we offer meets the needs of Yellowknife, Ndilo, and Dettah.

59 MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, thanks, Jesse. Thanks, Sarah.

60 Our audience is extraordinarily diverse. Yellowknife, Ndilo, and Dettah are of course communities with large Indigenous populations. Beyond that, Yellowknife is a young and multicultural community. We reflect this diversity in our ownership and in our staffing. Indigenous northern broadcasters are in our lineup. Our staff includes people who have lived here virtually their entire lives and people who know what it feels like to immigrate to Canada from Asia or from Europe. The one thing linking all of us is our residency in the North. We are a fully local station with fully local ownership, staffing, and programming. Our money goes right back into the community and the economy around us.

61 Cabin Radio is a culturally sensitive broadcaster. You will hear why that is so important from one of our intervenors, Gerri Sharpe, later in this proceeding.

62 We go to people. We invest in travel; we get reporters out into the communities we serve. We amplify the stories of northern Indigenous residents day in, day out. You can find those stories in podcasts of ours like Cabin Talks, which is an example of the level of spoken‑word programming to which we are committed in this application.

63 And most importantly, the thorough, diligent, consistent approach we’ve taken has earned us an audience that is completely different to the only other commercial FM broadcaster in Yellowknife. That is restated time and time again in the letters of support the CRTC has on file. For specific examples, I’ll invite the panel to study letters from former Dene National Chief Norman Yak’eula, and also from Alix Cracknell, Adelle Guigon, Alan Ehrlich, Alex Clinton, Alyssa Titus, Amanda Bailey, Amanda Johnson‑Dunbar, Amy Burt, Amy Throop, Ana Sutendra, Andrew Moore, Anita Lenoir, Anne Tyrrell, Anne‑Marie Jennings, Annelies Pool, Anson Chappell, Arlene Hache, Ashley Brebner and Ashley Makahoniuk. And the Panel will notice I haven’t got out of the A’s there, and I haven’t included any of our interventions either that we received last fall.

64 We are bringing a demographic back to radio that does not currently listen because the limited choice available does not meet their needs. For large parts of each day, there is only one local FM station broadcasting in the English language for Yellowknife, Ndilo, and Dettah, commercial or otherwise. The letters of support make plain that this is not acceptable. To be clear, those letters are on a scale where, proportionally, if Yellowknife had a population the size of Toronto, the CRTC would have received one hundred and five thousand letters of support for Cabin Radio.

65 This is not a conceptual application that talks about a theoretical model or hypothesizes about market impact. This is an application that comes backed by years of experience, outcomes, and data and years of direct impact on the market. That impact has already taken place. It cannot be treated as an unknown. That is crucial. And to tell you more, I’d like to introduce our general manager, Andrew Goodwin.

66 MR. GOODWIN: Thanks Ollie, and good morning.

67 It’s my pleasure to take you through the steps we’ve taken so far to manage this company responsibly and prudently and our financial projections for the years ahead as an FM broadcaster.

68 Cabin Radio’s operations are grounded in the reality of having done business for years and having prepared for FM broadcasting for years.

69 First, I’d like to review our growth since 2018. Our revenue from 2018 to 2024 has grown by almost 500 percent. This growth tracked and supported our expenses, which have grown by 420 percent over that period. It is notable that within that expenditure, the likes of payroll, securing compensation for all of our hosts plays a significant role. Putting money back into our programming and the community we serve has been key to our mandate.

70 Now I’d like to turn to our projections for the seven years commencing with our first FM broadcast.

71 These projections are ambitious and they are realistic. They are rooted in our experience of the market to date, a market in which we have thrived and which we are supported by many advertisers who have previously had no relationship with broadcast medial.

72 Ollie has already pointed out the dozens of letters of support from business clients of ours who directly state this in their own words.

73 In 2026, we expect to exceed our projections based on current performance.

74 In 2024, Cabin Radio has already generated 17 percent more revenue than projected in year one, which is 2026. We estimate operating with a 10.3 PBIT margin in the first year of the licence. This clearly demonstrates that Cabin Radio is not a start‑up operation.

75 Since 2018, Cabin Radio has grown to support eight full‑time staff and a range of paid part‑time show hosts, alongside a downtown office and a wide range of investments back into the communities we serve, as we’ve already outlined.

76 In that time, as the public record for this proceeding shows, we have had an extraordinary impact on residents and the business community here, while there has been no closure of any existing FM broadcaster. We note CKLB–FM, the territory’s Indigenous‑language broadcaster, which is backed by significant federal and territorial funding, has registered no intervention, nor have any Yellowknife FM stations except the other applicant in this proceeding, nor have those stations expressed any concern with our presence in the market. We have strong relationships with all of them.

77 With that, I’ll hand it to Ollie to discuss the city’s broader economy and how we view our place in the market.

78 MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you, AJ.

79 In the past, the CRTC has relied on territory‑wide economic data interpreted by a third party to analyze Yellowknife’s market. I’m grateful to the NWT government’s Finance Minister for her letter, which is on record as part of this proceeding that sets out the flaws in that approach and presents an alternative view of this city’s economy.

80 There is nobody more qualified to independently and robustly assess the market in which we already operate and have operated for seven years. The Finance Minister, Caroline Wawzonek, used employment data as a proxy for GDP data that does not exist at city level here. In doing so, she concluded that Yellowknife’s employment rate, historically considerably higher than in Canada as a whole and the rest of the NWT, demonstrates an economy that allows room for growth within the radio broadcasting industry.

81 Inflation has calmed. Existing diamond mines are talking of extending their mine lives. The territory’s industry Minister envisages new mines moving into operation by 2030. Meanwhile, Indigenous governments are expanding their own economic activities. Indigenous partners right here were among those who signed on to a deal worth almost $400 million in public and private investment in conserving the land and water around us last year. Even mine remediation in Yellowknife is worth hundreds of jobs and billions of dollars in the 15 years to come.

82 Throughout our existence, our experience has been one of a business community grateful for our presence and eager to support us. We are proud to have been profitable over the past seven years even as we continued to grow.

83 And put simply, we are here today both in front of you and more generally because the public of Yellowknife values Cabin Radio and wants it on FM.

84 Now, the CRTC has already stated, as referenced earlier, that COVID‑19 and 2023’s wildfires highlighted the importance of increased access to radio content in the North. In Notice of Consultation 2024‑57, the Commission indicated the Yellowknife FM market is not as well served as it could be.

85 I want to recognize the CRTC has taken recent steps to improve internet access in the North, including the planned creation of a subsidy and other measures to open up that market, which is dominated by Northwestel, to greater competition. And we appreciate the CRTC’s emphasis on the need for competition in that sector and its understanding of the risk in allowing only one provider to offer any service to a given community.

86 And while the North’s telecoms infrastructure will benefit from those reforms, the vulnerability of our infrastructure is set to remain a key concern for decades to come. The wildfires of 2023 showed that even after years of work to improve northern connectivity, two NWT communities still lost virtually all internet access for five days each. Yellowknife is not immune to telecoms and power outages that FM can overcome.

87 In conclusion, we have demonstrated today and in our detailed filing a high‑quality application that, most importantly, our audience considers to be of the highest quality, and which has attracted overwhelming local support.

88 The CRTC has made clear that it considers a better served Yellowknife market important, and so do we. Equally, the CRTC places great emphasis on a diversity of news voices and programming, operations and employment equity policies that address the diversity of the communities in this market.

89 We and our audience have demonstrated we are that news voice, and we have the programming, corporate culture and intensely local focus the commission is seeking.

90 And moreover, we have demonstrated sustainability with a business model and a formula that has shown itself to be immensely successful.

91 We seek an FM licence because our audience has clearly and consistently demanded it.

92 We seek an FM licence because the CRTC recognizes the importance of better serving the communities around us, particularly in crises that we knew will come again.

93 And we seek an FM licence because, as hundreds of people have told you elsewhere on the public record, we reach an audience that is not currently served and we have the support of many businesses that the existing FM market has not engaged.

94 Cabin Radio meets and exceeds the provisions of the Broadcasting Act and the Broadcasting Policy for Canada. We’re proud, privileged and thrilled to serve our communities and offer this opening presentation.

95 Thanks for listening to it, and we’re excited to answer any questions you might have.

96 Thank you.

‑‑‑ Applause

97 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Thank you.

98 Thank you very much, Mr. Williams, for your presentation.

99 Just before anything, Mr. Wheeler, please accept our condolences for the loss of your mom. And just a small reminder to put your cell phones on vibration mode so that we can get through the list of questions so the only squeaky noise admissible will be that of Cabin Kid.

100 So Cabin Kid, do what you need. Congratulations, by the way, for Cabin Kid. It’s always good news.

101 All right. So again, thank you for your presentation.

102 I have a series of questions. We have about an hour with a little bit of flex. Just a reminder to speak not too fast for the sake of our interpreters.

103 There’s a lot of enthusiasm in the room, I get that, but just to make sure that our colleagues online can fully understand in the other official language.

104 So I’m going to go through some of my questions that are based on your applications and then we’re going to take a very short break and then I’ll turn to my colleagues, Commissioner Naidoo and Levy, for additional questions, and we’ll see where this leads us if that’s okay, right.

105 Kind of happy that you guys didn’t bring the ducks with you. A little disappointed, too.

106 All right. So first question. So in your application, so if it’s approved, can you tell us a little bit about the type of adjustments to your current online programming you would undertake?

107 MR. WILLIAMS: Absolutely. First of all, I want to be very clear. There are like eight really large ducks that we tried that we thought were going to be really good for filming purposes and they just fell upside down and would not float properly.

108 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yeah, that happens.

109 MR. WILLIAMS: You’re welcome to one of them.

110 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right. Thank you. I will remember that.

111 MR. WILLIAMS: Secondly, the main adjustment, and I do not think adjustments will be many at all, is an increase in spoken word programming. That’ll mainly come in our afternoon programming in weekdays where we will place more of an emphasis on live current affairs broadcasting than we currently do.

112 That will bring us up to a minimum of 600 minutes of news and spoken word through the week and I would say, spoken word‑wise, we’re probably currently at about seven hours and that’ll bring us more toward eight and a half, and that would be the main change in our main programming commitment.

113 THE CHAIRPERSON: So when you talk about life current affairs, are you referring specifically to news or have you got something different in mind?

114 MR. WILLIAMS: I have something broader than that in mind. When I talk about news and when we talk about news in our application, we are referring there to the idea of a newscast and to the idea of providing regular summaries to our audience throughout the day of what is happening around them.

115 When I refer to current affairs programming, I’m referring in broader terms to in‑depth interviews, packages of more detailed reporting that our reporters may have put together or briefings with those reporters where we’re conducting a Q&A, essentially, with our reporting staff to give them more of a sense of in‑depth of what is happening.

116 The kind of programming I’m talking about there is reflected, for example, in Cabin Talks, the podcast that we currently do, and we would simply be providing more of that than we do right now.

117 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

118 This covers a little bit of my second question, but I was trying to get a better sense of, you know, how do you ensure that you’re on‑air programming is of direct and particular relevance to Yellowknife? Could you unpack this a little bit for me?

119 MR. WILLIAMS: Absolutely. Specific to spoken word, Madam Chair?

120 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, absolutely.

121 MR. WILLIAMS: We ‑‑ we are lucky at this point, and lucky may not be the word ‑‑ we’ve worked for it. We have seven years of experience through providing the programming that we do both in terms of what we would call our on‑air stream. We recognize that it doesn’t have a transmitter attached to it, but we consider it to be on‑air for our purposes, but also through our website and the written journalism we produce.

122 I think we have had an opportunity, particularly through the sheer number of crises that the world has thrown at the Northwest Territories, to actually fine tune the sense of what it is that our audience needs from us in a news capacity.

123 And if I was going to provide that in a nutshell, I would characterize that as an audience that wants breaking news, they want to know what is happening around them while it is happening. They value speed, but they don’t value that at the cost of accuracy or robust reporting. And our audience values efforts to help them understand what is happening.

124 And the two key examples I would provide there are, number one, the COVID pandemic and, number two, the evacuation of Yellowknife and other communities during the wildfire summer of 2023.

125 In each of those situations, we at once had too much information and none at all coming from the various different agencies that were trying to communicate to residents around them and it fell to us as Cabin Radio and other reporters to distill that information, to go after more and to find the most effective ways of communicating to our community what is actually happening right now, what do you need to know, what actions do you need to take.

126 And I think the interventions, the letters of support show that in each of those examples, we were very successful at doing that.

127 So we have a very finely tuned understanding right now of what our audience wants from us and, really, that’ll be a case moving to FM of just moving a little of our resource to say, okay, now people to get to listen to this on FM in a way they didn’t previously.

128 A larger audience will be looking to hear this from us on that platform and we’ll make sure we give it to them there.

129 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

130 So let’s stay on the issue on news for a moment, if you don’t mind. So who’s going to be responsible for gathering the news? Because you spoke about the fact that at one point there’s just a lot of news out there and you need some capacity to take on that information, distill it.

131 So you know, who’s responsible for that? How is it going to be gathered and, more generally, could you just unpack a little bit the proposal you have in your application for, I think, one hour and 30 minutes of news that’s proposed for your programming just so that we get a clearer sense of what it’s going to look like on the grounds.

132 MR. WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I’m in charge overall for the news gathering operation at Cabin Radio, as I have been since we were founded. My background is as a senior broadcast journalist for the BBC before moving to Canada, so what I have tried to do in establishing Cabin Radio is take some of the things that I valued in that background in terms of the BBC’s editorial standards and its approach to news gathering, I try to replicate them to the extent that one can when one has eight members of staff rather than maybe 20,000.

133 And we’re proud of the approach that we take to that.

134 I want to just briefly walk you through what that looks like on a day‑to‑day basis, if that’s okay.

135 So we have a newsroom of four people, myself included, right now, and there is a morning news meeting at about usually 9 o’clock each morning where we’ll go through what we believe to be the most important assignments of the day. I’ve already been on the air with our morning newscasts at that point.

136 The Cabin Kid is trying to get involved in unpacking how those newscasts sound, but we’ll maybe give him a few years to have the full perspective on what exactly we’re reporting.

137 The morning newscasts currently are about three minutes per newscast. They broadcast at 7:20, 7:50, 8:20, 8:50 and then throughout the afternoon we have a 12:30 newscast as well.

138 Once we reach FM, that will become a slightly larger package of newscasts that will reach through the afternoon toward the early evening as well with the availability on a more limited scale of weekend newscasts at the same time and we will produce those newscasts a little more.

139 And what I mean by that is we will include more audio from interviews and we will include more sound from events, for example, where currently the newscast is what I would term a dry read where it’s me delivering the news and you don’t really hear anybody else.

140 So we would be upgrading for FM the packaging of our newscasts and their frequency throughout the working day.

141 As I said, we have a newsroom of four. We have two reporters who are more dedicated to the broader Northwest Territories. That does include Yellowknife to a limited extent, but their remit is very much to ensure that our coverage of the entire Northwest Territories is up to spec and that that meets the needs of a broader audience outside Yellowknife. But we also have two reporters and myself and our assistant editor who are dedicated to reporting within Yellowknife and making sure that we’re covering everything within Yellowknife, Dena and Detta.

142 THE CHAIRPERSON: Right now, you’re the key person.

143 MR. WILLIAMS: Yes.

144 THE CHAIRPERSON: So how do you manage the risk associated with having such a heavy reliance on one key person for the news aspect of your programming?

145 MR. WILLIAMS: I think it’s one thing to be the key person. I think it’s another thing to be heavily relied upon.

146 I can tell you right now that if there were no me tomorrow, the reporters and the staff we’ve got around us would continue delivering the same product.

147 The way that we have structured what we do has got more to do with philosophy than it does with any one human being, and that goes back a little to the reference to my vision in starting that newsroom for the kind of editorial standards that I wanted to deploy, but that’s a vision that stands whether or not I’m the one there delivering it, and that’s a philosophy that we take time to work with our staff on when they arrive at the company. And you know, it’s a pleasure to work with that staff every day because they share it and they admire that philosophy, they live up to it and they extend it. And they also ‑‑ this is very important, they adapt that philosophy in collaboration.

148 You know, we don’t have a newsroom where I just sit there and say, “Hey, this is how we’re going to do it”. We have reporters ‑‑ and I’m particularly thinking of our assistant editor, Emily Blake, who is another very experienced northern journalist.

149 Emily will very happily push back and say, “You know what, we should cover this a different way. Make sure we include this. Why aren’t we doing this?”. And we have those very robust internal conversations to make sure that our news output is the best it can, and I think that extends beyond any one individual we currently employ.

150 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

151 So in your application and in your presentation earlier this morning, you did speak intensively about some of the emergency situations that Cabin Radio and other radios are ‑‑ have to cover as far as part of their mandate, so how do you ‑‑ how do you see adjusting your programming and your news in the context of an emergency? What’s your capacity to pivot?

152 MR. WILLIAMS: Let me answer that by way of an example of how we’ve done that once already and then I will explain how we would translocate that, if you like, to the FM dial.

153 So when Yellowknife was evacuated in the summer of 2023, that evacuation took place on August the 16th and ran until August the 18th. We had already, by that point, been running four days of round‑the‑clock coverage through our website with minutes‑by‑minute updates, by which I mean not necessarily 60 minutes in an hour, but generally speaking through the daytime you could expect maybe five or six written updates pushed through a dedicate live page on our website each hour. And then even overnight in the early days of that, we had people still covering it.

154 And again, it’s a ‑‑ there are eight people at Cabin Radio, so we very, very quickly adjusted to make sure that we could offer that.

155 And that coverage provided a central location for everyone in the community. And for the benefit of people listening online from Hay River and Fort Smith, I want to also recognize that while this hearing is not about your communities, we were also covering the situations in Hay River and Fort Smith at the time because those are intensely important to audiences in those communities but also to our Yellowknife audience.

156 We had been on round‑the‑clock coverage for four days before the evacuation began and we remained on round‑the‑clock coverage for 30 days afterwards, and so we ran more than a month seven days a week of minute‑by‑minute coverage where anything that happened we had an update on our website.

157 Now, was staffing that a challenge? Yes. But it was also the exact thing that a local broadcaster, a local newsroom should be rising to the challenge of. We are there for that exact purpose. We’re there to make sure our community is the best taken care of it can be in a situation like that.

158 Now, had we had an FM licence to serve Yellowknife at the time, we would have devoted a little of that resource to making sure that those updates were going on air as soon as they were going online.

159 And to give you an idea of how we would have resourced that, I can point to Jessie, to Sarah, to Scott behind me who were doing a great job through our audio livestream at the time of talking to people, being engaging, talking about what was going on, but also recognizing that, at the time this was happening, almost all of our audience attention was on the website because it was, frankly, easier to get to than Bluetoothing up to an app and listening to Cabin Radio that way, which is very much why we’re here looking for the FM licence.

160 Had we had FM, which we dearly wanted, we would have had these guys on the air throughout as much as we could delivering those updates alongside me, alongside other members of our newsroom as time permitted to make sure that people, rather than having to reach out for their phone and keep hitting refresh, I think they ‑‑ people even started calling it “The Cabin refresh” every five or 10 minutes to see what was happening on our website.

161 People listening in Yellowknife unsure of what was happening with the fire the night of the evacuation order needing to know what they needed to know at the time, all of that could have been going out live and people could have had it with them as they packed up, as they were in their vehicle as far as our broadcast reach would carry them. And that would have made a real difference, I think, to the accessibility of that vital coverage.

162 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

‑‑‑ Applause

163 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right.

164 So let’s move to another theme, if I may, the language of broadcast.

165 On your application, you mention that 100 percent of your broadcasts will be in English. Any plans to do any kind of programming in languages other than English at one point, for example, Indigenous languages?

166 MR. WILLIAMS: I believe, and I may have to double check it in the application, we do have one show currently that is francophone Thursday nights 9:00 till 10:00.

167 THE CHAIRPERSON: Francophone, you said? Sorry.

168 MR. WILLIAMS: Francophone, yeah.

169 We currently have that. Other than that, we have no plan to broadcast in Indigenous languages.

170 THE CHAIRPERSON: So how do you ensure that the needs and the interests of the Indigenous communities are well served and somewhat reflected in your programming?

171 MR. WILLIAMS: We have two other broadcasters serving the communities, KCLB FM, which is an Indigenous licensed station with a mandate to broadcast in Indigenous languages throughout the Northwest Territories, and the public broadcaster, the CBC, has invested heavily in Indigenous language broadcasting, so those two broadcasters we are conscious already serve the community in a variety of Indigenous languages in a way that we think we’re better served providing the best predominantly English language service we can rather than introduce a third option in that market.

172 THE CHAIRPERSON: But how do you make sure that in your programming in English you do reflect the needs and the interests of the Indigenous communities of the North?

173 MR. WILLIAMS: I’m going to pass that to Sarah.

174 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

175 MS. ERASMUS: Hello. In discussing this new show that I brought to Ollie as an idea, and that we are going to execute eventually, is that myself, in school I was taught Wilììdeh Yati and was able to take it up in grade four, and now I’ve made it a goal of mine to learn that language. And because the best way to learn language is to practise it, I hope to, as I’m on this journey of learning my language again, to share it with the listeners and, you know, words of the day, phrases of the week. And even ask, seek for help on the best way to learn a language is, because there are several different ways that that can be done. I do know a lot of people that speak differ4ent languages, so that is very much a big goal of mine in the near future.

176 So in that sense, we would bring that into my new show.

177 MR. WILLIAMS: If I can just come back in on that as well, Sarah, I wondered if you want to talk a little bit about Buffy Sainte‑Marie at this point, because what you’re speaking to, Madam Chair, is really important; which is that we need to ensure as an FM broadcaster that we are giving space to when I discuss, for example, spoken word in current affairs, some of that should come from an Indigenous voice.

178 And you had the point that we’ve been talking about in recent weeks about why Buffy Sainte‑Marie, for example, we need to make sure we do more.

179 MS. ERASMUS: Yeah. So, you know, First Nations, Indigenous issues are very personal, complex issues. For example, when the news broke about Buffy Sainte‑Marie, it wasn’t really a censored topic. It was news, very huge news, but in my eyes it was a heartbreaking sensitive kind of soul‑crushing thing to hear. You know, as you grow up as a First Nations kid, there aren’t very many people that are in the spotlight that you can idolize, and Buffy Sainte‑Marie for me was very much that person.

180 So, there was no real space to discuss it, and not only real space but a safe space, because there just wasn’t. And that was kind of one of the key things to me; that I was like, you know, there should be a show that can address these issues, and a show led by a First Nations person.

181 And when I approached Ollie about the show, that was one of the bigger things that I brought up. And, I mean, that is just one example. There are several.

182 The beauty of Cabin Radio is that they are open to these new opportunities and to see where it can go.

183 MR. WILLIAMS: And to be clear, we have Indigenous voices on the air already. We have Sarah broadcasting every Wednesday evening, 7:00 till 9:00. We have Jesse on Mornings at the Cabin every weekday morning, 7:00 till 9:00 a.m.

184 But those are not necessarily the space that Sarah is talking about, and that’s why we’re working with her to create something new and different that we can add to the schedule that will provide that. And those are the conversations we want to keep having as staff about how we do a better job of that.

185 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Thank you for this answer.

186 Moving along, proposed format and musical selection.

187 As you know, under the Revised Commercial Radio Policy, commercial stations are expected to broadcast 5 percent of their musical selections aired each broadcast week to Canadian emerging artists. And you did refer to emerging artists in your presentation.

188 You are actually proposing to devote 35 percent of all your Canadian musical selections dedicated to emerging artists. That’s really high.

189 Could you elaborate a little bit on how you are going to be doing that, meet that requirement, keep people interested?

190 MR. WILLIAMS: I’m going to pass that to Scott behind me in a second, as our Program Director.

191 But just to lead off for a few seconds, we have already been doing that for seven years of broadcasting history, as we look at it, and we operate and we serve a territory, a community, where people want to hear Indigenous and Northern Indigenous artists. And you can see in the sample music selections that we’ve included in our application, we are operating already at a level where those artists are playlisted throughout the day. They are an intrinsic part of what we do, not because it’s a quota system or not because we feel obligated to do that, but those are our artists. They’re ours. That’s what the community would like to hear, and they are a huge part of what we do.

192 And I wanted to maybe pass it back to Scott to talk a little bit more about who we play right now and how we play them.

193 MR. LETKEMAN: Thank you. Yeah, I mean just from a philosophy’s sake, for someone who grew up in Canada listening to radio our entire lives, one of the main complaints of a lot of people who listen to radio is the constant recycling, if you will, of Canadian music.

194 The CanCon system puts a bit of a strain on the music that broadcasters are allowed to play, and you hear that reflected in a lot of Canadian radio broadcasting.

195 One of our main philosophies when starting Cabin Radio was that we wanted to break out of that chain a little bit and not get away from CanCon necessarily but seek out new CanCon that maybe other radio stations were hesitant to play or, you know, to give that airtime for fear of losing their listening audience because it wasn’t familiar; i.e., it wasn’t Bryan Adams or Alanis Morissette.

196 We have been doing that since 2018. We have been seeking out newer or just Canadian artists that just maybe haven’t been given that airtime traditionally on Canadian radio, and we have been making that part of our regular broadcasting.

197 And further to that, as Ollie pointed out, NWT and Indigenous artists have found a regular home on Cabin Radio. They are not relegated to a specialty hour of music per week to fill some kind of quota. They are part of our main event. Our main broadcasting purpose is to give some of these new and emerging artists a home and somewhere where they can share their music with our listening audience.

198 And our listening audience has responded to that. And beyond that, artists themselves have responded to that. We quite regularly now receive submissions from local artists who have recorded a new song, and they know to come to Cabin Radio and send us their music, because there’s actually a chance that we will play it. And quite often we do end up putting it into our regular rotation. We are proud to do that, and we will continue to do that.

199 MR. WILLIAMS: And just to quickly pick up, Madam Chair, if I may.

200 THE CHAIRPERSON: Quickly, please.

201 MR. WILLIAMS: I will.

202 Scott is right, that our audience has responded and that the artists have responded. And I think it’s also clear that the advertisers have responded, and that is critically important. Thanks.

203 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Thank you so much.

204 Sorry, I have a lot of questions. That’s why I want to make sure that we cover everything.

205 Just to build on what was just presented a few seconds ago, could you explain a little bit the similarities and differences between Cabin Radio’s proposal for music format and programming, when you compare it to the existing local radios in Yellowknife, the competing application?

206 We are trying to get a sense of what the value proposal is here and how different, similar your application is to what already exists in the market.

207 MR. WILLIAMS: Are you asking us to compare, sorry, Madam Chair, to what already exists in the market or what is proposed in the other application?

208 THE CHAIRPERSON: Both.

209 MR. WILLIAMS: Okay. In terms of how Cabin Radio currently operates ‑‑ and to be clear, we propose no major change to our music programming. We have been doing this for seven years.

210 We have demonstrated an investment in Northern and Indigenous music that, as I already said, doesn’t treat it as a quota, doesn’t treat it as an obligation, but it is the centrepiece. It is the bedrock of what we are doing, in the sense that over the past few years, we may have become a little bit more of a news operation as well, just because that was something that the audience responded well to. But the reason for Cabin Radio to be here is to ensure that Northern and Indigenous music is at the heart of every day’s listening.

211 And if you were to listen right now to any commercial radio available in Yellowknife, you won’t hear that. It is not part of the fabric of those stations’ formats. It’s not part of the delivery mechanism. I am not aware that there is any playlisting of Northern Indigenous artists in any commercial licensee in the market right now.

212 Of course, that’s a question better directed to them.

213 In terms of what the proposals set out, again we would point to the fact that we don’t ring‑fence an hour or two of one day and say that right there, that’s where our homegrown talent is going to lie. The homegrown talent is the reason for the broadcasts, and that applies across our morning show, it applies across our late mornings, it applies across afternoons, it applies into evenings. It absolutely applies in our specialist shows.

214 If, for example, you were to listen to Scott’s show or Sam’s show like late in the morning, often we will play what we would call a folk trio. That refers to Folk on the Rocks, the major music festival here. We’ve covered that with about 30 hours of live coverage every year since 2018.

215 We have archived sets from those artists. We will either play an archived set back‑to‑back of three tracks from a local artist, or we will look ahead to an artist coming this year who may be Indigenous Canadian from elsewhere in the country, and we will play their music as well.

216 We take time to create programming like that, that is designed only to keep lifting up the artists around us who our community want to hear. I know that we’re hearing from at least one artist later in this proceeding who I think can speak to that.

217 We have a philosophy that is absolutely centred in that, and I don’t see that philosophy elsewhere in the market.

218 THE CHAIRPERSON: So in your opinion, this is what distinguishes Cabin Radio.

219 MR. WILLIAMS: Among other things, this is absolutely a key distinctive factor in our application, is not only that we propose to do this, but we have done it for seven years. And even the sample music list is not one we created in the hope that you would like it. We broadcast that on the 28th of April 2023.

220 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

221 MR. LETKEMAN: Sorry, if I could just expand on Ollie’s point a little bit too, when you asked the question about the differentiator for us as opposed to what’s currently operating on commercial radio in Yellowknife, our belief is that the current broadcaster puts together a format that is catered to a bit more of a major market.

222 Now, Yellowknife is a population of approximately 20,000 people with one commercial licence currently operating. Most people would tell you, if you asked them right now, that their FM dial doesn’t move from that station. And I think they would probably elaborate on that in saying that’s not necessarily by choice; it’s by lack of choice.

223 So as a result, one of the main complaints you might hear from a lot of people is that they hear the same songs, the same playlist in rotation almost on a daily basis.

224 That is a radio format choice, but it is catered more to a major market where there is a wealth of choices on the radio dial, geared towards basically having people, if they happen to land on your radio dial or on your frequency, they are going to hear a song that they are most likely going to immediately recognize that is going to keep them on that station, hopefully for at least a little while so they can hear a few commercials that are running and pay some of the bills.

225 In Yellowknife, we don’t have that option. We have one radio station that is catered to a major market in a place where we don’t have choices. We want to offer an alternative choice, and we put together our programming based on a somewhat different philosophy; that being that radio can be a place for discovery, and it can be a place still for a wealth of different voices and music. And it doesn’t just have to be the same artists every day, because we are in a different place, and we believe that we should be operating differently. Thank you.

226 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you so much.

227 We are going to take a five‑minute break out of necessity. But just five minutes. It’s morning, right?

228 Then we’ll come back, and we’ll just go through the rest of my questions, and then I will turn to my colleagues.

229 So, Secretariat, just five minutes. All right?

230 THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

‑‑‑ Upon recessing at 11:02 a.m.

‑‑‑ Upon resuming at 11:06 a.m.

231 THE CHAIRPERSON: Please take your seats. We are going to start again.

232 The Cabin baby doesn’t need to sit down. That’s all good.

233 I’m going to ask the people in the room to please sit down so we can start.

234 Just a reminder to put your cell phone on vibration mode, except the Cabin baby. Okay? He still has a pass. Thank you.

235 All right. So let’s move to Canadian content and what you are proposing in your application in terms of support to Canadian content.

236 In your application you committed to making an annual over and above contribution of $147,000 to Canadian content development over seven years, broken down as follows: $105,000 to fund the local festival Folk on the Rocks; $24,500 to support performers yearly; and $17,500 to FACTOR.

237 In a Request for Information from the CRTC, you further indicated that you would adhere to a Condition of Service and respect the Commission’s regulation regarding CCD, which means that you ought to devote at least 20 percent of the total amount of contributions to FACTOR Musicaction. So 20 percent of $147,000 is $29,400. So, there is a discrepancy in between the number included in your application, $17,500, and what 20 percent means, $29,400.

238 Could you comment on the discrepancy between the proposed breakdown and what the policy actually requires?

239 And if you don’t plan to follow the policy, are you seeking an exception so that you can allocate a greater amount to the other initiatives? And is there a reason why you think the Commission should grant an exception? And what happens if the Commission denies the exception and you impose the standard allocation of 20 percent?

240 So what impact would that mean? You know, what impact it would have on the rest of your allocation.

241 So could you unpack this for us, please.

242 MR. WILLIAMS: Madam Chair, would you permit me 30 seconds to get you the best possible answer on that?

243 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, of course.

244 MR. WILLIAMS: Thanks.

‑‑‑ Pause

245 MR. WILLIAMS: Thanks, Madam Chair.

246 If it pleases you, we will take that as an undertaking to provide clarity on that.

247 THE CHAIRPERSON: Sure, absolutely.

248 MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you.

Undertaking

249 THE CHAIRPERSON: So, let’s move on then. It’s an important question for us, so I look forward to you getting back to us.

250 You are also committed to funding the Festival of Rock by investing every year $15,000. Could you explain a little bit to what extent the contribution should be perceived as an eligible contribution?

251 MR. WILLIAMS: Pardon me, perceived as…?

252 THE CHAIRPERSON: As an eligible contribution.

253 MR. WILLIAMS: As an eligible contribution.

254 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

255 MR. WILLIAMS? So, Folk on the Rocks is an annual music festival here. We provide significant supports to that festival. We are kind of a central part of it at this point. We run a stage for two days across the festival weekend. We run live broadcasting across the festival site. We invest a considerable amount of money in each of those things. We’ve invested in infrastructure at the festival site to support that as well.

256 And we have a contribution agreement above that with Folk on the Rocks that accounts for helping to market the festival, helping to promote the festival throughout the year, helping to promote the artists involved. That takes the form, for example, of an agreement involving airtime where the festival has in the past hosted its own shows on Cabin Radio, or we have hosted artists from the festival.

257 We produce video content for the festival. We produce photography for the festival as well.

258 THE CHAIRPERSON: So I think what we’re trying to better understand is to what extent contributing to that particular festival in effect means a contribution to the development of Canadian content.

259 MR. WILLIAMS: Okay.

260 THE CHAIRPERSON: So that’s what I’m trying to get a better sense of.

261 MR. WILLIAMS: Folk on the Rocks has a philosophy in terms of how it puts together the festival lineup for the weekend, that is heavily weighted toward Canadian artists. In fact, I’m struggling to think off the top of my head of any time I’ve seen an artist at Folk on the Rocks who was not Canadian.

262 And we have had festivals, Folk on the Rocks in the past, particularly during the pandemic, where virtually the entire lineup was northern Canadian, never mind Canadian. So in that sense, that festival aligns almost identically with what we’re trying to do, in terms of offering supports to Canadian artists. Particularly to emerging Canadian artists, which form a huge part of that festival’s lineup and certainly form almost the entirety on our stage lineup.

263 In offering that exposure, in offering that coverage, in offering to do things that maybe otherwise those artists haven’t had done for them yet. I know for example, Carmen Braden might speak to you a little later on about recording the live sets of our disks so that they can be broadcast later. That actually ‑‑ my understanding is that doesn’t really happen that often, until you might reach a certain level.

264 It happens at Folk on the Rocks, and it happens because we’ve invested in the equipment, and the staffing, and the infrastructure to do that. And we think that is a really valuable support. We’ve heard back from artists that that is a very valuable support, among the other supports that we offer.

265 THE CHAIRPERSON: So yeah, so there’s some sort of almost ‑‑ is there a formal and informal quid pro quo, a reciprocity agreement by which you support the festival but in turn, you know, it actually supports the programming on ‑‑ what’s the ‑‑ what’s the nature of that relationship?

266 MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah. There is a ‑‑ there is a formal contribution agreement between the festival and ourselves to the value outlined in the application, that we have had in place since 2018, with the primary goal of elevating the acts that appear at that festival so that their work can be seen by a wider audience.

267 And for example, you can go on YouTube and watch some of the headline acts who performed at Folk on the Rocks in years past. We’ve got video alongside audio that we’ve produced from previous festivals, and we’re the only ones doing that. So they’re incredible performances to watch, and the video coverage, the audio coverage of those is produced and made public, and publicized by us.

268 THE CHAIRPERSON: But does it find it’s way back to the actual programming of Cabin Radio?

269 MR. WILLIAMS: Yes.

270 THE CHAIRPERSON: Live feeds or interviews?

271 MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, sorry.

272 THE CHAIRPERSON: That sort of stuff?

273 MR. WILLIAMS: When I say we broadcast live coverage for 30 hours at each festival, that is all through our audio stream and that would be on FM in the advent of having an FM licence. Beyond that we have a Folk on the Rocks dedicated show 9:00 till 10:00 p.m. every Monday, repeated Sundays, that plays archived tracks, interviews, sometimes the festival takes over that programming on it in its entirety.

274 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right. Thank you.

275 Let’s move to economic impacts. So we anticipate a certain amount of growth in ad revenues if you become a licenced service. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, how much growth you expect that might come from the other Yellowknife radio services as opposed to your own existing operations, completely new advertising revenues? Just to get a sense of a little bit of what you anticipate and do you think ‑‑ so let’s start with that.

276 MR. WILLAMS: I’ll pass this over to A.J. just to clarify that question. As I do that, you were asking for entirely new revenue that we do not possess in any way, shape, or form moving to FM?

277 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, well, I’m interested in the growth of the ad revenues that you’ve indicated in your application.

278 MR. GOODWIN: Yeah, we currently sell what we call on‑air advertising. It’s on our online stream, which takes up a certain percentage of the market currently. We anticipate roughly 17 percent in the first year of growth on on‑air sales.

279 THE CHAIRPERSON: Seventeen (17) you said?

280 MR. GOODWIN: Seventeen (17) percent, yeah.

281 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

282 MR. GOODWIN: And that’s growing to about 32 percent over seven years, over the seven years of the licence.

283 THE CHAIRPERSON: That’s ‑‑ those are big numbers.

284 MR. GOODWIN: Yeah.

285 THE CHAIRPERSON: It’s quite ambitious and so is this realistic? Are you –

286 MR. GOODWIN: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean right now our numbers aren’t as high for broadcast sales. We do a lot of non‑broadcast sales. So we are a multi‑platform business. We do video production, audio production, graphic design, photography, you name it, we do a lot of things. So right now, 31 ‑‑ or sorry, 24 percent of our revenue is broadcast sales. So we intend to grow that by 30 percent.

287 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right. Thank you.

288 MR. WILLIAMS: Just if I may, Madam Chair, just to briefly add to that?

289 THE CHAIRPERSON: Sure.

290 MR. WILLIAMS: The projections that you have in front of you, they speak to a lot of this. They’re very much grounded in what we’ve done for the past seven years. We have the financials to back up the projections in the sense that they are not a hypothetical. They are not based on the model that we don’t already have. It is a model we have. We understand the market, we think quite well right now.

291 Having said that, I would also point out that our 2026 projections that are filed with you, which of course we filed some time ago, we have surpassed in 2024. So at this point we’re quite confident of being able to meet those in 2026 and beyond.

292 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right. Thank you.

293

294 So in a scenario where following this hearing the Commission decides to grant a licence to both Cabin Radio and Vista, how do you anticipate the impact on the Yellowknife market generally? Is it still going to be worthwhile from your point of view to launch an FM radio if you’ve got two licensees, new licensees in the market?

295 MR. WILLAMS: Yes, absolutely. We would be very confident in that situation of our place in the market.

296 THE CHAIRPERSON: And you think the Yellowknife market is strong enough, robust enough, based on what we understand to be, you know, how it’s doing right now and how it is projected to be in the near future that you would survive, you would thrive, and you would continue to be put in ‑‑ be in a position where you can deliver on your commitments included in your application?

297 MR. WILLIAMS: In that situation, which I don’t think we have any opposition to on principle, I think we would feel very confident of delivering the exact forecasts that are in front of you.

298 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right. Thank you.

299 So I’ve got a couple of last questions and then I’ll turn it over to my colleagues if that’s okay with you.

300 Diversity and inclusion. So do you have any specific measurable goals in terms of increasing representation of equity deserving groups such as women, racialized communities, people with disabilities, individuals who identify as LGBTQ+ in your leadership and staff roles? Can you talk a little bit about that? And are you putting in place some specific initiatives, for instance, to be able to support, develop the presence and participation of these individuals in leadership roles, etcetera, etcetera?

301 MR. WILLIAMS: We have programs in place right now that are building up to that. One thing that we have learned over the past seven years of operation here is we need to build a better runway for that in the North for broadcasting and journalism.

302 At the moment ‑‑ we alluded to this in our presentation ‑‑ there is very, very little access for young people, frankly people of any age, in the Northwest Territories, particularly if they live in a smaller community here to actually be able to see the horizon of a future in broadcasting or a future in journalism, and then go and pursue that.

303 You are asking an incredible amount of people and we have to make sure we are a part of building the runway so that people can see that future for themselves. Initiatives that we’ve already started, we’ve had now paid internships every year since I think 2018 in fact, and a more formalized program of paid internship since 2020. We’ve never offered an internship that was not paid about minimum wage or at minimum wage in minimum.

304 And we have just launched ‑‑ again, we referred to this briefly ‑‑ a program where we will be working intensively for six weeks with four interns who are drawn from indigenous and racialized communities within Yellowknife, Ndilo and Dettah, they start on Monday next week. They’ll be with us through to the end of March.

305 At that point we have just ‑‑ I actually saw it in my email this morning, we now are going to be able with partnership from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation to extent those internships through into the summer. And then we’ll pick those people up, or at least two of those internships ‑‑ and we’ll pick those people up at that point.

306 So in terms of building the start end of that runway that you are talking about, that’s great. We’re proud of that. And I think we said three in application, I want to be clear, it’s four internships on February 17th that start.

307 But you were also talking about the backend of the runway when you are taking off into senior leadership positions. That is also really important, and as we finish that end of that runway, we need to make sure we’re building the middle and the end. That is probably a medium‑term objective, but it is absolutely one that is in our sights.

308 Sarah has spoken already to the importance of making sure that the voices that we have on Cabin Radio are reflecting the voices that are in the community. I think we entirely agree as a company that the people making the decisions at Cabin Radio ought eventually too, to be people who reflect the broader community around them.

309 And we’re very, very happy I should add, that ri

310 ht now our ownership group is broadly representative of people who are indigenous and are non‑indigenous, and have grown up in Yellowknife and have not grown up in Yellowknife. We know that there’s more work we can do.

311 And I don’t know, A.J. if you just want to briefly mention some of the policies we have within handbook, things like that as well that speak to this.

312 MR. GOODWIN: Yeah, quite simply we just ‑‑ we have an anti‑discriminatory policy in our handbook. And I think the industry that we work in and also the type of company that we run, safe to say, I think we run a pretty cool company that people like to work at and it is a very safe space. We try our best to make it as safe as possible.

313 So I think the people that are applying for these jobs recognize that and we get a lot of diversity coming through the door, and we love it. That’s our ownership reflects that, our staffing reflects that. So yeah, the more the merrier.

314 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

315 Just with respect to the proposed internship. So if I understand correctly, they target representatives from the Indigenous communities, the racialized communities. What about women, what about LGBTQ? That’s my first question. Are they covered?

316 If not, do you have any kind of policies or you plan to have specific policies that address those specific groups? Both in terms of making sure they have an opportunity in the company, but they can also grow. I think that’s an important point. That’s my first question.

317 And then my last question, are you planning to actually have measurable goals? Meaning going beyond just a declaration that it’s important for us, but actually to put in place something that you can use as a benchmark and measure in the long run?

318 MR. WILLIAMS: To briefly answer the last point first, if that’s all right, and by the time I get to the end of this you might have to remind me of the first question.

319 We already work with the CAJ through ‑‑ the Canadian Association of Journalists, through its newsroom diversity survey that takes place annually. I certainly, as the newsroom editor, see it as a mission to make sure that when we take that survey annually, we’re able to report back numbers that reflect the communities around us, and also reflect diversity.

320 So we feel held accountable by the presence of the CAJ’s newsroom diversity work. And while we do not presently have a formal commitment to a specific number of individuals from a certain community within that, we do have a philosophy of making sure that when we fill that out each year that it is representative of as many peoples as we can make sure that it is.

321 In terms of female representation and representation of minorities more generally at Cabin Radio, to take you question about internships for example, we actually struggle to hire male interns. Like, I can think off the top of my head of two, maybe three out of 25 to 30 over the past six or seven years. And I think some of that has to do with almost to go back to the analogy, the lack of runway for young male journalist broadcasters in the Northwest Territories.

322 So we have to be cognisant of that as well. And in making sure that that voice is also heard, and one of our four interns will be male and from the Liidlii Kue First Nation, which is out of Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories, now living in Yellowknife. And the remaining three are female from different, again, Indigenous and racialized communities.

323 So I think we have broader work to do to reflect the entirety of the Northwest Territories on lots of different fronts. But we absolutely have a commitment to make sure that, yes, absolutely, women, people from minorities, people who ‑‑ however they identify should be absolutely at the core of what we do. They are right now, and we want to make sure that they are in the future. I know the Northern Journalist In Training Initiative might speak more to this when they intervene tomorrow.

324 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Is that what your sticky note says?

325 MR. WILLIAMS: That is. NJTI appear to speak on, blah, tomorrow.

326 THE CHAIRPERSON: That’s quite clear.

327 MR. WILLAIMS: Sarah wants to come in as well, if that’s all right.

328 THE CHAIRPERSON: Absolutely.

329 MS. ERASMUS: I mean, yeah, to add to it, some of the subjects on topic you are questioning about, I mean they are very delicate and sensitive areas, especially with what’s happening across the border. LGBTQ+ is, you know, welcomed with open arms. I would like to say everywhere, however it is still very much a fluid topic, subject. And to ‑‑ you want to approach it in a very delicate way.

330 And you know, we talk about LGBTQ+, reconciliation, all of these things are very sensitive important matters. And myself being from the community of Ndilo raised and currently still live there, you know I’d like to ensure and portray that everyone is welcome.

331 Given from a small community you wear a lot of hats, and myself I own a business, I currently sit on the school board, and I am the Chair of it. I also sit on the Yellowknife Centre First Nation Trust. You know, and I like to be present in our community and show that I care, very much care.

332 Because we are kind of we were here from ‑‑ since the beginning of Yellowknife Dene, and so in that sense, which is why when I approached Ollie to have this show, it is very much important that the stories are being told correctly, and researched. And myself, being in this and like who I am, I was very much ready to take on that challenge.

333 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Thank you for that.

334 That concludes my questions. So I’m going to turn to my colleague, the Commissioner for the Northwest Territories, Commissioner Naidoo, for her questions.

335 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.

336 I just wanted to say as Commissioner for Alberta Northwest Territories, thank you so much for turning out today. For being in this room, all of you with Cabin, all of you in the audience. We really appreciate it when people take part in these hearings. So thank you for that. Again, thank you for welcoming us to the north so warmly, and for rolling out that white carpet. We’d much prefer a red carpet, but a white carpet will do. It is winter, so we understand that.

337 I just wanted to ask you a few questions. You said in your submission that during the wildfires high quality rapid response broadcasting could have made a crucial difference, had it been available on FM. I found that statement interesting and I’m wondering if you can explain what you mean by that, considering that there are other FM stations in the market?

338 MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you for the question.

339 And you are right, there are other FM stations in the market. None of them did the programming we did is the short answer to that. I will unpack that a little bit. So a lot of what happened during the wildfires, the evacuations of multiple communities, did not happen between 9:00 and 5:00 on a weekday. A lot of it happened in the evenings, the evacuation order was issued in an evening.

340 And the same with COVID as a separate example. I can remember at 9:45, 10:00 at night on a Friday getting an advisory coming out declaring that the Northwest Territories was closing its border at the very start of the COVID pandemic.

341 As far as I am aware, we are the only broadcaster serving Yellowknife ‑‑ and I include all broadcasters in this statement ‑‑ that reacted within minutes every time any of those things happened, and would have done on FM had we been able to do so.

342 And I recognize that in some situations, for example the CBC, like turning a public broadcaster around in circumstances like that is hard. There are lots of factors involved in that. I have worked for the BBC, I’ve been within that environment. I understand, you are turning an oil tanker to address these things sometimes.

343 We are a nimble, agile, pretty small private broadcaster and we can turn on a dime in a crisis. And during the wildfires, the evacuations, I had a Starlink dish popped up on a couple of bags of dog kibble in the back of a truck being driven down the highway by my partner, who I might add is a CBC reporter. So she ‑‑

(Off microphone / Sans microphone)

344 ‑‑ were able to get on and still be writing up dates, still be delivering information, even from the middle of highway 1 in the Northwest Territories, heading into the dead zone as we evacuated. And to be clear, there is no other means of doing that without a Starlink dish right now. There is no cell service, there is nothing on almost all of out highways.

345 So we have time and again taken steps to react really quickly, inventively, creatively, to get information to people in a crisis. We are the only ones who have done that here.

346 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I really appreciate that answer. Did you want to add something?

347 MR. GOODWIN: Yeah, I just wanted to add something. So with the wildfire evacuations, I ended up sticking behind ‑‑

(Off microphone / Sans microphone)

348 There were certain roles that needed to be filled, I could fill some of those roles with some skillsets I had. Some bizarre ones. I was a chef, I was a school bus driver, I sucked out many porta‑potties, one of my less glamourous jobs during the evacuation. And one of them was to set up safety protocol for people, boots on the ground. I did a lot of HR in that capacity as well.

349 And one of the things that we had come back to use was we need to no longer listen to the current FM station because it wasn’t fast enough in its response if the highway was open or not. That was actually given to us by the GNWT. So we now needed to take their consultation from that and then give that to the workers on the ground, because a lot of the times we were being told through FM broadcasters that the road was open, and you’d show up and the road was closed, vice versa. And as a result, we actually upgraded a lot of our software so that we can act remotely in case something like that does every happen again.

350 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for that.

351 You talked about your revenue targets, which were quite ambitious. While we know that, you know, you feel they’re realistic, obviously, due to the trade war possibility with the United States affecting the economy, how would that change your plans?

352 MR. WILLIAMS: We are obviously at an incredibly early date. It is very soon to understand exactly how that trade war will roll out. I would venture to suggest that there is not a soul alive in the planet, including the President of the United States, who knows what is going to happen in the next seven days. So we will react to that as we need to.

353 You’ve raised a valid point. Having said that, the effects of a trade war are very nuanced and complex, particularly in the Northwest Territories and Yellowknife. Take for example the critical minerals supply chain in North America. At the moment for the past five or 10, 15, even more years, Canada and the U.S. have had joint critical minerals agreements, all of the emphasis has been on building those things together.

354 And that has meant cooperation between the two, and it has also frankly meant not a whole lot of investment in those industries sometimes because there was an attitude of, you know what, it’s not that vital, we’ll figure it out between us. And so, China currently has most of the critical minerals industry. It controls most of that.

355 I imagine if there is a trade war sparked by the U.S. that happens to evolve to any particular stage, we are likely to see a change in federal government investment approach in that situation and the federal government might be minded, for example, to invest more heavily in Canadian critical minerals infrastructure to ensure its own supply chain.

356 Particularly if China were to retaliate to U.S. tariffs that have been imposed on it in the past week or two by itself throttling the availability of critical minerals. Indeed, I believe it already has done that as part of its response U.S. 10 percent tariffs that were enacted earlier this month. That is just one example of a situation that might three, four, five years down the line actually result in significant new investment in the Northwest Territories rather than necessarily being to the detriment of the local economy.

357 So while I take your point that there are lots of uncertainties, with a potential for a trade war to come up, I think the uncertainties are such that we might just as likely end up with significantly more investment in the Northwest Territories than find that the economy suffers as a result.

358 And another example might be the Mackenzie Valley Highway, a big highway project, or the Taltson Hydro Expansion, which is designed to bring cheaper, cleaner electricity to Yellowknife, they might find themselves suddenly federally funded. And Premier of the Northwest Territories has expressly advocated for this as a tariffs response, because of the political and economic environment we’d find ourselves in.

359 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you. I really appreciate the answer. I’m going to just skip some of the other questions because you touched on them in some of your answers, and I know that my fellow colleagues over there would also like to ask questions.

360 My last question is, you know, full disclosure ‑‑ I come from a news background. I was a journalist for many years, so news is really something that’s of interest to me, and I wanted to get your sense on what are the biggest challenges that you think ‑‑ anybody on the panel there ‑‑ what do you think are the challenges, the biggest challenges that news faces these days? What do you think can be done to fix the issues, and do you think that there is a role or anything specific that the CRTC should be doing?

361 MR. WILLIAMS: Sorry, how long have I got?

‑‑‑ Laughter

362 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Not long. Not long.

‑‑‑ Laughter

363 MR. WILLIAMS: Okay. There is ‑‑ there is a lot to unpack there. Let me have a little swig of water. That’s a really good question.

364 Now, we obviously have been operating in the challenges of that news environment. We have been operating through, for example, the Meta ban on news on Facebook and Instagram, which kicked in about 15 days before the evacuation of Yellowknife. So, we have had to be extremely nimble in figuring out what we do with that and trying all sorts of different approaches, particularly as in the Northwest Territories, this is essentially a Facebook‑based internet economy when it comes to the exchange of information.

365 Virtually everybody is on Facebook. You will not find people on X ‑‑ Twitter, whatever you want to call it. Everyone is on Facebook. Elections take place on Facebook; notices go out on Facebook; results are declared on Facebook, and maybe not anywhere else. So, a lot of things happen on Facebook in the Northwest Territories that you may not find elsewhere.

366 Now, suddenly, we are in an environment where people can post misinformation or disinformation on Facebook, and we can’t really post the news ‑‑ or address that misinformation or disinformation, or at least under Meta’s actions, we wouldn’t be able to. Now, I want to be clear ‑‑ we have worked around those. We have found ways to still provide links to news on Facebook and, you know, so far, haven’t shut them down ‑‑ great. But at the same time, it’s not really a sustainable solution for small news organizations to go around finding clever tricks to post news on Facebook when Facebook is trying to stop you. That is not a healthy news environment.

367 We think the addition of an FM licence to what we do is a small example of a way that you can provide a meaningful and easy‑to‑access ‑‑ and free to access ‑‑ means of distributing news that wins national awards and wins a lot of plaudits locally, and we’re grateful for that because you don’t have to pay to listen to our broadcast on FM in an environment where internet is still pretty expensive up here.

368 I know a subsidy is coming, but the cost of living in general is still really high here, and being able to provide the news that we provide for free on FM is going to be, in an era of incredibly fractured news dissemination and a really difficult era for news broadcasters ‑‑ that’s going to be a really meaningful asset for us, and the community has said as much in its interventions.

369 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you. That’s all I had. Thank you very much.

370 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Commissioner Naidoo.

371 I will turn it over to my colleague, Commissioner Levy, for the last questions.

372 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Hi. Thank you again for your presentation. I was really interested in what was almost an aside, but I’d like to dig in a little bit more on the French program that you have. Can you talk a little bit about why that happened, how that happened, who you are speaking to, and how many hours a week of French programming do you do?

373 MR. WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I might see if Scott wants to come in on this, but I think I can cover this for the most part.

374 We had a program, 9:00 till 10:00 p.m. on Thursdays called ‘Poissento’. It is operated by a gentleman named Pat, who I believe started with us in Yellowknife. I think he may now live in Yukon, and he provides an hour of francophone music broadcasting that is really compelling and is one of my favourite shows that we broadcast each week, and Pat is francophone. He asked if he could do a francophone show when we originally were starting Cabin Radio.

375 He is one of, I would say, seven, eight, nine, ten broadcasters who have been with us throughout for six or seven years of broadcasting, broadcasting all manner of specialist shows throughout the week. Their dedication is incredible. And Pat puts together a show weekly that we air on a Thursday evening, and it occupies just a specific spot in the schedule, and we love it and he loves it and we keep doing it. And I draw attention to it only because it exists.

376 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Is it, do you propose to keep that going on an FM station should you get a licence, and would it just be the one hour a week?

377 MR. WILLIAMS: As I understand it ‑‑ and Scott, feel free to interrupt me on this ‑‑ we propose to keep it, and one hour a week.

378 MR. LETKEMAN: Yeah, I think that would be the plan moving forward, and like Ollie said, he is one of our original hosts who got in touch immediately when we announced that we were going to be launching the Cabin Radio livestream, and he is also a veteran broadcaster. His show is actually syndicated on various other radio stations. I don’t off the top of my head know what stations exactly, but I know there are ‑‑ he mentions it every show, but unfortunately I don’t speak fluent French, so I’m not sure where exactly these stations are broadcasting out of. But he’s been consistent, his show is great to listen to whether or not you speak French, and yeah, we are proud to just continue having him, giving him his space to do his show once a week.

379 COMMISSIONER LEVY: I have, if I may, a couple of questions that have to do with the journalism side of your operation. You have talked about doing 150 minutes of news per week in your application, ?t you’ve since talked about doing 600 minutes weekly of I think spoken word more generally. How would that ‑‑ would that 150 minutes of pure news fit within the 600 minutes, or would you see expanding that as well?

380 MR. WILLIAMS: The news broadcasting and the spoken word are separate, discrete objects, if you like, in the application. So, the news ‑‑ where we refer to the news in the application, we refer to newscasts. So, the idea of delivering, you know, the equivalent of ‑‑ at the moment, we have 7:20, 7:50, 8:20, 8:50, in the afternoon as well. We would expand those out to a degree.

381 Spoken word ‑‑ and I’m grateful for the opportunity to keep talking about this ‑‑ includes, for example, our morning show, ‘Mornings at the Cabin’, which is at the minimum 40 minutes of spoken word daily. It is not a morning show in the sense of, you know, someone opens a microphone for 30 seconds, introduces the next track, and goes away again, and then there’s a newscast somewhere. The newscasts appear, but there is also, on top of the newscasts, minimum 40 minutes ‑‑ sometimes, if we can’t shut them up, more than that ‑‑ of spoken word programming.

382 And to give you an example of what I mean by that. Last week, Jesse ‑‑ we’ve already heard about Gail, Jesse’s late mom ‑‑ one of our guest cohosts, Chrissie Carrigan, was on with Jesse on last week’s Thursday morning show, I want to say, and discussing the topic of grief, because they’ve both had major losses in their lives lately. And I’m pretty sure that ran to about 15 to 20 minutes of uninterrupted speech on the topic of grief.

383 I am prepared to tell the Commission I do not think a single other broadcaster in this community would do that. I’m not sure that many other broadcasters in the country would do that, but it was incredible spoken word radio, and the messages we received from our listening audience after that ‑‑ the messages of gratitude for it and just wanting to respond to what they had heard ‑‑ we believe that deserves a place on FM, and even though that might not be the approach of other formatted stations, here or elsewhere, when we get those messages, we know it’s resonating.

384 And again, it resonates with our audience; it resonates with our advertisers. It is something that the population of Yellowknife, sat behind me here, and who wrote in and who listened to us ‑‑ they value that. And that sort of spoken word broadcasting is part of what I’m talking about within that ‑‑ not just hauling the Premier in to say, ‘Hey, what’s going on with the tariff situation?’ but also, let’s spend 20 minutes dealing with a very human topic that will speak to a lot of our audience.

385 COMMISSIONER LEVY: You’ve only got four journalist to cover a huge area, really, because you’re attempting to cover all of NWT. Correct? That’s quite a task. Do you have any proposals to expand that staff? How would that happen? What would that take? What would it take to hire more journalists?

386 MR. WILLIAMS: Money, and that would be great. Now, the good news from that point of view ‑‑ that gives me a really good opportunity to talk about what we intend to do as a company, what we are for. The revenue that we generate ‑‑ and I think this is borne out through our financials that are on file with the Commission and in the application itself ‑‑ nobody here is doing this with the intent of being an individual dollar millionaire or billionaire through operating a private radio station in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

387 We invest back into our programming, including our journalism, as much as we are able to do so, and that is reflected, I think, in much of what we have on file. You know, we will take any opportunity we can to expand ‑‑ in balance ‑‑ so that we’re not ‑‑ for example, it wouldn’t be opportunity to have a newsroom of 37 journalists and one poor sales member of staff desperately trying to figure that out, but to expand all areas of our station as we are able to do so.

388 And you can see over the track record over the past seven years. When Cabin Radio started in 2018, I was the journalist, and then by the fall of 2018 there were two of us. Then, by the start of the pandemic in 2020, we got that up to three, and so on and so forth. And our sales staff has expanded roughly along those lines, and our ability to bring on paid programming talent has expanded along those lines, as well.

389 So, we ‑‑ believe me, they will have to hold me back ‑‑ I will always invest in more journalism where I can. What is exciting is that our audience has shown that they are ready for that, and it’s a big reason why they support us. We had 14 million hits to our website, 2023, during the wildfires. Even without too many evacuations to worry about last year, the figure was more than 10 million. And that is a huge number for a broadcast entity, a station our size. And we think that reflects the reliance of our audience on the work that our newsroom does. So, we will certainly look to expand that where the opportunity arises.

390 COMMISSIONER LEVY: I had a little bit of a follow‑up. Congratulations on your CAJ awards. That is high praise indeed, from that organization. But I want to talk a little bit about the move from a webcast to an FM station is going to require more rigour as it applies to journalistic standards and ethics, and so forth. So, how are you going to meet that challenge? What existing standards and so forth do you subscribe to, and are you prepared for that?

391 MR. WILLIAMS: We have operated to the standard that would be required of us as a licensed FM station since we began in 2018, and that applies across all of our activities as a broadcaster, and particularly across news journalism, both written and broadcast.

392 For example, whenever elections have been held, I recognize that the CRTC regularly issues bulletins around elections, make clear to broadcasters exactly the rules by which by must abide. We have at all times during federal territorial elections in the Northwest Territories followed exactly what those rules would be for us regardless of the fact they don’t actually apply, because it would be pointless to run the organization one way and then sit in front of you and say, ‘Yeah, tomorrow, magically we’ll be able to plug in an FM transmitter and we’ll do it differently.’ We’ve tried to do it that way since 2018 precisely to meet that very important objective of being able to sit in front of you and say, ‘We will maintain the exact standard you expect us to, because we have done to date.’

393 COMMISSIONER LEVY: And just a little bit about the difference in the catchment area. As a webcast, you had 14 million, 10 million hits, and so forth. So, how do you calculate the kind of population that you’re reaching as a webcast, and how would that increase as an FM licence, given that FM has constraints on its range and reach, and so forth, whereas a webcast does not, and so, you have that. So, what would be the difference?

394 MR. WILLIAMS: Webcasts have a lot of constraints in the Northwest Territories. If you drive about eight minutes out of Yellowknife in any given direction, you’re losing any internet. So, that’s the end of the webcast ‑‑ and I would argue the FM frequency will extend, based on the broadcast maps that we’ve submitted, significantly further out, north on the Ingraham Trail and west along Highway 3, than the internet does.

395 So, FM radio actually is a real asset in Yellowknife in terms of what it can do, precisely because webcasts are not as reliable as you might think, even in the year 2025, in Yellowknife. The internet is not all‑pervasive here yet. It’s actually quite hard to get reliable internet. There are some days, and there are plenty of residents who will get in touch with us and say, ‘I live in this neighbourhood; I can’t even get a cell signal today. What’s going on?’ and we’ll try and find out, and some poor soul at Bell or Telus will have to fend off a question or two.

396 It’s still not that easy to rely on the internet in Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories. That is a critical reason for this application. I know it’s something that our audience has always said to us ‑‑ that the ease of FM at home, in a vehicle, is how they want to be able to consume the product, and it is a much easier means still of using the internet to do so, particularly when you are on the move, and that’s what we’ve heard from our audience, and the reason that we’re here.

397 I want to clarify with regard to the statistics provided for the website just now. Not all of those are people listening to the livestream. I don’t pretend to have 10 million listeners. But a proportion of them are reading our web journalism, for example. And so, we have a broad sense of, okay, how many thousand people are tuning in, we think, a year on FM, and that’s submitted to the panel ‑‑ you have that figure. There’s just so many more people who find that a barrier to entry to consuming our coverage ‑‑ to have reliable internet, to have it on the move, to have it as soon as you’re any distance outside the city limits, and FM will make a huge difference to that.

398 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Okay. Just one last. You talked about the recordings you do at the ‘Folk on the Rocks’ concerts. These are obviously broadcast quality, because you’re making sure that they are broadcast quality. Do you also provide any kind of service to sort of individualize them for particular artists so that they can take them and use the audio ‑‑ and the video, if necessary ‑‑ to further their careers and their recording opportunities, et cetera?

399 MR. WILLIAMS: We would be happy to do so. I think certainly ‑‑ Scott, have we often be asked by artists to provide copies of tracks from the archive from ‘Folk’?

400 MR. LETKEMAN: It’s come up ‑‑ not a lot, but there have been cases in the past in which yeah, an artist will ‑‑ specifically, like, mostly young local artists who have had the opportunity to perform at ‘Folk on the Rocks’. I can think of one specific instance in which we had a group of high school kids playing in a band and playing on our stage, and one of the things we do as part of our broadcast on the ‘Folk on the Rocks’ festival weekend is we invite everyone ‑‑ all the artists who perform on our stage ‑‑ to come and chat with us at our broadcast booth after that, and their parents in particular wanted to hear that interview. So, we cut out that audio and sent it over to them, and they really appreciated it, obviously.

401 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Okay.

402 MR. WILLIAMS: I believe Scott it speaking about the Whitehorse‑based act ‘Cows Go Moo’, just to elaborate on that very quickly. We would be thrilled –

403 THE CHAIRPERSON: I’m going to ask you to conclude very quickly because we need to move on.

404 MR. WILLIAMS: Okay. We would be thrilled to offer that service, and that is something that we consider is a core part of providing that sort of service of recording it in the first place, is to have it available to support artists in future.

405 COMMISSIONER LEVY: It wasn’t my idea, but it just occurred to me. Anyway, thank you very much for your very fulsome explanations of my questions. That’s all I have.

406 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Commissioner Levy, and I will exercise my privilege as Chair to ask a follow‑up question that you can answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Am I correct to assume that your contribution agreement with the festival includes copyright provisions, especially if you are to broadcast some livestreams or some performances on your new radio?

407 MR. WILLIAMS: Yes.

408 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Thank you so much.

409 So, I will ask my colleagues from our legal services whether they have additional questions at this point?

410 MR. BEAUMIER: Just a quick question. Hi. I am Samuel Beaumier. I am legal counsel with the Commission. I am conscious of time, so I will be quick.

411 We have heard that you cover Hay River as part of the newscast with online radio, but Hay River is outside the Yellowknife FM market. Given this, I would like to know what are your plans regarding this market, and if you could provide this information as part of an undertaking to be provided by February 20?

412 MR. WILLIAMS: Can you just elaborate for me a little? We cover communities in the Northwest Territories more broadly through our written news coverage. It isn’t specifically part of the application here because it ‑‑ obviously we’re speaking purely to the Yellowknife market here. We don’t have at the moment a formulated plan to extend, for example, broadcast service to Hay River after this. That’s certainly something we’d be interested in doing, but we don’t currently possess that plan.

413 MR. BEAUMIER: Okay, we’re good with that answer. Thank you.

414 And I would also like to confirm with you that you will provide the information relating to Vice Chair Théberge’s question on CCD contribution to FACTOR and Musicaction by Thursday, February 20?

415 MR. WILLIAMS: Confirmed.

Undertaking

416 MR. BEAUMIER: Thank you.

417 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Maître Beaumier. Thank you to my colleagues. Thank you to you all for your presence, your participation, and your generosity today in answering our questions. I do hope it wasn’t too painful. Cabin Kid was really quiet, so I interpret this as that this was not that painful, and so I thank you all and I wish you a very good afternoon.

418 We will take a lunch break and we will reconvene at 1:30 this afternoon for the rest of this public hearing.

419 So, thank you very much again, and safe travels.

‑‑‑ Upon recessing at 11:57 a.m.

‑‑‑ Upon resuming at 1:30 p.m.

420 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to the afternoon tranche of our public hearing of the CRTC. I’m Nathalie Théberge. I am the vice‑chair of Broadcasting for the CRTC along with the Chair of this particular Panel.

421 Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone to please put your cellphone on vibration mode so that our colleagues have our undevoted ‑‑ or devoted attention, I should say.

422 But I will first turn to our hearing secretary, Sonia, for some housekeeping information, please.

423 THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

424 Welcome back, everyone. We will now hear item 2 on the agenda, which is the application by Vista Radio Ltd. for a broadcasting licence to operate an English‑language commercial FM radio station in Yellowknife. Please introduce yourselves and then you have 20 minutes to make your presentation.

425 Thank you.

Presentation

426 MR. GABOR: Good afternoon, Vice‑Chair Théberge, Commissioners Levy and Naidoo, and Staff. It’s a pleasure to be here today with all of you in Yellowknife. I would like to also acknowledge that we’re located in Chief Drygeese Territory, from time immemorial the traditional land of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.

427 Before we begin, I’d like to introduce our panel. First, I want to extend warm regards and apologies from our president, Bryan Edwards, who unfortunately had to undergo essential surgery last week and regretfully is not permitted to travel. Bryan is one of the founders of Vista Radio. Under his leadership, Vista has focused on super‑serving small markets, a philosophy he has instilled in all of us, based on his many years of experience working with and understanding the unique needs of these communities, including Yellowknife and many others across Canada since the 1980s.

428 My name is Joe Gabor, and I’m the vice‑president of Business at Vista Radio. I joined Vista in 2019, after 25 years in Canadian broadcast media, largely with the CBC and Bell Media.

429 To my immediate left is Robin Ram. Robin is the general manager for Northwest Territories and Vancouver Island. He has been with Vista for 10 years, six of those here, residing in Yellowknife when he was on the board of directors for the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce and a member of the GNWT Tourism Marketing Advisory Committee. Robin is also a former Communications officer of the Dene Nation and a past CEO of several Yellowknife‑based companies, where he has worked with Indigenous communities to secure project funding.

430 To Robin’s left is Kent Schumaker. Kent is the national music director for Vista Radio. Kent has worked in small markets across western Canada and the North for almost 30 years, including three here in Yellowknife at CJCD under previous owners Charles and Eileen Dent.

431 To my right is John White. John is Vista’s director of News. John just joined Vista this past summer, but he has had an immediate and a profound impact on modernizing our news operations. He has over 30 years of journalism experience, both in small‑market community news with Castanet and Black Press and major newsrooms with the Edmonton Journal and Winnipeg Free Press.

432 Vista Radio was founded in 2004 with a single station in Duncan, B.C., and has since grown to 52 radio stations and nearly 40 community websites, with a team of over 260 people across Canada. In 2024, we completed the acquisition of CAB‑K Broadcasting, adding three small‑market stations in central Alberta to our family.

433 At the core of Vista is our commitment to small‑market radio. While many radio broadcasters have responded by reducing staff, consolidating operations, or exiting the market altogether, we have remained steadfast in our commitment. We continue to invest on our local teams and in our communities, even during challenging times.

434 We have proudly served Yellowknife and Hay River since 2007, navigating difficult periods such as floods, wildfires, and of course the pandemic. We see being grassroots not as a measure of the company’s size, but as a reflection of our enduring commitment to what we do and our sustainable approach to radio’s future.

435 In Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2023‑33, the Commission determined that the Yellowknife market could not support an additional commercial radio station at that time. We strongly believe that this was the right decision.

436 Since then, the economic indicators that informed that decision have worsened. The impact of wildfires, housing costs and availability, high interest rates, inflation, and now the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs have all contributed to an extremely challenging business environment. Furthermore, as noted in our application, limited population growth is placing increased strain on the economy, and the ongoing decline of the resource sector in the Northwest Territories will undeniably have a profound negative impact on Yellowknife’s economy and, most importantly, its local businesses, resulting in reduced spending on advertising.

437 If, despite these challenges, the Commission determines that it would be in the public interest to license an additional commercial radio station in Yellowknife, we strongly believe that the most beneficial and responsible approach would be to approve our application for a new station.

438 Thank you, and I’ll hand things over to Robin Ram now.

439 MR. RAM: Thanks, Joe.

440 True North FM launched in 2020 following extensive consultation with Yellowknife community leaders, local businesses, and listeners. This marked a renewed focus on programming and community engagement, underscoring our commitment to Yellowknife and Hay River.

441 We’re proud of our long‑standing charitable initiatives, like over 25 years of Stuff the Bus in Yellowknife and over 10 years of Fill the Ford in Hay River. Our Community Voices program provides free promotional support for local charities working alongside businesses. We also support local events through sponsorships and programming like Minute with the Mayor and True North Tales, which showcases the stories of our communities. These are part of MyTrueNorthNow, an Indigenous‑led digital platform created by our digital director, Ashley Roberts, who’s from Yellowknife.

442 In 2023, we invested in new equipment and moved our Hay River transmitter to better prepare for floods and wildfires. We also upgraded our Studio‑to‑Transmitter (STL) links in Yellowknife from analogue to digital to ensure continuous service during emergencies. These projects alone represented an investment of over $110,000.

443 In 2023, True North FM and MyTrueNorthNow were vital in supporting our communities during multiple emergencies. When Hay River faced severe flooding, we worked with civic officials to provide timely safety updates. Soon after, wildfires forced evacuations across the territory. We partnered with local governments to deliver live updates from officials and displaced residents, increasing coverage as evacuation orders were issued.

444 In May, Hay River and K’atl’odeeche First Nation were evacuated. Our teams worked with officials and organizations like the Salvation Army and Crazy Indian Brotherhood to provide resources while also assisting displaced families through on‑air and social media updates. As fire threats escalated, we offered emergency updates every 20 minutes, and when Yellowknife’s evacuation order was issued on August 16th, we had Mayor Rebecca Alty on air within 10 minutes to provide guidance. While some staff relocated to our Grande Prairie station, others remained behind to ensure uninterrupted updates on evacuation procedures and flights. Throughout the crisis, we maintained close contact with government officials, the RCMP, and displaced residents to address concerns. Devin Bellinger, our program director, stayed in Yellowknife after the evacuation deadline, ensuring our operations transitioned smoothly and coverage continued seamlessly.

445 True North FM also partnered with the Salvation Army to launch the Wildfire Relief Fund and were recognized by Broadcast Dialogue for the Best Small Market Community Service Initiative in Canada for 2023.

446 On September 6, the return to Yellowknife began, and we launched a Return Home resource page on MyTrueNorthNow.com to provide updates on businesses, reopening schedules, and community changes for both Yellowknife and Hay River. Following the lifting of the evacuation order, we introduced the Recover Together initiative to support local businesses in both communities. This program offered complimentary advertising to help businesses rebuild. Originally planned for three months, the initiative was extended into 2024 due to strong local support, contributing over $400,000 in free advertising to assist in the recovery of the local economy.

447 Joe?

448 MR. GABOR: Thank you, Robin.

449 As set out in our application, we expect CJYK‑FM to generate modest revenues at the outset, given the business environment, as well as limited potential for growth in the near term. The key is our proposed station would leverage operational synergies with 100.1 True North FM. These synergies are critical to the stability of operating a financially stable station in Yellowknife, and our commitment is underpinned by a solid and realistic business plan.

450 With the opportunity of adding a new station to the market, we’re excited to unveil brand‑new radio software for Vista that will revolutionize out‑of‑studio broadcasts. Kent and John will both have more details, but with the addition of new tools, new staff, and a youth‑oriented programming lineup, our strategy includes an increase in live broadcasts from within the Indigenous communities in Yellowknife and across the region. By increasing accessibility and representation, we want to reaffirm our commitment to true reconciliation and fostering a more inclusive media landscape.

451 I’ll hand things over now to Kent.

452 MR. SCHUMAKER: Thank you, Joe.

453 Thanks for having us.

454 We plan to roll out a Hot AC format with our property, which is currently not being served in the city. Hot AC, or Adult Contemporary, is a fun, lifestyle‑driven format aimed at young adults. So our target demo will be adults ages 18 to 49. It’s a format listeners can enjoy anywhere ‑‑ in the car, at home, in the office, in at the gym. An upbeat playlist, it’ll offer the opportunity to sing along to today’s top stars and discover artists from other genres who their music fits seamlessly into the format we are hoping to roll out here. We believe our mix of 90s hits and today’s chart‑toppers, with featured content that many listeners grew up with and continue to enjoy with their families, will be attractive. Bruno Mars, Adele, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Charlotte Cardin, and The Weeknd will be central to our playlist.

455 We’re also committed to 40 per cent Canadian content between 6 and midnight, seven‑day spread, Sunday to Saturday, and dedicating five per cent of our annual artist roster to new Canadian emerging artists. Many of these up‑and‑coming artists are currently underrepresented in the NWT, and we want to provide them with exposure. Using our Homegrown Lineup series, which we’ve had on for about four years now, we spotlight 100 per cent Canadian and Indigenous talent right now, an initiative we’ve developed in collaboration with True North FM, Music NWT, and FACTOR. The series highlights Indigenous artists and showcases talented musicians from right here in the region, both on air and through our digital platform, MyTrueNorthNow.com. It’s an opportunity not often seen from commercial radio stations, and something that we’ve really been proud of over the duration of this.

456 With the opportunity to have a second station here in Yellowknife, and one with a music format that aligns well with the artists that we feature already in the Homegrown Lineup, we see tremendous opportunity in expanding this initiative. As mentioned, it’s been four years in existence, the Homegrown Lineup. We’ve featured over 60 songs from local Yellowknife and NWT artists. I’ve personally been involved in the distribution and rolling out of that content to make sure it’s on our station here in Yellowknife, and I’m actually particularly quite excited to meet and talk to one of them ‑‑ Carmen Braden, I notice, is slated to appear during the hearing. “Small Town Song” has been featured on our station over 50 times. That’s 100.1 True North FM.

457 In support of Canadian talent, we’re earmarking $15,000 annually for additional contributions to FACTOR. We’re also pledging $5,000 to the True North Bursary. This will be available to an Indigenous student pursuing a career in broadcast arts or journalism. If the Commission grants us a seven‑year licence to operate CJYK, we will dedicate a total of $140,000 over the course of the licence term to further support Canadian talent development.

458 The Hot AC format will be complemented by entertainment‑based news and information, all delivered by local voices here. Using the latest technology and one of the top operating systems in broadcast radio ‑‑ it’s called PlayoutONE ‑‑ we’ll be serving the interests of younger listeners in the North, including youth‑hosted programming, with the ability for them to broadcast anywhere there is a reliable Internet connection. We will achieve our goals using several strategies with our programming team including True North Podcast Factory. We’ll give members of the public an opportunity to access our studios to start on‑air conversations which can then become the themes for the podcasts.

459 Homegrown Lineup will expand our local music show to include live in‑studio sessions with local talent leading to a broader audience through our Vista Launch Radio Pad portal for new Canadian bands. True North Tales (the Podcast) will create a library of northern stories for our local features. Yellowknife Safe Streets Program will team with the RCMP and youth services programs to give at‑risk youth a platform to discuss issues while building a safe community for those who might have difficulty experiencing a chance to communicate why they’re having difficulty staying connected. We’re really excited about PlayoutONE.

460 High school programming will work with high school youth leaders to develop their own local show that revolves around wellness, learning, community, and language. And again, using PlayoutONE, the ability to broadcast from locations that complete the story we think will be exciting and attract youth to our field. By offering youth‑oriented programming over the airwaves, we remove the barriers related to Internet access and mobile service costs. That will create opportunities for expert guests to address youth‑specific issues and expand arts and culture programming, including content featuring the Dene First Nation’s culture and language and local Indigenous musicians.

461 You have our personal commitment that CJYK‑FM will be committed to reflecting, informing, and engaging the Yellowknife community.

462 Thank you. And now John.

463 MR. WHITE: Thank you, Kent.

464 Journalism in North America is at a crossroads. The economic model is broken, and the profession has been under attack by extremists bent on stirring up chaos and mistrust. Now, more than ever, we must do our part to protect democracy by bolstering our journalistic efforts, especially in markets that have traditionally faced oppression, ignorance, and indifference.

465 I have fought to stay in the industry despite multiple downsizing events to do my part in protecting and enriching the legacy of truth, and truth to power. I applied to join Vista Radio because they are one of the few media organizations in North America stepping up to fill the growing news void.

466 And speaking of stepping up, CJYK‑FM is designed to expand the choice and diversity of news, information, and music in Yellowknife with a strong focus on local reflection, community information, community access, and underserved younger audiences. Like True North FM, CJYK‑FM will be live and local and will be produced with the same high journalistic and management standards. However, the new station will bring a fresh perspective tailored to young listeners.

467 While covering traditional news, we’ll also highlight real‑life stories that affect our listeners. Our investment in a dedicated team will ensure our journalist integrity as we report on major issues such as the opioid crisis, food insecurity, child and family welfare, and affordable housing, providing a vital service to the community. It will directly serve Yellowknife’s on‑air and online information needs.

468 We will provide a minimum of 10 hours and 28.5 minutes of spoken‑word programming each week with a particular focus on local news, upcoming community events, and staples such as road conditions and weather. With decades of service to Yellowknife, we understand the region’s diverse culture and will provide a shared voice for all. Each week, a minimum of seven hours and 46 minutes will be dedicated to local news and information. Partnering with True North FM, we will broaden our storytelling across both stations. News and information programming will air regularly from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and will be followed by weekend newscasts.

469 Our expanded team ‑‑ including a total of five new staff in news, on‑air, sales, and marketing ‑‑ will enhance coverage across both stations and our community portal, MyTrueNorthNow.com. The expanded Yellowknife newsroom will also be supported by Vista’s regional, provincial, and national news teams for added coverage relevant to our audience. While our individual newsrooms cover their local markets, we are always collaborating as a team to enhance the information we bring forward. In Hay River, we are working to expand our digital coverage with greater focus on stories from local newsmakers and community leaders.

470 If news breaks, we can leverage our newly introduced operating system called PlayoutONE, which allows us to broadcast from remote locations, and be on air within moments. The interface brings all of the standard studio tools to one screen. We can control, edit, and broadcast whether it’s at a scene or inside covering a council meeting. I am also part of a team working to redraw our emergency response guidelines for newscasts, website alerts, and breaking news stories. Together with the engineering team and the program directors’ group, we will ensure we are responsive to our audience in the eventuality of future emergency situations.

471 We agree that strong journalism is vital to Yellowknife, and Vista has a proven track record of delivering reliable local journalism in a sustainable way.

472 Thank you, and back to Joe.

473 MR. GABOR: Thank you, John.

474 As you heard from our team, we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished here and we’re also very excited about the possibility of operating a second station with all the new programming, news, and community‑based initiatives that would come along with it.

475 We have a strong track record of effectively managing multi‑station markets, perhaps most importantly, being able to strengthen the viability of the existing station in a market when introducing a new one, a perfect example of which being our recent launch in June 2021 of CFCH in North Bay, Ontario ‑‑ the only new commercial station in Canada to be launched during the difficult times of the pandemic ‑‑ which, along with its sister station JET FM, have provided us with stability and predictability in these challenging times for local radio.

476 As the Commission is acutely aware, we’re already all competing with global digital behemoths for both a share of advertising dollars and the audience’s attention. It’s becoming increasingly harder to invest in quality content and local journalism. If the ultimate goal is more Northern coverage, I would humbly propose that perhaps the focus for all of us, both in the private and the public sector, be on collaboration instead of competition, to work together to stabilize and strengthen our Canadian‑made and Canadian‑based publishers, broadcasters, and content creators.

477 The Commission has long expressed the view that strengthening existing broadcasters is a desirable outcome of licensing. We anticipate significant challenges for a new commercial radio station to attain financial viability. Furthermore, such viability, if it would be achieved, would undeniably come at the expense of CJCD, with a new entrant facing no incentive to minimize the impact on 45‑year‑old heritage station, putting it at significant risk.

478 If the Commission concludes that it would be in the public interest to authorize the operation of a second FM radio station in Yellowknife notwithstanding the market environment, we do believe that Vista is ideally suited to be licensed to provide that new service. It best serves the public interest by achieving a balance between the objectives of increasing choice and diversity as well as minimizing the potential negative impact on the quality and variety of radio services that are currently available to the local community.

479 Thank you, and we’d be now happy to answer any of your questions.

480 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for this presentation. These hearings are important, as you know. It is through these hearings that we can construct a robust public record upon which we will base our decisions. And so we appreciate folks like you to come in and give us the opportunity to constitute this robust public record. So thank you very much.

481 So we have about an hour scheduled for questions from the Commissioners. And our Commissioner for Alberta and the Northwest Territories, Commissioner Naidoo, will be leading the questions and will probably turn to us if we have additional questions.

482 So Commissioner Naidoo?

483 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you very much, Vice‑Chair Théberge.

484 Hi there, and I just want to say thank you so much for being here today before us for such an important proceeding. Thank you to everyone in the audience for coming and being part of it as well. We really appreciate the welcome that we get when we come to Yellowknife. It’s a great city, and you guys always treat us really well. So thank you for that.

485 So I have several categories of questions that I’d like to go through with you, but I’d like to start off with a few that pertain to your presentation directly. So first of all, Vista had strongly suggested previously that there’s no room in the market in Yellowknife for another station. But today you’re saying that you would like to be that latest station. So how do you square those two things? What’s changed, if anything?

486 MR. GABOR: Well, to be honest, I think from our point of view, we don’t believe that right now ‑‑ considering the economic conditions, both in the territory and specifically to Yellowknife, considering our current ‑‑ the state of our current station ‑‑ is the right time to do it. And as I said, however, if it’s determined that in the public interest, notwithstanding the financial environment, if for other rationale, other reasons the decision is made, again, to be able to preserve the stability and the financial viability of the station, we believe that operationally, with minimizing the impact on our local station, we have the best opportunity to launch a new station, make it viable, and still preserve our existing operations.

487 So again, we’re excited to launch a second station if the decision is to move ahead with it; however, we remain firm in our standing that we believe at this time, as I said, with the existing ‑‑ the past ‑‑ the impact of the past environment, financial environment and everything that’s still coming ‑‑ and as we know and we’ve discussed before and is in our documents that we filed, we believe that right now the economy and the radio industry is at a bit of a crossroads in terms of being able to preserve small‑market radio, as I’m sure you’ve seen and heard in recent times.

488 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you. I really appreciate that answer.

489 I read your submission thoroughly. You have said both in your presentation and your materials that you submitted that you plan to hire five staff, five new staff. You mention that they would be working in news, on‑air, sales, and marketing; right? So that’s a lot of ground to cover. And I’m wondering how many of those staff will be dedicated ‑‑ do you know at this point how many will be dedicated specifically to news? And will they only be doing news, or will they be asked to perform ad‑revenue‑generating duties for the station?

490 MR. GABOR: Sure, I’ll answer it first, and then I’ll actually pass to John to discuss news specifically.

491 So currently, we have our existing staff in Yellowknife with CJCD. We’d be looking at a minimum of five staff with the new station, generally split probably two for announcers ‑‑ right, a morning show, an afternoon show ‑‑ likely a news person, and then another body in marketing promotions, and then sales. So we’d be adding one news body to our existing news staff, and then how they would work between the two stations and our digital properties, I’ll let John address that.

492 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Just to clarify, so you’re adding one news staff person? Is that what you’re saying? And the rest would be marketing and ad revenue?

493 MR. GABOR: No, two announcers.

494 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Okay.

495 MR. GABOR: Yeah, so two announcers, a news person, a marketing person, and a sales person. So one person dedicated to news.

496 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Right.

497 MR. GABOR: Two announcers, two on‑air announcers, and then a marketing and a sales position.

498 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Okay, got it. Thank you.

499 MR. GABOR: Yes, sorry.

500 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you for that. Sorry, it’s complicated. Numbers, right?

501 MR. WHITE: Yes, so we have two news positions currently at our existing station, and then we’d buttress that with a third. And we also have support from the rest of the network. And that team joins our Alberta cluster on morning news meetings. And I join those as well, so I kind of bring in the big picture and also offer my feedback and experience. And that would continue and expand. Then we would launch a Yellowknife‑specific meeting once we had that extra person.

502 MR. GABOR: If I can add as well, and we know this especially through situations like the wildfires and the pandemic, everybody in the station becomes a news person. They’re all contributing, especially our on‑air announcers, because they’re so connected to the community. They become pseudo‑reporters. They might not publish the final document, but ultimately every announcer at some point in time becomes a junior reporter when the situations call for it.

503 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: It’s the era of multi‑tasking; right?

504 So, sorry to dive down into this, I just want to make sure that we’ve got your statements on the record, exactly what we need. So I’m just going to just dive down a bit more before I go into the sort of the different buckets of questions that I have.

505 You say that there’s not enough room in the market to sustain another station, it’s your view. Right? However, presumably some of the new staff members that you just mentioned to me out of those five will be working to secure revenue for the station in a market that you have suggested does not have capacity to generate any more revenue. So I’m trying to figure out how you square those two things.

506 MR. GABOR: Absolutely. The role of a sales person besides ‑‑ I mean, of course, a significant part of that is the time they spend dealing with clients. But they’re also out there talking to new businesses. So again, our current sales staff obviously are out there selling radio and digital properties, promotions, contests, a variety of features that are geared to True North FM and the demographic and the type of programming that it runs.

507 With the new station, with the different type of programming, different demographic, likely a whole ton of programming ideas, as Kent mentioned, that are very unique from remote communities, et cetera. We are determining that we would want someone else there to be more focused specifically on those so as not to get lost, necessarily, with the existing sales.

508 So again, different demographic, more boots on the ground, potentially talk to advertisers that currently ‑‑ I mean, advertisers don’t just buy the radio station because it’s there. They buy it because it reaches their audience that they want for their business and the new station, for us, would be targeting a slightly younger demographic so that may open up opportunities for us with local businesses that, right now, perhaps are not interested in True North FM because it doesn’t match their demographic.

509 So having that extra body who’s geared specifically to that station, we think, gives us better financial stability and sound

510 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you. I really appreciate that.

511 I hope you appreciate that we’ve exactly what you wanted to get on the record on the record. Thank you.

512 MR. GABOR: Yeah.

513 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: I’d like to move on now to the buckets that I mentioned, so we’re going to move to local programming and synergies.

514 Of course, local programming, for anyone in the audience who may not know, is programming that originates with the station or is produced separately but exclusively for the station.

515 So I’m wondering if you can elaborate on the proposed 10 hours of spoken word local programming broadcast each week specifically. How will you ensure that programming on your station will include on each broadcast day coverage of local news, coverage of sports and events that is of ‑‑ that are of direct and particular relevance to Yellowknife?

516 MR. GABOR: Absolutely. I’ll let Kent start and then maybe John can jump in a little bit specifically on the news and then if Robin ‑‑ if you had anything to add.

517 But I think Kent in his presentation talked about the different buckets of programming we have and I think those will address specifically what you’re asking.

518 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yes. Again excited about the operating system that we do bring to the table. It allows instantaneous access to the people who are out in the community making the news, whether it is the people in the sporting groups, whether it’s the people involved in community events, whether it is involved with the people who are keeping the roads safe.

519 If we have to be outside, we can bring the radio station outside with us.

520 That has been a challenge for a lot of radio stations in the past, and it is not a challenge to us. And we’ve seen it through many of our other stations right now.

521 So being able to be out on the street and talking to the people who are directly involved in community events and things that we can bring to the audience and the listeners, by having them out there on the streets, our reporters are doing exactly what you suggested, bringing what the listeners need and want to hear and on emergency conditions, too.

522 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you for that.

523 One of the things that you had mentioned in your written submission that you didn’t mention in this answer, and I just want to make sure that you have a chance to, is the homegrown lineup. And that’s a lineup created by your True North FM station in partnership with Music Northwest Territories and Factor.

524 Do you intend to count that homegrown lineup as local programming for this new proposed station and, as a follow‑up to that, who will be creating that lineup?

525 MR. SCHUMAKER: The answer to that, yes, it would be included in that, and our program director and music director would be involved in that and as well the people who are supporting that in the community.

526 So again, we would rely just as much with Factor and NWT to make sure that those ‑‑ they’re brought to the table with us. But we absolutely count that as part of our commitment.

527 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Perfect, thanks. I just wanted to get clarification on that.

528 You also mentioned in your application and supplementary brief that Vista will benefit from operating and corporate synergies with CJCD FM.

529 So can you specifically explain for us what those synergies are and what will be the impact on your existing station if we grant you another licence?

530 MR. GABOR: Certainly. And I just wanted to from before in terms of the Playout 1, the operating system, this is a system that we’re putting right across Vista right now. Our engineers are pretty much on the road now constantly installing this.

531 And the advantage of that is it allows our programming team ‑‑ we’re not necessarily looking at just programming buckets of schedules, right, like a lineup. It allows them to actually do live and dynamic programming when they’re out on the road so if something presents itself as an opportunity, it allows them to literally go live on air and do something.

532 So it’s not just about creating a schedule lineup. It actually allows us to be a lot more dynamic and interactive than we are right now.

533 To answer your question in terms of operational synergies, as I said earlier, you know, we operate in a variety of multi‑market stations right now and the advantages ‑‑ again, we have our Yellowknife team here, programming, news, sales, but they’re part of a larger group. So engineers, right. We have an engineer in ‑‑ he’s in ‑‑ I’m trying to remember now. He’s in Lloydminster who oversees Yellowknife. So he’s on short call, has to regularly fly in here if we need something. He has support from an engineering team across the country.

534 HR, finance, those are the support services that we have right now currently.

535 In terms of specific operational advantages,

536 y having that second station ‑‑ I mentioned earlier, with having a slightly larger news team, having a larger announcing team, et cetera, there’s an advantage to them working together to be able to play off of each other as to what’s happening.

537 But overall, with Vista, the operational synergies are we don’t need to hire an HR person, a finance person, engineering. All those support services, they are already established and so we can efficiently launch a second station without having to consider those other bodies.

538 And we’ve all done it. You know, Robin and I are pseudo HR people on any given day with what’s going on. But again, by having that existing team in Yellowknife to support the new staff coming in and then having the Vista team around them with the different department leads like John, who oversees news, it gives them an automatic advantage because they immediately stepped into a group that’s been there, they’ve launched new stations, they’ve launched second stations in markets, so we’ve learned, you know, you never ‑‑ you learn the most when you make mistakes doing it. And we’ve done it, and we’ve done it regularly, so there’s a great support system around our team.

539 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Okay. So you’ve talked about operational and, you know, employment synergies.

540 What about programming synergies from CJCD FM?

541 MR. GABOR: I think maybe, Robin, if you want to address that.

542 MR. RAM: Yeah. Like Ed said earlier, it’s a different demographic we’re chasing on the new station. It’ll be 18 to 49.

543 The existing station is more of an oldies format that appeals to a broader audience. I’ll let Kent address to how we program that station, but it’s a different audience.

544 And as Joe alluded to earlier, the sales team and the other team will be dedicated to the new station in support of the existing station.

545 Kent.

546 MR. SCHUMAKER: Thanks, Robin.

547 I think when it comes to synergies, the one thing that I’m excited about being in this chair right now is to be able to say we’d be able to harness the manpower, the people that we have at both stations to be able to get out in the community and bring people the awareness of the technologies we have.

548 So I think part and parcel of this answer is the two stations together will be able to bring the community into our station and make them a part of it. And that, too, is through the podcast channel. We have a fantastic model being built right now on Vancouver Island in our head office with podcast content which also becomes great terrestrial content for on air as well, too, with cross promoting.

549 So the synergies here, having two stations and crews working together, and reaching a wider audience, a demographic, I believe that it’s going ‑‑ the synergy is going to make radio exciting in this community. The technology’s going to make things exciting, especially for the younger generation.

550 I spent a really great three and a half years of my life here. I saw ‑‑ from a sports background. I played a lot of sports. And I saw a cap. When you wanted to do something in sports and you wanted to grow into it or maybe excel at it, you had to leave. You had to leave the territories, and that’s hard on families.

551 We’ve seen it when people are progressing through IT or anything informational. If they want to pursue that career, they have to leave the NWT.

552 The technology that we’re bringing here and the ability to make the community excited about what we’re offering their children, one of the best examples I can say is I worked in a small town where I ended up doing the morning show for a couple of years and parents were coming to me saying, “I used to listen to your predecessor talk about bus reports when I was growing up and now my kids are listening to you do it”. They didn’t leave. They’re there raising their families.

553 We as a radio company don’t want to put caps on what we can offer the community, and that’s ‑‑ that synergy, our two ‑‑ should you grant us a licence, the synergy of those two stations is going to make that exciting again.

554 MR. GABOR: If I could jump in for a –

555 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Please do. Just turn your mic on.

556 Thank you.

557 MR. GABOR: Oh, there we go. Thank you.

558 In terms of the synergies that you’re referring to, I think in terms of programming there’s some amazing events that happen in Yellowknife. Very large scale events as well that will actually work on both stations, both formats, both styles.

559 So again, in terms of the synergies, now we have a larger team there being able to work on programming together, right, and be able to gear unique programming that goes back to their specific station and their specific demographic, but, as we know, they can share as well.

560 So that’s the advantage again. It works right now with how we have it when these events are happening, but if we’re adding bodies to it, and again, as Kent said, being able to go into the community, so it might be that one or two announcers there at an event reporting from the event, but the other announcer’s somewhere out in the community being able to report back on something that’s happening there and then be able to share information.

561 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you very much.

562 I want to keep moving because I’ve got a ton of questions and I’m glad that we’re having a good conversation.

563 Given your revenue projections, can you tell us about your capacity, your willingness to absorb losses for the first six years of operations and if your revenue projections do not materialize, are you confident that you’ll be able to operate two sustainable commercial stations in Yellowknife?

564 MR. GABOR: I guess just an answer yes wouldn’t be appropriate, but absolutely. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.

565 And again, we’re committed, and I’ll let Robin talk about ‑‑ he’s got a very extensive history here in town and understands Yellowknife and understands the territory. But from Vista’s perspective, we don’t get into anything for the short term.

566 We understand the risks. We’re here despite good and bad times. We’ve continued to invest.

567 As we mentioned, 2023, post‑pandemic, all kinds of challenges, concerns. We see what’s happening in industry, right. We see what’s happening across different provinces. We invested $110,000 purely on equipment to upgrade for the future.

568 Playout 1 that we’ve talked about is an amazing system. It does not come free.

569 We are still investing in a station. So to answer your question specifically, absolutely, our ‑‑ we trust our forecasts. We think they’re reasonable. They’re not ‑‑ we’re not trying to make the case that the station will be ‑‑ we hope it certainly will do better, but the numbers that we’ve submitted, we believe, are realistic and they do take some revenue away from our existing station. But again, I think the uniqueness of the station that we’re proposing different ‑‑ very different from our existing station and significantly different from the existing programming that the other applicant has put forward.

570 So we believe there is some new revenue generating from that, especially from the kind of programming that we’re offering.

571 So I’ll let Robin speak to the ‑‑ I think the uniqueness of this market from a revenue perspective is one Robin can speak best to.

572 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Robin, before you jump in, I just wanted to throw the curve ball out there because I think the elephant in the room is that we, right now, don’t know whether there’s going to be a trade war with the United States, which will affect some of what you had worked into your proposal.

573 So if you can work that into your answer because, obviously, there is a fudge factor that you didn’t ‑‑ none of us foresaw, right, so.

574 MR. GABOR: Yeah. Absolutely. And that’s why we’re not forecasting dramatic growth. We think the growth that we’ve forecasted from that station is tied specifically to having an additional person in the market looking specifically for revenue tied to the initiatives and the programming and also, from our perspective, we have a significant advantage over the other applicant in terms of national revenue because of the number of stations we have and the history and the knowledge we have of the national radio advertising market.

575 So there’s a second advantage, I believe, that we bring to the table there.

576 So we’re confident in that number. Of course, if the trade war goes or if it’s a trade war or there’s a significant impact, I think that’s going to impact all of our stations, not just Yellowknife. But in making that forecast, we didn’t foresee, obviously, this happening, but we did, obviously, build in there ‑‑ we don’t expect ‑‑ thank God, I hope we don’t have to deal with another pandemic soon, but we do anticipate wildfires and floods and other natural disasters and other things that could impact local businesses because, you know, as soon as we think it’s not going to happen, it happens.

577 And we deal with this in Alberta, in Ontario, in B.C., all over. So when we do our forecasts, we always anticipate the unexpected.

578 Of course, the U.S. situation I don’t think anyone was expecting, so it’s not necessarily directly factored in there, but I think it’s always a consideration of ours to consider what we didn’t know was coming.

579 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Right. Thank you.

580 And if you want to continue answering that question, I’m happy to let you. Otherwise, we can move on to news.

581 MR. RAM: Yeah, just to add on to that.

582 Yeah, Vista has a history of investing in small markets, right, so we’ve not stepped away. Through the whole pandemic, we did not let anybody go. We’ve been adding to our team. You know, in small markets we’re adding to the infrastructure, investing in equipment. We’re investing in technology, always moving ahead and stepping forward, right.

583 So I’ll let you get to your next question.

584 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Great addition of information. Thank you so much for that.

585 I’m going to move on to news. I’d like to see if you could elaborate for us on the three hours and 40 minutes per broadcast week to newscasts. More specifically, how will the news differ between your two stations?

586 MR. WHITE: I think part of the initial process would be to get a really detailed understanding of the audience’s needs from that demographic. I’m really big on surveys and doing callouts and having that help inform it, but we would come in with a skeleton of something similar to our 6 to 9, top and bottom, noon, 4 and 5 format to start and then see where it goes from there, identify people in the community who step up and show the kind of skill to be able to produce that kind of programming and develop our source network more robustly with ‑‑ partly with training from myself and other people within our company who have that experience.

587 We probably have ‑‑ between the news directors across our company, we probably have 90 years of experience in journalism, so it’s a pretty good talent base to pull on to develop this kind of strategy.

588 And when I started with the company, I did a full audit, really, of the entire news ecosystem and discovered the gaps, figured out a strategy that would help fill those gaps. Part of that is training, part of that is approach. But it’s all about listening.

589 And I did a lot of listening in my first three months. In fact, I wasn’t allowed to enact strategy for three months. So that was a wise decision because I got to really understand and hear from everyone. And as it is now, in March I’m going to be doing one‑on‑ones with every reporter in the company to help identify training gaps, software programs, things that can make their work easier that they’ve discovered. And all of that will go towards building a strategy here once I get a chance to start that work.

590 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: All right. Thank you.

591 Sticking with news, would news bulletins be produced daily and would those bulletins be repeated, would they be repeated on a loop, would they be updated throughout the day? I mean, what’s your vision for that?

592 I mean, obviously current facts, especially in the wildfire situation, was a matter of life and death, so if you could just –

593 MR. WHITE: Yeah, that’s certainly something we would definitely do and we try to do now. And one thing we’re really cognizant of making sure what we do report is factual and not supposition. You’re going to do more damage by spreading rumour, so that’s a big thing for me. And that will be baked into our ‑‑ whatever pattern we decide is appropriate for any given event or catastrophe.

594 But yeah, we have not only the team locally, but we have the team nationally who can then help with that and it could be an all hands on deck situation, which we’ve done in the past.

595 So there’s a ‑‑ we have a go bag, a lot of us, for this exact reason, to be able to immediately go somewhere to help, so that’s a big part of it.

596 MR. GABOR: If I can jump in as well. As I mentioned, John joined Vista in August, so he wasn’t here for most of what happened here, but I mean, he literally stepped right into the fire with what we deal with I other markets in other stations.

597 And he’s currently ‑‑ again, he’s establishing protocols for these types of situations and he has the ability now, besides, obviously, all the experience he brings to the table, to tap into very longstanding experienced broadcasters, both news and announcers, in markets across B.C., Alberta and Ontario who are dealing with natural disasters of the different kinds across the provinces, so establishing that framework so that if and when ‑‑ hopefully never, but if and when those things do happen, the team’s trained, ready, they’ve got existing supports and services from outside the market to help guide them so that they can focus on what’s happening there.

598 And as John said, and I think it’s very important and I really wanted to make sure that we had the opportunity to discuss it, is we don’t necessarily see as the volume of information that goes out there. It’s the quality, the source and the reliability of that information.

599 And I believe we’ve done that and I think under John’s leadership, I’m confident that it’ll get better.

600 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you for that.

601 I think you touched on my next question, so I’m just going to skip it unless you really think that you want to flesh it out some more. I was going to ask you about, during an emergency, accurate information’s a matter of life and death, as we sort of touched on in the last question. And in a time of crisis, how will you ensure proper and crucial information is relayed to listeners in real time while ensuring accuracy?

602 I mean, you touched on it but, I mean, really, this is the thing about getting it out.

603 Do you feel like you’ve answered it to your satisfaction or would you like to –

604 MR. GABOR: I’ll pass it to John, but I think, again, it comes down to our existing infrastructure, right, having ‑‑ we have a ‑‑ I have a ‑‑ I oversee digital as well for Vista, so we have a dedicated digital team to help with the digital side of, you know, whether it’s text messaging, websites, social media and then, of course, locally with the radio station. And I’ll let John address that.

605 MR. WHITE: Yeah, I’m actually on a working group looking at diversifying that outreach and making it as efficient as possible.

606 And part of that, though, will be baking in the verification process. And I’ve seen instances in other provinces where things that were not facts were being shared quickly under the guise of a media sees better, and that’s like ‑‑ my first rule is verify first.

607 And so yes, I’m all about live and real time, but not to make things worse.

608 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Yeah, nobody wants that.

609 We asked Cabin Radio this question and I want to, out of fairness, ask you, too.

610 What do you think are the biggest challenges facing news these days? Obviously, we’re living in the 21st century. Things are a lot different than when we were all growing up.

611 Is there anything that you think must be done that is a big issue and do you have any ideas about how to fix the issues or how you think that the CRTC should address some of them?

612 MR. WHITE: I’ll gladly take that one.

613 It’s been an interesting five years. I will say that.

614 Well, let’s go back to 2020 in other countries where the media were made out to be the bad guy and death threats were common and, in fact, friends of mine received death threats and had to have protection for three months straight, so I’ve lived it myself. I’ve been called many things by many people. I’m not going to share any of those. Yeah, I need a hug.

615 So that ‑‑ but that’s part of it. You don’t go into this to make friends. You go into this to share the truth and tell the stories that need to be told, and that’s when I mentioned truth to power. That’s why I’m still in industry after being laid off three times because of constriction within media. I still believe in it.

616 And I’ve got, what, 10 years left, hopefully. Knock on wood.

617 I want to do my part to protect journalism and to protect democracy, and that’s why I’m here today as well.

618 Cabin did mention Facebook and social media, and that’s definitely a big part of how news has evolved. And from my perspective ‑‑ and I agree with them when they talk about it’s the wild west of information and you really need to be looking at it as a conduit and not a source and a method of distribution. But to go any deeper there, I’m very much about be in touch with the community through those platforms, but it’s not something I would rely upon as a reliable source. It goes back to vetting.

619 But I think most people working in journalism now have that understanding and realization and know how to use it as a tool, an effective tool, for research and treat it as such. But that is a big challenge.

620 Misinformation is a big challenge. There are co

621 ntries that spend millions of dollars to spread propaganda on the platforms we are using, and we have to combat that. That’s an uphill battle.

622 It never used to be the case. It was someone printing a newspaper, and that was the source of news. And everyone gathered around. And that’s gone. So, that’s a huge part of it.

623 So having these kinds of discussions is really important and making sure that we’re working together as the industry to have these high‑level discussions.

624 I was at ONA in Atlanta this year, and one of the biggest topics was the threat, the real threat, the physical threat to journalists and the threat to journalism as an industry because of the power of the propaganda machine. So, I’m intimately aware. I personally have been victimized by it, and I will do whatever I can to support it and make sure it thrives.

625 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you very much. I know that we’re strapped for time, so I’m going to try to move through the questions a little faster.

626 I’m going to ask you if one of you can answer, that’s great, just because I want to make sure we get through the questions and that my colleagues have a chance to weigh in as well. But if you think that somebody else should actually add some context, please feel free to do that. We don’t want to stop you from saying what you need to say.

627 I’m going to move on now to proposed format.

628 Explain the similarities, if you can, and the differences between Vista’s proposed format and the format that it already operates in the market of Yellowknife with CJCD‑FM and if you can explain how the new station will increase the programming diversity specifically in Yellowknife.

629 MR. SCHUMAKER: The first thing will be the demographic that we’re after. The Classic Hits format is traditionally towards the older end of our demographic, as mentioned. The 18‑49, I wouldn’t say is being targeted right now with the Classic Hits format. So the Hot AC format would allow us, with our two stations, to be able to get the majority of the market.

630 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Can you tell me why you think the Adult Contemporary format that you mentioned, why you think that that would be the best suited for the market and listeners in Yellowknife specifically?

631 MR. SCHUMAKER: Because it’s not being offered right now.

632 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: And presumably you know that there’s a market for it or there’s going to be some interest for it? Yes?

633 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yes.

634 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: All right, thank you.

635 Let’s move on to Canadian content and Canadian emerging artists.

636 Vista has proposed to exceed the regulatory requirement relating to the broadcast of Canadian musical selections set out in the Regulations. Specifically, Vista has committed to devote, by Condition of Service, a minimum of 40 percent of the music played between 6:00 a.m. and midnight, Sunday to Saturday, to Canadian artists. This would be exceeding the regulatory minimum of 35 percent.

637 Why do you think that this is important, and how do you propose to meet this requirement?

638 MR. SCHUMAKER: This is important because, first of all, the demographic we are after is looking for that type of content, and we believe that supporting new and emerging artists on our platform is something that’s not being done right now. It is underserved here. And providing a platform to that selection of our entertainment industry, our music industry, needs support. And we believe in supporting our industry.

639 As the National Music Director, I’ve often told people on our panels, our younger music directors coming in, it’s one thing to be able to say oh, I put music on the radio, but the reason you’re doing it is because we need each other. Radio has always been there. Radio has always been a discovery for younger talent and emerging talent. So, we’re taking that exposure very seriously. And 40 percent to us is just something that we think is needed, especially today.

640 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you for that.

641 What has Vista’s existing station, True North FM, done to rectify the problem of emerging artists?

642 MR. SCHUMAKER: It’s a Classic Hit station, so we don’t think about it right now. We’ve talked about it. We’ve talked about what happens down the road. We’ve planned for it. But as a Classic Hits format, it’s something that we don’t talk about. We have other formats. We have CHR, we have Hot AC. That’s from new and emerging artists.

643 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you for that.

644 All right. Let’s move on to Indigenous programming and musical selections.

645 In your supplementary brief, you mention that Vista is developing an Indigenous Incubator program, and you mention that it’s in conjunction with your Launch Pad program and that it will aim to provide a platform for talented Indigenous people to showcase their work.

646 Could you describe for us what your Indigenous Incubator program and your Launch Pad programs are?

647 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yes. That’s another company‑wide initiative that we have been working on and we plan to work on here. If you go to our MyTownNow sites in all of our markets, you will see that digitally we have Indigenous artists already listed with samples of their work. Here in Yellowknife, we want to expand from our homegrown lineup and let people know, let artists know, that we are open for business per se.

648 We are going to, every single hour, be rolling out Indigenous artists. It’s not something that we take lightly. It’s something that we have looked at. As this process has been going on with the CRTC, you will notice that all of our stations are buying into this. So, Yellowknife will not be an exception.

649 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Okay. So let’s just flesh that out a bit. Are these programs exclusively focused on supporting Indigenous artists in the North, particularly in the City of Yellowknife?

650 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yes.

651 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: All right.

652 In your application, you mention that 100 percent of your broadcasting will be done in English. Right?

653 MR. SCHUMAKER: Correct.

654 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: You mention also in your submission that you will not be broadcasting in any Indigenous languages. But during the fires ‑‑ I mean, we’ve made some trips up here. We’ve chatted with people. I know that during the fires, some people have said that there were people in the community that actually did rely on Indigenous languages during the emergency situation.

655 So what have you heard from the community about making sure that you have information available to people who need the information in an Indigenous language?

656 MR. SCHUMAKER: That’s a great question. I will let Joe answer that one.

657 MR. WHITE: Yeah. As I say, actually, John, I think that’s really a news function when it comes to how we handle emerging situations.

658 I would say, though, again, with the programming lineup that we’ve discussed for the new station, we might not necessarily have buckets or windows of programming mentioned earlier that are in another language. However, I wouldn’t be surprised that we end up with content that is broadcast in another language. But it’s not necessarily going to be, you know, tune in at 3 o’clock on Sunday for something. It might just be a function of an event or an initiative or something that we are working with.

659 I think one of the programs that Kent introduced earlier is we are going to work with local high school students. Well, if that program, if at the heart of that is Indigenous programming, we are not going to say oh, well, sorry, that won’t work on our station because we’re only broadcasting in English.

660 I just want to make clear that we don’t have necessarily set windows of any programming that we’re planning currently in an Indigenous language, but I believe it is still a function of what we’re scheduling.

661 I will let John speak to ‑‑ again, to answer your question specifically, I think it really is a function of news as to what we might do in these situations that obviously goes beyond just English broadcasting.

662 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Yeah. I think basically I am wanting to hear how are you going to ensure that the Indigenous community is well served? Yes.

663 MR. WHITE: I think that would come out in the end part of the strategy work I’m doing currently, to determine the audience split within the demographic that we’re going to be reaching. And then if we discover that yes, that X percent require that kind of language support, then that’s something I’m looking into as well.

664 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you.

665 You went into quite a bit of detail about the new software program. I’m wondering if there’s anything ‑‑ I do have a set of questions on it, but you touched on it quite extensively.

666 I wondered if there’s anything that you didn’t say that you would like to add, or if we should just move on to the next question. I want to give you a chance.

667 MR. GABOR: Sure. No, I think we really wanted to ‑‑ it’s happening right now where literally our engineers are working west to east, putting it in all our stations. So it’s very relevant, not just to the new station but even to our existing station with CJCD right now.

668 But again, I think we’ve addressed it. It is a very exciting opportunity for us, and our teams are going to be trained and learn how to use it. Again, whether it’s programming or music events that Robin will be involved in, and then news, there’s so many different applications for it.

669 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: And you are planning to count that as local content?

670 MR. GABOR: Yes, it will be. I mean, that’s the idea, is that our announcers and our news team are able to go out of the studio and create local content and be able to broadcast live directly to the station. And very challenging right now in our two market stations is to be able to do one thing and end up sending it to two stations live.

671 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Right.

672 MR. GABOR: Our new software allows you to do that seamlessly.

673 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: All right. Thank you for that.

674 How will you ensure that Indigenous music is integrated in your playlists to respect the Commission’s 5 percent expectations?

675 I’m sorry, I stumbled over that, so let me say it again.

676 How will you ensure that Indigenous music is integrated in your playlist to respect the Commission’s 5 percent expectation?

677 MR. SCHUMAKER: It will be just like ‑‑ it will be included in every music meeting. Just like we do with all the other content that we have on our stations and our various music meetings around the formats, Indigenous music will be part of the music meetings.

678 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you very much. All right. We are really making headway, so I’m making sure that my colleagues have a chance to ask questions as well.

679 I’m going to move to Canadian content development

680

681 In your application, you committed to establish the True North Bursary, which will award $5,000 annually to an Indigenous student who is pursuing a career in journalism or broadcasting.

682 I’m wondering is you can describe the program and how it would benefit the community. And do you believe this bursary will be eligible and meet the requirements established in paragraph 117 ‑‑ you don’t have to look it up ‑‑ of the Commercial Radio Policy?

683 Is there a concern that this could appear to be promoting Vista’s existing station?

684 MR. GABOR: I’ll let actually Robin or John want to address it.

685 I think, though, our perspective, yes, I believe we’ve done our due diligence. I think we’re confident that it will apply.

686 And again, it’s also about being able to provide an opportunity for somebody in the market or from the region to be able to work with Vista. That content might appear on the radio stations. It might appear online. I mean, we have partnerships and partnerships that we are in discussion with, and that student who is involved may potentially be creating content that’s not even for Vista.

687 So, really, we’re looking to build up the opportunity for somebody in this area using that bursary to be able to contribute to content in the North, as I discussed earlier, not necessarily that we would be even dedicating them specifically to something that we’ve introduced at this time.

688 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Okay. And paragraph 117 of the Commercial Radio Policy, I know that you are familiar with it, because I read your submission. But when proposing discretionary initiatives, the onus is on the Applicant to demonstrate that it’s not self‑serving. Right?

689 ` So you are comfortable with that?

690 MR. GABOR: Yes, absolutely.

691 I know John, we’ve discussed it at length, so I’ll let him maybe jump in.

692 MR. WHITE: Are we talking about the bursary?

693 MR. GABOR: The bursary, yeah.

694 MR. WHITE: Yeah. On top of that, I’m also looking at ‑‑ I’ve had some discussions with the Northern Journalism Training Initiative Program. And after I get back from this, I have my next conversation with them on that.

695 I did a full market survey for them, to get an understanding of where we’re at and how we can contribute. So, that conversation continues next week.

696 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Thank you. You guys are busy.

697 Do you consider Cabin Radio in its current form operating an online radio station a competitor to your station CJCD‑FM? Do you consider it to be a competitor? And how do you think granting Vista a new licence would impact Cabin Radio in its current form?

698 MR. GABOR: I consider them a competitor on certain levels obviously. For share of ear, I mean they’re also out in the market selling. But we don’t compete with them online from a digital perspective. Their site and our site are quite different.

699 I think from our perspective, if we were granted a second licence, I don’t really see it impacting them from our perspective, because again we’re targeting such a different demographic, as Kent has described. They are obviously successful. They are in the community. They are involved in a lot of events, as are we.

700 I think what we’re really looking at with the new station is really bringing something to the market to address right now a current gap that we believe exists.

701 So, again, I think introducing any new station will have an impact on the market, regardless. But I don’t see it as a direct competitor to what they’re doing currently.

702 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Okay. That’s if they are an unlicensed service that you are answering.

703 MR. GABOR: Correct.

704 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: What if we were to license them? What effect would that have on your service?

705 MR. GABOR: Sorry, to understand, if you were to license them exclusively?

706 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: What economic financial impact do you think licensing Cabin Radio would have on your service and the Yellowknife radio market?

707 MR. GABOR: I think, as I mentioned, I think it would have a massive impact on our existing service. Having another FM station in the market right now, as we said, I don’t believe even if we had a second station, it would naturally impact our existing station. Some advertisers would prefer to be on the second station, or they might split their advertising budgets.

708 Again, from our point of view, there are some benefits in terms of having operational efficiencies. So it would impact our station, but it wouldn’t be the death of our existing station.

709 But I think having another radio station move into the market at this time, considering the current environment, the unknown, the challenges that we have, the increasing cost of everything from labour, rent, utilities, software, you know, we see double‑digit increases year over year in some of these. And, you know, I think as we’ve said and we’ve discussed, revenue isn’t increasing in local radio at that rate. But everything that costs to bring that to market is.

710 So from our perspective, introducing another station, if our application is accepted, we can find a way for those two stations to live and cohabit. We don’t expect it to increase more dramatically maybe somewhat because of the new demographic. But having a direct competitor come in who, as I said earlier, has no incentive to do anything to support the existing radio station, I believe would have quite challenging circumstances for us.

711 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: All right. So we talked about what if it were the status quo, we’ve talked about what if we licensed them. Now I want to know what you think about if we were to grant a licence to each of you.

712 What do you think the impact would be?

713 MR. GABOR: From my point of view, it doesn’t change the impact on us in terms of them coming in. I think that’s still a significant consideration for us in terms of making this a viable operation for us.

714 It does minimize the impact because, again, I think we’ve been very clear in saying that our goal with the new station is to go after different demographic, potentially some different clients, some different initiatives to help make that viable. So it minimizes the impact, but it doesn’t make it go away.

715 Us introducing a new station and then coming in and having another station, I think the combined will still have a significant ‑‑ because even our new station will have an impact on our existing station. So, there’s the dual impact.

716 That one will impact CJCD, plus the new entrant coming in.

717 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: All right, good answer. Thank you.

718 Last two questions, just so my colleagues know, and you guys know you are done with me in a second.

719 We are moving on to diversity and inclusion.

720 What specific and measurable targets has Vista Radio set for increasing representation among equity deserving groups in its leadership and staff roles, both across the company as a whole and within the proposed Yellowknife operation, including any timelines or benchmarks for progress?

721 MR. GABOR: So I will answer that quickly from Vista’s perspective, and then I will actually ask Robin to address the local.

722 As you know, Vista, we are a federally regulated company, so we also have to meet the standards from that point of view.

723 So, we have pay equity. Our programs, our HR team right now are taking us through. We report annually on our diversity and equity numbers back to, I believe ‑‑ I can’t remember which department it is exactly. But we maintain all those standards.

724 We have an accelerator program in the company to help staff progress through the company, up through different levels.

725 Our senior executive team, or our senior management team, I believe my last two hires at the director level were both women. I believe we’re pretty close to 50‑50 now, maybe a little bit off, 45‑55. So we do have a very balanced management team across the company.

726 And again, from where we’re located in the markets that we recruit in and hire from, these markets often have quite a diverse culture as well and diverse demographic. So, we end up with quite a few people in those.

727 But we have our own benchmarks in terms of, you know, bias‑free recruitment. We have leadership training for all our managers available each year. We have disability accommodations.

728 We have a whole variety of programs within the company to ensure that it’s balanced, our hiring is balanced, and where we promote and hire, that we maintain certain standards.

729 It’s not always the case. It’s difficult finding a manager for Smithers, B.C., because again it’s a small community. Sometimes it takes a little longer. But we definitely hold ourselves to that standard, not just with Vista but also with our parent company, who have their own expectations and standards that roll out across all their businesses.

730 I will let Robin speak to Yellowknife as, again, it’s a very unique community, and the challenges here are quite unique.

731 MR. RAM: Yeah, it has been a challenge, an ongoing challenge, for years trying to get people in this environment. The opportunities to cover all those aspects is tough in this market. That’s reality.

732 But we do advertise in all the different venues. We’ve had women on staff. We’ve had diverse groups in our support mechanism for both our digital platform, as I said earlier. Actually, who works as part of our digital team was born in Yellowknife. Our whole platform was done that way. As you can tell, I’m inclusive as well.

733 So, we don’t segregate. We offer opportunities to everyone.

734 But bigger than that ‑‑ and I look after Vancouver Island as well, and I have a lot of diverse people on my staff. But the big thing that we offer within Vista is not only when they come onboard, is the opportunity to grow with us, you know the opportunities across the network from the parent company that we offer.

735 So, joining us at any level has multiple opportunities for you.

736 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Excellent. Thank you very much.

737 I know you must have read the intervenor’s submissions, so I’m sure you are familiar with this.

738 The FRPC intervention highlighted the need for additional clarity ‑‑ quote/unquote ‑‑ additional clarity regarding Vista’s employment equity commitments, particularly concerning Vista’s plan to create the five new positions that you mentioned to support the launch and operation of its proposed station.

739 FRPC argued, as you probably read, that a clear outline of Vista’s initiatives and evaluation methods would provide insight into how Vista intends to achieve its diversity and inclusion and equity goals.

740 So how, then, does Vista Radio plan to implement and measure the effectiveness of its diversity and employment equity initiatives, particularly for new positions associated with the proposed station?

741 MR. GABOR: I don’t remember exactly that specific part. But, I mean, from our perspective, it wouldn’t be any different than we currently do right now. We have our standards. I mean, obviously, the biggest challenge would be for us to be able to do so in that market and be able to fill those positions. But we would maintain the same standard of ‑‑ our expectations would be maintained at the same standard as we do right now.

742 We wouldn’t have a specific number or which position, but I think from our perspective we’re looking for diversity in that group to our existing group with True North FM right now. But I think overall, we always look at not just diversity, let’s say, across a large cluster of stations, because then it could all be grouped in one area. So we always look at those expectation in standards in the operating group in that market and then where that fits in across the country.

743 But I think again to Robin’s point, the challenge is to be able to find local talent or find talent from other markets who might be able to meet some of those criteria and be able to get them up to Yellowknife.

744 And as I mentioned in my opening, it’s challenging

745 ight now with housing. And Robin can tell you, we’ve found the perfect candidate who wants to work for us, and made him an offer and had an acceptance, and then had to walk away because they couldn’t find housing here. So I think from our perspective ‑‑ and this is part of John’s challenge on the news front ‑‑ is we have to put some programs in place to help us find people that are already here, because we have a lot of people that want to come work for us and would love to come to Yellowknife and work, and they just can’t get here because they are struggling with finding housing.

746 So I think from our perspective, it would be for us to put in some programs to be able to recruit better and willing talent here in Yellowknife. I think that would address not just the requirements, but the expectations that you hold, and we hold of ourselves, of having a representative workforce if at least some, if not the majority of it, are from Yellowknife.

747 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: That was supposed to be my last question, but I just want to follow up on that.

748 MR. GABOR: Sure.

749 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: How do you keep people here? How do you train new journalists, get them to come here, and then get them to stay?

750 MR. GABOR: I don’t know if one guys wants ‑‑ I’m sure they all have a lot –

751 MR. RAM: I’m not sure there’s a magic answer. I was here for six years, you know, I was presented opportunities within Vista, so I’ve you know, now taken on a bigger role, similar to Kent. But to just go back to what John was saying earlier, you know, we’re expanding our search across the north, so advertising in all the smaller communities as well. Trying to encourage here, we offer relocation allowances, we offer you now, housing allowances. But it is a challenge, there’s no question it’s a challenge.

752 Kent, do you want add anything?

753 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yeah. I would love to add to that. My hope is as a programmer is always, always to have people out in the community, be a part of the community, be a fabric of the community. And when you’re hiring, let’s say we’re talking about younger journalists now, because people can come in and be a journalist at 40 years old, right? Let’s assume we’re talking about younger ones.

754 I do believe what we offer as a company is a chance

755 o grow that is above and beyond what other companies are offering right now. I believe the opportunities that I’ve seen in my five years with this company are ‑‑ they rival anything, and like I said, I’ve been in small markets for close to 30 years now.

756 And this particular experience was amazing because at the time, Charles and Eileen Dent, preached that to us. And had I not been looking for advancement in my career, I would probably still be here. The last community I worked in was 10 years, it was in Peace River, another small community. Same thing.

757 But I believe with Yellowknife here and what we are proposing, should we get a new licence, it will make it exciting to be here because they’ll be out and be a part of the fabric of the community. Hopefully, we can find them from here and then they don’t have to leave.

758 That’s been the hardest thing that I’ve seen for parents and grandparents to lose their kids to bigger centres. Why? Because there’s more opportunity. There’s better technology. We’re investing in that and hopefully that makes a difference here.

759 COMMISSIONER NAIDOO: Well, I think that was a really good final word to leave things at for me. So I’m going to turn things back over to Vice Chair Thérberge. Thank you very much.

760 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you so much.

761 I’ll ask my colleague, Commissioner Levy, if she has any questions.

762 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Thank you. Thank you for being here today. You know, we certainly know Vista and know it well from the many applications and so forth we’ve seen over time. I have a couple of questions.

763 I just want to be consistent asking you the same question I did of Cabin. And that had to do with what the broadcast standards are that you follow. Like what ‑‑ I just want to make sure that it is properly on the record.

764 MR. GABOR: Sorry in ‑‑ like I mean, Canadian Broadcast Standards Council or ‑‑ I don’t remember the question, sorry.

765 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Yes, or the RTNDA standards. All of the rest. Okay.

766 MR. GABOR: Yes, absolutely. I mean Canadian Broadcast Standards, RTNDA for news, you know on music side, I mean, we follow all of it across all of our stations. So and anything like that is obviously applied to Yellowknife, whether it’s our existing or a new station.

767 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Okay. The last question I had was to do with ‑‑ we’ve talked a lot about diversity in terms of hiring and so forth. But and certainly, this is not unique to the application we find before us, where one station wants to essentially have another so that there are going to by synergies and all of the rest of those wonderful things.

768 But in a small market like this, that doesn’t ‑‑ that poses, I think, some challenges with regard to diversity of voices because it is essentially the same ownership group that is owning both stations, and you are really only adding maybe one, perhaps two on‑air voices that are different from what you’ve already got.

769 So how does this advance the cause of diversity of voices in a small community like Yellowknife?

770 MR. GABOR: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s a challenge for ‑‑ I mean, for sure when we have two stations or we launch two stations, I mentioned earlier we acquired CAB‑K broadcasting, a small family mum and pop shop, and they have two stations in Olds, Alberta, right? Very small community. So again, I think there is definitely operational advantages to doing it.

771 To answer your question specifically, about diversity of voice, I think that comes down to what’s at the core of what we do, which is we want to ‑‑ we want the station to reflect the community that we operate in. We don’t come in and say here’s our templated format for one station and two, and you do this, and you do that.

772 We definitely want to reflect back to the community where again, where CJCD has a slightly older demographic, you know with the music and the programming. I think with the new station and the programming we’re bringing will definitely create that diversity of not just a type of programming but who that programming is targeting.

773 And ultimately, with ‑‑ again when we ‑‑ not to keep going back to it, but with the ‑‑ with PlayoutONE, with that ability to have the people that were going out to a scene actually in a sense providing content and programming back to the station. So I mean, music for sure. There’s a variety there, a diversity of voice from the music point of view because they are such different formatted stations.

774 But I think both Kent, and John, and whoever I think we can really address that the format, and the style, and the intention of the new station if it’s licenced, from our point of view, it naturally will start to address more diversity. Because we want them to be seen as unique from each other to your point, so that they don’t ‑‑ they’re not just carbon copies of each other playing the same ‑‑ sorry, playing slightly different music line up.

775 So actually, John can address and then maybe Kent can jump in.

776 MR. WHITE: Yeah, I would say the additional news reporter would have access to and the ability to grow our source network dramatically, by a third, I suppose. So in doing so they would reach those voices and have an understanding of the finesse and nuance needed to make sure that we’re providing the breadth.

777 And our daily news meetings we can talk about are we covering the scope of the community we’re serving? We do that daily, we do that bi‑weekly as all the news directors across the company, we talk about that. So it’s something we’re always aware of and talking about. So I think we could expand upon that.

778 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yeah. And I also think there’s, with this new initiative, should you grant us a licence, there’s absolutely nothing saying that look, if we run into a challenge of hiring talent up here, we could go to the community and say who are ‑‑ who are the people standing out right now with the podcasts? Who are the people who are passionate about Yellowknife?

779 They could be Dene, they could be from Yellowknife, they could be from somewhere else. But there’s nothing saying that we couldn’t grab a younger personality here and give them a home on our platform. There’s nothing saying that. We could totally work that into our strategy. We actually talk about it quite often when we talk about our podcast strategies across the company.

780 In these smaller communities, it’s often times challenging to get people. So whey don’t we look from within?

781 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Thank you very much.

782 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

783 I’m actually going to bounce back on that. Why don’t you look within

784 MR. SCHUMAKER: We do.

785 THE CHAIRPERSON: Could you unpack it a little bit?

786 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yes. We do. So in, let’s say for example, in Yellowknife, we ‑‑ should we get this licence, we would be looking for young broadcasters, we’d be looking for young podcasters.

787 There’s a strategy that Robin and I have actually talked about down south on the island. There’s a couple of markets that are challenging. We go looking for the young podcasters that we can turn into broadcasters.

788 THE CHAIRPERSON: So there are already precedents, strategies already ‑‑

789 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yeah.

790 THE CHAIRPERSON:  ‑‑ strategies already put in place in other markets?

791 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yeah, yeah.

792 THE CHAIRPERSON: And this is something that you could eventually consider for the Yellowknife. Am I interpreting correctly?

793 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yes, yeah.

794 THE CHAIRPERSON: Because one of the things we’re interested in as well during this proceeding, is to see, sure what a new station would bring to the local communities. But also what the local communities can bring to programming for instance, in terms of diversity, but also in terms of content and programming. So I’m interested to understand a little what you have in mind in terms of connecting with local events, for example.

795 Are you considering, you know, MOUs or partnerships? Is this something that you’ve already considered or that you plan to consider, or it’s not something that you’re considering?

796 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ll hand that off to Robin because he’s already started that up here.

797 MR. RAM: Yeah, we are precedent setting in other markets as well, where we co‑produce concerts with local events, our podcasters are being expanded to local community leaders, the people who built the infrastructure, the local, you know, communities, our True North Tales program is a reflection of that. That’s currently online right now and we’re going to take it to the podcast level.

798 So yes, that’s some precedent setting stuff with that right now.

799 MR. GABOR: If I can jump in as well, I think it’s important to understand our existing station, the demographic, how we’ve ‑‑ I mean having run ‑‑ I mean running so many stations across so many markets, and again, sometimes we try things, they don’t work. I think one of the things that works for us here is we’re not trying to be everything to everybody; right? We have a format that we believe works here.

800 We can always get better, we always try new things. Robin, Kent, John, all our teams are always looking for ideas. They share. We have weekly meetings, we have programming meetings, music meetings, news meetings for the teams to be able to get ideas from other markets. Because sometimes they just can’t figure out what’s going to work in their market, but they hear about success stories from elsewhere. So we do this across all departments, all our staff, all our managers get ideas and inputs.

801 I think the idea again of the news station is it’s different. It’s different, it’s not unique necessarily to what we’re doing in another market, but it is different for us here in Yellowknife. Right? The idea is why wouldn’t you just do that with your existing station? Well, because that station we believe fills a void that we have here, and so adding the new station helps us address potentially, again like was said, some more remote focused programming on the business side, attracting a younger audience, that might attract younger advertisers and so on. So we think they work well together from that point of view.

802 THE CHAIRPERSON: Maybe just one potin of clarification, when you speak about the demographics. And it’s quite clear for this particular application you’re targeting 18 to 49. I appreciate these are young Canadians, I just miss the mark unfortunately. It’s a rather large demographic. What is the demographic target for True North?

803 MR. GABOR: I think Kent addressed it, 25‑54 is kind of the general. But especially with the music, right, when we’re looking at the music we’re playing, and I’m a little just passed where you are, is it’s really more now I think it’s 25 to probably 64, right? Because it’s only the ‘80s and you know, when we sit there and we go, oh my God, the ‘80s are 40 years ago. We’ve had that ‑‑

804 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yeah, don’t do it to me.

805 MR. GABOR: No, I know. We won’t do it like ‑‑ we won’t get into the math.

806 THE CHAIRPERSON: Don’t go there. You’ll get on my wrong side if you ditch the ‘80s.

807 MR. GABOR: I’m with you. Could someone refer to an ‘80s song recently as an oldie and I was like, wow, that hurts.

808 THE CHAIRPERSON: No, don’t go there.

809 MR. GABOR: So no, so I think the idea is, you know, we talk about 25‑54 as a very common theme and demographic with music and business. But we really know right now that ‘80s music and that early ‘90s music resonates and continues to resonate. So we think that demographic for our existing station is probably shifting a little older. It’s probably more like 34 or 35 to 64.

810 MR. SCHUMAKER: Yes, I would totally agree with that because there is some mid to late ‘70s stuff that I will not abandon as well.

811 THE CHAIRPERSON: That’s okay, you’re in company.

812 MR. SCHUMAKER: So I would definitely say that the upper end of the demographic is what we target. There is a usually one you’ll here in the radio industry, but we know that we’re probably up towards the maybe 40 to 65 probably.

813 THE CHAIRPERSON: Forever young.

814 MR. SCHUMAKER: With classic hits with True North.

815 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your answers, thank you for your presentations.

816 I’m just going to turn quickly to our colleagues from our legal services to see if ‑‑ no, they’re nodding, no. No additional questions. All right.

817 Thank you so much for your generosity in your explanations and for being here. We appreciate it’s part of what allows us to build up a robust public record, so we appreciate that.

818 Madame secretary, we’re going to take a 15‑minute break before we come back.

819 THE SECRETARY: Yes, absolutely, and we’ll return at 3:15.

820 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right. So we will be returning for the presentations by applicants on competing applications.

821 All right. Thank you. Thank you very much.

‑‑‑ Upon recessing at 3:02 p.m.

‑‑‑ Upon resuming at 3:16 p.m.

822 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon. Welcome back. We are going to be moving on to Phase II of this public hearing, presentations by applicants on competing applications.

823 Madam Secretary?

824 THE SECRETARY: Thank you. We will now hear item Phase II of the hearing and the presentation by 506992 N.W.T. Limited. Operating as Cabin Radio. Please reintroduce yourself for the record, and you will then have 10 minutes to make your presentation.

825 Thank you.

Presentation

826 MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you very much. Hello again, Madam Chair, Commissioners, Commission staff. My name as earlier is Ollie Williams, I’m the editor at Cabin Radio and one of five co‑owners. And alongside me is Andrew Goodwin, who is co‑owner and General Manager of the station.

827 I am going to speak purely to aspects of Vista Radio’s application that have a bearing on our own and that we feel compelled to address. And I’d like to start with the Vista Radio application’s approach to market capacity.

828 Firstly, in mentioning housing earlier this afternoon, there is a fuller picture that could be provided. Housing is a challenge, but that’s changing fast. The city of Yellowknife just announced it permitted nearly 300 new housing units last year and well over 300 were already permitted for this year. As of January, 15 more residential consultations for other developments were underway.

829 The city’s community plan is being renewed, and there’s pressure to start building out new subdivisions as well as create more infill. And there are even applications in front of the city to build work camps, housing 400 people at a time, because there isn’t enough housing to meet demand.

830 A study completed in October for the city by Urban Systems, said more than 1,000 extra households are expected in Yellowknife over the next decade. The picture for the years ahead is one of a city that’s working to expand rapidly to meet demand to live here, and the city’s population is already at an all‑time high. That growth in population means more people requiring more services, establishing more businesses themselves, which we’ve see lately, and becoming advertisers themselves.

831 Vista throughout its application’s handling of market capacity treats Cabin Radio as a concept, and I’m obliged to address that. As we’ve comprehensively outlined, that is false. We are in the market, have been for years, and that has a huge bearing on a central pillar of Vista’s market capacity argument. We have broadcast advertisers, just as Vista does and many of our advertisers when they come with us to FM will be new advertisers to the FM market. There are dozens of interventions and letters on record with the CRTC to that end.

832 We submit that the most meaningful market data in this process is our financial data. None of that could be sustained without significant market share. And we too, have lived through a pandemic and wildfires. We live here, and our financials through that period show that we very successfully navigated the difficult periods that Vista talks about.

833 Our projections are grounded in that existing successful approach, and we’ve demonstrated a robust ability to manage our business profitably through the same challenges as the other applicant. And I would extend that to anything we can’t yet foresee, including a trade war or any other concern.

834 We note that Vista hasn’t performed any study to back up its assertion that the market has no capacity. It has not original research before the CRTC in that regard. Cabin Radio has provided original market research that Vista itself has gone on to rely on in its submissions. When that research supports Cabin Radio’s application Vista calls it seriously flawed. When Vista likes the results of the market research it cites our research as the only evidence it can find that it’s service might be competitive. And you can find that in Vista’s reply to interventions by individuals.

835 And finally, on the subject of market capacity, on the public record there is no voice among hundreds and hundreds of submissions, including those supporting Vista Radio, that backs up Vista’s assessment of the local economy. Vista’s is the sole submission advancing that assessment.

836 Briefly, Vista’s application stresses news and particularly quantity of news coverage, but made little mention of quality. We did just hear reference to standards. Commercial FM licensees in this city have in the past year simply read off of the Cabin Radio website story after story for newscasts of their own, and we have that on tape.

837 Recognizing both applicants are telling the

838 CRTC that they’re really good at news, I would invite the Commission to consult the broader public record, because the view of the audience should be the ultimate determinant.

839 And lastly, we would ask why Vista Radio is not doing many of the initiatives it outlines in its application? While I recognize Vista has said it does not seek to be everything to everybody, there appear to be penalty of initiatives Vista just outlined that don’t appear to be determined by format or demographic.

840 For example, why aren’t the initiatives Vista outlines to support Indigenous northern music being carried out already on the FM station Vista has? Why aren’t regular live broadcasts on location and in studio session with musicians as set out in Vista’s application already happening on the FM station it has?

841 We already use PlayoutONE, the software Vista mentioned. We’ve used it for a year, we agree, it’s great. We do the things with it that Vista says it will do, but currently does not. And PlayoutONE was a fantastic way to upgrade our broadcast from Folk on the Rocks last year, 30 hours of live coverage.

842 Why aren’t podcasts involving member of the community, initiatives involving youth, the funding for Indigeous students, all of which are set out in Vista’s application already happening? We are doing all of the above. We have done them for years.

843 So in conclusion, I’d like to highlight that Vista proposes a station that Vista itself says will lose have a million dollars over the first seven years. That is a conceptual Vista station that will lose $500,000 while doing things Vista could already do if it wanted.

844 Cabin Radio’s application is about an actual existing station that grounds its healthy financial projections in lived experience and is already outperforming those projections. Cabin Radio delivers the service that it proposes to offer and it’s asking simply for the addition of an FM transmitter.

845 Thank you.

846 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Please, I would ask people to keep your claps for another opportunity at this juncture.

847 I will look to my colleagues as to whether they’ve got questions. Yes, Commissioner Levy?

848 COMMISSIONER LEVY: I just want to clarify something. Earlier I think one of your parties said that ‑‑ gave a percentage for how much of what Cabin Radio is in total is actually strictly focussed on the Cabin Radio side of things. So excluding the audiovisual work and so on and so forth. How much of Cabin Radio is Cabin Radio proper?

849 MR. WILLIAMS: In terms of how much is obviously on radio in the sense of FM, zero. But I know what you’re getting at.

850 The way that the company is formed is very much to rely on various different pillars to be a multiplatform organization. I think something that has been key to us is that we have seen that older models of commercial FM radio delivery are not particularly nimble and don’t really seem to serve an audience anymore, particularly in Yellowknife.

851 So we have a model that is designed to allow people to work across pretty much any aspect of what you’ve just outlined. I think I would struggle to be able to sit here and tell you these people or this line of revenue ‑‑ this never touches Cabin Radio as an audio proposition. We do have some metrics broken out that I think are in our application filed. Andrew, I am conscious you don’t have them in front of you, but we do break out the difference between on‑air and digital advertising. Right?

852 MR. GOODWIN: Yeah, on‑air advertising makes up roughly 24 percent of our revenue right now, and has done so the last five years.

853 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Okay. So, the rest of the revenue comes from some of these other pillars.

854 MR. WILLIAMS: As we would intend it to continue doing, as well.

855 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Okay. All right, and that is consistent with ‑‑ I have other radio operations in my region that have branched out into some of the same sorts of areas with a lot of success. So, that’s not unknown.

856 And I believe that that is all I wanted to ask ‑‑ just to clarify. Thank you.

857 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you again, Commissioner Levy, and thank you again, Cabin Radio, for your presentation.

858 Madam Secretary?

859 THE SECRETARY: Thank you. So, this therefore concludes Phase II of the hearing and the agenda for today. No ‑‑ I’m sorry. I apologize. I will now invite Vista Radio Limited to come to their presentation table.

‑‑‑ Pause

860 THE SECRETARY: Please re‑introduce yourselves for the record, and then you will have 10 minutes to make your presentation.

861 MR. GABOR: Sure. Thank you.

862 THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

Presentation

863 MR. GABOR: Vice‑Chair Théberge, Commissioners Levy, Naidoo, and staff, as you know, I am Joe Gabor, Vice President of Business at Vista Radio.

864 Before I begin, I wanted to make a short personal statement. I have not had the pleasure of meeting the owners of Cabin Radio, three of whom I am told are in fact former employees of Vista Radio here in Yellowknife. In reviewing their biographies submitted to the Commission in their application, I did note that, while other details of their past employment were there, that fact was oddly left out. Nonetheless, I do want to sincerely congratulate them for launching and sustaining an online radio station like Cabin Radio.

865 Even with financial supports that are available to Digital First or journalism funding programs, it’s a notable feat in Canada. A lot of very successful individuals and companies have tried and failed, so I do commend them for what they’ve achieved.

866 On behalf of Vista Radio, we do appreciate the opportunity to speak to you regarding our concerns about Cabin Radio’s application. In broadcasting decision CRTC 2023‑33, the Commission found that the market could not support an additional commercial radio station. As such, we believe it is incumbent upon applicants to provide a clear and detailed analysis of the capacity of the market to support a new station.

867 We submit that Cabin Radio did not provide the necessary evidence to support their case. It’s our expectation, after the Commission graciously agreed to make an exception to its two‑year moratorium policy, that Cabin Radio would have ensured that they tried in their application to address these economic and financial issues identified. They did not. Instead of addressing them, they opted instead to dismiss them. In fact, they went so far as to tell the Commission where its focus should be. To quote section 48 of Cabin’s supplementary brief, and I quote:

“Yellowknife, not the Northwest Territories, is the market being assessed. That assessment must focus on the city, not the entire territory, which incorporates 32 other smaller communities with significant economic challenges not representative of Yellowknife’s economic performance.”

868 However, we believe there is an abundant amount of evidence that the Northwest Territories is facing significant economic challenges, and that those challenges will undeniably have an impact on the economy in Yellowknife.

869 Elected officials in Yellowknife have acknowledged that the city faces difficult times. As stated earlier, a third‑party study found that current trends in the NWT economy could result in a significant loss of jobs in Yellowknife, reducing total income in the city by 13 percent, and knocking 100 million dollars off consumer spending. That inevitably will have a direct impact on radio advertising by local businesses.

870 Ignoring these fundamental economic and financial issues, as Cabin Radio would have you do, will not make those issues go away. Instead of addressing the issues, they chose to submit what we consider two flawed studies to support some of their claims in the application. One of them, a listener demand study, was conducted before the COVID pandemic with serious methodological issues ‑‑ lack of random sample selection, flawed questionnaire design leading to biased answers, and a focus on sub‑groups ‑‑ that’s introducing small sample sizes with large margins of error, rendering much of the report meaningless and misleading.

871 That being said, I did find it enlightening amongst the 92 pages of the study was this finding, and I quote:

“Respondents feel they have adequate access to community information. The majority, 65 percent overall, agreed that the community is currently being adequately served by local radio.”

872 The second study, presumably done by Cabin themselves, labels itself as a retail advertising study. However, since the screening question was not included in the report, we have no way of evaluating the results, or if they are representative of the market as a whole or as a selected segment. In fact, since Cabin Radio was the audio service listened to by the largest percentage of respondents, it’s plausible that this was in fact a survey of Cabin Radio advertisers and therefore does not provide a measure of the retail demand within the market as a whole. We submit that the Commission should give no weight to these flawed studies.

873 Now, a more significantly reliable indicator of the potential impact is in Appendix 7 of their submission. Here, they acknowledge that fully 80 percent of the proposed station’s new revenue will be in addition to the existing advertising revenue base in the market. For that to happen, and not at the direct expense of existing revenues of any radio stations operating in Yellowknife, local ad revenues in the market will have to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 7 percent.

874 Let’s think about that. From 2019 to 2023, radio ad revenues decreased at an annual rate of minus 7.1 percent across Canada, and minus 8.2 percent across non‑designated markets in the Territories. Yes, there was some post‑COVID recovery in 2022, but the downward trend continued in 2023, and I fully expect it to continue in 2024 when that data is released.

875 Clearly, based on current trends, no one could seriously expect radio advertising revenue specifically in the Yellowknife market to increase at a rate of 7 percent annually over the next few years, which means that the approval of Cabin Radio’s application will inevitably have a serious negative impact on local radio service that radio stations in this market are able to offer.

876 There are several other outdated, misrepresentative, or simply false assertions in the application. One quick one before I move on, as it misrepresents reality in several markets we operate in. In section 46 of their brief, there is a table meant to rationalize a case for comparably sized markets that are serviced by multiple radio stations. This table includes Williams Lake; Nelson, B.C.; Camrose, Alberta; and Cobourg. First, unlike Yellowknife, these markets all have substantial rural populations serviced by the radio signals, and therefore some of the reported population figures are difficult for us to be able to justify.

877 For Williams Lake, we operate the only station there. So, presumably the second station they are talking about is our station in Quesnel that has a repeater there, but again, they are both Vista Radio stations.

878 The second market ‑‑ Nelson ‑‑ we own one station there but the second station is currently owned by Bell Media, who has deemed it not a viable business and currently is before the CRTC for acquisition by Vista. So again, it would be potentially two Vista stations in that market.

879 For Camrose, we can only find evidence of two stations, not the stated three, both of those being Stingray stations, one of them local and one of them an AM broadcast out of Edmonton. So, I’ll leave it at that. From our point of view, it’s not a valid argument to make.

880 As we stated at the outset and have sought to demonstrate, Cabin Radio has failed to provide a clear and detailed analysis of the capacity of the Yellowknife market to support a commercial FM station. We stand by our view that there is no effort by Cabin to address the fundamental tenet of the Commission’s own stated factors in the evaluation of applications. In Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2024‑57, in which a call for applications to serve Yellowknife, the Commission stated that events such as the pandemic and the wildfires highlighted a need for increased access to radio content in the north.

881 In other recent proceedings, the Commission has emphasized the importance of supporting and expanding the availability of local news, and even stated in the Notice that commitments to local programming will be an important element in its evaluation of the quality of the application. In light of this, we are surprised by the commitment in the application to just one hour and 30 minutes of news programming each week, and no submitted commitment to a minimum total of spoken word programming, which includes news, community information, and other relevant information.

882 In contrast, our proposed new station will provide a minimum of nearly 10‑and‑a‑half hours of spoken word each week, including just under 8 hours of news and information programming.

883 In consideration of all that we have addressed here, and given the Commission’s stated call to increase radio content in the north in response to events such as the pandemic and the wildfires, the failure of Cabin Radio to provide any commitments with respect to news and information overall, and only a minimal commitment to news, should make it difficult for the Commission to conclude that the applicant has filed a quality application deserving of an over‑the‑air commercial FM radio licence.

884 We thank you. That concludes our intervention presentation, and we welcome any questions you have.

885 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

886 I am looking to my colleagues as to whether they have questions? No more questions.

887 Thank you very much for your presentation.

888 Madam Secretary?

889 THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

890 So, this therefore concludes the agenda of today, and we will resume tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time. Thank you.

‑‑‑ Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 3:36 p.m., to resume on Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 10:00 a.m.

Reporters
Benjamin Lafrance
Monique Mahoney
Lynda Johansson
Tania Mahoney
Brian Denton