Arthur Lewis' presentation to the CRTC December 6, 2006
Our Public Airwaves says Kamloops
Index
We will now proceed with Our Public Airwaves'
Presentation,
Mr Arthur Lewis will -- you will have ten minutes for your
presentation, Mr. Lewis.
*PRÉSENTATION / PRESENTATION MR. LEWIS: Thank you. Good
afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners. My name is Arthur
Lewis and I'm here to speak on behalf of Our Public
Airwaves. We are a public interest advocacy organization
dedicated to revitalization of public broadcasting in
Canada. OPA was launched in 2003 at the initiative of
concerned Canadians, both organizations and individuals, who
believe a strong Public Broadcasting System is essential to
provide a broad range of innovative programming in the
public interest, independent of commercial considerations.
Because we are a relatively young organization, this is our
first appearance before the Commission and I would like to
express appreciation for the opportunity to be heard today.
As advocates for public broadcasting we believe that
Canada's Broadcasting System has become seriously unbalanced
in terms of the relative positions of its public and private
components.
Any review of the regulatory framework should, therefore,
seek out ways in which that balance can be restored.
Today's CBC is no match financially for Canada's
well-founded commercial networks. A point best illustrated
by the ease with which Bell Globe Medias, CTV outbids CBC
for broadcast rights to the 2010-2012 Olympic games. If
media speculation is to be believed, this could well happen
again when rights to NHL hockey come up for bid. And so, we
come before you to ask that the Commission in considering
its television policy keep firmly in mind the role of public
broadcasting as a vital component of the system. There are
several specific issues that I want to focus on today, but
of them the one that is clearly the most important is
programming.
In your opening remarks last week,
Mr. Chairman, you listed
the first objective of this proceeding is ensuring that
licensees contribute in the most effective manner possible
to production acquisition of broadcast of high quality
programming, Canadian programming. We would submit that CBC
and Radio-Canada has the only major OTA networks that are
willing and able to focus all of their efforts toward
achieving that goal. It would, therefore, seem appropriate
for the Commission to do everything possible within its
powers to assist... to assist CBC toward that end. And how
might you go about doing that? Well, more money would
certainly help, but I'll get to that issue in a minute.
First, let me suggest that CBC needs to bulk up a bit,
develop a bit more marketplace muscle. We believe that an
important first step toward leveling the playing field for
public broadcasting would be to require compulsory carriage
as part of the basic package by all BDUS of all
CBC-Radio-Canada TV channels, including those now classified
ass "specialty" or "digital". This would ensure that all
public channels are available to the largest possible number
of Canadian households.
That, in turn, would enhance the ability of CBC to finance
production and acquisition or programming by providing it
with widely available second window channels. I need only
point to the recent fiasco that resulted from the CBC's
airing of secondary curling matches on Country Canada to
illustrate this point, and if any of the Commissioners don't
understand what I am getting at there, I'll be happy to
explain later. It would, of course, be necessary to require
that BDUs continue to collect payment of subscription fees
for those channels to which they now apply. While we
appreciate that CBC itself has not made this request for
universal carriage, we believe the Commission should
consider the public interest, even when that may not be what
CBC's current management has chosen to ask for. As its
second objective, the Commission has focused on regulations
relating to costs and revenue.
This is where we get to
the money. Our Public Airwaves
believes the Commission should require BDUs to pay a
compulsory subscription fee for transmission of those
CBC-SRC services that are now categorized as OTA. Because
Canadians have long struggled with the question of how best
to appropriately finance our national public broadcaster,
CBC now finds itself in a very difficult financial situation
when it has led to over-commercialization and an obsession
with ratings at the expense of its public service mandate. A
monthly fee of only $2.00 would provide our national public
networks with approximately $240 million dollars in
additional annual funding.
That money, in turn, would allow CBC and Radio-Canada to
offer a much larger slate of quality Canadian programming
and, in particular, drama. It would be tempting to propose
that subscription fees be limited to CBC and perhaps the
provincial educational networks. At the very least, we
suggest that our national public broadcaster should be given
preference in the application of such a fee. Whatever their
fears for the future, the private networks remain profitable
and for CBC, the need is now. I should note the response of
Ted Rogers to this Commission last week, when he said that
if a subscription fee is to be levied, it should only be for
CBC and not its profit-making competitors.
Then, there is the question of advertising. We believe that
for a public broadcaster, CBC-Radio-Canada has become far
too commercial. That's best illustrated by the fact that
current management now calls it a "publicly subsidized
commercial TV broadcaster". For the moment at least, it's
impractical for CBC to wean itself from this essential
source of funding, but we believe it's time for the
Commission to impose restrictions on the manner in which a
public broadcaster can commercialize itself. For example; in
our view, it is totally inappropriate for a public
broadcaster to carry programming for which fees have been
paid for product placement. Equally unacceptable is digital
alteration of images for the purpose of inserting
advertising, except perhaps in professional sports
programming. We, therefore, ask that the Commission forbid
such practices by public broadcasters.
In the same spirit,
we further suggest that the Commission
mandate the allocation of one third of all new subscription
revenue toward reduction of commercial minutes in CBC
programming. This should begin with a substantial reduction
of commercials with the news, current affairs and
documentary programming. One final point with regard to the
third objective of these hearings, examining options for
effective delivery of Canadian digital HD signals. We
believe that Canadian broadcasting, public broadcasting
signals in particular, must be universally available. The
very concept of public broadcasting demands it. But the
world is not always as we might wish and pragmatic
considerations of costs may dictate otherwise.
The Commission may well decide in its wisdom to allow OTA
networks to limit coverage of their digital transmitters to
larger markets while relying on satellite and cable systems
to cover the rest of the country. And, of course, we've had
a lot of discussion of that in the last week and a half. In
that case, to accommodate the needs of low income Canadians
as well as those for whom TV is a low priority, we believe
the Commission should require all BDUS to provide a
price-regulated minimum cost basic digital service to
include all public broadcasting channels as well as the
other Canadian OTA networks. When we look at the television
services of CBC-Radio-Canada, we see far more than the
over-commercialized under-funded networks that Canadians
love to criticize.
We see the greatness that once was and the enormous
potential for public service that still exists. In any
reformulation of television policy, we respectfully ask that
the Commission use its regulatory powers to the fullest
extent possible, to enhance the ability of our national
public broadcaster to satisfy the programming needs of
Canadians. Thank you again for this opportunity to express
our views. I welcome your questions in a particular -- I
welcome the opportunity to respond to Vice-Chairman French
on the question of second guessing the government with
respect to CBC funding.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Lewis. My first question to
you will be -- since as you've said, it is the first time
that Our Public Airwaves has a chance to appear before the
Commission, could you, in some -- in a few words, tell us
who you are and who you represent, Our Public Airwaves, as
an organization and how is your membership structure?
MR. LEWIS: Well, we grew out of a
conference that was held
here in Ottawa five years ago, called "Finding Focus". It
was a conference on public -- a three-day conference on
public broadcasting attended by a broad cross-section of
people from the production community, from broadcasting
networks, from the public at the Chateau Laurier. And there
was a feeling coming out of that conference that there was
no one advocating for public broadcasting in this country.
Certainly, at the time nobody was playing that role and
after a lot of tuning and throwing over a period of time,
funds were raised, a lot of it -- we got funding from the
Canadian Media Guild who appeared earlier, a number of
teachers unions, the Canadian Teachers Federation and
Steelworkers Public Service Alliance and all the Alberta
Teachers Federation, the British Columbia Teachers
Federation and some of the Ontario Teachers Federation
kicked in money. That's how we got started and we are slowly
as we become better known, doing some public fund raising
from ordinary Canadians. We have a mailing list of about
40,000 Canadians who receive our occasional e-mail
newsletter and participate in some of our campaigns in
support of public broadcasting. I don't know if that answers
your question. I don't want to go in it too long.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes. Yes, it does. Obviously, I'm sure
that you know Friends of Canadian Broadcasting?
MR. LEWIS: Oh! Very well.
THE CHAIRPERSON: As an organization, but obviously which is
mainly made up of individuals while your organization is
made up of structured organizations such as unions or guilds
and other interested --
MR. LEWIS: Well, no, not exactly. That was where some of
the initial funding came from. Our Coordinating Committee
consists of a cross-section of individuals with varying
broadcasting backgrounds or not We have a former
vice-president of the Public Service Alliance, a former
president of the Canadian Teachers Federation, a former
director of Strategic Planning for the CBC, a documentary
film producer, myself, and the president of Canadian Media
Guild, but in we, in our perspective, attempt to represent
consumers, viewers, and our funding is moving more and more
towards donations from ordinary Canadians. You mentioned
Friends and I suppose I should say and I guess there is to
some degree a certain amount of friendly, you know, not
always friendly competition between the two organizations,
but Friends, you will note, does not advocate for public
broadcasting. They advocate for Canadian content in the
audio-visual system and there is a substantial difference in
that respect.
THE CHAIRPERSON: That I could recognize that you have
different goals, but sometimes they could go parallel, in
parallel.
MR. LEWIS: Oh! Absolutely.
THE CHAIRPERSON: You have in your oral presentation today
alluded to the compulsory carriage of all the CBC
over-the-air channels as well as the specialty services and
you mentioned Country Canada. I suppose that you will
mention documentary as well and --
MR. LEWIS: Well, that's not really there as yet, but that's
for you to decide.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, but the thing is that in all the
others in which they -- are you meaning that -- I know that
in some instances they are partners with others in the
ownership of some of the specialty services, and in some
other instances, like Newsworld, obviously, it is totally
CBC-owned and operated. Are you advocating that all those
specialty services in which the CBC has an involvement
should be on basic?
MR. LEWIS: Well, I am thinking primarily of those where the
CBC is the principal controlling shareholder, certainly,
Country Canada, Newsworld, RDI, the Documentary Channel
should that transaction be approved, and any others that
might at some point come along in the future. Who knows
what the digital world will bring?
THE CHAIRPERSON: And you are making that recommendation
because of the curling experience that you had to go through
on Country Canada, which was obviously on a tier, you may
not have been a subscriber to that tier at the time?
MR. LEWIS: I am not even a curling fan, sir, but I think it
was widely seen across the country that it was a fiasco for
CBC and led to CBC losing subsequently its carriage of
curling because the curling community was so outraged, and
the problem being that CBC, unlike some of the other
broadcasters, and CTV comes immediately to mind, does not
have this large supply of secondary channels on which it can
lay off programming. So when it attempted, because it can't
on its main channel run all of the curling matches, to put
them on Country Canada, there was an enormous outcry from
the curling community because the vast majority of those who
wanted to watch the matches don't have access to Country
Canada. We believe that as a public broadcasting channel,
Country Canada and any other public channel should be
available to the public. I think it is as simple as that.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Taking curling as an example, which is
certainly a sport by itself, is it really the mandate of
Country Canada to carry curling?
MR. LEWIS: Oh, I couldn't speak to that, sir.
THE CHAIRPERSON: As you probably are aware, the CRTC has
been licensing the specialty services on the basis of
thematics, which is one per genre, and obviously, sports is
a genre by itself in which there is some competitions
because you have a national network and regional services,
some owned by CTV, some others owned by Rogers, but all the
other services, mainly, they are always licensed through
genres. I wonder if really the country specialty service was
the place to carry curling in the first place.
MR. LEWIS: Well, that is a very good question and it is one
I would encourage you to address to the CBC. I just don't
have any opinion on it. I was speaking to the broader
question of the CBC's lack of secondary channels. You
raised, for instance, in the genre of sports -- and I should
note that the Commission seems to have been fairly generous
in allowing a number of licensees to migrate from genre to
genre.
We could talk about Spike, I think it was, and a couple of
others that have transformed but let us not go there. Let us
talk about sports. Well, we already have the situation with
the CBC losing the Olympics. There is a possibility that
they may well lose hockey in the future and it is something,
I think, that terrifies them considerably. CTV has a
considerable advantage in this area by having -- by owning
sports channels on which it can lay off the cost and the
airing of secondary games and the same applies to the
Olympics. It really does put the CBC at a very substantial
disadvantage. And you may recall that the CBC has in the
past come before this Commission -- and I can't cite chapter
and verse, you would know it better than I -- seeking
licences for other channels for which it has been denied.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Well, for sometime the Commission asked
itself, is the CBC fulfilling its mandate on its main
channel before granting them the authority to start
segmenting their over-the-air service, because one of the
concerns that was raised by intervenors like you over the
years was that they were fearing that the CBC could use the
opportunity of having specialty services to move some
content from the free over-the-air network towards a
specialty service for which they will be receiving a fee for
carriage.
MR. LEWIS: Well again, that is a
concern that the
Commission may well have but the reality of the television
game today is multiple windows, multiple platforms. Let us
keep going back to CTV. When CTV puts money into "Corner
Gas", they air it on CTV, they air it on the Comedy Channel.
This makes the economics of producing a program like "Corner
Gas" far more appealing to CTV than, for instance, the CBC,
that does not have a vast array of secondary channels. So
having multiple windows, having shelf space, however you
want to describe it, is certainly a large -- or not having
it in the case of the CBC is certainly a substantial problem
and we think that you could assist the CBC in at least
making sure that those channels that it does have are widely
available to all Canadians. And after all, they are channels
owned by Canadians. So we think that any public channel
should be available to the public. I mean that seems to me
kind of a given.
THE CHAIRPERSON: While I understand what you say, the
reality is that there were policy decisions made years ago
allowing the introduction of specialty services as long as
the market forces are interested in getting them and the CBC
has elected to play in that game and apply for various
specialty services such as Country, such as Documentary,
such as Arts TV in French, and to be carried by the
distributors in the same manner as the other commercial
operations, because they are self-sustaining, they are
living from a carriage fee and from advertising. And yearly,
we are getting the annual report of each of these services
and we can see that at best they are breaking even and most
of the time they are making a profit.
MR. LEWIS: Well, without being disrespectful, sir, that was
then and this is now. The Commission in its wisdom, for
instance, licensed CTV's Newsnet to be a headline service.
You then allowed it to become a more direct competitor of
Newsworld. The Commission licensed Spike as something else
-- I can't even remember, it was, you tell me -- and then
allowed it to become something else. So my point is things
change, the world moves on, and I am dealing with what is
here now and not what might have been when policies were
made however many years ago.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Spike is not a Canadian service, it is an
American service. The other alternative was to remove it
from the distribution and the Commission, after assessing
the content of the new service, came to the conclusion that
there was no similar service offered in Canada. So that is
another story. If we move towards the other items that you
have in your brief. Subscription fees, what you are arguing
is that CBC shall get a fee -- if the Commission was to make
the decision that a fee is an acceptable policy, then you
are saying that the CBC shall be granted one and you are
suggesting $2.00 per subscriber per month. Have you thought
of what kind of fee should be contemplated for carriage of
the CBC service in the francophone market and vice versa?
MR. LEWIS: Well, I was picking a number -- we were picking
a number arbitrarily, as any amount such as this would be,
but you are talking primarily of two national networks and
we think both those networks should be available to all
Canadians. So in effect, you are talking about $1.00 for
CBC, $1.00 for Radio-Canada.
THE CHAIRPERSON: And do you have any views about fee for
carriage for commercially operated over-the-air or you share
in Mr. Rogers' conclusion?
MR. LEWIS: Well, we try not to spend too much of our effort
occupying ourselves with what the private broadcasters do.
That is something that Friends interests itself in more and
obviously the Commission is but we are focused more on
public broadcasting. So whether you do or don't grant fees
for carriage to commercial broadcasters is not something
that we have a strong opinion on. All we are saying is that
CBC should be first in line and has the greatest need and
beyond that the Commission will do in its wisdom what it
thinks best.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Now, if the Commission was to grant a fee
for carriage for CBC, then what you are saying is that CBC
shall reduce their advertising content by a third?
MR. LEWIS: That is a proposal that we are putting forward.
There is, as you may appreciate -- I am sure you are more
than aware of the unhappiness that arises from time to time,
as, for example, in the recent Senate report on media, the
suggestions that come forward regularly that CBC Television
get out of the advertising business. This Commission, of
course, many years ago now, told the CBC to get out of
advertising in the radio business. And the CBC is overly
dependent in the view of many Canadians on advertising. The
Senate Committee suggested that it get out of advertising
totally. In some respects that might be desirable but it
seems impractical.
We are trying to offer a way to move forward without saying
okay, pull all the ads, because there is no way that revenue
will be replaced, and frankly, it is a struggle because if I
had $100 million or $200 million to give to the CBC, the
last thing I would ask them to do is to use all of that
money to take advertising off the air because I think there
are much greater needs in terms of developing programming.
So we are making a suggestion for a modest advancement here,
two-thirds of any subscription fee towards programming,
one-third towards a pullback from what we see as
overcommercialization. It is a judgment call. It could be
20 percent or 40 percent. We are saying about a third.
Again, I wouldn't be distressed if you said 20 or 40,
whatever the Commission might feel appropriate. I would be
distressed if you said 100 percent because then there is no
new funding for programming.
THE CHAIRPERSON: And $240 million will not be enough to
replace --
MR. LEWIS: No, exactly.
THE CHAIRPERSON: -- on top of that? Finally, regarding
over-the-air transmission, as you know there are various
options that have been tabled over the last couple of days
and hybrid, the system, and old BDU delivery of television
in this country. What you said, you don't seem to have a
strong opinion on that, but you are saying that if it was to
go towards a BDU delivery, then the BDUs should make sure
that they provide, at the minimum cost, a decoder into all
households who are not currently receiving distribution
services in order that they get the current over-the-air
service.
MR. LEWIS: Well this, again, is one of those difficult
questions of balancing, as you well know. And as I
suggested in my earlier remarks, in an ideal world the CBC
would provide an over-the-air signal in digital as it now
does in analogue to all Canadians because public
broadcasting should be available to the Canadian public.
And in theory, that means I suppose that if there is, you
know, one guy who has, you know, a trapline in the Northwest
Territories who can't get an over-the-air signal, you know,
there is something wrong. The reality is that even today
with analogue there are small pockets here and there where
you can't get -- I mean, we don't 100 per cent, we have I
don't know, you tell me, probably 95 per cent, 99 per cent,
whatever the coverage is, it is not 100 per cent. What we
are saying that the practical realities may well dictate
that a complete coverage is not possible.
We think that it is
incumbent up on the Commission, not upon
BDUs, on the Commission to ensure that there is, as much as
with telephone service, a basic package that is available at
minimal cost for those who don't want all the bells and
whistles, that there should be a very basic cost at a
minimum regulated fee and the Commission may well want to
look at other aspects of the delivery of this. You may want
to look at what the British are doing in terms of their
rather complex multiplex system, which was referred to I
think on Friday. You still have to go out and buy a digital
box out of your own pocket, but then the digital channels
are provided. But we are talking here of a country with
obviously a much different geography. So what is practical
in this country? I would like to make a suggestion. You
know, the problem for many Canadians is five, seven, eight
years, however many years it takes, whatever the cut-off
date, is that many years away.
And as the
Commission is aware, this problem has arrived
already for the people of Kamloops, British Columbia and
will arrive in the coming years, I suspect, in other
communities where we have a situation where the CBC
affiliate in Kamloops has moved over to Global, there is no
longer an over-the-air broadcast signal from CBC available.
If you want to get it on cable, if you want to get it on
satellite, it is there, but if you live in Kamloops and you
have rabbit ears, you are out of luck. I would suggest that
this provides an opportunity for the Commission should you
decide that you are going down, let us say, a hybrid road.
I frankly, think that the Commission and the government
should be trying to find a solution for the people of
Kamloops, but that may not be practical. But I would like to
suggest that if we head down the road toward some sort of a
hybrid system you might well want to look at Kamloops as a
place where you can experiment with solutions, because they
have a problem now. So whatever you are thinking you might
roll out for everybody who doesn't get reception through the
hybrid system that the CBC is proposing, test it out in
Kamloops because they have the problem today, see how it
works. Maybe there are a couple of different solutions.
Here is a lab, here is a testing site to see what will work
for those Canadians who, should the time come, do not have
over-the-air reception.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Well, Mr. Lewis, those were my questions.
Mr. French.
COMMISSIONER FRENCH: Mr. Lewis,
I can hardly fail to take
you up on your request and I am glad to discover someone who
actually wants to answer this question and since I have
asked it on a number of occasions and never got an answer. I
mean, just let me tell you what I have heard from the
previous people who have answered me, if I may paraphrase
it. My motives are pure. I speak for what Canadians want
or what they would want if they knew what was good for them.
The public objective that I am searching to achieve is of
such transcendent importance that the essentially academic
concerns of the Commission about things like political
accountability and democratic responsibility are really not
important. The Government of Canada and the Parliament of
Canada who have got the financing of the CBC wrong and it is
the CRTC's job, in part, to see to that. So that is the kind
of answer I have generally gotten which, you know, is a
non-answer. And if you want to address the real question
which I think is important, but I am prepared to modify my
view, then the real question is this, our constitution says
that the financing of public objectives is to be the
responsibility of the political executive and of Parliament,
and that is how the CBC is financed. It has constitutive
legislation and there is an annual budgetary process. I
know it has many flaws in its impact on public broadcasting,
but so does every member of Parliament and that is the
output. So the issue for us or for me, and I can't speak for
my colleagues, and I would be very pleased to hear your
views on it is, you know, can we reasonably say to the
Government of Canada, you know, we think we know a whole lot
better. So what we are going to do is go out and ask every
television subscriber, every cable or satellite subscriber
to contribute X amount of money to finance CBC.
MR. LEWIS: Well, I think that is a very reasonable
question. I have heard a couple of other people -- and the
reason I volunteered to answer it was because I have heard
some others attempt an answer and stumble, and I think that
is partly because this was a bit of an ambush on your part,
if you will for give me, in that I think it perhaps might
have been more appropriate if the Commission wanted an
answer to that question to have put it in the list of
questions it wanted answered. I don't suggest that you are
deliberately setting to ambush, but I am saying that that
was the result because people came here not prepared for
that question and it is not an easy question. But I thought
about it a little bit since I heard you ask it first last
Friday and I am going to try and answer it.
I guess the first thing I would draw your attention to is a
recent vote of Parliament, of the House of Commons, which
called on the government to increase funding to the CBC.
So, you know, we have a minority government, so there
actually is a vote on record of Parliament saying that the
CBC should have more money. However, I think far more
important, the CBC's funding is not provided solely by act
Parliament, by parliamentary appropriation. As you well
know, the CBC's funding comes from a variety of sources,
which include advertising, which include subscription fees.
CBC is now receiving subscription fee revenue for some of
its channels. There is nothing in any act of Parliament
that I am aware of or in the Broadcasting Act, and please
correct me if I am wrong, that precludes a subscription fee
for the CBC. You, in your wisdom, allow CBC Television to
sell advertising, you allow CBC to collect subscription fees
for some of its channels. Let me ask you, why do you have
difficulty, why is their difficulty in your mind in allowing
them to collect a subscription fee for one of its OTA
channels and why would the it be permissible, for instance,
for a private broadcaster to have a subscription fee as
opposed to the CBC? I mean, I am just not sure why you
single out the CBC in this since it is not solely financed
through parliamentary appropriation.
COMMISSIONER FRENCH: No, that is right. So I don't think
that the fact that they have specialty channels like
everyone else and they get financed in a different way is
really a particularly strong argument, if I may say so
respectfully. So your view would be to say to me that given
that advertising is a second source of financing and given
that if we were to make a decision of principle that fee for
carriage would apply to the range or the category of all
conventional broadcasters it then might be perfectly
reasonable that we would include the CBC and Radio-Canada as
conventional broadcasters in that group?
MR. LEWIS: Well, I think that is a reasonable approach.
But, at the same time, you know, I don't see any reason why
you couldn't, for instance, decide that the CBC needs the
money more than the others. You know, you make judgments --
again, correct me if I am wrong -- but you make judgments
that TSN needs a certain amount of money for a subscription
fee, you make decisions that Newsworld needs a different
amount, that somebody else needs a smaller amount. You
know, you don't have one subscription fee fits all. You
look at the circumstances in which they are being applied.
The CBC is a very substantial provider, because the
Commission has expressed concern about providing Canadian
programming.
The CBC, of course, is a major provider and, in primetime,
the only network that is really willing to provide wall to
wall Canadian content and the only vehicles, particularly in
English-Canada, where it is possible because the economics
of the private broadcasters don't allow that. So I think
there is some public purpose behind assisting the CBC
through this other means of financing. You know, the CBC's
financing is not just -- I mean, the CBC gets money from the
satellite radio licenses that you granted its partnership
and, you know, there are all sorts of little pockets of ways
that the CBC gets funding. The CBC has some commercial
enterprises. So all I am saying is it is a much broader
question than parliamentary appropriation and shouldn't be
looked at as well because the Government of Canada gave them
X dollars that is all they should have. You have it in your
hands to provide them with more, why not?
COMMISSIONER FRENCH: Yes, I guess what I would say to you
about commercial revenue is that is what it is. It is
commercial revenue, it is earned in a market. What you are
asking us to do is apply something that looks a bit like a
tax. And what you have basically said is you already do it,
you are already playing God, you might as well play God for
everybody, which is I think a, you know, legitimate
position. But I don't think, to be frank, the fact that they
make money in commercial markets is in anyway a rationale
that would permit us to say to Parliament, by the way we
have decided to add a second tax for the CBC. I mean, that
I don't see I must say.
MR. LEWIS: Well, I don't understand, sir, why you phrase it
as you are saying to Parliament. I am not quite sure why
that conversation would take place. You have a domain of
responsibility, I don't know --
COMMISSIONER FRENCH: Well, I will tell you why it should
take place, because the members of Parliament are
democratically accountable and have to come up for election.
We are appointed on a periodic basis to do essentially
technical tasks associated with the regulation of the
communications system of the country. Those are very
different functions. We are not politically accountable.
And therefore I, for one, still think -- and I appreciate
the thoughtful discussion we are having because it is
helping me to understand and it is bringing me a better idea
of where you are coming from -- but I still think there is a
fundamental philosophical issue there. Do we second-guess
the duly elected parliamentarians of the Government of
Canada and its political executive, all the process of a
democratic process, all the product of a democratic process
about the level of funding the CBC should attain? I think
it is a real issue. I repeat, I appreciate the thoughtful
way that you are approaching it and the issues you are
raising.
MR. LEWIS: Well, I guess I just want to challenge, if I
may, the use of the term second-guess. You know, nowhere
did the Parliament of Canada express itself on a maximum
amount of money that the CBC should have and you are somehow
superseding that. They just said: here is how much we're
giving them, they have not expressed, to my knowledge, any
objection to the CBC going out and getting money in other
ways. I don't think there is any expression by our
democratically elected representatives to the effect that
the CBC should not have a subscription fee or should not be
able to partake of whatever opportunities are available to
it, to acquire funds with which to do its work.
COMMISSIONER FRENCH: Yes. And with the greatest respect,
you're persistently confusing the CBC's behaviour in certain
marketplaces where they sell goods and raise money, such as
advertising time or DVDs or other commercialized products.
And the use of the power of the State in this case vested in
us under the Broadcasting Act and so to add another
obligatory contribution on the part of all television
viewers or all television viewers who are subscribing to
cable on satellite to the CBC's financing and, you know, I
appreciate your point of view, but it's not quite as clear
in my mind as it is in your mind. As for ambush, I don't
think that it's reasonable to ask the CRTC to exercise its
power in a certain way and then feel that somehow it's
legitimate to be asked what other should be rationalized,
you know, and then the particular group to which you refer
went out of their way to tell us that this was an industry
process which was not accessible to the public apparently,
which should, in fact, create a public process as opposed to
a public debate, as opposed to the one we're trying to have
here and washed its hands of the precise and specific
recommendations that we require, you know, to actually write
a report. They gave us a series of counsels of perfection
and then said fundamentally, we haven't thought too much
about that, that's someone else's problem. Well, they got a
response, you know, as a function of the usefulness of their
approach to us and you've been much more helpful because you
have been willing to enter into details and enter in the
script of it and the detail and not sort of washed away and
said that's someone else's problem.
MR. LEWIS: And all I'm saying is and, please forgive me if
I used too strong a word, but in terms of ambush, but all
I'm saying is it's a difficult question because I'm sure you
appreciate and, you know, others who have been asked really
haven't had an opportunity to reply to it and I sat here on
Friday and thought, that question really hasn't been
properly answered and it should be and so, I gave it some
thought.
COMMISSIONER FRENCH: And I appreciate the spirit and the
contribution you made I think was valuable.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Lewis. We will move to the
next intervener. Thank you very much.
MR. LEWIS: Thank you. Back to news page