Excerpts from the March 20 meeting of the parliamentary committee reviewing the mandate of the CBC

Excerpts from the April 20 meeting of the parliamentary committee reviewing the mandate of the CBC

This is part of the presentation of Mr. Laurin (President, CBC Branch, Canadian Media Guild). He is concerned that small centres across Canada, like Kamloops, are loosing free access. The CBC argues that it's not economical to build transmitters for small audiences but that's just what Germany did.

Mr. Marc-Philippe Laurin :

Good morning. My name is Marc-Philippe Laurin, and I am President of the CBC branch of the Canadian Media Guild. I represent employees at the CBC outside the province of Quebec. In my daily work, I am a technician and associate producer for local CBC radio in Ottawa.

I would like to talk a little about what is happening to the infrastructure of our public broadcaster. The guild is very concerned about the fact that the CBC clearly does not have the financial resources to protect its cultural and technological assets, which enable it to provide programming on all its platforms to reach all Canadians, including minority language groups in every region.

CBC/Radio-Canada's infrastructure, we believe, is in decline. This is of some concern to us. Many of the decisions faced by the CBC today to change some major parts of its infrastructure are, we believe, in part because it cannot defend the expense when so much of its programming is now bought from independent producers. I want to be clear here. While we certainly support the role that independent producers play in providing Canadian content, we also believe that CBC and Radio-Canada must continue to be able to produce original programming that cannot be found anywhere else on the dial.

As you know, CBC/Radio-Canada is also proposing to greatly reduce its provision of free television over the air with the transition to digital. This is due to the fact that the CBC again does not have the resources to upgrade all its existing TV transmitters. We know you've heard about this already, and we share the concerns of smaller centres, such as Kamloops, B.C., which is losing free access to their public broadcaster over the airwaves. We think that is just wrong. This not only disenfranchises Canadians in small towns and in rural areas, but it would also fundamentally change the public broadcaster's role to one of a specialty service sandwiched within a 200-channel universe, as opposed to being one of a broadly accessible public service.

The public broadcaster's leaders have stated this is a public policy question, and we entirely agree with them. Even in Germany, where only about 5% of the population picks up TV signals over the air, the public broadcasters were required to fully replace analog transmission with digital without losing a single viewer. It was a matter of public policy for them, and we believe it should be one for Canada also. That's why we are urging Parliament to provide one-time financing to CBC/Radio-Canada to allow for the upgrade of its existing transmission infrastructure from analog to digital.

The public broadcaster must continue to provide broad access to CBC/Radio-Canada programs over the airwaves to all Canadians in all parts of Canada, to every single viewer.

Committee member, Ms. Tina Keeper, asks how the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network came into being. Jean LaRose (CEO of the APTN) says that a program from Heritage Canada was supposed to provide over the air programming through CBC but when they didn't, APTN set up its own transmitters to direct programs to remote communities.

Ms. Tina Keeper:

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Both your presentations were very interesting. What I've heard is there are shortcomings in terms of the CBC and how it has met the needs of Canadians or is a reflection of the diversity of who we are.

I'd like to address both of my questions to Mr. LaRose.

They are on APTN, and I'd like to go back to two things. One is that you talked about the Broadcasting Act on page 6 of your presentation, mentioning that the act stipulates that the programming reflecting aboriginal peoples in Canada should be made available in the broadcasting system only as resources become available for that purpose. I'd like to talk about the CBC mandate in the Broadcasting Act, which doesn't even specifically mention aboriginal people in its mandate. It does say it should “reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada” and “—meet the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities”.

I think what I'm asking you about is APTN's origins. Did APTN come about because there was a perceived shortfall in terms of how CBC was reflecting the aboriginal peoples in Canada? Can you just talk about that in terms of the Broadcasting Act and the CBC mandate?

Mr. Jean LaRose (Chief Executive Officer, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network):
Your question has hit the nail on the head, in fact. When Canadian Heritage established the NNBAP program, its initial intention was to have the CBC, as the public broadcaster, pick up some of the programming that was done by the communication societies in the north and broadcast it as part of its national mandate to reflect all peoples. That wasn't happening. The CBC wasn't interested in picking up that programming and airing it. That's how the northern distribution programming came into existence later on; when it became apparent that the societies were creating programming that the CBC was not airing, the department provided funding to establish 96 transmitter sites across the north so that the programming could be distributed over the air to every resident north of 60, basically.