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Good morning, everyone. I call this meeting to order. This is the 38th meeting—we're almost getting up to 40—of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. This morning, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are continuing the study on the future of the Canadian Television Fund, with consideration of the draft report.
I think everyone has probably perused the report, and that's about all I have done so far. When our task was set to look into the Canadian Television Fund, it was the problem that Shaw and Vidéotron had stopped their monthly payments. That being resolved, I think we may want to make sure that something like it doesn't happen again.
I'm open to suggestions on how we should go about this. Mr. Angus has, just previously, given me a few things here. I know our experts have given it a quick going-over. We have one recommendation here, and I see Mr. Angus has quite a number of recommendations.
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I know Mr. Kotto has no intention of making this any more political a report than it obviously will be.
I would point out that some of the praise the minister had from the witnesses is also absent from the report, so it's a tit-for-tat kind of idea. I suggest that the approach, as you said, Mr. Chair, is to reflect on the testimony and the sequence of events that occurred.
Obviously I'm unaware of all the things that were happening in the background, although certainly I was aware of some that would counterbalance what Mr. Kotto is saying. But I don't see any value in getting into that. I think the approach of this report, which is reflective of the testimony at the committee and the public events in a chronological order, is probably a preferable way to go rather than getting down into the nitty-gritty that Mr. Kotto is suggesting.
The narrative I thought spoke well in terms of the various issues we heard. I didn't feel it covered where we go from here, and perhaps it was not the role of the clerk to take us in that direction.
I'm sorry I didn't get it to everyone sooner, but I spent much of the weekend going over the evidence. That's why I've come forward with eight recommendations, which I would suggest is a way of moving us forward from what we've heard to amalgamating them into the report--parts or the whole thing, depending on the will of the committee.
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Mr. Chairman, I simply want to suggest a change.
In my opinion, the report is well written and appropriately covers the events that occurred. However, on page 2, in the paragraph dealing with recent developments, it says:
In a letter sent to the CTF on December 20, 2006, Jim Shaw, CEO of Shaw Communications, called for major changes to the CTF's mandate and governance structure.
Then, a little further on, it says:
The company announced that it was withdrawing its financial support.
I would prefer that we say: “At the same time, the company announced that it was withdrawing its financial support”, or “On that occasion, the company announced that it was withdrawing its financial support.” It seems to me that without those link words, the sentence does not flow well.
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I believe it comes down to a question that we should be determining as a committee right from the beginning. The existing situation where we are, as of this minute today, is that we have gone through a crisis that was created in no small part by the withdrawal of the funding by Shaw, then by Vidéotron, their deciding to reverse their position. The issue is now before the CRTC, who effectively have taken the reins of control out of the hands of the CTF. I think Commissioner von Finckenstein certainly gave me a lot of confidence that he's going to be able to make this happen.
Now, we ask the question, what is the purpose of this report? If the purpose of our report to the House is to say this is what we did and this is where it was, then the report as drafted does that. If the purpose of this committee, and it's a perfectly valid choice on the part of the opposition.... If the choice of the opposition is to get into these recommendations and create an extra element for consideration of the public at large and for the consideration of Mr. von Finckenstein and the CRTC, then that's it.
The fact of the matter is to crank it up a notch and to put these recommendations, should they pass, with the wisdom of the collective committee.... Certainly most of them I would be very strongly opposed to, but nonetheless, should they pass, then we've created another point of conflict. It strikes me that we don't need another point of conflict for the CTF and for the producers in Canada. What we need for them is some kind of security of knowing that they have the CRTC with the CTF issues under control so they can go ahead and start producing their shows rather than our creating an extra point of conflict.
I say quite bluntly, that's exactly what these recommendations, should they be included in this report, will do.
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That's a valid point, but I don't agree. I think it's our job to learn lessons and make recommendations around those lessons learned.
The reality is that this has been a painful experience for a whole bunch of people. I would argue the industry.... There's a lot of responsibility. There are some good things that have happened that need to be identified. I think it's important, from my perspective as a member of the committee, to support the good work that has been done by the Canadian Television Fund. That's reflected here. I don't find it strongly enough reflected in the narrative in terms of the people who have appeared.
I think there are lessons learned. We heard witnesses from across the country. I think we owe it to them not to take the position that somehow for us to exercise our right as parliamentarians runs the risk of adding fuel to the fire. I think that's unlikely. Quite the contrary, I think we should inform the debate--the public, the government, our committee--of what we've heard. Otherwise, they've come here for a lot of time and given us a lot of advice that we simply have not acted on.
This is not a criticism of the report. I think the report basically does frame the discussion appropriately. Now, as parliamentarians, I think we need to offer advice. This is advice that I support.
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There are some things about the narrative that make me agree with everyone else that it's not strong enough. What we have in terms of the one recommendation in the report is that it's really just a band-aid.
It says that we urge the CRTC to amend the Broadcasting Act to stipulate that they must make monthly.... That doesn't stop Vidéotron and Shaw from going against the regulations again if they choose. Then we're back to square one, we're constantly sort of arguing, and calling them frauds, etc. We need to look at how something becomes sustainable in terms of the fund and deal with it once and for all. I think that to fix it for a temporary period of time until the next crisis really has us reacting to crisis after crisis. That isn't strong enough in the one recommendation.
The second thing I believe is this. I tend to agree in principle with a lot of the things Mr. Angus said, but I have this ongoing concern about the CRTC, which has set up a task force to also look at the Cable Television Fund. I am very disturbed that they're not holding public hearings.
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The bottom line is that courts hold public hearings. The CRTC is not a court; it's a quasi-judicial body, so it isn't even a judicial body. The argument that there are people who may not want to testify because of conflicts, whistle-blowing, or whatever, is a valid one. There are ways to deal with that; there always have been. But if we get a report coming out of hearings, and no one knows what went on in those hearings, that report could reflect whatever the report chooses to reflect and not what that group heard.
I think we should—and we have the power in this committee—require them to hold public hearings. I have a recommendation to that extent that is a little stronger than the last recommendation, which Mr. Angus made, requiring that they hold public hearings, and at their discretion, when necessary, they can have in camera hearings on special occasions to facilitate special witnesses.
We need to be able to talk about this in public. We need to be able to know what witnesses were called, what the witnesses said, and whether the report reflects what was heard. We can't have quiet hearings. In this day and age, it's not even accountable.
So I would like to be stronger than what this report has basically said.
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As a clarification, the recommendations coming forth now are not an afterthought or an attempt to take over Mr. von Finckenstein's work. For the record, we were the first point of contact on this issue. It was the heritage committee that stepped in, called for witnesses, said that we would study this, and issued a report. This is something that we must complete.
Part of issuing a report is coming forward with recommendations, regardless of whether Mr. von Finckenstein has his own process in place. I don't believe you can usurp the work that we began here, because people are looking to us to come forward with clear recommendations.
What I suggest is that we seem to have a general sense of the narrative, and the question is on the recommendations. Should we vote to go forward and look at the recommendations, yes or no? If we vote to go forward with the recommendations, we can start to go through them point by point and find out whether or not there's agreement or changes. Perhaps that's a better way to spend the other hour and a half of our time this morning.
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I have two points, Mr. Chair.
First of all, to address Ms. Fry's point, she refers to the fact that judicial proceedings typically are in public, and that's true. In fact, the reason they're in public is that judicial proceedings are perhaps the most penal in nature, usually, and in fact the higher you go in terms of something being of a quasi-judicial or strictly judicial process, you're going to make that public.
But I remind her that even within judicial processes there is such a thing as a voir dire, which is closed to the public, which is done privately. And the lower on the scale you go, right down to a task force, it's less serious in the sense that because the decisions aren't of a penal nature typically, you wouldn't require that it necessarily be a public hearing.
Let me finish. You had your say.
I'm suggesting to you that the task force that Mr. von Finckenstein is going to be undertaking is something where he can informally discuss the concerns of the industry, including those of Quebecor and Shaw, to determine what the real issues are here. We never had an opportunity at this table to actually go into the underlying issues and the details of those issues that were causing Shaw and Quebecor to take the action they did.
My suggestion is this. We already have a commitment from Mr. von Finckenstein to undertake a review by way of a task force where there are going to be broad consultations within the industry. He's committed that he will be making that report public and will submit that to this committee, so we will have an opportunity to have additional information upon which to make recommendations.
The process we've completed has simply addressed a crisis of funding that took place--which has resolved itself, at least on a temporary basis. But at the same time, the reasons that gave rise to that problem of funding haven't been dealt with exhaustively at this table, and presumably that's the whole purpose of Mr. von Finckenstein's task force.
I find it amazing that we would even suggest moving forward with far-reaching recommendations when we don't have that basic information available. Why would we not wait until Mr. von Finckenstein reports? That is the appropriate process. If the intention of this whole process that we've completed was to make recommendations as to the various issues underlying the funding crisis, then we would have had to have a much broader consultation. We would have had to spend much more time on the issue.
Again, I go back. The task force is charged with doing that. I'm absolutely confident that Mr. von Finckenstein is going to come forward with a task force report that's going to provide us with the kind of information, statistics, data that we require to make recommendations that are actually going to be effective.
I've just had a quick look at the various recommendations Mr. Angus has made, and I'm looking forward to receiving those from the other opposition parties, but it's highly unlikely that the government side is going to support most of these, simply because they're of a political nature. They're highly charged. They appear to make recommendations in the absence of supporting evidence. So that's my concern.
I want to make sure that if we're going to make recommendations as a committee, those recommendations are based on fact, that they're based on solid data, that they're actually going to move the industry forward, that they will inform the minister appropriately.
First of all, I have an opportunity here. I'm not going to vote against it just for the sake of voting against it. I want to justify why I believe the process that's being suggested here is inappropriate. We'll have a chance to debate the recommendations, I'm sure, given the fact that the government is a minority at this table. But at the same time, if we believe that the purpose of this committee is to be constructive, to move forward in a constructive manner, to work collaboratively, I'm not sure we're equipped yet to make the kinds of recommendations that I see Mr. Angus bringing forward here.
I'm going to take about three more responses here, because we're in debate right now and we're going nowhere. We will then take a vote on Mr. Angus's motions.
One thing that I, as the chair, have noticed throughout the consultations is that we haven't had all the parties that contribute to the Canadian Television Fund before us. Are we going to make those same mistakes that have been made before? We haven't had any satellite people here as witnesses. Have we had a full contingent of witnesses? I'd just put that to people's minds, just to think. It's as the cable people said when they were here. There were a lot of recommendations made ten years ago or so, and they weren't even at the table. So are we going to do that same thing again? Let's just think a bit about that.
Mr. Kotto.
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I understand what you are saying, Mr. Chairman, but I do want to clarify a couple of things.
Mr. Abbott was critical of the fact that this issue is being politicized. But I would remind people that we are not the ones who politicized things here in committee. However, I do not intend to impute motives; we'll have plenty of time outside these walls to elaborate on matters.
Also, I think that, as members of this Committee, we should be taking a holistic approach to all the issues we examine. In that sense, you were right to mention that we have not heard from all the industry players. I should also point out that since March 1, 2006, Telefilm Canada has been in charge of managing applications to the Canadian Television Fund, although we have not had them appear before the Committee.
That brings me back to what Ms. Fry said about public hearings. Because it is removed from politics, the CRTC may feel it has every right to hold hearings behind closed doors. However, if Telefilm were to take part, given that it is responsible for processing applications, it would be more inclined to be accountable to us, or ensure the exercise is somewhat more transparent.
I, too, am having a lot of trouble understanding why this work has to be carried out behind closed doors. We have been following this issue very closely and we know that all the details with respect to Shaw's and Videotron's actions are public. Those details have already come out. So, what is going to be resolved in private meetings? Unless the idea is to develop a new configuration or paradigm for the Canadian Television Fund.
In that regard, my concern is that we will lose control and that when this exercise is over and done with, we won't know much more than we did before. So, I share Ms. Fry's concerns in that respect.
Thank you.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To come back to what I was saying earlier, the report is well prepared in terms of format, because it has an introduction, a development, a conclusion, and the correct terms have been used. But that doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with the substance. I believe the CRTC's decision to set up a task force that will be meeting with witnesses behind closed doors upstages us as a Committee.
We mustn't forget that Mr. Shaw came before this Committee and said that when he sat down over there, he has already received assurances that his comments had been heard. He went back to making his annual payments. He considered the idea of continuing to pay because he had received assurances that things would change. Those were his own words. That means that Mr. Finckenstein had already met with him, as he told us, and that there may have been an agreement between Shaw Communications and the CRTC.
Personally, I am very embarrassed at the idea of holding meetings behind closed doors. I actually came back to that point when I questioned Mr. Finckenstein, saying that I felt uncomfortable with the idea of these private meetings. If the Committee had held hearings, they would have been public. If only for that reason, we should continue to hear from witnesses and discuss this issue.
Finally, I received Mr. Angus's recommendations this morning. I have not read them. It isn't his fault, but they had to be translated. However, I do think that we should come back to the recommendations later, so that we have an opportunity to read them and look over them properly beforehand.
I wanted to thank Mr. Fast for explaining to me so clearly the difference between a judicial and quasi-judicial body and parliamentary committees. I had no idea.
I want to say, Mr. Chair, that page 7 of the report relates to what I'm speaking to. We have listened to witnesses, we have come up with this report, and extending on that, obviously the CRTC has launched the task force. A task force by nature, generally speaking, is a public body with public hearings. The argument that I continue to make is that when you have hearings in private and then a public report, no one knows whether that report reflects what was heard at the hearings. We are trusting completely that the body would do exactly that.
I confess to being skeptical. I read clearly here about Vidéotron on page 6, and we heard what Vidéotron said when they were present here at the last meeting of this committee, that no matter what they do right now—which for me is “let's keep everybody happy”, let's tread water, let's just put the band-aid on—their ultimate goal is to create a $109 million fund over three years for Canadian production as a replacement for its contribution to the CTF. The witness from Vidéotron was very clear that this was his ultimate goal. Over three years: that buys them three years to keep everybody happy and keep this quiet.
If this report speaks to issues relating to the Canadian Television Fund, it is completely within the jurisdiction of the report to speak to not only the short-term but the long-term stability of this fund. I think both of those things and the recommendation that I made relate directly to this report and to the CRTC task force that follows and builds on it. I believe it is important for accountability reasons.
The CRTC exists because Parliament has written it into existence; therefore, it has a duty to report to Parliament and to listen to what Parliament asks it to do. I am saying that we are speaking today about accountability. Accountability is not only whether you spend money; accountability is whether in fact you are doing the job you are supposed to do in an appropriate manner. I think it is entirely within our right to suggest that the CRTC should be accountable to Canadians at the end of the day, so that its work is clearly and openly done.
Where there are problems, the CRTC will have the ability to make decisions about listening to in camera hearings, but there must be public hearings. This is important to all Canadians. This is a public issue. It has to do with the future of Canadian production and Canadian programming, and I think it requires that we do what we must do now: we set in place the structures now that will require that we have a sustainable and permanent way of continuing with Canadian programming in this country. I think it's even more important now, when we know about new media and all of the other challenges that are facing Canadian production.
So I repeat that the recommendation I made will be brought forward on Thursday to be discussed and voted on. You have to give 48 hours' notice, and I did this yesterday.
Mr. Chair, I reiterate what I said notwithstanding Mr. Fast's detailed explanation about how things work around here.
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Part of the problem we have here is the fact that we are having a discussion in a vacuum of fact. What I'm thinking of, for example, on recommendation 1 is that I believe there was testimony both by Vidéotron and by Shaw Communications. The testimony verbatim would be of value to me, and perhaps even to the opposition, to be able to read into the record, because without having come prepared with the testimony of all the people who came before us, we are all, every one of us, working in a vacuum of being able to put it on the table.
I completely accept the assertions that have been made by my friends on the other side of the table when they said Mr. Shaw said this, or Mr. Péladeau said that, or whatever the case may be. I accept that you did that in absolute good faith. You did not in any way, and certainly without any intention, torque it. But I don't know if your recitation of what they said was actually precise, and without that precision, how can we have a discussion?
The second part of the problem is that I'm really wondering why, because it appears as though we are choosing to go down this particular road to do something different with the report than that which was presented to us on Friday.... I don't know really why we're in camera at this particular point. What is the value of our being in camera? All of us are restricted to come out of this meeting and say—and in good faith I will tell you what I will say—that unfortunately the committee at this point has been unable to come to a consensus on a report and the discussions are continuing, period, full stop, end of statement. That's all that we can say.
The fact is that there are some other things that I would like to be able to say, which I am constrained from saying as a result of this being in camera. What is the value of our continuing with this meeting in camera? I understand that it is in camera and it will remain in camera. That's fine, until we decide otherwise. I'm just saying, what is the value of us continuing in camera?
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Thank you. To clarify, because I am feeling that we are starting to walk the clock down here, the issue that was brought before us was the crisis precipitated by Shaw and Vidéotron. At that time, when we stepped in, there was no discussion about our looking at the governance structure of the CTF, the role of the CTF, Telefilm, and so on. There are a lot of aspects to this file, but we focused on the crisis that was at hand.
So you will see out of these recommendations that they're strictly focused on the evidence we heard. There are no recommendations on changing the governance structure. Mr. Shaw raised questions about who sat around the board. I don't feel myself in any position to make recommendations on that, because we didn't hear enough evidence. If at the end of the day the CRTC comes forward with recommendations on changing the governance structure and the composition of the table, well, they will have perhaps a greater degree of expertise if they were choosing to study that. What we studied was the issue of the suspension of payments and what happened, and how that should not happen again. What we studied was the issue of whether Vidéotron or Shaw can change the funding arrangement so that they might want to move their funding elsewhere. We had heard clearly that this was problematic, so for the CTF, as it stands now, this is coming forward as a recommendation.
Then the final area of recommendations is the role of a closed-door process at the CRTC, which I think is highly unusual. I don't feel that it's my job to condemn the CRTC for that, but to remind—and this is in the recommendation—that the CTF remains a child of the heritage department and so it has to somehow come back for public hearings, and we want to make sure that happens.
So that's strictly the focus of the recommendations. There's no vacuum here. This is based on the exact issues that we were faced with, and so now it is incumbent upon us to come forward with this.
So I would suggest we look at the recommendations. We have all studied, we have all listened to the evidence, and we are in a position to decide whether these recommendations are what the committee wants or what the majority of the committee would like to come forward with.
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First I will read the motion that was put forward by Mr. Angus on February 1. It is moved:
That due to the ongoing uncertainty of the future of the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) as precipitated by recent announcements from Shaw Communications Inc. and Vidéotron Ltée that they will no longer live up to the terms of their licence by withholding contributions to the fund, this committee will investigate the impacts of the CTF’s potential elimination on the health of Canada's domestic television production and make recommendations to the House of Commons based on our findings.
That's the motion. Maybe sometimes I don't look into things quite as deeply as everyone else, but when I look at this, I think the main thrust is the withholding of funds by Shaw and Vidéotron. I thought it was the task of this committee at that time to make sure they were restored to their monthly payments.
When I looked at all the extra recommendations here, I thought we had a simple task and that our experts had come across with a good response. I think there was only one recommendation from this committee, to make sure the monthly payments continued, that they were put into legislation. That's what I understood our committee was looking into.
Maybe we should have put off our study on public broadcasting until the next session and continued with CTF. If we're going to come out with a whole list of suggestions...we did not have enough witnesses here. Everyone has not been looked at to do that.
I just look at the recommendation that was put forward. It seems to answer the question we were given. The more recommendations you make, the more.... You might think that it corners people or stops them from doing things, but it gives them more of an out.
It goes back to where all our laws came from. There were 10 of them. Now we have so many it doesn't matter what those 10 laws might have been way back when. You can get around the situation by looking at 10(a), (b), (c), (d), (e). It will get you around number 10.
I don't know why we have to make this so complicated, but that's fine. I have spoken as chair and we will now go forward.
Do we want to look at Mr. Angus' motions?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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This recommendation, for the most part, is commentary. The only recommendation is that the minister condemn Vidéotron and Shaw. I think we had the opportunity to question the minister. If the minister, number one, wanted to condemn them, she would have had the opportunity to do that any number of times. She actually made it very clear that she was going to speak with them with an intention to be conciliatory, so I think she's passed judgment on this. It's in the testimony. I don't think making the recommendation at this point is beneficial, because the only recommendation here is that we urge the minister to condemn Vidéotron and Shaw, and she's made it clear that she's not going to do that because she thinks it's important that we work together with them rather than condemn them.
So I think we're counterproductive in doing this. I think we're getting into the political on this recommendation.
I know, Charlie, that what you're hoping to do is to make a strong statement, and I think we can do that maybe in the commentary. We can say that witnesses had issues. Obviously they felt that it was a crisis situation. I don't think we need to put it into a recommendation. I think we can put it in the commentary. And as far as telling the minister to condemn these companies goes, I think it's irresponsible of this committee. I'll assure you of what her response will be, because she testified as to what her response would be.
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I concur with my colleague Mr. Warkentin. Typically condemnation takes place when there has been an action of moral reprehensibility. We do that in the criminal law, in our sentencing structures. It's not something we do when someone has stayed completely within the law.
The testimony is clear. From all the witnesses we've heard from, there's a general consensus that the circulars that were issued, which supposedly required monthly payments by Shaw and Vidéotron, were not legally binding. They were imposed on those parties without a legal force behind them. It's quite another issue to discuss the annual payments, because those are required by regulation. But to suggest that we're now going to condemn these two entities...because they have stayed completely within the law, they've brought an issue forward that apparently hasn't been addressed for anywhere from five to ten years, testimony showed. This problem has been percolating for a long time. You can't blame these two entities for having now been forced into the position where they have to get a little tougher to make sure that we, as a committee, and the minister understand that there was a problem.
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It's a long-standing problem.
Secondly, I also want us to focus in on what we are trying to achieve here. We've all paid lip service to the fact that we want to solve this problem. We want to solve the underlying problems of the CTF: how it's funded, how the money is allocated, what technologies might be served through this funding. This is all evidence that came out during these hearings.
We want to bring Vidéotron and Shaw to the table. We want to bring the industry to the table. Mr. Finckenstein wants to now work through a task force to bring resolution to all these issues. Not only are we, in this recommendation, as a committee, making a statement of condemnation, we're asking the minister now to go public and say she condemns these two companies for having stayed within the law.
What are we going to achieve by doing that? We're simply going to alienate the members of the industry who have raised concerns but who have actually come back to the table, have restored their monthly funding--which they weren't required to do legally--and now we're going to stick a stick in their eye and say we're condemning them publicly just to embarrass them even more, to shame them into doing this.
Do you think that's going to be conducive to moving forward and trying to resolve these issues? I think not.
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Coming from the perspective that Mr. Fast just outlined, I have managed to retrieve the precise words used by Mr. Shaw in his testimony. In part, he said, “Prior to our announcement to withhold CTF funding, few decision-makers cared to hear our views.” In the next paragraph, he said, “We are here because the issue is important to us and we want to participate in the process of finding a better way to bring more quality to Canadian television in the future. You may disagree with the methods we used to get attention, but I hope you won't disagree with our goal.”
If we were to proceed with recommendation 1, that would be to call him a liar. It basically is to say that we not only aggressively disagree with the method he undertook—albeit a totally legal method, albeit completely within the law—but that we also don't believe his goal is to make a better system.
At the conclusion of his testimony, he said, “The sincere and cooperative consultations that we have had over the last few weeks and months have reassured us that our message has been heard.” That, of course, is in reference to the meetings that he would have had both with the minister, other people in the ministry, and Mr. von Finckenstein.
The fact is that it took ten years of a constant slow boil on the part of Shaw, and to a lesser degree Vidéotron, to actually get some decision-makers and the minister to finally listen. I should also say, without condemnation of prior committees, that the heritage committee never took this on either until they actually precipitated a crisis.
The most important thing to bear in mind is that they precipitated the crisis within the law. They were fully within the law. They were completely within even the regulations. They did not break any regulations, rules, or law. For this committee to come forward and say we condemn them for doing all of this bad stuff within the law is, I think, really quite immense. I just can't imagine it.
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Again, I fail to see what the recommendation is in this commentary. For the most part, I see this as maybe a recapping of some of the testimony from certain individuals, but I really don't see a recommendation here.
We're recapping the amount of television that's produced and the number of hours. I see that we're talking about the industry, about the jobs that are created, and the dollars that are leveraged with the fund. But quite frankly, I don't see any recommendation in this entire sum of words. I don't know if I'm missing something, but I don't see any recommendation.
Do you see a recommendation, Mr. Scott?
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I have a similar concern, Mr. Chair.
It's certainly apparent, from the first vote that we took, that this has become entirely political and that no constructive work is going to take place here. What we had hoped, as a party, was that through collaborative work at this table, perhaps we could move forward and actually get something done, as we get things done at some other committees I'm involved in.
I sense that there was reticence across the table from maybe one or two members even on the last motion. Now we have a motion that has no recommendations—
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Mr. Angus, I am speaking. Thank you. I've been acknowledged by the chair.
This recommendation isn't a recommendation at all. How can we vote on something that is declared to be recommendation 2? It has no recommendation, it's simply a statement. Where you can include that is in the body of the report, presumably. Obviously this committee is forcing the government side to issue a dissenting report, which we presumably will, because we can't allow these kinds of unsubstantiated recommendations to move forward.
I'm looking at a statement in this so-called recommendation right at the end that says, “But this committee heard no reason to believe the allegations of Shaw and Vidéotron that CTF is poorly structured or operated”.
Essentially, we're calling Shaw and Vidéotron liars; they're the bad guys. Again, we're doing the same thing as we did in the first recommendation. We're trying to do a public shaming of the two parties we need at the table, who at all times stayed within the law, who actually raised an issue that was important to be raised, an issue that had been neglected for far too long, and now we're blaming them for doing that. If there's any shame, it should be on this committee for having suggested this kind of a recommendation.
Mr. Chair, on a point of order, I ask you to rule on whether this is a recommendation.
Why is it a recommendation? It says very clearly, “The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage praises the work of the Canadian Television Fund...”. It's very simple, very straightforward, because what was underlying a lot of this crisis that was precipitated were the attacks and the insults that were launched by Shaw and Vidéotron against the industry.
I think it's incumbent upon the heritage committee to say, based on the testimony we heard, that we actually learned that this fund has created a fair amount of jobs, that it has leveraged a number of dollars, as was pointed out. This is the evidence we heard. The recommendation is that we praise the work that's been done. It's very simple and straightforward.
I mean, he might call it a “so-called recommendation”. He might think it's an attack on the Conservative Party. He can think whatever he wants, but it is a recommendation, and I'd like to bring it forward.
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We have to remember what we heard as testimony in this committee. I'm just seeing all kinds of contradictions developing here. On page 6 of our report, it says, “The Canadian Broadcasting Association stressed that the CTF and indeed, all television production funding mechanisms, must keep pace with the challenging realities of the broadcasting environment. To this end, the association recommends that the CRTC be directed to hold a review of matters related to the production funding mechanisms and the first principle of such a review, according to the association, must be the creation of great Canadian programming that attracts audiences from all available platforms.”
All of a sudden our report is saying yes, there needs to be a review, and then following recommendation 2, we're saying that there was no other testimony showing that the complaints of Vidéotron and Shaw were valid. There are already contradictions developing, and I think we have to look at this in the context of what we have in the first part of the report.
I'll just point out, since I noticed it, what looks like a spelling mistake in that paragraph. It should be “a” rather than “as”. It's purely technical.
:
Mr. Chair, I'm not challenging you directly on that, but I am curious.
I understand the points that the opposition have been bringing up. I lived in opposition for 13 years, so I know what the opposition is bringing up. The point is that I thought, along the lines of what Mr. Scott was saying, it would have to be unanimous, and the reason it would have to be unanimous is that all of us, at some point, have taken part in this discussion and all of us should have the option of saying yes or no to our testimony, our comments, moving from in camera to public. I don't think going to a simple majority vote would really be appropriate.
This has come out with a few other issues with the CRTC, when they had the Shaw decision, and what steps you can take in terms of going against players who are not abiding by their licences. They don't have too many tools. At the end of the day, this recommendation will go to the CRTC, and they will decide what they are going to do with it.
Are we going to tell Shaw we're going to pull their licence when they have tens of thousands of cable viewers across Canada who are going to ask what's going on? This was to give the CRTC a suggestion for some more tools they could apply, because pulling a licence would be a substantial step to have to take. It's the same as pulling a licence of a radio station that's not playing ball. The question had been raised in the past: should the CRTC have a few more tools at its discretion, such as financial penalties and other penalties, to deal with players who are not living up to the terms of their licences? So this was a suggestion to give to the CRTC.
:
I'm thinking we're micromanaging, if that's not what the current structure is set up to do. I'm sure there are penalties, but I think we're making this decision completely in the vacuum of actual information.
I don't know what the CRTC usually does when there's non-compliance, when somebody breaks the regulations. If we could get that, it would be beneficial to every committee member so we could better reflect the types of penalties there should be.
I believe there should be penalties, there's no question. I'm just not sure if it's financial or if it should be something more regulatory.
:
Mr. Chair, this goes back to the point I made at least half an hour ago, the fact that we received these in good faith, because there was the difficulty for Mr. Angus to be able to write them over the weekend, having only received the report on Friday. I understand all of that, but the fact is, particularly on recommendation 4, we are going to be voting on something about which we're working in an absolute vacuum of information. For example, the broadcasting distribution regulations will be an extension of the Broadcasting Act. That is the legislation that would permit financial penalties. I have absolutely no notion, and I would suspect even our experts have no notion, as to whether the Broadcasting Act would allow that to happen in the first place.
Secondly, if it would be allowed to happen, I don't have any idea what tools there are for them to be able to enforce that either. We're working on this, as with all these recommendations, without having had an opportunity for any of us, individually or collectively, to take advice, to prepare, to go to source, to come forward so that we can be making intelligent decisions in this particular case.
At the very least, recommendation 4 should be tabled. I did not mean to make a tabling motion. I'm not doing that. I'm just saying we really need to set this one aside because we don't know what the facts are, whether in fact this could actually happen under the Broadcasting Act.
Quite simply on this, Mr. Chair, I would recommend that we refer this to our researchers and have them come back. We can take this up at the end of our next meeting, or whatever, just as we would with a motion. I brought it forward because I wanted to deal with the issue that I think there is a major discrepancy in the powers of the CRTC and what they actually can do. Pulling a licence is certainly something you want to do in the last regard, because it creates ultimate chaos.
So I would suggest we refer this to our researchers. They can come back and say, these are the tools they already have, or there is a vacuum here. We can then decide, out of that, whether or not to move forward with this recommendation.
:
For consideration, I don't really understand the reason for recommendation 5. If Shaw and Vidéotron have decided to recommence their monthly payments and get caught back up to date, I'm at a complete loss to understand why we would need this motion in any event.
The second part is that this interest-free bridge financing is a cost to the government that is under the purview of, obviously, the Treasury Board and the finance minister. Furthermore, any loans that are either made or guaranteed by the government are the same as having been made. As Mr. Scott will know—say, on $100 million, to pick a number—if there was a guarantee or a loan put forward, that would go against the current spending of the government. So it's not just an incidental thing to say, gee, we need some kind of bridge here. It's not an incidental thing at all.
Secondly, I don't understand why we need it when Shaw and Vidéotron have already said they're going to recommence their payments.
:
My difficulty with this is that we're prejudging the work of the task force. We have a status quo that exists. Mr. von Finckenstein has agreed to start a task force to look into the very issues this recommendation seems to be pointed at.
Both 6(c) and 6(d) are issues that Shaw and Vidéotron raised. Paragraph 6(c) is the funding of CBC up to 37%. Both Shaw and Vidéotron have taken issue with that. Whether their concerns and complaints are justified is quite another matter. That's up to the task force to address. I assume Mr. von Finckenstein will eventually come back to us and submit his task force report. At that time we'll probably decide whether we want to hold further public hearings on it.
The same holds for paragraph 6(d), that the CTF allocates funds exclusively to independent producers. As you know, Vidéotron has asked to be given permission to do it in-house. All of us may disagree with that position, but it's an issue that the task force is now going to dig into. They're going to have broad consultations on the issue and bring it back to this table, and then we can decide whether we accept it or not.
But to now say we want to maintain the existing provisions is essentially a statement that we prefer the status quo to anything the task force is going to come up with, and that's unfair. There is a status quo already. There's no suggestion we're changing it until the task force has completed its work. But this statement is clearly prejudging what Mr. von Finckenstein is purportedly charged with doing.
:
Mr. Chair, I find it surprising that the Liberal members of this committee are now supporting, first of all, a permanent commitment to this funding, basically indefinitely into the future, and secondly, our actually indexing it, something that they failed to do for some 10 years from the time the fund was established, when the government was actually contributing to it.
They never did that, and now suddenly, because they're on the other side of this table, this becomes an important issue. They would never have tied their hands as a government in the way this recommendation suggests.
You know, what's interesting, Mr. Chair, is that here we have a minister who pre-emptively already commits to two years forward, $100 million per year, to continue to fund the CTF, which is a huge step forward, I believe, providing stability in the industry. But now we're going that extra step, suggesting we want to tie her hands and commit her indefinitely, in perpetuity, to keeping this funding in place--and on top of that, to indexing it, something that the previous government was never prepared to do but is now suggesting is a great idea.
It puzzles me.
:
There are a couple of things.
Obviously there are some people who find it strange that the CRTC would hold closed-door hearings. I think it was explained by Mr. von Finckenstein that the reason they're holding closed-door meetings is that what they'll be discussing is sensitive corporate documents. They'll be discussing the financial obligations and financial conditions of these corporations.
I don't know whether any of you have worked in the business world. From my previous experience, this happened often. Whenever you were working in cooperation with some type of person who is in the middle ground, you wouldn't share your corporate documents with other corporations that you're competing with. Some of these documents will be sensitive simply for competition reasons.
Mr. von Finckenstein was very clear that this was the reason these would be held in private. I don't find it unusual that they would be held behind closed doors. I have some reservation about passing something that says we find it strange that these corporations would be able to keep their documents secure and private.
But that's fine. I think Mr. von Finckenstein was very clear that the CRTC would be releasing their report and that they would bring it back to this committee. I think there will be full transparency of the CRTC's intentions going forward.
:
I want to respond to what the honourable member just said.
I think most of us, if not all of us, have worked in private, semi-private, or public institutions. I can assure you that there are ways of keeping certain documents confidential. But this is not just a private company. This is a public institution, accountable to the people of Canada, and therefore it has a responsibility to be open and transparent. Therefore, while I'm sure it can hold public hearings in this country while at the same time dealing with the in camera problem or certain other aspects, there ought to be public hearings. This is not a private company; this is an organization responsible to the Canadian people.
:
To follow up on what has been discussed, the other day when we were with Mr. von Finckenstein I raised with him a number of times that it is highly unusual for the CRTC to announce a task force of this nature and say it's going to be behind closed doors.
The CRTC deals with broad issues of commercial competition all the time, and it is done behind closed doors and is done protecting the various competing bids. This is what they do. What is concerning me, and I find it unusual, is that there are numerous elements of this piece of the pie. It's not just two companies competing for a licence; it's restructuring a public-private partnership that has numerous players who have to speak to it.
At the end of the day, it's not in the public interest for us as parliamentarians to give over what is a creation of Parliament to the CRTC to have closed-door hearings and come back and say, this is what we've decided, but we're not going to be able to tell you how we decided, because it was all behind closed doors. It has to come back to Parliament for the final say. Whether it comes back through the heritage committee or through another process, it has to come back to us, because this is our creation.
:
I would like to add something, Mr. Chairman.
I said at the beginning of the meeting that since March 1, 2006, Telefilm has been in charge of administering applications to the Canadian Television Fund. In my opinion, it should be part of the Task Force. I wanted to suggest to Mr. Angus that Telefilm be included in his recommendation 8.
I realize that it may be difficult for industry players to speak publicly about their financial circumstances. Perhaps we could set aside that part of it, but the rest of our discussions on the mandate of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, which is to facilitate the production of high-quality Canadian programming, should be public. So, I have great reservations in that regard.
:
Well, Mr. Chair, I think it's unfortunate that we're using the words “closed-door hearings”, because in fact the task force isn't really a hearing per se; it's a group of individuals who are tasked with doing fact-finding. How they do that, especially when it's on an informal basis, is up to the task force to decide. I've been involved in a number of task forces over the years. Those have never been public hearings per se; they have been fact-finding missions.
I just want to counter something Mr. Angus said. He suggested that the task force will then “decide”. I didn't hear Mr. von Finckenstein say “decide”. In fact, the role of a task force is to report.
As you know, Mr. Angus, Mr. von Finckenstein made a commitment that the report of the task force—not the decision, the report of the task force—will be made public. This committee will receive that report. At that point in time, we, as a committee, can determine whether we perhaps want to hold our own public hearings on that task force report. The minister can decide to hold her own hearings. But to suggest now that somehow this is a conspiracy of silence to try to hide information that the task force is going to ferret out is highly irresponsible.
Let's give Mr. von Finckenstein the benefit of the doubt and assume that he's moving forward in good faith. We have no evidence to the contrary. Let's give him an opportunity to do the fact-finding, to prepare his report, which will then be presented to this committee. At that point in time we will have an opportunity to hold public hearings if we believe that's necessary. At the same time, that report is going to the minister as well. The minister may take some action, the CRTC may take some action, based on that report, but the task force itself is not a body that will make the decision.
:
We'll carry on, then. We can't vote on the interim report yet, so we'll set that aside.
When it comes to committee business, we have the order in council appointment of Mr. Konrad von Finckenstein as chair of the CRTC. The order in council appointment has been referred to the committee. We have a possibility for Thursday, March 1, 2007, to interview Mr. von Finckenstein—and before him, the officials of the department on CBC's mandate review.
Would everyone be agreeable to that?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
:
We meet on Thursday from nine o'clock in the morning until noon.
There is another note that's been put before me, on the CBC's local radio advertisement of the committee's public hearings in remote areas. Is it agreed that the committee ask CBC management to make public announcements on local radio in remote areas, for example Yellowknife, for the upcoming public hearings of the committee?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Great, thank you. It's carried.