OTTAWA – Official Languages commissioner Graham Fraser called Tuesday on the government to compel the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to spruce up its regional programming to help build cultural connections among Francophone minorities outside Quebec and English minorities inside the province.
Appearing before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage which is in the midst of an investigation of the role of the CBC in the 21st century, Fraser said one of the shortcomings of the public broadcaster is that it has become too centralized in Toronto and Montreal.
He noted that Francophone communities outside of Quebec need to have access to regional French-language radio and TV programming and that English minorities need English-language programming in their communities.
“Canadians need to talk to one another more,” stated Fraser, who criticized the CBC/Radio-Canada for not producing more cross-linguistic programming. An example of what he is looking for is the CBC’s bilingual production of Canada: A People’s History.
Fraser said there needed to be more exchanges between producers and other staff at CBC and Radio-Canada. Cross-linguistic programming is occurring to an extent at Radio 2, where the French and English arms of the public broadcaster collaborate on live music recording, he added.
But he lamented the “absence of a common space for bilingual programming and collaboration” at the public broadcaster.
Cross-linguistic programming will give English speakers access to the lives of French-speaking Canadians and vice versa, he said.
Fraser also stated “universality of access” to CBC/Radio-Canada was fundamental and must be retained.
In documents filed last year, CBC management told the CRTC it didn’t have the money to upgrade all of its towers to digital-capable. Therefore, it proposed a hybrid distribution system, which would involve using over-the-air infrastructure in major markets but doing away with other transmitters and forcing Canadians in less populated areas to subscribe to either cable or satellite TV to receive its signals.
The Official Languages commissioner said Canadians shouldn’t have to subscribe to cable or satellite TV to get CBC/Radio-Canada, and complained that many of the public broadcaster’s local channels are not carried by distributors. He urged the committee to take steps to require DTH operators to carry all the public broadcaster’s local TV stations.
Fraser also said he had fired a letter off to Rogers Cable to complain about it moving the French-language TV channels it is required to carry in a cluster to the upper reaches of the TV dial. Referring to a “kind of ghettoization” of the French-language channels, he noted that viewers now don’t cruise past these channels – which are located on channel 100 and above – because they don’t go there.
Fraser also referred to the “chronic underfunding” of the CBC/Radio-Canada, which has made it difficult for the broadcaster to strive for excellence and fulfill its mandate.
He called on the federal government to return public funding of the CBC/Radio-Canada to at a minimum the levels of 1996, and to increase it based on the spending of other countries on their public broadcasters. He said Switzerland spends 2.5 times more per person on its public broadcaster than Canada does, and that Britain spends about $122 per citizen on the BBC versus $33 per person in Canada.
Fraser recommended the government provide the CBC/Radio-Canada with increased stable multi-year funding, which would allow the public broadcaster to “adapt in this new century.”
One of the paradoxes of the new broadcast era, said Fraser, is the huge opportunities with new media and other distribution platforms are coupled with the challenges of increased audience fragmentation.
But he concluded, “I am convinced the CBC/Radio-Canada will have a full place and role in an increasingly fragmented universe.”
Fraser appeared before the committee on Tuesday after CRTC representatives Scott Hutton, acting associate executive director of broadcasting; Doug Wilson, director of strategic research and economic analysis; and Peter Foster, manager of conventional television services for English markets.
In his opening remarks, Hutton noted the commission has the chance to “draw attention to the aspects of the CBC’s proposals that we feel hold the most merit” during the public broadcaster’s licence renewal hearings.
But Hutton and the CRTC gang had no concrete recommendations for the CBC. Their appearance before the committee covered in a general manner a wide range of topics, ranging from unregulated platforms and new technologies to whether the CBC/Radio-Canada has begun to look too much like a private network. Hutton declined to comment on the latter matter.
He also turned aside questions on whether he thought the CBC should be allowed to refrain from upgrading all of its current over-the-air towers to digital and thus require some rural residents to subscribe to cable or DTH to get its signal. He said he could not answer because the matter was currently being deliberated by the CRTC.
