CCA Bulletin 14/07

Ottawa, Monday, April 2, 2007

Update on the Canadian Television Fund (CTF)

Just the facts…

Whereas lengthy and open public processes have characterized the CRTC’s review of its commercial radio and over-the-air television policies, the examination of the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) crisis has left the public arena provided by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Heritage and moved behind closed doors, with the promise of maybe a public hearing at the end of the process.

On February 20, 2007 the CRTC announced the creation of an internal Task Force, “to develop a consensus to resolve the concerns raised by stakeholders or, failing that, to set out possible options to resolve any remaining issues. The Task Force will make its report public. If it is required or deemed advisable based on this report (emphasis added), the Commission will then issue a public notice and hold a hearing. The work of the Task Force requires intense interaction and the utmost openness between all stakeholders, and may necessitate the sharing of confidential information. The work must therefore be conducted in confidence.”

The Task Force, whose report is due in June, has a rather narrow mandate:

To investigate issues related to the funding of Canadian programming and the governance of the CTF. Specific issues will include:

The most effective use of the required contributions from Broadcast Distribution Undertakings

The most appropriate size and structure of the CTF Board

The most appropriate mechanisms to deal with real or perceived conflicts of interest at the CTF

For the past several weeks, behind closed doors, taking no notes, the Task Force has been meeting one after the other with all the players and with a number of interested parties in order to try and reach a solution to the crisis it could deliver to a no doubt grateful Heritage Minister. On Tuesday March 27, it was the CCA’s turn to meet with the Task Force. We took the opportunity to stake out the broad preoccupations the CRTC should bear in mind in its attempt to mediate a political compromise between the rebellious cable operators and the other partners within the CTF.

The CCA has restated the concerns about the whole process from the beginning of the crisis and reiterated the support for the CTF it had expressed previously in a brief presented to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. The CCA has urged the CRTC to proceed immediately to correct the legal loophole that makes hostage taking of the whole sector by cable operators. We also supported the suggestion of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) to hold a public hearing on the financing of audiovisual productions.

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The Canadian Television Fund (CTF) crisis clearly raises, in a very forceful way, the fundamental question of who actually makes decisions regarding the cultural policies and strategies in Canada. As Mr. Douglas Barrett, the Chair of the CTF, said at the opening session of the Heritage Committee hearings:

…the real question here today is this: Who is to be primarily responsible for determining and designing the appropriate structures for supporting television production in Canada with public resources. Is it to be Parliament, its Ministers and officials plus the mandated regulator? Or, is it to be private stakeholder groups with the financial levers to drive the debate?

It is remarkable that without any formal complaint to the regulator by either Shaw or Vidéotron, without any type of public process, without any independent analysis other than that provided by the Parliamentary Committee hearing, the CRTC’s February 20 Press Release simply echoed the cable companies’ argument, agreeing that there are “serious concerns” about the CTF”, that these concerns cannot be addressed within the existing structure of the CTF and that the CTF’s Board of Directors has failed to address the concerns.

The CCA believes that the CTF crisis should be looked at within a full-picture examination of the Canadian Broadcasting “ecological system” and of how efficient it is at ensuring that the national cultural objectives set out in the Broadcasting Act (1991) are met, something which the CRTC appointed Task Force is not about to do.

As several of the witnesses appearing in front of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage have pointed out, the CTF is critical to Canadian television programming and therefore, to Canadian cultural policy. Every dollar allocated by the CTF triggers several more dollars in independent program production telling Canadian stories, creating programs for our children or expounding our views on the world we live in.

The Fund is part of an overall strategy to ensure the vitality of an independent creative sector as part of the overall broadcasting system, a key participant in achieving the cultural objectives included in the Act. Canadians benefit in the form of new and often award-winning programs in genres difficult to finance in this country, as well as economically through employment and income opportunities in this important sector.

In response to the accusations levied by the media magnates, the Heritage Committee was presented with ample evidence that the CTF is effective, efficient and accountable and that its track record shows that it has all the internal mechanisms and dynamics to adapt to change without any of the stakeholders having to resort to what is tantamount to civil disobedience.

Unfortunately, Shaw and Québécor’s unsubstantiated allegations regarding the CTF’s inefficiency and lack of accountability have managed once more to deflect attention from the true problems in the Canadian broadcasting system: an inadequate funding structure and a system of regulations based on incentives that seem better at ensuring financial profits than at attaining the national cultural objectives of which the CRTC is be the custodian.

Facts show that the CRTC’s purposeful creation of highly-concentrated broadcasting and distribution ownership and its unaccountably blind faith in deregulation have not generated the programming promised so many times to Canadians over the past 30 years, at least in English Canada. The current state of regulation and, more specifically, the regulator’s repeated disinclination to enforce it, have led to a situation where the whole production sector can be taken hostage by powerful media conglomerates quite legitimately concerned only with their bottom line. These conglomerates seek less regulation, conveniently forgetting that without regulation and financial support, they themselves would not exist.