Update on the Canadian Television Fund (CTF)

CCA Bul­letin 14/07

April 2, 2007

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.

Tell me more

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.