Finance Committee — Bill C-38 — Budget Initiatives on Culture, the CBC and the Audiovisual Sector

Bud­get Ini­tia­tives on cul­ture, the CBC and the audio­vi­sual sector

Meet­ing 67, May 31st 2012

 Ms. Karen Wirsig (Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Pol­icy, Cana­dian Media Guild):

My name is Karen Wirsig. I’m the com­mu­ni­ca­tions coor­di­na­tor for the Cana­dian Media Guild, a union that rep­re­sents 6,000 media work­ers across the coun­try. Thank you for invit­ing me to appear before you today.

 

Bill C-38 is a mas­sive under­tak­ing that changes an astound­ing num­ber of pieces of leg­is­la­tion to enact a bud­get that itself makes fun­da­men­tal changes to what our gov­ern­ment does and how it does it.

 

It’s inap­pro­pri­ate, in our view, that this bud­get imple­men­ta­tion bill cov­ers sub­stan­tial leg­isla­tive changes in a num­ber of areas, includ­ing old age secu­rity, employ­ment insur­ance, and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. More study, oppor­tu­ni­ties for pub­lic involve­ment, and trans­parency would be pos­si­ble if such changes were dealt with under sep­a­rate bills.

 

In this con­text, the elim­i­na­tion of the Cana­dian Artists and Pro­duc­ers Pro­fes­sional Rela­tions Tri­bunal and the shift­ing of its respon­si­bil­i­ties to the Canada Indus­trial Rela­tions Board is not par­tic­u­larly momen­tous, as I think Alain pointed out. Although details are scarce on how these changes would be enacted in prac­tice, we urge the gov­ern­ment to ensure that the CIRB has both the resources and the exper­tise needed to deal effec­tively with the issues that have come before CAPPRT in the past and to address its exist­ing files at the CIRB in a timely manner.

 

I’d also like to take a few moments to talk about the impacts of other bud­get and Bill C-38 mea­sures on the lives of cul­tural work­ers in Canada.

 

Over the next three years, $191 mil­lion is slated to be cut from Cana­dian her­itage pro­grams. Included in this are dis­pro­por­tion­ate cuts to fund­ing for CBC/Radio-Canada, Tele­film, and the National Film Board. Not only will this shrink oppor­tu­ni­ties for cul­tural work­ers and dimin­ish a vibrant sec­tor of our econ­omy, but the obvi­ous corol­lary is that Cana­di­ans will have fewer oppor­tu­ni­ties to see and hear our­selves and our sto­ries on our screens and radios. For indi­vid­ual Cana­dian artists to thrive in our vast and diverse coun­try, insti­tu­tional supports—including our pub­lic broad­caster, film fund­ing agen­cies, and muse­ums and per­for­mance spaces—are essential.

 

Look­ing at the planned cuts to CBC alone, we see the dis­ap­pear­ance of regional music record­ing facil­i­ties and pro­duc­tion assis­tance. That is caus­ing great con­cern, espe­cially within the leg­endary music scene of New­found­land and Labrador. CBC music pro­duc­ers, record­ings, and live broad­casts have helped nur­ture regional and national music scenes that con­tribute both to our iden­tity and to our econ­omy. Because of the drop in fund­ing, CBC is also plan­ning to close the only TV pro­duc­tion stu­dio in Canada east of Mon­treal, the home of This Hour Has 22 Min­utes, in Hal­i­fax. This coun­try would not have a TV pro­duc­tion sec­tor with­out sig­nif­i­cant gov­ern­ment sup­ports, start­ing with the CBC.

 

We urge Par­lia­ment to exam­ine its sup­port for Canada’s cul­tural sec­tor with a view to rein­vest­ing in the insti­tu­tions that anchor artis­tic and cul­tural expres­sion in the coun­try. Later this year, the Cana­dian Radio-television and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion will hold pub­lic hear­ings to renew CBC’s broad­cast licences. Tens of thou­sands of Cana­di­ans are already par­tic­i­pat­ing in a “Reimag­ine CBC” project. Cana­di­ans know that our sto­ries, our diverse cul­tural expe­ri­ences, and our ideas rely on pub­lic insti­tu­tions such as the CBC to flourish.

 

We also know that the cul­tural sec­tor con­tributes enor­mously to our eco­nomic well-being. For exam­ple, Deloitte and Touche found last year that the $1.1 bil­lion the gov­ern­ment has been giv­ing CBC trans­lates into $3.7 bil­lion in eco­nomic activ­ity in this impor­tant sec­tor. The guild is very con­cerned that the gov­ern­ment is back­ing away from national pub­lic sup­port for culture.

 

Finally, I have a few words on how other mea­sures in this bill will affect cul­tural work­ers. Pro­posed changes to old age secu­rity will pri­mar­ily affect lower-wage Cana­di­ans who don’t have a work­place pen­sion. Artists and cul­tural work­ers in Canada are too well rep­re­sented within this group. With the changes to OAS, these lower-wage work­ers will spend more of their later years strug­gling to put food on the table. This coun­try needs a decent pen­sion plan for all types of workers—union and non-union, employ­ees and the self-employed. The planned changes to OAS move us in the wrong direction.

The eco­nomic impact of arts and culture

Ms. Peggy Nash: …

I want to say to those of you who are here from the cul­tural sec­tor, I cer­tainly am con­cerned about cuts tak­ing place in this sec­tor. In my par­tic­u­lar rid­ing, we have a large num­ber of peo­ple who work in the arts and cul­ture sec­tor. I should also say that we have had other tes­ti­mony about the impact of the cuts to libraries and archives, and in spite of the minister’s reas­sur­ances that these cuts will not mean any change to how things are done, we’ve had other tes­ti­mony that says that in fact that’s sim­ply not the case.

I’d like to get a sense from you, because I know what a huge eco­nomic impact the arts have in Canada, and it is basi­cally a sus­tain­able indus­try. It’s a non-polluting indus­try. It has a huge eco­nomic impact. Per­haps one of the wit­nesses for the arts could just com­ment briefly about the eco­nomic impact when you start cut­ting back on fund­ing for the arts.

Mr. Alain Pineau:

Very briefly, this is a sec­tor that is quite key to the cre­ative econ­omy, and there are all sorts of stud­ies that show that artist cre­ation and cre­ation in gen­eral are linked. It’s a ques­tion of train­ing, of people—the artist and cul­tural work­ers are an impor­tant part of the econ­omy. In 2008 the Con­fer­ence Board of Canada did a study that showed that directly and indi­rectly it rep­re­sented over $84 bil­lion, so it’s an impor­tant part of the econ­omy. It’s impor­tant to invest in that sec­tor in particular.

The other aspect, also because we’re talk­ing here about job growth and long-term pros­per­ity, is that one of the upsides of the down­sides of being an artist is that it doesn’t cost much to cre­ate an artist job and to have a cumu­la­tive effect, a mul­ti­plier effect, because artists are not paid huge sums of money.

I remem­ber the statistic—but I can’t say exactly where the num­ber came from—and it cost about $30,000 to $35,000 to cre­ate a job in the cul­tural sec­tor. It costs some­thing like $400,000 in heavy-industry and about $100,000 in middle-industry types of jobs.

If the strat­egy is to cre­ate as many jobs as pos­si­ble, there shouldn’t be cuts in the cul­tural sec­tor. There should be investment.

Dean Del Mas­tro On the CBC

Mr. Dean Del Mas­tro:

Thank you, Mr. Chair­man. I’ve really appre­ci­ated the oppor­tu­nity to take part.

I did a lit­tle bit of art­work that I’d like to hold up for the committee.

Can you see that num­ber, Ms. Wirsig? I’m not an artist, but it was a bit of artwork.

Ms. Karen Wirsig:

Yes.

Mr. Dean Del Mas­tro:

Okay. I wrote $100 mil­lion down on the page for col­leagues. That’s about dou­ble, roughly, the record lot­tery that’s ever been held in this country.

Is that a big number?

Ms. Karen Wirsig:

Sure.

Mr. Dean Del Mas­tro:

It’s a big num­ber. Do we agree?

We give that to the CBC every month. It’s a lot of money.

For the most part, Cana­di­ans hear num­bers like 1.1, 5.2, 3.6, what­ever the num­ber is, and then the fact of whether it’s mil­lion or bil­lion gets thrown out and we lose the idea of the sig­nif­i­cance of a number.

The CBC gets in excess of a bil­lion dol­lars. If you started counting—one, two, three, four—it would take you 32 years to reach the num­ber one bil­lion. It’s a lot of money. And there’s a lot of respon­si­bil­ity that comes along with spend­ing that much money.

One thing that really sur­prises me.… We’ve talked about how gov­ern­ment resources are finite—they’re not infinite—and that deci­sions have to be made. The gov­ern­ment has made a num­ber of deci­sions that I think are dif­fi­cult but nec­es­sary, includ­ing the Depart­ment of National Defence. I under­stand you com­pared the CBC bud­get to fighter jets in your com­ments. Obvi­ously we’ll spend sig­nif­i­cantly more on the CBC than we will on fighter jets over the next 30 years.

We’re pro­vid­ing this level of sup­port, frankly, in a back­drop where I think you’d have to acknowl­edge that over-the-top and online media.… That’s where young peo­ple are. I’m just curi­ous. If we can acknowl­edge that’s a lot of money, then why isn’t the gov­ern­ment being rec­og­nized, despite the fact that if it is faced with very dif­fi­cult chal­lenges, it’s still going to pro­vide in excess of $100 mil­lion a month to the CBC?

Mr. Dean Del Mas­tro:

I was in Her­itage. The CBC gets direct fund­ing in excess of $1 bil­lion. They get an addi­tional roughly $200 mil­lion from the Cana­dian Media Fund. They have sched­ule 1 fees that they col­lect from CBC News­world from each and every Canadian—that’s about 75¢ per Canadian—on their cable bill per month.

These are direct pub­lic sub­si­dies that are com­ing into the CBC. And then of course you have gov­ern­ment adver­tis­ing, which would again go on top of that.

I don’t want to dwell on this too much, but I think it’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that despite the dif­fi­cult choices the gov­ern­ment has made, we were the only coun­try in the G-8, the only one, to increase fund­ing for arts and cul­ture dur­ing the recession—the only one. We made that dif­fi­cult choice because we knew that if there was a sec­tor that would be tar­geted and would hurt more than oth­ers, it was prob­a­bly enter­tain­ment. When peo­ple are chal­lenged, it’s one of the areas they draw back.

So the gov­ern­ment made that choice, and now the gov­ern­ment has to move for­ward and bal­ance its books. By pro­vid­ing the CBC the money it needs for its 2015 plan, I think we’ve demon­strated sup­port for them—despite, frankly, a num­ber of Cana­di­ans out there who look at it and say, “Are you really sure this is money well spent?” I rec­og­nize that there are a lot of Cana­di­ans on the other side of that debate as well, but we’ve indi­cated our support.