By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL — The first paragraph of the CRTC’s decision to renew CBC/Radio-Canada’s TV and radio licenses was no surprise. The Commission is never going to deny a license to the national public broadcaster.
But many of the changes to its conditions of licence — and in particular the conditions it chose not to impose any more — are a major step toward implementing the new philosophies of the Ian Scott-led Commission. And that step does not come without some resistance — including from within the Commission.
Four paragraphs into the introduction of its mammoth, 68,000-word renewal decision issued June 22, the CRTC references Harnessing Change, a 2018 report it created at the request of the federal government that looks into how programming is distributed in Canada and how it will change in the future. The government requested the report as it prepared its reform of the Broadcasting Act, which coincidentally passed in the House of Commons the day before the CBC licence renewal decision was published.
In the report, the CRTC explicitly stated Harnessing Change does not “attempt to prescribe policy,” but the Commission seems to use the conclusions it reached in that report as the basis for its decision to remove key conditions of licence from the CBC, including TV quotas for the exhibition of Canadian content, children’s programming, local programming and independently produced programming.
In some cases, it gave the Corporation more regulatory flexibility than the CBC even asked for – all because the Commission has a “relative level of confidence” in it.
Not to say the CRTC is letting go of the reins entirely. The CBC still has 84 conditions of licence. But 32 of them are about things it has to report to the Commission, consultations it has to hold with stakeholders, public opinion polling it has to do and the functioning of its ombudsmen. There are also 16 “expectations” and two “encouragements” for its licensed services, plus a series of new reporting rules and guidelines for its unlicensed digital media activities.
Formal requirements, the CRTC says, no longer need to be imposed “where the CBC has proven that even without conditions of licence, it would continue to meet its mandate under the Broadcasting Act and the outcomes set out for it by the Commission.” If the CBC is doing more than the bare minimum required by its conditions of licence, then the conditions are unnecessary, the CRTC’s logic goes.
The increased reporting requirements will help the Commission qualify and quantify whether the CBC is meeting its objectives, though it is unclear what it would do to correct any problems before the licence comes up for renewal again in five years. (And five years is optimistic — the last CBC licence renewal was supposed to be for five years, but various delays extended that term to nine years, while its licence renewal before that was for seven years but was extended to 13.)
The decision to replace hard conditions with expectations and reporting requirements split the Commission: Chair Ian Scott, Quebec Commissioner Alicia Barin and B.C./Yukon Commissioner Claire Anderson signed on to the majority decision, while Vice-Chair Caroline J. Simard and Ontario Commissioner Monique Lafontaine wrote strongly worded dissenting opinions.
“The list of conditions of licence that are abandoned in the majority decision is long and includes the pivotal protections responsible for the recognized success of the Canadian broadcasting system and of the national public broadcaster,” Simard wrote in her dissent, which was endorsed by Lafontaine.
“I consider that the general laissez-faire approach proposed in the majority decision in regard to traditional and digital platforms carries real and unnecessary risks of undermining the mandate of the CBC and the Canadian broadcasting policy as set out in the Broadcasting Act. I cannot take this risk for the public broadcasting service financed through public funds in the billions of dollars.”
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) also condemned the majority decision, calling it “a five-year golden ticket to do whatever CBC wants, not what the Canadian viewing public needs or desires.”
Specifically, here are what programming-related conditions are changing:
Canadian content on TV
Currently, both CBC and Radio-Canada television stations must ensure 75% of the broadcast day and 80% of prime time (7 to 11 p.m.) is Canadian programming. That requirement has been eliminated, with the CRTC finding “exhibition requirements are not the most appropriate regulatory tool when adopting a multiplatform approach.” (The CBC did not ask for this, preferring to keep an exhibition requirement.) The CRTC said the chance of the CBC abusing this flexibility is low given its mandate.
Instead, the Commission is doing with CBC and Radio-Canada what it did with the private TV networks: imposing quotas on spending dollars rather than broadcast hours, and letting the broadcaster choose how best to use that Canadian content spending. The Corporation must now use 85% of its programming budget for each of CBC and Radio-Canada on Canadian programs.
Shifting resources online
As a way to offer the CBC more flexibility to spend some of its budget on digital-only programming, the CRTC is allowing the Corporation to group its linear TV services and streaming (CBC Gem and ICI Tou.tv) in calculating that 85% quota. All-news services CBC News Network and RDI are excluded from this calculation.
This change has some worried that it gives the Corporation carte blanche to divert money into areas the CRTC does not (yet) regulate directly.
“In my view, the majority decision has approved a licensing framework for CBC/Radio-Canada that is fundamentally different from the Commission’s licensing approach for television broadcasting, without first conducting a detailed policy review to consider what, if any, measures would be appropriate for the digital age,” Lafontaine wrote in her dissent, which was also endorsed by Simard.
“We are therefore left with a majority-approved programming framework that allows hundreds of millions of dollars to leave the Corporation’s regulated platforms each year and flow to its unregulated online audiovisual platforms.”
The Commission is also allowing the CBC to spend some of its “programs of national interest” (PNI) budget — now a percentage of expenses rather than number of hours a week — on programming that airs on digital platforms. PNI includes long-form documentary, scripted dramas and comedies, and some specific awards shows.
Children’s programming
Under the previous licence, the CBC had to broadcast 15 hours per week of Canadian children’s programming in each language, with minimum requirements for original programming in each language (100 hours a year in French, 52 hours in English). At least 75% of this programming had to be from independent production companies.
After finding the CBC exceeded its conditions of licence in French but “only met its requirements” in English, the CRTC eliminated the French quotas entirely and kept only the minimum requirement of 52 hours a year of original first-run programming for children in English.
“In the Commission’s view, the CBC will make the necessary efforts to reach Canadian youth with quality content on the platforms they prefer, with the ultimate goal of maintaining a relationship with them during their teenage years,” it said in justifying the loosening of restrictions.
In other words, it is trusting the CBC to be sufficiently motivated to create youth programming.
Local programming
The CBC requested a slight reduction in the number of hours a week it had to devote to local programming on television, with more flexibility to broadcast local programming online. The proposal was opposed by several interest groups who said local programming is vital.
The Commission acknowledged the important role of local programming, and in particular local news, with many of the thousands of individual interventions supporting the CBC mentioning it. It therefore kept requirements in place for TV stations in small and mid-size markets. But for “metropolitan” markets — Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal in English, and Montreal in French — it removed the quota entirely.
“The Commission is confident that the CBC will continue to broadcast local programming that is predominantly news in both the English- and French-language metropolitan markets,” the decision reads, and so imposing a requirement “is not necessary for the CBC to achieve the above-noted outcome in this regard.”
This decision, based on the CBC apparently exceeding its requirements for local programming in metropolitan markets, drew a quick rebuke from the Canadian Media Guild (CMG), which represents CBC and Radio-Canada employees in English markets. Calling it “unreasonable”, “shameful” and “a stark reversal of decades of support for mandated hours of news production”, the CMG said it was worried the broadcaster would cut local news in large markets as a result.
“Under the guise of modernisation, the CRTC has chosen to give CBC a blank cheque to kill original production, even after a difficult two years when Canadians saw the importance of trusted news,” CMG’s CBC branch president Kim Trynacity said in the statement.
The Commission’s contention that the CBC “well exceeded its conditions of licence” related to local programming in these markets is curious and seems to be based on a quantitative rather than qualitative analysis of what airs on these stations.
CBC Television does not have local morning shows or noon newscasts. It meets its local programming quota of 14 hours per week in large markets in part by broadcasting video of local radio morning shows on TV (a trick also used by private TV stations). In terms of original local programming, there is the evening newscast of 30 or 60 minutes depending on the market, and a late-night half-hour newscast. Neither of those airs seven days a week.
But the CRTC has decided it is willing to trust the CBC on this. And the CBC says it will not abuse that trust.
“As a public broadcaster we remain committed to serving local communities,” corporate spokesperson Leon Mar said in a statement to Cartt.ca. “In fact CBC News recently announced that it is increasing its local news presence by creating 14 new journalism positions across the country, focused on deepening community connections.”
Also removed is a special requirement for English-language metropolitan market stations to have an hour a week of “non-news local programming”. After this requirement was introduced in 2013, CBC launched local weekly programs called “Our Montreal”, “Our Toronto”, “Our Edmonton”, etc. Though they have some original content, their limited resources mean these programs consist largely of news stories recycled from the local newscasts or national segments with little local relevance.
But rather than watch these programs to evaluate them, the Commission simply conducted a “review of the CBC’s program logs” and judged it had exceeded the requirement, so it was no longer necessary.
There was also the CBC’s controversial decision at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 to suspend local English-language newscasts nationwide. In response, the CRTC imposed an expectation, but not a requirement, for the CBC to continue local news in times of crisis.
Despite all of these issues, the CRTC is willing to trust the public broadcaster on news, at least in large markets – partly because it is in the CBC’s interest to maintain news operations in Canada’s largest cities, and partly because Canadians living there have competing private options for local newscasts.
Programming diversity
The first 19 conditions of licence imposed on the CBC relate to diversity, ensuring minimum spending quotas in television on productions from English-language producers in Quebec, French-language producers outside Quebec, Indigenous producers, racialized producers, those who self-identify as LGBTQ2 and those with disabilities. Indigenous and minority-language productions have their own quotas, and there is a combined quota for all of the above groups.
The CRTC has also added a separate quota for French-language productions in Quebec outside greater Montreal, which was previously lumped in with francophone productions outside Quebec. And a new Indigenous music quota has been imposed on radio.
While the Commission trusts the CBC on local and children’s programming, “the issue of diversity and the relevance of the CBC’s programming has taken on more pressing importance and … the public broadcaster has a key role to play in ensuring that Canada’s broadcasting system meets the programming needs of Indigenous Peoples and of Canadians in all their diversity,” the decision reads.
Other changes
Removed conditions of licence worth noting include a requirement to broadcast a Canadian feature film each month, and one that CBC Music and ICI Musique broadcast “a vast selection of music styles and genres.” (They still have CanCon quotas, including 50% of popular songs.)
The Commission also agreed to increase the mandatory wholesale fees for CBC News Network ($0.20 per subscriber per month in French-language markets, a $0.05 increase) and RDI ($0.13 in English-language markets, up $0.03). Because they are licensed as national news services, they remain subject to the standard conditions of licence for those services.
PIAC said it would “study all avenues of appeal of the decision.” That could include appealing to the federal government to order the CRTC to reconsider it.
Failing that, the CBC will get all sorts of freedoms it did not have before, and while the CRTC will be well informed of everything going on, it will not have the power to do anything about it until the licences come up for renewal again in 2027.
CRTC conditions of licence are not the only way to keep the CBC accountable to Canadians. Its mandate is set by law, and in theory the federal government could step in if the broadcaster went too far out of line. The lack of profit motive also gives the CBC little incentive to act against Canadians’ interests. But by replacing legal conditions with reporting requirements, the Commission seems to be banking on the threat of some form of public shaming being the strongest motivator to fulfill their promises.
In Harnessing Change, the CRTC talked about replacing licence conditions with “comprehensive and binding service agreements.” It is possible with the passing of Bill C-11, and the regulatory structure changes that will follow, that suggestion will be implemented. But for the CBC, at least until 2027, the CRTC has imposed neither licence conditions nor binding agreements on some very important aspects of the Corportaion’s programming, and it is taking a leap of faith, trusting that it will not regret the freedom it has offered.
The CBC’s new conditions of licence take effect Sept. 1, 2022. Its new reporting requirements will not start until Sept. 1, 2023.
