Speeches and Interviews
March 18, 1998
Address to the Royal Canadian Military Institute
Toronto (Ontario) — Perrin Beatty
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted to be here today, and to speak with you about my current passion, as I believe you are most familiar with a previous one, which we happen to share.
A decade ago, in another life I was privileged to serve as Canada's Minister of National Defence. It provided me with a chance to witness the commitment of the men and women in Canada's armed forces to preserving and promoting Canada's ability to be a strong and independent nation.
Today I head another organization, one that, at first glance, could not be more different from the Canadian Forces. But for all the differences, there are also enormous similarities, especially in that both of these great institutions serve on the front lines of the struggle for Canadian sovereignty. And there is another more sobering similarity: from time to time the necessity for the very existence of each of these organizations is publicly called into question.
I am a fervent believer that both are essential.
Why? Because, as someone once said, every country has an army — either its own or somebody else's. The same can be said of culture: if we neglect it or take it for granted, we can lose what makes us unique as a people. And whether we are protecting our territory or our culture, we need strong organizations like the military and the CBC.
As a result of the War of 1812 Canada was created as a bulwark against American expansion. Today, we face a different kind of threat. We risk letting our cultural sovereignty slip through our fingers through negligence or because we no longer believe that we have something unique to offer to the world.
As Minister of Defence, I explained to my American counterpart, Casper Weinberger, why the 1987 White Paper placed such heavy emphasis on the need for Canadians to shoulder more of the burden for defending themselves, instead of simply integrating into a continental strategy.
I said to him, "The US will never get better neighbours, never find anybody who is more pro-American, or who shares basic democratic values with you more than we do. But we can promote those values more effectively as an ally than as a protectorate. Our words have the greatest effect when we Canadians speak with our own voice instead of simply echoing somebody else's."
It's that way in international affairs and it's that way in the cultural field as well. Toronto is not New York and Calgary isn't simply Houston in thermal underwear. We are different. And that difference reflects our identity as a people.
A couple of years ago at the Banff Television Festival, a reporter from an American publication asked me why the fight for Canadian programs on Canada's airwaves was so important.
I pointed out that, if we took a television series and set it in the mountains of Banff, it might well look foreign to audiences in southern Ontario. Yet you don't feel that same sense when you see a lawyer drama from Los Angeles, a medical series set in Chicago or a police show from New York.
Because we view what is on our screens as a reflection of ourselves, if we do not see ourselves or our country, we risk becoming strangers in our own land — to not know our own geography or our own stories.
And what stories Canadians have to tell — magnificent, epic stories of the men and women who built in the northern half of our continent a country that is the envy of the world. Now, in the age of global communications, we are writing a new chapter in that story — the struggle to ensure that our children understand what makes their inheritance unique and worth preserving.
Over the years modern communications have been essential to stitch together communities scattered throughout the second largest country in the world. The networks we have built have shattered the distances that separate us and brought the world into our living rooms.
In 1998, we have greater access to other people's cultures than ever before in our history. They are available via satellite and cable TV, from sound recordings, from print, radio and on the Internet.
That openness has enriched us, but it also poses serious challenges for our sovereignty.
Let me be clear about one thing, I have no time for those who would try to build an electronic wall around Canada. I believe in a confident, assertive nationalism that doesn't apologize to anyone for who we are, and I believe we must remain open to the world. But that doesn't mean that we should not maintain the ability for Canadians to come into their own living rooms, or that you're only going to see yourself through somebody else's eyes.
At the same time, I don't think we should spend a great deal of time trying to define or prescribe Canadian culture. That's a very different exercise from creating the conditions where it can flourish on its own.
We define ourselves by our experiences. There's no official version of a Canadian. We must trust Canadians to draw from their own experiences the lessons they feel are relevant, but let's give them the tools they need to do it.
If we are to preserve and strengthen Canadian culture, we need a broadcaster dedicated to showing Canada to Canadians. Second, it has to have the flexibility to be able to adjust to changing technologies and changing demands in the marketplace. Finally, it has to be permissible under international trade rules. CBC is all of these things.
The challenge CBC Television faced 30 years ago, when it was one of two or three Canadian broadcasters operating in each market, was considerably different. Our job was to distribute a television signal throughout Canada, which included hauling American programming. We had a different face back then too — Red Skelton, Get Smart, the Beverly Hillbillies, and, of course, Tommy Hunter were a few of our marquee shows.
But the job of extending the signal throughout Canada has been done. The arrival of direct-to-home satellite broadcasts with 75 channels available everywhere in the country, including the high Arctic, means we are no longer needed to give Canadians access to American commercial television. In fact, every second that we spend showing American commercial programs that are already readily available throughout Canada takes us away from our reason for existing. Today, our purpose must be to ensure that, with all those voices being heard, some speak with a Canadian accent.
The people we broadcasters serve have a diversity of choices, so it's important to have a clear sense of who you are. I see CBC as a broadcaster reflecting every region of the country, striving to tell Canadian stories and set the pace in everything it does. We want to be the standard by which every other journalistic organization in the country measures itself. We want to showcase Canadian arts, celebrate the diversity of our country and explain and promote what we share in common.
We will focus on what we do best. In our case, our skill is telling Canadian stories, and telling them well. That's why we are determined to completely Canadianize our English TV schedule.
I believe the Canadianization of CBC Television is not only good public policy, but it is also good business. We are carving out a special place for ourselves in television, just as we have already done in radio. And we're betting that Canadians will make us their Canadian broadcaster of choice.
Of course it is not enough just to be Canadian. No-one will watch us out of a sense of duty, as if we were the cultural equivalent of cod liver oil. Our television must be of such a high quality that people won't want to watch anything else.
We are already well on our way.
We have Canadianized prime time with shows that are earning the admiration and loyalty of Canadian audiences. In fact, we continue to develop new Canadian shows and to win record numbers of awards for excellence both at home and internationally, at the same time as we are confronted with massive budget reductions.
We have also put to rest the notion that Canadian shows are inferior and given the choice Canadians would rather watch something else. In the qualitative rating survey we did last year, Canadians rated our homegrown programs as high or higher in quality than imported programs.
This point was demonstrated again by our coverage of this year's Winter Olympics. Showcasing the talent of Canadian athletes is part of our job of telling Canadian stories, and it makes compelling television. Our market share during the second week of the Olympics was 29% — a staggering number for English television programming in Canada.
We enjoyed that success precisely because, as a Canadian broadcaster, we know Canadians' interests in the events covered and the stories told about the athletes. As a result of the choices we made, we often had more than a million people staying up past midnight to watch Canadian television live.
All in all, millions of Canadians rearranged their lives, and sleeping habits, to join us and share in the excitement of watching Canada's best compete against the best in the world. That our coverage could provoke such commitment from our audiences, and such overwhelming enthusiasm, is high praise indeed. In fact, our coverage was the preferred choice of many critics and viewers all over North America.
It is also the reason that I and everybody else at CBC come into work in the morning — to tell Canadian stories. Everything else is secondary.
When I laid out this goal to Canadianize in our strategic plan in 1996, there were those who said the CBC could not possibly succeed. Well, we have already Canadianized prime time and we are determined to do the same thing throughout the day.
While the last three years have been focused on dealing with the $414 million in budget cuts, we have also demonstrated that Canadians want to watch Canadian television.
At the same time, we have shown that we can work with our unions to have more modern collective agreements and bring in more modern work practices. And we have set an example of operating efficiency that prompted USA Today to compare our Olympic installations and resultant coverage favourably with that of their own CBS.
We have hit our financial targets and we are producing more high-quality Canadian content than ever before in our history. We have just come back from winning 38 Gemini Awards, and we were also winners at the International Emmies and in other international competitions this year. The CBC is recognized for top quality at home and abroad.
And at the same time as we were reducing costs, we were announcing plans to open a new radio station in Victoria to extend the service to the only provincial capital without a local service. We have not lost sight of our mandate.
On April 1, three years after I first arrived, CBC will start a new phase of its existence, unfettered by a preoccupation with budget cuts yet to come. At that point, we will have reached a period of financial stability that will let us plan based on our opportunities, and not on our limitations. We will meet our mandate with vigour and creativity while treating the public funds entrusted to us with care.
You will be pleased to know that that trust continues. The recent budget provided capital funding of $15 million over 3 years to improve infrastructure for Radio Canada International. This infusion will allow us to enhance our international service to even better provide Canadian voices to Canadians, and others, at home and around the world. You will clearly understand the importance of this.
The trust we have built with Canadians in our ability to provide so many of these services must be built upon. We will continue to seek more efficient — and more collaborative — ways of producing highly relevant Canadian programming. For example, through financial partnerships with the private sector, we will be able to undertake the most massive history project in the history of Canada.
We will literally be telling the epic story of Canada in a major documentary series entitled A People's History of Canada, covering all of Canada's past from the arrival of the first inhabitants more than 12,000 years ago to the last decades of the 20th century. This series of approximately 30 hours of programming will be broadcast over two years from 1999 to 2000. It will inspire and excite people and put to rest the belief that Canadian history is dull.
The series will be produced jointly by our English and French television networks, and it will provide one of the few occasions when Canadians of all backgrounds will see a common interpretation of our history.
Helping Canadians understand how we became who we are today is one way we are working to support Canadian culture. Ensuring that Canadian artists have the opportunity to be heard on our own airwaves is another.
If you watched the Grammy Awards this year, you will realize how critical that is. You saw Canadian stars such as Sarah McLaughlin, Alanis Morrisette and Céline Dion being celebrated by the Americans as being the best in the world. They must wonder what we put in the water up here to produce these incredible talents.
So we don't have to apologize to anyone for the quality of the artists we produce in Canada. But we must ensure that Canadian artists are seen, heard and read in their own country, and we must ensure that this country is an incubator for its talent. It is only if we continue to develop Canadian artists here at home that they can find their way onto the world stage.
That is CBC's raison d'être. Our focus is Canada. Our job is to serve Canadians in all their diversity — to ensure their own experiences are reflected back to them on their televisions and radios.
Canada is a unique place. And its public broadcaster is like no other broadcaster in the world. No other public broadcaster anywhere provides programming throughout the second largest country in the world in two official languages, seven native languages, on radio, TV, and around the world on short wave, on the Internet — locally and nationally — for about seven cents a day per citizen.
And the type of service we provide is unlike any other in the way it can make you feel your nationalism. The ad men with their slogans can't do it.
I've been fortunate enough to visit almost every corner of Canada. I have seen its natural beauty, experienced its rich social diversity, and witnessed how Canadians provide a shining example of how people of different backgrounds and beliefs can build a common future. If we can help people tell their stories and celebrate both our differences and what we share in common, we will build a genuine sense of attachment to the country.
My vision for the CBC stems from my own experience. I am from a rural area, and in small communities across Canada, much of daily life takes place around the kitchen table. You do a lot of your business there, and it is also often where you celebrate your successes and comfort one another in hard times. CBC serves much the same function for our national community.
The men and women in Canada's Armed Forces recommit themselves daily to preserving Canada's independence. They do so with a courage and professionalism that inspires a deep pride among Canadians.
At the CBC, we make our contribution to Canada in a different way, but I believe that it is one that is no less important to our national future. We are proud to serve as a strong and colourful thread in our national fabric, and, now that we have successfully overcome the financial challenges that confronted us, we look forward to our future with confidence.
