Speeches and Interviews

April 3, 1998

Address to the Ticker Club

Guylaine Saucier

Thank you very much for that generous introduction. It's a pleasure to be in the heart of Toronto's business community. Now that I am on my third day of my second term as Chair of the CBC, I think that I am now ready, and qualified, to take on the challenge of speaking to such an illustrious group. I want to talk to you today about the business, the values and the challenges of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The Corporation itself is a mirror of Canadian society and it is worth looking at just for that reason.

Anyone operating in business today is constantly fighting Titans. Battling challenges of mythic proportions. Up close each corporation, each sector has its own peculiar set of problems. Take a step back, and the CBC's challenges aren't much different from those of another Board I sit on: the Bank of Montreal. And they may well be much the same as those you meet every day.

In strictly business terms, CBC is:

• a billion-dollar Corporation,
• with 10 thousand mostly unionized employees,
• regulated by an arm's-length agency,
• operating in fixed and mobile facilities,
• across the country and abroad.

CBC's operations are on the cutting edge of new information technology. We create our own programs, we procure product from independent suppliers and use both conventional and non-traditional means to distribute our products and services to the public.

Of course, CBC differs from banks and the private sector in distinctive ways. CBC is a Crown Corporation with a public mandate. To meet that mandate CBC receives a significant appropriation from the federal government. In addition, we have commercial objectives. We compete for advertising dollars and programming sales revenue in a free marketplace. While our foreign and domestic competitors have fewer social obligations, CBC measures its success on equal terms. The CBC wins audiences, world-wide recognition, and awards for the programs and services it provides.

When you turn on your radio to CBC Radio One 740 AM or CBC Radio Two 94.1FM here in Toronto, or to channel six CBLT-TV or to Newsworld, you probably do so because you want to listen or watch the news, follow a drama like Black Harbour or catch up on some commercial information on Business Report. I doubt you think much about the medium, the broadcaster or the business bringing the programming to your car, home or office.We may not be listed on the TSE and, so far, we have not been subject to hostile takeovers, but we are touched by the same global winds of change as other businesses at play in Canada.

Challenges you are familiar with, like:

• technological change,
• increased competition,
• globalization,
• regulatory issues, and
• human factors.

Like businesses in the private sector, CBC has undergone considerable structural changes in a very short period of time, brought about by unprecedented budget cuts and a fast-evolving technological and regulatory environment. Today, the CBC is a strong, responsible, responsive and publicly-accountable organization. Having turned the same corner as the economy, our horizon is looking bright.

CBC is a microcosm of Canada. It is mandated to reflect the country to itself. Its shares are not traded on any exchange; they are privately held by each and every Canadian citizen.

As a national institution, CBC has a broad and comprehensive role within Canada's evolving society and broadcasting system. While maintaining the essence driving its creation in 1936, the CBC's mandate has been refined and expanded over the decades.

In changing times and financial circumstances, the CBC has had to adapt and continue to serve the citizens of Canada in all parts of the country — even Toronto. It does so in English and in French, on radio and television, in several Aboriginal languages on the Northern Service, and to global citizens and Canadians living abroad through Radio Canada International and Newsworld International.

In transforming CBC to a more transparent and responsive institution, in tune with both the times and our mandate, we have used as our guide five principles.

The first is that the CBC Board and the organization itself must be fully accountable to its shareholders: the citizens of Canada. We must be responsive in terms of maintaining and improving levels of service, for the quality and originality of our programs and for nurturing Canadian talent and culture.

The second principle is that CBC must be predominantly and identifiably Canadian to survive and prosper. This recognizes CBC's unique responsibilities in the Canadian broadcasting system while differentiating it from the private sector.

Thirdly, CBC has recognized that it has no guaranteed audience. It must cultivate and earn audience loyalty through the effectiveness of the CBC "brand."

Decades of exposure have shaped CBC's reputation for creativity, insight and daring with radio and TV programming like As It Happens, The National, Air Farce, the REZ, the fifth estate and This Hour has 22 Minutes.

While newer companies have to work to establish their brand, CBC's brand is a badge of honour: a hallmark of quality and originality. It is a timeless symbol of Canadian excellence, intelligence and a beacon for new generations of Canadian talent.

That brings me to our fourth guiding principle. We need to foster the talent of people who make CBC happen. They are CBC's heart and soul. Without their imagination, technical skills and faith, we would shut down. Our talent doesn't just reside with the creative staff. It is largely due to
management's efforts that we are now beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Our fifth and final strategy is a commitment to evolution. Few Canadians have been isolated from the tremendous changes in society over the past decade or so. Electronic developments like the fax machine, the VCR, voice mail, email, the Internet, automatic teller machines and electronic commerce, have touched even the most remote communities.

In the corporate world, the rules have changed all round. In the media, we are intimately aware of these sea changes. We document them and, — as part of the electronic information sector — we operate in the eye of the storm. Against that turbulence we've had to foster our human resources and serve our social responsibilities and our shareholders.

Consider this. We no longer have the luxury of an exclusive product. Where we were once a regulated monopoly, we are now an industry with competition from all sides. Huge barriers to entry have been leveled like the Berlin Wall by technological and regulatory change.

The CBC — as the Broadcast Board of Governors — used to regulate its own competition. Of course, there were about as many players then as it takes for a hand of bridge. Since 1984, 50 Canadian specialty and pay channels alone have been licensed and dozens more are waiting for authorization. The 500-channel universe is only a digital compressor away.

Today's consumer has increasingly high expectations, less loyalty to one brand and an active interest in making his or her own choices.

Technological change is blurring the lines between competitors outside the studio and inside, redrawing the lines of responsibility between departments.

The opportunities are endless. At the same time, the costs of implementation can seem prohibitive. And that brings me to the political reality. Governments just aren't going to bail anyone out. They are demanding fiscal responsibility from the private and public sectors as never before.

This scenario of relentless change could be a documentary story-board on the evolution of the CBC and broadcasting or — with a few script changes — for your sector as well, I'm sure.

To meet those challenges, technological, competitive, regulatory and political, the CBC has undergone enormous upheaval.

To ensure ourselves of informed and empowered leadership, the CBC Board examined itself and how it governs.

While there is room for improvement, women account for one quarter of the seats on the CBC Board. That having been said, the composition of the Board has recently been criticized for its lack of appointments from minority groups or from outside Central Canada. In addition, I would encourage Ottawa to look for the relevant Board or corporate experience you might expect at the helm of a one-billion-dollar Corporation when it recommends appointees.

Composition is only a starting point. For three years running, the CBC Board has made significant improvements in its governance processes. We are active in defining the Corporation's strategic direction and corporate plan. We have begun the process to identify key
risks ahead and developed methods of assessing top management's performance against established duties and objectives.

This exercise was undertaken in the midst of downsizing. Our public appropriations have been reduced by 30% over the past three years alone. Looking at it another way, government funding comes down to little over seven cents per Canadian per day.

We are a smaller Corporation today. We have eliminated over 3,000 positions. In addition, we have, in cooperation with our unions, reduced the number of bargaining units from close to 30 to eight.

We have sold our Ottawa headquarters building and reduced its staff by half. We have outsourced non-core operations such as building maintenance. And where we could, we introduced new technologies to maintain quality while still cutting costs. Despite this, our commitment to provide accessible programming remains firm.

As a measure of Ottawa's confidence in our approach, this week we launched the first fiscal of five with no budget cuts on the horizon.

So all those changes make us a perfect takeover target, right? Tear up the five-year commitment, Madame Minister, and privatize the CBC. Is that what you're thinking?

Somehow I just don't see it. There is a real role — now more than ever — for public broadcasters around the world and for the CBC here at home. A role that no private broadcaster would volunteer for, I assure you.

Only a public institution, with public support, can ensure all Canadians access to our common values, our shared dreams. Only a national public broadcaster can provide the thread to link Canadians from coast to coast. While many private broadcasters air some excellent programs, it
is incidental to their central role: to make profits for their owners and shareholders.

Our raison d'être is quite different. The CBC's role is to articulate Canada's distinct cultural identity and strengthen Canadians' sense of nationhood.

Even with the growing economies of scale brought on by consolidation in the now-mature broadcasting industry, no private player has sought to meet the needs of Canadians living in remote areas, and francophones outside of la Belle Province. What is the private sector's interest in such small market shares over such a wide and expensive expanse? Such business plans could not sustain normal private sector scrutiny.

CBC reaches more Canadians than any other broadcaster. Our programming is virtually 100% Canadian.

We seek out developing talent. We introduce Canadians to their own composers, symphonies, ballets and rock groups. We see it as our calling to discover emerging on-air talent, to hire young journalists, to provide them with opportunities and audiences and to keep them in Canada.

We take risks that others won't: in information and entertainment programming; in new media and new services. We brave the ire of the Senate and the television critics alike. Because if we won't, who will?

The results? Success that can be measured through attention, audiences, awards, advertisers and international program sales.

More awards at this year's Geminis than any other network, I'll have you know. We've increased the amount of Canadian content on our television networks, and we're maintaining our audiences.

For authoritative coverage of international and national events, our role is unparalleled. During the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, CBC's average audiences ranged from 850,000 daytime viewers to nearly 1.8 million prime time viewers or almost a third of the people watching. On federal election day last year, our French TV coverage easily outdrew the competition and English TV's ratings peaked at 2.8 million: one million more than any other broadcaster!

Competitive bragging aside, the CBC has also sought out cooperative arrangements with the private sector. Not only are we complementary in our differences, but we have partnerships with private broadcasters which put Canadians first.

Two examples of such cooperation come immediately to mind. As you may have heard CBC and Netstar, owner of Canada's preeminent cable sports networks TSN and RDS, have won the rights to broadcast the Olympic Games in Canada in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.

Secondly, you may have watched Traders the weekly drama series about a fictional Bay Street merchant bank called Gardner Ross. Traders is the first program in Canadian broadcast history to appear early in the week on the commissioning private broadcaster and later on CBC. This arrangement has contributed to the series' bottom line and expanded Canadians' opportunities to see indigenous Canadian drama.

It may take a village to raise an American child, but it takes an army to make a Canadian TV program. Traders, like many Canadian series, only exists because of a complex coalition of public-private players.

So, while we have a number of accomplishments to be proud of, and a set of principles to guide us, CBC is a work in progress.

In my second term, I am determined to bring the CBC even closer to its mandate. We did the cost-cutting, the restructuring — now is the time to refocus the CBC so that it can better fulfil its public service role. Canada's cultural identity is fragile and continually evolving.

A strong CBC, clearly focussed on the essence of its mandate, to reflect, nurture and strengthen the Canadian identity, is essential to the very survival and continuance of our culture.

For me, the CBC as Canada's public broadcaster has a responsibility to link Canadians from coast to coast, transcending distance and geography, generational differences, and language barriers.

The CBC is one of the key means of conveyance of our culture — we have few others — so it is important to look at how we are reaching out to younger performers, to younger audiences as well as underserved ones.

Are all Canadians being equally served by their public broadcaster? As we apply for new services programming are we not just serving the same audiences, those who already have full access to our bouquet of services? I am heartened by the new linkages the Internet has brought to rural and northern communities — but its penetration is far from complete, and we are just starting to offer programs designed for the Internet.

A related question is: "How do we truly reflect the regions to each other?", as we are mandated to do. Today's programming may have currency within a region, but does it convey to an Albertan the reality of living in New Brunswick?

A similar question is: "How do we provide service choices to Canadians who are hard to reach for other reasons: young people who find commercial radio so attractive, or people from minority communities?"

When we investigate new media opportunities do we apply our mandate in the same way to new media as we do to conventional ones?"

Half the answers are related to our programming — in ensuring it is a true alternative; and ensuring that it doesn't speak to the lowest common denominator. Yet, of course, one has to balance those goals against being elitist. We are asked to be "enlightening" but to what extent do we have an educational mandate?

Finally, at least for today, I will set out another issue that CBC is testing: "How do we define ourselves in the world of broadcast journalism?" The awards we have won for news and current affairs are legion. Canadians find our broadcast news to be the most credible. Yet, as the trend around us (especially due south) is to move news down market, we must fully map out and articulate what we want our news offerings to represent, and ensure that they continue to espouse the values of the Broadcasting Act — insightful and inclusive coverage. Geography, inter-regional communications, new media, new audiences, new programming, distinctive journalistic standards, are only a short list of considerations to be debated. They are all part of our existing mandate. CBC is mastering the same challenges as all businesses today. And we are doing so with a renewed perspective. That of an organization strongly focused on its mandate to the Canadian people. Determined to do more with less.

As you may by now have guessed, we embrace change. But we cannot and will not turn our backs on the proud history that has earned us a privileged place in Canadian homes.

We are mandated to bring a special, an essential service to Canadians. A service that is unique to the CBC as Canada's national public broadcaster.

What's more, we have several networks which export our programming to Canadians living abroad. In doing so we are among the ambassadors who assist Canadian businesses off shore.

It is part of our evolution.

If we were to do an exit poll today, I would hope to find that you now appreciate what the CBC offers a little more than you did when you sat down this afternoon.

Many of you probably have stories about what the CBC has come to mean to you. I look forward to hearing about them in the course of the question period.

Thank you.