Speeches and Interviews

October 27, 2005

Opening Remarks by Robert Rabinovitch, President and Chief Executive Officer CBC/Radio-Canada, to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

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Madame Chair, Members of the Committee:

Thank you for inviting us to appear before the Committee.

Madame Chair, CBC/Radio-Canada is a unique institution. It promotes Canadian unity, it bridges our differences, it recognizes our linguistic duality. No organization is better suited to serve this crucial nation-building function. And that is, indeed, the role CBC/Radio-Canada seeks to play.

But it will only be able to play that role if it is able to act in advance of change instead of dragging behind it; if it takes the tough decisions necessary to enable it to thrive in the most competitive broadcasting environment in the world; if it can attract the most talented people and produce the most creative content.

In the last six years, we have worked hard to transform CBC/Radio-Canada into a true public broadcaster. In order to maintain funding levels for programming in the face of shrinking finances, we have had to become more efficient, more integrated and better-run. And we have made good progress.

We now generate $65 million a year through better management and through exploitation of our physical assets. These funds have been poured into programming and today represent the largest influx of program financing that we have had in over 30 years.

And the resulting programming can be seen and heard in the substance of Radio de Radio-Canada, in the novelty of Télévision de Radio-Canada, in the heart and depth of CBC Radio, and in the impact and quality of CBC Television.

By the measure of its own history, these have been good years at CBC/Radio-Canada. But the list of new challenges facing broadcasters in the coming years is long and we intend not only to face them but to use them to our advantage.

For us to do that, it is not enough for CBC/Radio-Canada to survive. It must consistently achieve excellence. It must lead the technological and programming transformation of the Canadian media landscape.

What CBC/Radio-Canada cannot be is rigid or static. It cannot be introverted. CBC/Radio-Canada does not have a monopoly on creativity in people or in ideas. We must be the most creative organization in the country. We need to be an open organization where people and ideas flow freely.

A decade ago, there were nine internal unions at CBC/Radio-Canada and roughly as many outside unions. In a given year we might enter into as many as a half-dozen negotiations. In my tenure we have carried out 24 negotiations, 20 of them without a labour disruption of any kind.

Over that decade, we have implemented a concerted strategy to streamline our industrial relations. This most recent negotiation was the culmination of that strategy for our operations outside of Quebec and Moncton. The result is one bargaining unit, one collective agreement, one set of rules for those employees.

Getting there was not easy. At the bargaining table we needed to rationalize three collective agreements into one, designing a single employee relations model that would fit journalists, technical employees and clerical staff. This was not tinkering; it was nothing less than the re-design of the future of the organization.

The Corporation's negotiating mandate was based on our front-line managers' assessment of operational needs. It was approved by Senior Management. It was confirmed by two successive Boards of Directors. Over the last 18 months, there have been nine formal discussions of the negotiations at full Board meetings as well as seven discussions at meetings of the Human Resources and Compensation Committee of the Board.

While the Board was informed of progress, the tactical decisions were taken by Senior Management as they have been in the other fifty-odd negotiations undertaken in the last decade.

On August 14th, there were still 42 issues outstanding. Six of the seven major issues that the Corporation had identified as essential to our future had not been dealt with. On some, after 15 months - over 100 days of negotiation - the union had yet to take a position other than the status quo.

Nonetheless the union leadership, through its negotiating team, through the explicit declarations of the President of the union and through nationally published advertisements, made it crystal clear that they had a strong mandate to strike and that they intended to use that mandate to best effect.

Our evaluation was that the union would wait until early October, once the Corporation had spent its main promotional budget launching its seasons. With pent-up demand for hockey and the possibility of a Fall election adding pressure, it would strike at the moment when the damage to our audiences would be greatest.

I believe there should never have been a lock-out. With a genuine will, we should have been able, over 15 months, to move towards an agreement. But the lack of progress and the union leadership's statements made it clear there would be a work stoppage.

Our choice on August 14th was straight-forward: wait and let the union strike at a time of their own choosing when Canadians would be deprived of critical programming, or bring the negotiations to a head at a relatively quiet time of year.

Madame Chair, a lock-out is a blunt instrument. Just as a strike is the final recourse of labour, a lock-out is, indeed, a last resort - the final action available to Management to force movement in a stagnant negotiation. This one subjected our employees, and their families, to hardship that is truly regrettable. It has left damage to employee relations that will take time to heal. It deprived Canadians of services they rely on.

The President of CBC/Radio-Canada has a fundamental duty to safeguard the services CBC/Radio-Canada provides to Canadians. In my private life, as an investment advisor to the Nunavut Trust, I have devoted time and energy to the development of the North. I understand the critical role that our services play in that region. Similarly, I understand the importance of Radio-Canada to Francophones outside Quebec.

I can honestly say that the lock-out decision was the most painful I have ever had to make.

But the President of CBC/Radio-Canada has another equally fundamental duty. And that is to safeguard the long-term viability of the Corporation. It is not only to provide services today, but to ensure that what we offer remains relevant tomorrow; to ensure that our service is available for critical national events. It was these longer-term considerations that motivated our actions.

People have asked whether the lock-out was worth it. My answer is yes and let me tell you why.

The CBC/Radio-Canada of today is not everything it needs to be to fulfill its mission or to serve Canada as it could.

One of the things CBC/Radio-Canada needs is long-term, stable funding and I want to once again thank this Committee for its strong, constant support on this issue. You are all well-aware of the $400 million of budget cuts over the last decade. But did you know that, salary inflation aside, it has been more than 30 years since CBC/Radio-Canada received a permanent increase to its operating appropriation? Thirty years! In that time the number of services we provide to Canadians has grown from 9 to 20 and the cost of production has increased dramatically.

It is clear from this that Management exerts little control over the funding that the Corporation receives. Where we can try to control our destiny is in preparing the public broadcaster for the future. We must position the public broadcaster to succeed.

To paraphrase the recent report Pour un Québec lucide: "CBC/Radio-Canada cannot be allowed to become the status quo broadcaster - a fossil of the 20th Century."

In the coming years, we need to look to the creativity and diversity of programming that we simply must have, to meet Canadians' changing expectations. The first step is a single CBC bargaining unit. The second is less rigidity in the workplace. And the third is a culture driven to achieve - an organization compelled to excellence and quality, recognizing creativity, risk-taking, courage, and adaptability. But above all, creative organizations must be in a continuous state of renewal.

In the next ten years, we will actively recruit the best and the brightest creative talent in Canada. Some will be permanent employees, others contract employees and, in some cases, they will be freelance workers within the independent production sector.

CBC/Radio-Canada already has some of the most talented and dedicated employees in the media world. Being able to challenge and inspire them, matching talent to task, and unleashing their potential is what the future of CBC/Radio-Canada is all about.

The collective agreement reached this month is an important step in the right direction. Early in the dispute a misguided perception took hold that these negotiations were about the number of contract employees that would be hired under the new agreement.

Before 1996 the Corporation had much greater flexibility to hire on long-term contracts. Our most original programming has often been the work of blended teams of contract and permanent employees. These are the teams that created The Journal, that brought you Canada: A People's History, that continue to turn out such high-quality programming as DiscDrive, the fifth estate and our coverage of the Olympics. Many of our most celebrated and senior on-air personalities have always been on contract.

But the contract employee issue was not the overriding objective for the Corporation. In fact, it was one of seven priorities that the Corporation had in its bargaining mandate. Taken together, they would allow us to better use our talented workforce to produce excellence in programming.

The union leadership is proud of its achievements at the negotiating table and they should be. Both sides made progress on their agendas and both made compromises to reach an agreement. The following are the achievements of the agreement corresponding to the Corporation's priorities:

1. A mechanism to improve the job performance of under-performers;
2. "Best qualified" is the standard for hiring, rather than seniority, everywhere in the bargaining unit;
3. An employee will have to be qualified, beyond seniority, to displace a more junior worker from a job as a result of downsizing;
4. The Corporation's 100 existing salary scales - yes, one hundred - will be rationalised into 13 salary bands;
5. We will be able to hire 50 per cent more employees on a long-term contractual basis than we have today;
6. We will also be able to outsource parts of our operation where there is a valid business case;
7. We will have greater ability to commission, acquire and co-produce Radio Arts and Entertainment programming from independent producers;
8. And finally, we have a monetary agreement that matched the funding available through Treasury Board increases.

Each of these achievements represents an additional tool to promote excellence, diversity or creativity. Each helps us control our future rather than reacting to it. Taken together they are not just progressive, they are revolutionary.

We must use this new collective agreement and the tools it provides to diversify and improve what we put on the air. That does not mean that your favourite program is about to disappear.

It does mean that we are going to significantly increase the amount of Canadian drama you see on CBC Television.

It means we are going to reinforce our journalistic core, rethinking and renewing our News programming.

It means that CBC Radio will continue to be the public space that reflects in its programming the diverse reality of Canada.

It means the most creative talents will appear on CBC/Radio-Canada's airwaves, whether we find them within our permanent workforce or in the independent sector.

It means that we will continue to be a leader in developing specialized content for new platforms - like podcasting and satellite Radio and the Internet.

Madame Chair, seven years ago, I accepted the job as President of CBC/Radio-Canada. Some of those close to me asked why.

I accepted the position because I believe very strongly in public service. More importantly, because I believe that in a country as diverse - and sometimes as fractious - as ours, we need more than a public broadcaster - we need an excellent public broadcaster.

The labour negotiation just concluded was intended to help secure the public broadcaster's future; and it will. It will help us achieve our mission - a mission to create audacious, distinctive programming.

• Programs designed to inform, enlighten and entertain.
• Programs that reflect Canadians and Canadian regions.
• Programs that explain national and international issues.
• Programs that help tie the country together and celebrate great national events.
• Programming in all genres but with a marked emphasis on drama and News and Current Affairs - while not forgetting our special responsibility to children and to the arts.

Through the last two months one thing has become very clear: that despite its faults, despite its critics, Canadians love their CBC/Radio-Canada. We must honour their trust. But, in order to do that, we must always look to the future.

Thanks for your attention. We will be happy to answer your questions.