The Truth About Canada (22 page)

In 2001, Canadian music artists had 16 percent of the market share of sales in Canada. By 2004, this had increased to 25 percent. While
75 percent of all CDs, DVDs, and tapes sold in Canada are American, 93 percent of survey respondents say that music by Canadian artists is better than or equal to music by foreign artists. Sales of Canadian albums increased from 6.8 million in 2001 to 8.5 million in 2004, a 25 percent rise, while the sales of foreign artists fell over 15 percent during the same period.
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However, in 2006, total sales of CDs, music DVDs, and other music items in Canada fell by a record 12 percent, and at this writing it appears that 2007 will have been an even worse year, due mostly to illegal Internet downloads.

Turning briefly to film, in 2005, Canadian films accounted for only 5.3 percent of tickets sold at Canadian movie theatres. In the words of Marke Andrews of the
Vancouver Sun
, “The figures reinforce the fact that Quebecers flock to French-language Canadian films, while English-speaking Canadians largely ignore homegrown films. The French-language market accounted for $36.4 million of the box office, while English-language films earned just $7.7 million.”
¹³
According to the book
What Canadians Think
, by Darrell Bricker and John Wright of Ipsos Reid, 73 percent of Canadians cannot name a single Canadian film that they’ve seen during the past year.

Despite some bad broadcasting industry news, in the spring of 2005, Statistics Canada reported that “Canadians are increasingly choosing homegrown news and public affairs shows and other programming on Canadian television.” Meanwhile, a surprise: the proportion of time allocated to watching sports fell on regular, pay, and specialty television.

In 2005, Canadian content on television was about 57 percent for conventional TV and about 44 percent for pay and specialty TV, the latter up from 40 percent in 1998. Of course, Francophones watch much more Canadian TV than do Anglophones, spending seven times as much time watching Canadian comedy and three times as much watching Canadian drama.

In 2003, the average Canadian spent 22 hours a week watching TV. In 1998, young men and women aged 18 to 24 averaged 31.9 hours in front of a TV set, but by 2003 this had dropped to an average of 26.6 hours.
¹⁴
Of course, a major reason is the Internet. Statistics Canada says that in
2005 some 16.8 million adult Canadians (68 percent) surfed the Internet for personal non-business reasons. About three of every five use the Internet to read news, check sports results, or do their banking online.

In 1998, only 49 percent of Canadian households had a personal computer. By 2005, that had increased to almost 75 percent, and more and more Canadians say they spend a greater amount of time online than they do watching television. In fact, since 1999, the time that Canadians spend both listening to radio and watching TV has dropped. Despite this, 419 FM radio stations pulled in almost $1.1-billion in revenue in 2006, up from $806-million in 2002. Meanwhile, the number of AM stations had fallen in 2006 to only 178, down 31 since 2002.

A word from
Globe
television columnist John Doyle about the CRTC. Private broadcasters, as always, want to cut back on their required support for Canadian programming. For Doyle,

The vastly profitable commercial broadcasting racket in Canada doesn’t need a break. It needs regulation and a sharp reminder about cultural responsibility. Later, they can cry all the way to the banks. These days, the CRTC’s policy is to pamper the pampered and let everyone thrive except the creative community in Canadian TV. And yes, it’s a disgrace.

What’s needed is more regulation, not less. What’s needed is more firmness with broadcasters, not the slippery business of allowing empty promises to be made in return for permitting more overlap and concentration.
¹⁵

Having strongly lobbied Ottawa to provide major government subsidies for the Broadcast Program Development Fund, Canada’s cable television broadcasters, fat with burgeoning profits, now say that they want to keep the hundreds of millions of government dollars that they receive without turning it over to the program fund. Talk about chutzpah!

In the fall of 2005, Canada and many other countries battled the United States in a combined attempt to establish a new international convention that would allow countries the right to treat their cultural
industries differently from other industries in international trade agreements. Canada has been a strong proponent of an effective international agreement since the late 1990s, when Sheila Copps led the charge, but it is something that the United States and its powerful culture-exporting conglomerates have fought against for decades in their desire to eliminate any and all barriers to U.S. cultural industry dominance.

In October 2006, 151 countries voted in support of the new agreement, while only two (the United States and Israel) voted against. The then
Toronto Star
columnist Graham Fraser wrote of Canada’s efforts: “The campaign led to a remarkable coalition, not only between English and French speakers, but also between the federal and Quebec governments.”
¹⁶
Bravo! It was a very important victory, of which few Canadians are even aware, but it will make a huge difference in our ability to have a vibrant group of cultural industries thrive in our own country.

The Harper government, in its 2007 budget, said, “As Canadians we are proud of our history and culture and the things that make us unique.” But with worrisome new developments — such as the unfortunate takeover of Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution and their massive library of Canadian films and television shows
¹⁷
(many financed by government tax credits and grants), the remarkable decision by the CRTC to stop regulation of network advertising limits, the suggestion that Canadian television content regulations be weakened, and the growing lobby in Ottawa to remove restrictions on the foreign ownership of book publishers and bookstores — one has to question just how proud of our culture the Harper government really is.

To the dismay and astonishment of many, in the fall of 2007 the CBC secretly and incomprehensibly sold off its foreign sales division to a non-Canadian firm, without giving Canadian firms a chance to bid on the sale. So, in the future, 135 government subsidized made-in-Canada shows will be internationally conrolled by non-Canadians.

Although the Harper government certainly didn’t intend that people who read their budget should consider this, clearly one of the most important things that does make us unique is just how weak our government’s support for culture really is, and just how much foreign
ownership and control of our country Ottawa is prepared to allow and even encourage.

The Canadian Council for the Arts has an excellent paper comparing government cultural funding in which it states, “Canada provides relatively low levels of funding for the arts, or at least stands just below the middle in terms of ranking.”
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The document shows that government arts spending in Canada, at 0.21 percent of GDP, is less than half Finland’s rate of 0.47 percent. Public arts spending as a percentage of total public spending, at 0.93 percent, is far below the levels for Finland (2.10 percent) and Germany (1.79 percent).

In per-capita terms, Canadian support for the Canada Council for the Arts is only about two-thirds of the level for similar organizations in Australia and New Zealand, but is far, far below levels in the United Kingdom. Total arts grants there in 2003/2004 came to just under $23 per-capita, compared to $4.15 in Canada and only 44 cents in the United States.

Let me end this chapter on culture in Canada with four brief quotes. First, from filmmaker Atom Egoyan, regarding the takeover of Alliance Atlantis: “Culturally speaking, we’ll become another [U.S.] state, because there is no incentive to continue to develop a domestic industry or a distinct alternative to the American system.”
¹⁹

Next, from Jeffrey Simpson in the
Globe
, on the state of book publishing and the heavy dominance of American publishers in the Canadian market:

This morning’s Globe and Mail bestseller non-fiction booklist shows two of 10 entries by Canadian authors.

English-speaking Canada is the only place of any size in the world where only two of 10 bestselling books would be by writers from that country.
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And next, from Ian Morrison regarding the controversial sale of Alliance Atlantis: “This is a lawyered deal representing creeping American control, foreign ownership by the back door.”

Lastly, from TV critic John Doyle, commenting on the new CRTC chairman’s suggestion that we need “a lighter approach” to TV regulation: “Less regulation of broadcasting in Canada is an eccentric proposition. Bluntly put, there are some people who can make the reasonable point that our airwaves have been seriously polluted. We are awash in American network drama in prime time and oodles of cheesy celebrity news.”
²¹

Well, yes, awash we indeed are, not quite yet slipping below the surface and drowning, but there are people in Ottawa who are clearly anxious to pilfer our remaining life preservers.

23

THE MEDIA IN CANADA

“THE PRESS VERSUS THE PEOPLE”

“Media in Canada are the most concentrated in the world.”

L
awrence Martin of the
Globe and Mail
wrote a fine column in 2005:

The media, to the tune of about 90 percent, ripped the Martin government to pieces over its decision to reject Washington’s missile-defence plan. The people went the other way; they favoured the decision in polls by a 20 percent margin, which, in political terms, is a landslide.

Today’s press, most strikingly on the question of U.S. relations (missile defence, Iraq, defence spending, taxation, etc.), has become concertedly conservative, moving to the right of the people.

The conservative media tend to favour a clear embrace of the United States and its values. Canadians themselves show little inclination to go that route. It is a storyline — the press versus the people — that runs right to the heart of the debate over the future of our country and to the heart of politics.

The end result is two large newspaper chains on the right, none on the left.

Meanwhile, at Maclean’s, a former editor of The National Post is in charge. At Policy Options, formerly a very liberal magazine, two former employees of Mr. Mulroney run the show.

In traditionally liberal Ottawa, policy-makers wake up to four newspaper choices that all tack conservative. The largest segment of the population are centre-left Canadians.

On missile defence, the media tone was remarkably hostile. The issue was examined not so much on the basis of what Canadians think, but on what the Bush administration would think. It was as if — after 138 years of existence — we were still strapped down to a client-state mentality wherein the driving imperative was approval from a higher authority.
¹

Well-known journalist and author Geoffrey Stevens puts it this way:

Media ownership is more concentrated in Canada than in any other western country — and our laws to protect the public interest from excessive media power are the weakest anywhere.

The media have no interest in enlightening the public about the perils of entrusting too much power to too few media owners.
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To those who say that there is no problem, given the proliferation of radio and TV stations, Stevens says,

What use are 100 voices if they are all saying the same thing, promoting the same values, advocating the same policies?

Three times in the past 37 years, Ottawa has conducted inquiries into ownership concentration and cross-ownership (print owning broadcast and vice versa). But nothing has been done.

Stevens points out that the Southam chain of newspapers used to be known for quality coverage, especially in international news.

Then they fell into the hands of Conrad Black. After Black had done all the damage he could, he enriched himself by
selling the papers to the Asper family, of Global TV. The Southam papers had 11 foreign bureaus when the Aspers acquired them. Only two remain today.
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What’s worse, the Aspers have served notice that they intend to pull CanWest Global, their print and broadcast behemoth, out of Canadian Press, the 89-year-old national newsgathering collective. The departure may cripple CP and it will leave CanWest readers and viewers with even less news of Canada and the world.

As for CTVglobemedia Inc., owner of CTV and the
Globe and Mail
, and their takeover of CHUM Ltd., with its 33 radio stations, TV stations, and 21 specialty channels, “The takeover would never be allowed in the United States where laws against excessive concentration and cross-ownership are enforced. But not in Canada.”
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I talked about all this to a top Ottawa media expert who asked to speak “off the record.” He said only Italy has such an appalling level of media concentration. I asked how could this be in a democracy like Canada. Was it the political donations? No, though they had been a factor in the past. More to the point was the media’s ability to influence votes. The right-wing publisher appoints a right-wing editor, the editor hires the journalists, and the journalists avoid offending the boss. There is an “unspoken mutuality of perspective.” There develops “a serious fear” among politicians of no news coverage, or of stridently negative coverage. And, of course, there is an even greater fear among journalists with families to support, and mortgage payments to make, and kids to send to university. Don’t cross Conrad Black. Don’t offend the Asper brothers. “The prevailing government ideology, despite all the enquiries and reports, is ‘hands off the media.’ ” And the media raises all the red herrings about a 500 channel universe and the thousands of blogs. So what if the news desks have been decimated? So what if so many channels feature American junk, cooking shows, sports, reality TV?