Senator Simons: Thank you, Senator Housakos. I think I gave the answer to the same question when it was posed to me by Senator Downe, that what you’re asking for is a level of specific granularity that is out of place in a broad, general framework.

Also, if I can quote from what Senator Dawson told us at committee, this is from Senator Dawson’s words:

The CBC currently discloses compensation ranges for on-air talent of senior management. They break it down by position and classification of the role. That is consistent with other organizations in the wider federal public sector. What is being proposed would be inconsistent with standard practice in the federal public sector.

Senator Simons: Fire away.

Senator Downe: Would Senator Simons take a question?

Hon. Paula Simons: Honourable senators, I rise today with great sympathy for what Senator Downe is trying to accomplish. I began my functional career in journalism, working as an associate producer at CBC Radio in Edmonton. I well remember that it was a time when the CBC in Edmonton was under great economic stress.

Not long after I was hired, they brought all of us together in the large TV studio to make a major announcement. I was terrified. I figured last one in, first one out. The ink was not even dry on my contract. Instead, they gathered us in the room to announce that they were shutting down the TV service in Edmonton and that the CBC would serve Edmonton via Calgary.

Now, if you know anything about Edmonton and Calgary and the intense pride and rivalry, you can imagine the fury in Edmonton — where, I believe, at that time the CBC News was the number one supper-hour TV news show — when someone in Toronto announced that Edmonton, a city of a million people, could be served without a CBC TV station.

The experiment was a disaster. Ratings cratered, and the CBC eventually had to acknowledge that they had made a severe blunder — and that it was part of their mandate to serve the regions of Canada, and to give back a TV station to the capital of the province, which was a city of just under a million people back then. So the TV station returned, but they never again regained the trust of the audience or the share of the market.

I understand Senator Downe’s perspective. When you come from a place that is outside the centre of the country, it is intensely frustrating to have an official in Toronto or Montreal decide whether your region is deserving of the kind of attention the rest of Canada views as normative.

But we have to give some consideration to the extraordinary crisis that we faced three years ago. As Senator Downe said, it was a time when we did not know very much about COVID and how dangerous it was, and newsrooms all across the country, both print and broadcast, sent their reporters home and did their best to try to put together makeshift newscasts and makeshift newspapers with staff having as little face-to-face time as possible.

I also have sympathy for the people who made that decision in Prince Edward Island. They did not leave Prince Edward Island without local news, as Senator Miville-Dechêne has pointed out — the radio service was still there and active — nor did they leave the people of Prince Edward Island without access to CBC television, since there was coverage from other CBC stations and affiliates throughout Atlantic Canada.

I understand how bereft people must have felt and how betrayed they were, but I think we have to remember that this did not happen on a whim, as Senator Downe put it. This was an emergency response to an emergent crisis.

That said, it’s also very important to note that Bill C-11 is mindful of the fact that the CBC must be kept to the terms of its licence and to its regional mandate.

When we discussed the first part of this amendment in our committee, we were lucky to have Thomas Owen Ripley, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister at Canadian Heritage, speak to this issue:

The government would agree with Senator Downe’s point that right now the CRTC has very limited tools in the case of violation of a licence. At the end of the day, the primary tool is actually the revocation of the licence, which is, obviously, a big stick. That is why Bill C-11 puts in place an administrative monetary penalties regime, because it allows for a greater calibration of sanctions in the case of a violation where the corporation is actually able to assess what the violation is and what the appropriate sanction is to ensure compliance in that case.

The government had to consider whether CBC/Radio-Canada was going to be subject to that administrative monetary penalties regime. The government’s decision, at the end of the day, was to actually subject CBC/Radio-Canada to that regime. If you look at 34.99 of the bill, you will see that CBC/Radio-Canada can be subject to administrative monetary penalties just like the private sector.

To be precise, if you look at proposed paragraph 34.5(1)(b) of the bill, which I have just done, you will see that the penalty for a first offence may not exceed $10 million. For subsequent offences, the maximum rises to $15 million. So that administrative monetary penalty, or AMP, regime is potentially more crippling than what Senator Downe is proposing. Nor does the money go to local libraries, which is a complicated way to set up and administer an AMP regime, from which libraries benefit; instead, the money goes back to the treasury, and then it can be used as appropriate.

I, therefore, suggest to you that to punish Prince Edward Island’s CBC station for a decision made in a moment of crisis in a time of emergency — to import a spanking for them into this new Broadcasting Act that we may not reopen for another 30 years — is a bit too moment-specific. I think the fact that proposed section 34.99 of the bill does impose a penalty regime on the CBC — and requires them to keep to the terms of their licence or, as I said, face penalties of up to $15 million — is a pretty substantive signal that the government is taking this seriously.

Now we have arrived at the issue of salaries. I have an amusing personal anecdote about this, too: When I first joined the CBC as an associate producer — associate producers were primarily young women in their twenties, and, for many of us, it was our first real, substantive job in journalism — we were not paid very much money; I believe my starting salary may have been $27,000 a year.

One day, all of us girls got together and compared how much we were making, and we realized that one was making more and one was making less. It wasn’t a very fair thing. So all four or five of us marched down to the station manager’s office, and said that we would like a regularization of our pay. The station manager was outraged. He said, “Young ladies, it is not ladylike behaviour to discuss your salaries.”

I mean, I’m old, but I’m not that old. This would have been in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

The idea that the CBC keeps its salaries opaque, and that, even if you belong to a union, you may not know what your colleagues are making are long-standing problems.

I have some sympathy for the efficacy of sunshine lists, because sunshine is a good disinfectant. However, I am mindful of what Senator Wallin said in debate when we discussed this issue at committee. Let it be said that when I left the CBC, I believe I was making the “princessly” salary of $47,000 a year. I was never going to be on the sunshine list; I was always deep in the dark. Senator Wallin had a different career at the CBC where she was like a famous star, whereas it was my job to get people coffee. She knows more about this than I do.

Here is what Senator Wallin told us in committee:

The total compensation packages inside the CBC — and I’m sure others will be able to substantiate this — are broken down. For on-air talent, you would have the union part of your job, for which there would be a fixed rate; you would have the contract part of your job; you would have talent fees; you would have expenses, which might include cars, TV, clothes, surgery, et cetera; and there are performance bonuses, which are not performance in the traditional sense that you might have in the work world — the real work world for dollars earned or contributions made; it’s performance in the more traditional sense.

So working out how much somebody gets paid at the CBC is very complicated. It is certainly much more complicated than it was down at my end of the pay scale.

Again, I appreciate Senator Downe’s concern for transparency, and for the concern that he voiced in our committee about gender equity, because there are long-standing problems in the CBC and, frankly, in the journalism world regarding what men and women are paid. When I became a columnist at the Edmonton Journal, I started my full-time columnist job after working part-time and after having been on maternity leave before that. One day, I came out of the ether, I went to my boss’s office and I said, “Look, I don’t know what any of the male columnists here are making, but I want you to look at their salaries and look at mine, and tell me if you think it’s fair.” The next thing I knew, my salary had effectively doubled. That’s how much less I was earning than the men, and if I had not asked about it, that’s how much less I would have continued earning.

I think there is a legitimate problem in Canadian media that women are traditionally paid less than men for doing the same job — and often for doing a more difficult job. But, as Senator Dawson said, I don’t think that this kind of initiative belongs within Bill C-11.

I would love to see more transparency in how the CBC reports its salaries. We pay those salaries, and we depend upon those journalists to give us the news. Keeping the CBC accountable is in the interests of the whole nation, but this amendment to Bill C-11, to put this in the Broadcasting Act — our late colleague Elaine McCoy used to say we are shooting at the wrong duck. In this case, I think it is shooting at the wrong duck.

Thank you.