Address diversity gaps when filling CRTC roles, minister told

Filling all 13 spots allotted to CRTC commissioners could go a long way in addressing what some are calling decades of ongoing disparity between the demographics of those who make decisions about the country’s broadcasting and telecommunications sectors and the rest of Canada, according to advocacy groups, community broadcasters and researchers keeping an eye on the composition of the regulator. There are six vacant positions on the commission, following the departure of Candice Molnar, whose five-year term as the regional commissioner for Manitoba and Saskatchewan ended Jan. 9. With her departure, there are, technically, two regional commissioner positions open — Raj Shoan, who was fired last summer as regional commissioner for Ontario, is appealing his dismissal with the Federal Court and it’s unlikely the spot will be filled until the case is resolved — putting a renewed focus on the approach to CRTC appointments. In its current form, the CRTC is comprised of seven people, all white, a number that includes two women: regional commissioner for Alberta and the Northwest Territories Linda Vennard (whose term ends in 2020), and the vice-chairwoman of broadcasting Judith LaRocque (whose six-month interim appointment is slated to end May 12). In its submission to Canadian Heritage’s review of cultural institutions in a digital world, the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC) highlighted that the CRTC Act “does not require that Commissioners be representative of Canadians.” As a result of this, “the Governor in Council has for decades appointed predominantly white male Commissioners, often from the same companies that the CRTC regulates,” the FRPC report said. “This practice raises the obvious concern that CRTC policies and decisions may be more sympathetic towards and reflective of corporate needs, than of the needs of Canadian audiences and telecommunications users.” In a phone interview, FRPC executive director Monica Auer said this isn’t a value judgement on the appointed commissioners and their ability to do their jobs. “I am not in any way suggesting that any of the current commissioners are unable to consider the views and goals and opportunities of everyone,” Auer said, but noted “if we would like to ensure , is it possible that appointments can help further that goal? Because otherwise, if who we appoint does not matter, then why do we know who they are?” According to research the FRPC posted to its website last spring (prior to LaRocque’s appointment in November), 176 people have been appointed or reappointed to the CRTC since 1968. Of those, 26 per cent were women, with only two being named as vice-chairwoman (now three, with LaRocque). One woman — Francoise Bertrand, who served between 1996 and 2001 —has been chair of the CRTC. The report also said out of 103 first-time appointments, only two have been visible minorities — none of whom have held positions as chairman or vice-chairman — and since 1968, there is only one known indigenous person appointed to the commission, the FRPC said. The National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA) wrote to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly in November to say it has been “increasingly concerned about the makeup of the Commission in recent years,” and that the Liberal government has a chance to “substantially overhaul the Commission and the future of Canadian broadcasting.” In its letter, the NCRA noted that appointment criteria are broad for CRTC positions. According to the governing legislation, only those who are not Canadian citizens or don’t normally reside in Canada or those with direct or indirect interest in a telecom undertaking or are involved in the “manufacture or distribution of telecom apparatus” are not eligible to be appointed as commissioners. “However, despite that wide net, the previous government, and many governments before, have appointed new Commissioners with a very narrow range of backgrounds, experiences, and qualifications,” the NCRA letter said, adding that in addition to racial, ethnic and gender diversity, there is also a hegemony of professional experience. “Three-quarters (74%) of the people appointed as CRTC Commissioners have been men, 98% have been white and three-quarters (77%) have had backgrounds in management, finance, government or law,” said FRPC’s research. Out of the current complement of appointees, there is a lawyer and public servant (chairman Jean-Pierre Blais), a long-time senior public servant (LaRocque), a journalist, executive and consultant (vice-chairman of telecom Peter Menzies), a marketing and public relations executive (B.C. and Yukon commissioner Stephen Simpson), a lawyer (Quebec commissioner Yves Dupras), an academic (Vennard), and a telecom manager (Atlantic and Nunavut commissioner Christopher MacDonald). “There’s certainly a great deal of managerial experience and that’s valuable — I’m not in any way suggesting that isn’t valuable,” Auer said. “What I’m wondering is whether other experience might not be equally valuable?” The concern about diversity really came to the forefront “when it became evident the commission was unable to do its work,” Luke Smith, NCRA’s membership co-ordinator, said in a phone interview, referring to the delay of more than a year of a public hearing on rules covering French-language vocal music due to there not being at least three French-speaking commissioners. “The Liberal government announced they were filling a lot of vacancies, there was a big push to fill in the gaps, so we wanted to bring to their attention that when they do fill in those gaps at the commission, we hope that they would do so in a more-conscious way,” Smith said. In an email, Joly spokesman Pierre-Olivier Herbert said the Liberal government has ”a new process for nominations so that they better reflect Canadian diversity, gender parity and based on merit. This change of process will be reflected for our CRTC nominations.” The new approach is outlined on the governor-in-council appointments website and includes a commitment that “Ministers’ recommendations take into consideration the desire for Governor in Council appointments to achieve gender parity and reflect Canada’s diversity, in terms of linguistic, regional and employment equity representation.” Smith said “it’s a bit startling” that there was such a large number of commissioners with similar backgrounds, adding the association “found it concerning” there was little experience from the indigenous broadcasting sector or from campus or community radio. “And our argument really isn’t that we think there should be a commercial person, an indigenous broadcasting person and a community person. We think rather what it would do is help round out the experiences of the whole commission if at least one or two of them have some kind of other experience,” Smith said. “Really we’re advocating that when we do bring people on, they don’t stack the deck with just lawyers or stack the deck with just commercial broadcasters.” Just like her life experiences can’t translate into those of even her own family members, Auer said we can’t all put ourselves in other people’s shoes. “We can imagine — and that’s great — but at a certain point, diversity surely matters, otherwise we would all be uniform. And taking something as important, not just in terms of its industrial weight — because telecom its significantly larger than broadcasting in terms of impact on GDP — but in terms of touching us every day, radio, TV and Internet broadcasting matter. These things matter.” This is why groups such as the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) want to “broaden the circle and invite people to join us,” Zoë Ludski, CMAC vice-president, said in a phone interview. “What strikes me over and over again in the past few years is if the answers that we have right now or the solutions that we have right now are not actually working, then we need to think differently. And if we need to think differently, then we need to look to different people,” Ludski said. “And so once again, the most vital question is: who is not at the table?” In September, CMAC teamed up the Urban Alliance on Race Relations to pen a letter to the heritage minister asking Joly to look into allegations of racism at the CRTC that Shoan presented in court documents following his dismissal. The letter also referenced FRPC’s research about historic appointment patterns, saying that the data “suggest a serious problem of inequitable representation within the administration of the federal broadcast and telecommunications regulator, rooted in systemic racism, that can be observed without touching upon any of the disclosed information or allegations related to Shoan’s case.” Ludski said CMAC received a response to the letter on Jan. 9 that offered regrets for an inability to meet with Joly to discuss their concerns, but an invitation to set up a meeting with another Heritage Canada official. Details have yet to be hammered out, but Ludski said she imagined the issue of equitable representation would be a key focus for the meeting. “The one that seems obvious to me is: you’ve got some vacancies, let’s fill them,” she said. The government could make meaningful strides in improving the diversity of the CRTC with the current regional vacancies, but “I think we were really looking at the idea of the much larger commission,” said NCRA’s Smith. “But it’s interesting to see how they’ve opted recently for the more slimmed-down version. If they introduce more commissioners then of course it’s much easier to have more female commissioners or commissioners of diverse backgrounds.” Given the minority of francophones or women on the commission, and even fewer indigenous people or people of colour, it raises the question of whether their absence “explains why, even though the CRTC regularly reviews it policies for commercial radio and television, it has not reviewed its 26-year old Native Radio Policy or its 17-year old Ethnic Broadcasting Policy,” FRPC said in its Heritage submission. That statement jumped out to Ludski, who said it pinpointed exactly why diverse representation on decision-making bodies is critical. “Even if it’s not malicious, you don’t have the lens — inherently, you don’t have the lens,” Ludski said. Reviewing its 1990 Native Radio Policy has been on the CRTC’s three-year plan since at least 2012, if not earlier. Why it’s taken so long is ultimately a question for the CRTC to answer, “but I think there’s so many portfolios our community is dealing with that broadcasting may be, from our point of view, the least important,” John Gagnon, CEO of the Wawatay Native Communications Society, said in a phone interview. Wawatay runs a newspaper, radio and TV service out of Northern Ontario, broadcasting in Cree, Oji-Cree and Ojibway languages. “A lot of these policies and acts are also an imposition to our community, whether it be the reservation policy, residential schools… Our leaders struggle to navigate a lot of these portfolios because of severe underfunding and lack of true partnership with our Canadian brothers and sisters, Gagnon said. Having a seat at the CRTC table would “be a great honour,” he added, noting that adding First Nations representation to the board or decision-making level makes things easier. “If we had that honour, I think the landscape would change drastically and quickly,” Gagnon said. Back in the late 1980s when the current policy was developed, there may not have been the capacity to properly consult with indigenous communities for a beneficial policy, Gagnon said. This time, groups are looking to get ahead of the curve and starting next month, are engaging in series of discussions across the country culminating in a national conference in Ottawa in mid-June. The Future of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Broadcasting: Conversation and Convergence is “principally based on a respectful engagement with Indigenous Peoples to support their needs as it relates to scholarship and research about Indigenous media, specifically the CRTC’s upcoming public review of the Native Broadcasting Policy,” according to the event’s website. It’s also looking to address the void of an “active and established national association for the Indigenous radio sector.” Geneviève Bonin, an associate professor in the University of Ottawa’s communications department, said the idea for the conference came from one of her post-doctoral students. Bonin is working with people like Gagnon to organize the conference and six regional one-day meetings that will be held across the country. The event is open for participation by all, Bonin stressed, and said officials from the CRTC and all levels of government have been invited and notified. Bonin said there isn’t much going on that would make it look like the CRTC is going to go through with the planned policy review in short order, especially given the public hearing in March to consider five applications for radio licences to serve aboriginal communities. (Wawatay is one of the groups applying for a licence.) “And that’s why this conference, and even this licensing situation, is interesting because a lot of these questions are going to be brought on the table — ‘even though we’re here for licences, there’s all these other issues’ and ‘why are you bringing us in now when you’re not reviewing the policy?’ — which comes to the question really, is that because of the people that are on the board?” Bonin said. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that there has been one woman named to the position of CRTC chair.

Address diversity gaps when filling CRTC roles, minister told

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