The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, is sounding the alarm. She wants to draw the attention of French-speakers in Quebec and elsewhere in the country to the project of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre who wants to defund CBC while preserving Radio-Canada’s French service.
“It doesn’t hold water. When he talks about defunding the CBC, that means that everything is collapsing and that there will be no more Radio-Canada. We should not have any illusions about this. This leads to the end of Radio-Canada. »
According to Pascale St-Onge, Pierre Poilievre’s plan would result in a two-thirds cut in public funding. “By doing this, we significantly reduce CBC/Radio-Canada’s footprint. And also, how do we restructure Radio-Canada which is everywhere in Canada, which shares premises and equipment with CBC? We also have to ask ourselves how much it would cost to throw all these people out. »
The minister emphasizes that the Conservative leader delivers these two speeches during his meetings with supporters and that he does so “in two different languages.”
Why would Canadians from the rest of Canada pay so that only French speakers have a public broadcaster? When [Pierre Poilievre] says he can defund CBC and keep Radio-Canada, that’s false. It’s impossible.
Pascale St-Onge, Minister of Canadian Heritage
Remember that on Wednesday, during a speech in Côte-des-Neiges where he launched his seduction tour across Quebec, Pierre Poilievre said this while promising to make housing construction a priority. “It warms my heart to think of the beautiful family who will arrive in a U-Haul truck to move into their new home… in the old CBC offices. » These remarks were warmly applauded.
Pascale St-Onge is also concerned about the fate of Indigenous people, for whom the public broadcaster plays an important role within its many communities. “CBC not only serves in English, it also serves in eight Indigenous languages. What will this mean for them? I think it is time that we seriously question these ideas. »
This subject and many others were part of an interview that Pascale St-Onge gave me a few hours after the end of the parliamentary session in Ottawa. Arriving at the Department of Canadian Heritage in July 2023, the minister, known for her perseverance, has not been idle in recent months.
PHOTO SPENCER COLBY, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Minister Pascale St-Onge at a press scrum in Ottawa, June 4
Its greatest achievement is undoubtedly the application of Bills C-11 (on broadcasting) and C-18 (on online communication platforms). “We finally got our foot in the door. We have not yet taken the full measure of this because we are still implementing the laws, but it is starting to be concrete. »
These projects, which have made giant strides since the arrival of Pascale St-Onge, were crowned with a great victory last November: Google agreed to pay $100 million annually into a fund intended for Canadian media. “I have to thank my union background,” she said. It helped me a lot in carrying out these negotiations. »
However, there remains one recalcitrant player: Meta (Facebook and Instagram), which refuses to comply with this agreement. To get around it, the American giant has been preventing the sharing of content from most Canadian media since last August.
This decision coincides, according to many, with a deterioration in the quality of Facebook content on which we now find a large quantity of “clickbait” type sites, sponsored content, fake news sites and what the minister has already described in certain media as “cat videos”.
Pascale St-Onge refuses to capitulate and affirms that the standoff with Meta is far from over. “Complaints have been filed with the Competition Bureau. I also know that new powers have been granted to him to conduct more robust investigations. What will also need to be monitored is the work of the CRTC, which will have to rule on the platforms to which the law applies and those which will have an exemption. In the case of Meta, it will come in the coming months. »
What could be Meta’s fate? “I let the CRTC do its job, but my interpretation is that Facebook will never succeed in preventing the transfer of information,” explains Pascale St-Onge. If the CRTC judges that the law must apply, there are fairly significant financial penalties provided for. The law also contains an obligation to negotiate in good faith to reach an agreement. If this does not happen, there is an arbitration process planned. In short, there will be a decision in the end. »
The CBC/Radio-Canada file has also kept Minister Pascale St-Onge very busy. I overrode senior management’s premature decisions regarding cutbacks because I had the opportunity to speak out often on the matter.
Read “Compressions at Radio-Canada: improvisation and haste”
But I wanted to know if the modernization plan that the management of the public broadcaster is preparing and the plan that the committee set up by the minister is working on are not duplicates.
Pascale St-Onge, who did not hesitate to criticize certain decisions of CEO Catherine Tait, responded by choosing her words carefully. “It’s not abnormal that they work on a strategic plan. The last plan is coming to an end. They have a responsibility to do the work for the next five years. For my part, I am not in operations. This is why I focus on the Broadcasting Act, mandate and budget. »
At the funeral of Jean-Pierre Ferland last month, Pascale St-Onge was seated next to Mathieu Lacombe, Quebec Minister of Culture and Communications. On the surface, the two politicians seem to maintain a cordial relationship, but in recent months, Mathieu Lacombe has multiplied messages where he deplored that Ottawa did not leave room for Quebec in the development of Bill C-11.
Pascale St-Onge does not want to add fuel to the fire. “The bottom line is that we share the same goals,” she says. It makes our relationship a lot easier. In the case of C-11 [modifiant la Loi sur la radiodiffusion], I understand that Quebec is impatient. Implementation is not yet complete. The issue that is important for Quebec, and which should be for the rest of Canada, is the discoverability of our content. The discussions I have with Mathieu [Lacombe] aim to see how Quebec can be complementary in this. I am very open about that. »
Before diving back into the next fall session, Pascale St-Onge has a lot of work awaiting her this summer. It starts with CBC/Radio-Canada. She wants to come up with a “game plan” this fall. Then it will have to continue the work of implementing C-11 and C-18. She also intends to have major conversations with her international counterparts on the crucial issue of artificial intelligence.
“We need to think about the impact of all this on our creative industries, on the media sector and on society in general. I will be at the G7 this fall. There is also the G20 in November, in Brazil. It is urgent that we agree on guiding principles so that legislation can reflect them. »
Even if she hopes to have another mandate to advance these major projects, Pascale St-Onge only has a few months to consolidate them. She knows that next year, she will plunge into an electoral campaign. But it seems that the minister is already well underway.