Source : Winnipeg Free Press

by Maggie Siggins

Canadians are facing a threat to their nationhood that is far more serious than our armed forces being integrated into an American command, or our loonie being replaced by U.S. greenbacks. Depending on the musings of politicians, Canada's popular culture – played out on our television screens – may be Americanized beyond repair.

Since last September, the parliamentary standing committee on Canadian heritage has been reviewing the Canadian Broadcasting Act. Hearings have been held around the country and the spectacle of greed and arrogance has been astonishing. "Dump the CBC and give us everything" is what the private broadcasters have, in essence, demanded. Who gives a damn about Canadian culture?

Leading this assault is CanWest Global, a company that controls a television network, the National Post and the entire Southam newspaper chain. The Asper family of Winnipeg are the proprietors of this monolith, and in recent months they've been using their newspapers to wage war against our public broadcaster. A recent Ottawa Citizen editorial headed "Unplug CBC-TV" insists that "CBC English TV no longer has any obvious mandate that is essential to the national good." Shut it down, demand the Aspers. And this is only one of many such attacks in the National Post and the Southam chain papers

But what has CanWest Global done for Canadian viewers other than broadcast cheap American programs? A quick look at the prime time (7 p.m.-10 p.m.) winter schedule for 2002 tells it all. The CRTC rules demand eight hours of prime-time Canadiana per week. On Global's Saturday night lineup there was indeed a flurry of home-grown productions – Psi Factor, Andromeda, Mutant X, Outer Limits – but all play against the ever-popular Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. The Global fare gets much smaller audiences; they're in effect throwaways. And it leaves the network free to broadcast wall-to-wall American product during the rest of the week when the competition isn't so fierce.

What is galling about all this is that CanWest Global and other private broadcasters are eager to take advantage of ever-increasing government subsidies for the small amount of Canadian programming they do produce. While grants to the CBC have been chopped by $387 million since 1990, more and more money from the Canadian Television Fund has been funnelled to private broadcast programming.

Last year, $200 million was handed out to independent producers across the country. To my mind this is a great thing – the thriving film industry in Manitoba is partly a result of this largesse – but it's infuriating to see with what contempt CanWest Global regards the Canadian goods. Surely we should be able to see the result of our tax-supported programs at a time when most of us are watching TV. In 1999, a survey conducted by Nielsen Media Research and CBC's research department asked audiences what they thought were the best Canadian programs. CBC's The Nature of Things, Hockey Night in Canada, The National, Da Vinci's Inquest, Royal Canadian Air Farce and CTV's W5 and National were among those selected as quality television. Nothing that CanWest Global had broadcast made the list. What nerve, then, for the Aspers to suggest that they could replace our public broadcaster as purveyors of Canadian culture.

One statistic tells why the CBC needs to be beefed up, not undermined. In a typical week, Canadians collectively spend 18 million prime-time hours in front of their TVs watching the homegrown product broadcast by CBC's English network. The combined prime-time total for all the privates (not including speciality and pay) is only 11 million viewer-hours of Canadian programming. And yet, at the heritage committee meetings, CanWest Global and the other privates suggested that they are the prime source of made-in-Canada programming. What audacity!

For good measure, the privates insisted that a $90-million rebate on licence fees be given back to them each year, and regulations concerning advertising revenues be loosened so that they could earn another $240 million. All this without promising to do another thing to promote Canadian programming.

There's no indication the committee will pay much attention to the give-me, give-me pleas of the privates. Still, with advertising dollars spread ever more thinly among the conventional, specialty and new digital channels, the clamour to replace Canadian-made programs with cheap U.S. product will grow.

We Canadians had better beware or we may wake up one day to find our popular culture obliterated. What then is left of a country?

Maggie Siggins is an author and filmmaker in Regina.

© Winnipeg Free Press