ONTARIO EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS AUTHORITY
CONTENTS
Thursday 8 August 1991
Agency review: Ontario Educational Communications Authority
Continued in camera
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Chair: Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
Vice-Chair: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East PC)
Bradley, James J. (St. Catharines L)
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East NDP)
Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East L)
Haslam, Karen (Perth NDP)
Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent NDP)
McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South L)
Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West PC)
Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay NDP)
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West NDP)
Substitutions:
MacKinnon, Ellen (Lambton NDP) for Ms Haslam
Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South PC) for Mr Stockwell
Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview NDP) for Mr Wiseman
Ward, Brad (Brantford NDP) for Mr Waters
Clerk: Arnott, Douglas
Staff: Pond, David, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1046 in committee room 1.
AGENCY REVIEW
Resuming consideration of the operations of certain agencies, boards and commissions.
ONTARIO EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS AUTHORITY
The Chair: There are witnesses to the committee this morning, officials from the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, starting with Mr Bernard Ostry. Welcome, Mr Ostry, to the committee. I assume you have some sort of opening statement you would like to make.
Mr Ostry: Yes, I understood it was in order for people on the carpet to come in and have five or 10 minutes.
The Chair: You are not exactly on the carpet. I would like to have an indication from you how long you expect your opening statement to last.
Mr Ostry: About 10 minutes, if that is satisfactory.
The Chair: That is fine. Also, could I ask you to introduce the other members with you?
Mr Ostry: Yes, I would be glad to.
Good morning, Mr Chairman and distinguished members of this committee. I am Bernard Ostry, as Mr Runciman has indicated, and with me today are members of TVOntario's board of directors, advisory councils and senior staff, whom, with your permission, I would like to introduce.
They are Erica Cherney, who is the vice-chair of the board; Michael Levine, who is the board member and chair of our programming committee; on my immediate left, Suzanne Rochon-Burnett, who is the board member responsible for liaison with the native advisory committee; and Don Mills, the secretary of the board.
At the back -- maybe people could identify themselves because in the course of the morning or afternoon they may be coming forward -- Peter Bowers, the chief operating officer; Ross Mayot, the managing director of community, government and corporate development; Jacques Bensimon, the managing director of French programming services; Don Duprey, the managing director of English programming services; Olga Kuplowska, managing director of planning and policy research; Judith Tobin, director general of international affairs; and Lawrence Martin, who is the chair of the northwest advisory council and the member of our native advisory committee.
We welcome the opportunity to appear before you today, Mr Chairman, to answer questions as best we can, and in some small way contribute to increasing our mutual understanding of what makes TVOntario a unique and viable institution. We hope our responses and discussion will encourage a deeper appreciation of the value to Ontarians of an institution which all parties over the years have consistently supported.
The worlds of education and broadcasting have undergone enormous changes since 1980, which was the last time that TVOntario appeared before what was then the committee on procedural affairs. There were four recommendations made by the committee at the time, all of which were acted upon by TVO. Details, for those who are interested, are contained in the printed text that we will leave with the clerk of the committee.
I would, however, like to comment briefly on recommendations 1 and 2 of the 1980 review which focused on the objective of self-generated revenues. In 1980, TVOntario generated $1.2 million, virtually all from the sale of our programs elsewhere in Canada and in the United States. In 1990, TVOntario generated $18 million from program sales, public membership and project revenue. The total generated over the period since the recommendation of the committee to increase self-generated revenues was made is $110 million. Self-generated revenues today account for approximately 30% of our annual operating revenues; the other 70% comes from base funding.
I would now like to take a few moments to outline briefly for the committee some of the activities and achievements of TVOntario as it pursues and fulfils its mandate of meeting some of the educational and cultural needs of Ontarians. We would then be pleased to respond to your questions.
The questionnaire that we completed provides you with the basics, so I will not take your time here repeating some of the fundamental information on which you have been briefed. However, it is important to bear in mind that TVOntario is a unique, dynamic and competitive international broadcast business, distributing educational programming to some 90% of the province's population.
We hold licences for two networks, in addition to that of this Legislature, and broadcast in both English and French 16 hours a day, every day, reaching about two million viewers at home every week, tens of thousands of children in over 5,000 schools throughout Ontario and hundreds of educators in classrooms, staff rooms and school boards.
TVOntario is a remarkable resource and instrument for education and for change in which Ontario has invested for more than 20 years. It is recognized in Canada, in the United States and around the world as the best of its kind and a committed component of the education system. And finally, it is an organization in which we all can take pride, as it reflects Ontario's ability to successfully compete and earn respect in the international education and broadcast industry arenas.
I would like to have been able to use this opportunity to describe in some detail the diversity and complexity of our activities in programming and the support systems for its use, the technical side of our organization, the consultative structures and partnerships which give credence and relevance to our efforts. For reasons of time, I cannot go into this in detail, but it is contained in the printed text of my remarks, and I hope your questions will allow us to highlight some of these elements. I do, however, want to give some figures on the use of our programming and whom we are reaching. I will also try to go beyond figures and give you a sense of how we respond to social diversity and to the variety of our constituencies.
Some statistics from two recent TVOntario studies, one conducted in French-language schools and the other in English-language schools, show how TVOntario has become an integral part of the Ontario classroom. Over 75% of teachers in Ontario schools, French and English, elementary and secondary, use educational television and video in their classrooms, reaching as high as 86% for English secondary school science teachers. This use has more than doubled in five years, and our citizens are increasingly aware of the ways television can support learning. A recent poll commissioned by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education corroborates these trends, revealing that 75% of Ontarians consider educational television important in furthering the education of adults.
As the province's educational broadcaster, and as a unique public service institution, TVOntario has long felt a particular responsibility to ensure that our programming reflects not only positive images of men and women, but also the changing faces of our society. The adoption in 1989 by TVOntario's board of directors of a revised and strengthened multiculturalism policy, addressing TVOntario's role as an employer and educational broadcaster and a community resource, was the result of many, many months of consultation and analysis, as well as representation by our advisory councils. The policy has provided a framework for moving forward in this area and implementation has been facilitated in the past year by our hiring of a multicultural co-ordinator.
In March 1990, TVOntario's board adopted a policy to enhance and expand our relationship with the aboriginal people of Ontario. Building on the quality relationship we have maintained for years with the Wawatay Native Communications Society, on the expertise and awareness among our advisory councillors, board members, staff and on the more recent series of consultations around the province, the strengthened policy and its accompanying guidelines state our commitment to increasing aboriginal access to TVOntario's programs and services, to supporting the expansion of the supply of aboriginal language and educational resources, and to raising the visibility of aboriginal culture, history and talent in TVOntario programming.
In fact, societal diversity takes many different forms in TVOntario programming. The Many Voices series on children's perspectives on racism and ethnocultural diversity has generated interest and acclaim. Challenge Journal is a series about the issues facing persons with disabilities. Premiering this fall is a series tentatively titled Hotline to Seniors that will deal with senior citizens' issues.
Recently la chaîne française co-produced with Glendon College a series entitled La femme et la santé, a course that will be credited in bilingual colleges and universities. In the public affairs area, our series WorkWeek looks at a wide variety of employment issues from the point of view of people who are in the labour market.
These are all instances of TVOntario's determination to be accessible and give voice to as many segments of Ontario society as we can. These groups are our constituents as well as yours. They are part of the whole we are mandated to serve.
Another instance of TVOntario's commitment to being accessible is the ever-increasing number of hours of closed-captioned programming for the hearing impaired. We have moved from 80 hours of closed- captioned programming in 1988-89 to 200 hours in both English and French in 1990-91. We will continue to strive to increase those numbers, both in our own productions and in programs we commission or acquire.
Whether it is through the distribution of our broadcast signal, our partnership with the Wawatay Native Communications Society, our children's programming and the adult fare our research shows people are asking for and using, or our efforts to support lifelong learning and distance education, TVOntario is above all concerned with service to all Ontarians and providing them with access to education and equality of opportunity. We could not have achieved the reputation for excellence that we enjoy without the assistance, input, participation and encouragement of our many partners concerned with the many-sided, multifaceted issues of education.
I realize that one of the functions of the standing committee is to review and to establish to committee members' satisfaction whether the mandate of the agency under review is being achieved through the best possible use of the public money invested in it. Many of the items in your questionnaire were designed to provide you with detailed information against which to consider these issues. I hope you found our answers complete and perhaps instructive.
As I said at the outset, we are a unique and complex organization, for we function in a complex environment, facing at one and the same time provincial, national and international requirements and constraints at the junction of the public and private sectors. Our planning process tries to take these different factors into account while building on the contribution of each sector of the organization.
Time and timing are also of major importance in the business. Our corporate plan takes us into the three-to-five-year period beyond the current fiscal year. At the same time, our plan is reviewed yearly for progress towards corporate goals and submitted to the ministry, along with our capital and extension-of-service plans and our funding submission. This latter document is the result of extensive analysis and discussion and has, I know, been referred to by Management Board as a model for other agencies.
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We believe that the procedures, practices and regularly scheduled reviews in place at present at TVOntario allow for careful and appropriate monitoring of our budgets and spending. TVOntario, through its board of directors, retains the freedom and responsibility for taking internal budget decisions and making adjustments according to identified needs or priorities, with regular reports on the management of its resources made to the appropriate government or regulatory authorities.
The quality and, I might say, quantity of budget analyses in reviews can be attested to by our board and in particular its finance committee, chaired by David Galloway, president of Torstar Corp, and by the ministry and Management Board analysts who receive our documents and thoroughly review them with us. The quality of our management processes is also reflected in last year's unconditional audit of our finances, in the balanced budget we have maintained in the face of increased industry and public-sector-related costs and in the successful balancing of our financial capabilities and new programming demands on the organization. You have only to compare programming cutbacks, membership problems, staffing cuts and program sales slumps at the CBC, PBS, the BBC or our sister networks in Alberta and Quebec with our record in sales, membership, new programming initiatives and internal adjustments. You will immediately see that we have managed efficiently and effectively, without such cutbacks to staff or to programming, to make effective use of public money.
We are doing much more, though I must stress that it is often through special projects, while our base funding, which supports the infrastructure on which all these projects depend, is not keeping up with inflation.
There are new needs, needs you are keenly aware of, needs, for example, for providing new opportunities for training and skills development to help Ontario's economy survive and thrive in the 21st century. TVOntario tabled a proposal for an Ontario skills channel with government authorities in April. We believe, on the basis of our own research, our knowledge of the extraordinary growth of similar American services and the crying need in Canada for better training of our workforce, that for a very reasonable cost TVOntario, with its existing expertise and infrastructure, could provide a skills and training service on a new channel and exploit the tremendous potential of television and video for reaching people in the home or in the workplace and supporting their acquisition of new skills.
This is but one example of our capacity to be sensitive to needs, to recognize where past investment can be put to future use, to provide at least part of a concrete solution to needs which are spoken of and written of, but which have engendered little action.
May I, in conclusion, stress the vital importance of legislators' support of TVOntario to our ability to fulfil our goals. As MPPs, your contribution to our work is invaluable. Whether you support us as Friends of TVOntario, and that includes several members of this committee, as volunteers in a membership campaign or by attending TVOntario events in your ridings, valuing the good relations we enjoy with you, we also welcome any suggestions you may have for more effective relations between us.
Are there ways we can keep you better informed of our partnerships and initiatives, as well as of our programming, and help you to relate them to the real interests of your constituents and the public agenda? Apart from the Friends of TVOntario structure, are there other ways the support can continue to extend across party lines? Can we improve dialogue and understanding and your confidence in this provincial resource while maintaining the healthy arm's-length relationship required by both provincial and federal legislation guidelines and practices?
A stronger relationship can only work to our mutual advantage. As elected representatives of the people, you will be better satisfied as to how their needs and your concerns are being met. Your support will also impact on the quality of our programming, how we are known and perceived and how well we reach and serve our publics. More effective co-operation can only lead to even greater achievement of those goals we hold in common for all Ontarians. Based on such support and co-operation, I believe the best and brightest days of educational television are still to come.
There is much more to say about our goals and services, but I will stop here. We are a long way from being perfect, but we are generally acknowledged to be the best in our business. I hope that much more of our success story, one that premiers Davis, Peterson and Rae have lauded and supported from our meagre beginnings to the present day, will emerge through the questions you have.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Ostry. Before beginning questioning, I just want to remind members of the time guidelines we agreed to prior to the open session. We will begin the questions with Mrs Marland.
Mrs Marland: Thank you for your opening comments, Mr Ostry. Let me just place on the record that, as the person who raised the questions in the Legislature in the spring this year about some of the spending and budgetary operations of TVO, at no time was I criticizing the program aspect of TVOntario and I totally endorse the need for TVOntario. I compliment the history of this organization, and my questions are not directed at bringing down the corporation or suggesting that there is any reason to change the direction that TVO has been going since its inception.
You said at the end of your comments this morning that you would do anything you can do to help the real interests of the people of this province, and the questions I have for you are the real interests of the constituents in my riding and the people from around the province who have raised questions with me. I recognize that at this point, until we have the auditor's report, a lot of what we have heard are allegations, and I am glad you are here today in this forum in order that you may be able to deal with some of those allegations.
To start with your final comment about wanting to do whatever you can to help, I would like to bring to your attention that apparently there was a call from Mr Mills, who is present this morning, as secretary to the board of directors and general counsel for TVO, on 27 February, where he said in essence that he was not in a position to provide information freely about the operation of TVO. He said that the request for information would have to be in writing; he said that they will not provide information if it is wanted for a researcher or other than an MPP; and he said that he would place that kind of request before the board and there would be no guarantee as to what, if any, information the board might agree to release.
So my question to you is twofold. One is that you know as well as we do that TVOntario is not subject to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Therefore, the public has no way of getting a handle on a lot of the detail as to where money is spent and who are the beneficiaries of money allocated through salaries and contracts. You are sitting in the position as chairman of the board on the one hand and chief executive officer on the other. So my first question is, do you not see that as a conflict?
Mr Ostry: Do I not see the combined positions as a conflict?
Mrs Marland: Yes.
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Mr Ostry: Since I will not be here very long, I can try and answer that question; I am not somebody looking after my own office. That is a subject that has come up over many years, and not only in TVOntario but at the CBC and at other places where the positions were combined for many years. When the issue was raised with me when I was the deputy minister, my response at that time was to the then chairman and CEO that he should make recommendations which reflect the specific interests of TVO and explain why it would be better to split the positions before we asked the Legislature to reopen the legislation. I never heard back, to my recollection, and then he was gone.
In the case of the CBC, I think it is very important, and if you have a special interest in the subject --
Mrs Marland: No, I am discussing TVO.
Mr Ostry: Yes, but if you are interested in it, the subject is no different for TVO.
Mrs Marland: Do you think it is a conflict? Just a direct question.
Mr Ostry: No, I do not. Not only do I not think it is a conflict, I think it is a very important advantage if there is going to be any unity of leadership in the place, because, as we know from looking at other places like Russia, you cannot separate ends and means, and if you pretend that you can have policy without a clear understanding of the operational requirements to make that happen and not encourage conflict between those, which a split, in my view, would do, then I think you will recognize the importance of having a unity of purpose at the top.
Mrs Marland: There was a lot of discussion in the spring about the renovations that TVO was making to a building which it rented, in excess of $2 million, we understand, which included renovations to the executive suite, the boardroom, and also included the now infamous nine televisions in your office. For a publicly funded television service in Ontario, funded by the public taxpayers and also funded by public subscription, can you defend, first of all, having nine televisions in your office?
Mr Ostry: Yes, I would be glad to. I do not have nine television sets in the office in the sense that that would be interpreted by people who have a television set in their bedroom or living room. I have what are called monitors that are directly connected with one feed and they are on a wall so that they can be on and provide an environment for me in terms of what I do.
Mrs Marland: Why do you need nine monitors?
Mr Ostry: I will explain that. We are in a programming business. We are not in some other business. We are in the business of making programs and drawing the attention of our various publics to those programs, and we compete outside with a number of other public sector institutions which are trying to draw attention to their programs.
Every day or two, at our early management committee meetings, we have a piece of paper which indicates where English and French programming are going with respect to new programs that might be started, pilots, stuff that is on its way and the rest. Those are titles. They have a few lines in description. If I were to spend my time watching each one of the programs being made in the studio so that I understood what it was, with 12,000 hours going on, I could not be in my office at all. Therefore, I have to be able to see them when they are on. I have also to be able to see how they line up with the competition.
The monitors consist of the TVO feed from the master control so I can see the quality of the feed that is going out to the public as compared with what is on screen. That is two. la chaîne is three. The CBC English and French make five. PBS is six. Newsworld, with whom we have a close partnership, working relationship, which I will come back to, is seven. This Legislature, which we have the licence for, is eight. The ninth is there because we thought the CRTC was going to license a second PBS channel and it did not, so it is blank. I do not know how other chief executives and chairmen --
Mrs Marland: The chairman of CBS has three television sets, apparently.
Mr Ostry: Yes, but as the Globe and Mail describes today, they are going broke. One of the problems --
Mrs Marland: Are you operating on a balanced budget?
Mr Ostry: Yes. We have not had a deficit since I have been there, ever. I said that in my opening remarks, I think. But the point is an important point about the leadership of the place. I am not in, like Global or CTV, like Mr Cassaday, who came from Campbell Soup -- To deal with a commercial network is actually much simpler. It might not sound that way, but it is relatively easy to spend your day looking at the balance sheet to find out whether the programs somebody has acquired are drawing in the advertisers to ensure a profit at the end of the year. That is a very simple, straightforward thing, and even that the high-paid people in NBC and CBS and ABC are not able to cope with, according to this morning's Globe, nor is our cable industry.
In my style of leading this place, I insist on being bathed in the programming and in what the competition is in order to understand what we are about. This morning somebody, I think the auditors, asked me what good they are, what the evidence was that they do anything. The things were on and the sound was not.
Mrs Marland: Do you still have them there? Do you still have these nine monitors in your office?
Mr Ostry: Certainly. I hope my successor will have them, because they are an investment and good for 15 years or so.
Mrs Marland: What did they cost?
Mr Ostry: They were $700 each, I believe.
Mrs Marland: What was the installation and the cost of the wiring in the wall?
Mr Ostry: One of my colleagues can give you that information. The cost of taking the Financial Times to read and to inform yourself in this country is about $500 a year. Anybody in the information business, whether it is an editor or a publisher of any of the newspapers in this town, cannot operate by reading only his own. If you read Time magazine and Maclean's --
Mrs Marland: Excuse me, Mr Ostry, it is too long.
The Chair: Mr Ostry, complete this and then move on. We will come back to you.
Mr Ostry: I am trying to explain why it is important in my capacity, to respond to my programmers and to the scheduling people and to others, to know what is going on. That is the easiest and cheapest way, in terms of my time, to know.
Mrs Marland: For the CEO to be spending his time doing that?
The Chair: You will have another opportunity.
Mr Ostry: Not me.
The Chair: We will still have a lot of opportunity. We have to try to divide this as fairly as we can.
Mr B. Ward: Margaret has asked most of the good questions, but I think there are some left. I think part of the cost of putting in those monitors was that you had some plaster work done as well. I recall reading in one of the magazines about $11,000 for plaster. Maybe it was inaccurate; I do not know.
I would like to touch on part of what I perceive the mandate of TVO to be, from an educational standpoint. You mentioned the apparent success you are having from an educational standpoint, the use of TVO by teachers in the school curriculum. Over the last couple of years, how much has the programming budget increased for our children and youth education shows, a ballpark figure, 10%, 15%, more, less?
Mr Ostry: I would not like to give you a ballpark figure. We gave ballpark figures, if you like, in the questionnaire, which showed the growth from it --
Mr B. Ward: It has increased, though?
Mr Ostry: Oh, yes, dramatically.
Mr B. Ward: Over the last dramatic increase.
Mr Ostry: I think that is correct. The programmer will tell you. It is my view that they are substantially increased.
Mrs Marland: Do you not know the percentage points?
Mr B. Ward: Maybe somebody could find that out for us.
Mr Ostry: But over what years?
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Mr B. Ward: Even over the last couple of years.
Mr Ostry: Two fiscal years?
Mr B. Ward: Sure. Would you say, under the stewardship of your CEO/chairmanship, that TVO has been run in a fiscally responsible, well-managed fashion?
Mr Ostry: Well, I do not --
Mr B. Ward: Time to beat your own drum; come on now.
Mr Ostry: It is difficult to answer the question without being immodest. If I say yes I am immodest and if I say no you are going to say, "What's gone wrong?"
Mr B. Ward: You could say you have done the best job you can.
Mr Ostry: I think we have a board and staff that have been extraordinarily accountable in this area. We have managed growth in the programming area, for example, and through our marketing and other resources and project funding, so we can improve the quantity and quality of our programming. We have managed to do this in an environment, which is what I was trying to say a moment ago, in which our colleagues in the business have been going in another direction.
I am not saying they are not well managed, but we must be doing something right in an environment in which the cable industry has asked the government to act to protect it because it is no longer in the profit area it was a few years ago. In recent articles in series in both the Financial Post and the Globe, CTV and others have been talking about hopefully coming out of their reduced profit margins, and we have managed in the public sector to continue to provide the services we were meant to with the moneys we received at an improved rate.
Mr B. Ward: You have a library in the facility and I understand it has been moved two or three times; according to the one article in the Toronto Star, twice. Is that good management? Obviously there was a cost to this.
Mr Ostry: Of course. There are problems of that kind that occur and they are not a result of good or bad management. It is the result of being boxed in, in a building that was not designed for the purposes which we operate to serve. In an office building, which we are in, every time we have to do something to respond to the technical side of programmer requirements, we have to make a number of moves and they certainly are not the most efficient way to have to deal with those issues. But we have never had a building that was designed for our purpose, and that is one of the problems. That thing with the library is an unfortunate thing.
Mr B. Ward: The last time you had to move the library was to build the box, is that right? Or is it a move since then?
Mr Ostry: I believe so. That is correct.
Mr B. Ward: Part of where I see the usefulness of TVO is in providing training possibilities for the people of Ontario through apprenticeship or building on technical abilities, especially for our minorities, native people and women.
Mr Ostry: Dead right.
Mr B. Ward: Could you give us your point of view on how successful TVOntario has been, from a technical standpoint, in promoting the skills of our native people, women and people with disabilities?
Mr Ostry: I have touched briefly in my opening remarks on our attempts to do that. It is a problem. The problem is that we are the only operator to provide this service in this province and the needs are myriad. To program every day for pre-schoolchildren, schoolchildren, videos for teachers to use in the classroom and a whole range of subjects in primary and secondary and post-secondary education, there is not enough; you cannot do that.
Mr B. Ward: I am not talking about what we are watching on TV; I am talking more about behind the scenes. How many natives do we have who are camerapeople, production assistants, producers or directors?
Mr Ostry: We have a modest training program, but from the beginning we have invested in what the natives wanted us to do, which was to help them to establish their own system in the north. Through the committee we established recently, we are trying to get at something similar in the south because there are really pockets of natives in the south where they do not get TVO's signal. The interest in that is very strong. I do not know if Lawrence will want to speak to this. We have somebody who has devoted his life in the north to the Wawatay, who has been involved in their communications society, because most natives prefer that they develop their own ways of doing this in their language, for their skills, not the habits designed by other people. Perhaps you would like to hear it directly --
Mr B. Ward: I was not just focusing on natives. I mean opportunities for women and for the disabled. I am not quite sure I can get this answered.
Mr Ostry: I am trying to answer it. I think we have done more programming for the groups you have described, in their interests or reflecting their interests, than any other broadcaster in this country. I said that in my opening remarks.
Mr B. Ward: I am not talking about programming. I am talking about your staff.
Mr Ostry: Employees?
Mr B. Ward: Yes.
Mr Ostry: If you are talking about numbers of different groups among the employees, I would have difficulty answering the question, but I will get the answer for you.
Mr B. Ward: I would appreciate that. Thank you.
Mr Ostry: I can get the human resources people to do that. I do not know if they are categorized in that way, in terms of human rights, or whether you are supposed to. There are others here who would be wiser than me.
Mr Bradley: Mr Ostry, on June 4, 1988, you made a speech to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, "Ethics and Public Service," in which you made some interesting observations about politicians and others. You have requested the assistance of members of the Legislature in furthering the cause of educational TV in Ontario, of your organization. How does that square with your comments that say the following, some of the things about politicians and so on? Why would you enlist the support of politicians when you say, for instance, on the handling of scandals:
"`The scandals almost invariably concern elected officials, but in the public mind all who hold office are tarnished. The public consequently sees all officials as crooked. Especially damaging is the theory that incoming governments should make wholesale appointments as quickly as decency and the media would permit of senior officials who share their own party political outlook. Public administration is a profession, not pork barrel,' Mr Ostry said, repeating an earlier call for a royal commission to look objectively at the thorny issues of patronage. `Too many elected and appointed officials are proving unworthy of the public trust given them.'"
You go on to say, "`The official who abuses his office for private gain is not just swindling the people but injuring the free government, harming the country. There are those who blame the press and media for blowing small peccadilloes out of proportion. But my own impression is that the media are too easy on corrupt officials.' Ostry, who has voiced his opposition to patronage appointments in the past, said he is concerned `with the increasing reckless use of patronage and the misunderstanding in some quarters of the nature of public service. It was the appointment of yes-men, toadies and cronies to senior civil service posts that I objected to most, having spent most of my working life in public service.'"
In view of what I, and what I think a lot of people in elected public office interpreted as somewhat of a slam at elected politicians, why would you seek the assistance of this committee of elected officials?
Mr Ostry: Obviously because I do not believe that in our democratic process all politicians are the ones who -- at that time, when I was invited by that group and asked to give a speech on ethics and public service at their request -- that all politicians are tarred with that brush, any more than all public servants are the result of a patronage system. In fairness, Mr Bradley, I do not know that we have decided, as a society, in the constitutional makeup of this country, in terms of its politics, to move to an American system. We do not apply the checks and balances of that American system, where you have everybody out with the change of a president and government. I am not saying that if you want to change it, do not change it, but over the years we have had a commitment to public service where the most senior appointments only were made directly by the government in power. Those immediately below the deputy and other orders in council were not.
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There has been continuous erosion of that in the appointment system. The week I wrote that speech, there were a number of stories in the Globe and Mail about charges against local officials. I am afraid I cannot remember because it was so long ago. If I saw my speech, I might be able to remember it, but it was a week in which there were a number of charges in different areas of Ontario in local politics, of people who had been charged with some unethical conduct. So if you are saying that anyone -- in particular a public servant, or anyone at all -- should not draw attention to the need to ensure that our public life is as strong and clean as it can be, I am not sure who is to make those criticisms. Who do we appoint to do that?
I am not altogether clear about the question. I have spent my life working closely with politicians. If I had wanted to choose something different, if I did not have the highest regard for the vast majority of them, I would have chosen another avenue to earn my living in. I do not see any inconsistency whatever in saying that there may be bad apples in the barrel and that we should, being in public life, be severe about those so that the respect the others have due to them is there.
Mr Bradley: The theme was not simply one that you touched on in Halifax at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference. You also made a speech on ethics and public service at the international conference on public personnel administration in Ottawa on October 6, 1987. You have written, "Do not spoil the public service." You have written something to do with yes- ministers, something of that nature. So it is a topic, certainly, that you have had a great interest in. That is why I wondered how, in that context, TVO should be tarnished with the support of elected politicians who practice patronage.
My next question, sir, is, in your capacity as chairman and chief executive officer of the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, how much money do you make? What is your salary?
Mr Ostry: I believe my salary is in the deputy minister's range. I am not sure what the exact numbers are.
Mrs Marland: You do not know what you earn?
Mr Ostry: I know approximately what I earn. I know in a range.
Mr Bradley: The approximate figure; could you share that with the committee?
Mr Ostry: Are there any problems about sharing any of these things? I do not know. I earn about $110,000.
Mr Bradley: I see. What additional benefits and perks does the chairman and chief executive officer of the Ontario Educational Communications Authority have? Would these be similar to those of a deputy minister, for instance?
Mr Ostry: When I was asked to move to this position by your former leader, I indicated that --
Mr Perruzza: Was his name Peterson?
Mr Ostry: I did not hear that. My recollection at the time -- and I wanted to assure myself that he was deeply interested in the future of the agency. In speaking with his deputy, my recollection was that in transferring there I would not lose any of the benefits I enjoyed in my position at the other end. That was agreed to.
Mr Bradley: In terms of the amount of money that TVOntario and the board can spend on entertainment, what controls are there on the expenditures for entertainment purposes and hospitality purposes? I am not referring now to entertainment in the form of what you produce on television, but entertaining people. What kind of limitations are there on you and the board in that regard?
Mr Ostry: I think the internal guidelines on that are the same as apply to the rest of the government, are they not?
Mr Bradley: What capital improvements have been made -- and Mrs Marland touched on some of these in terms of the building itself -- to your office since you became the chair?
Mr Ostry: Over what period?
Mr Bradley: Since you became the chair.
Mr Ostry: Since 1985?
Mr Bradley: Yes, sir.
Mr Ostry: I think there was one period when the office was built and renovations took place, but the exact amount -- we have the figures here if you want to know the costs that have been spent on the fifth floor. Mrs Marland referred to what she called "executive offices," which do not really exist in that sense. There is a committee centre meeting and other rooms. You have eaten in one of them when you were down, I believe.
Mrs Marland: When I was helping raise money for this publicly funded television station, yes.
Mr Ostry: Right, which we appreciated greatly.
Mrs Marland: Just if you drop in that I have eaten there, I would like everyone to know when I ate there, Mr Ostry.
Mr Bradley: The Chairman has said I have a final question. It deals with the number of employees that you are responsible for. How can you justify 555 employees, according to the 1990-91 figures for TVO, when the Ministry of Energy has a total of 205 employees; the Ministry of Citizenship, 288; the Ministry of Financial Institutions, 404; Colleges and Universities, 336; the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology, 481; Intergovernmental Affairs, 64; Management Board, 388; Municipal Affairs, 421; Northern Development, 515; Skills Development, 536; Treasury and Economics, 382; Women's Issues, 58. Would it not strike an objective observer as somewhat interesting that TVO would have 555 employees when the various ministries I have shared with members of this committee have fewer employees than TVO?
Mr Ostry: Not at all, Mr Bradley. I do not think anyone is suggesting that TVO is a government department, which has responsibilities that are entirely different to running two television networks. I would turn it around, actually. If instead of drawing up a list of government ministries, you drew up a list of television corporations with responsibilities for two networks in two languages and a reach for the total population of this province, and competing with the private sector -- I do not do what these ministries do in terms of competition in the private sector. They may do things. I am not looking to be contentious; I just think it is apples and oranges. Television business is not a government ministry business. We had 450, as I recall, when I took over, and we were not running two networks.
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Mrs Marland: Mr Ostry, we all have a great number of questions, and I wonder if I could respectfully ask you to limit your answers as far as you can, because my last question had a five-minute answer. I say that respectfully.
It is my understanding that you have a chauffeur. Is that correct?
Mr Ostry: I have a car and driver.
Mrs Marland: Is it also true, even if you carry on with the deputy minister status, that deputy ministers do not have chauffeurs? Cabinet ministers have chauffeurs. How is it that you are entitled to have a chauffeur?
Mr Ostry: As I believe I said in answer to an earlier question, the driver and the car were transferred to TVO from the position I held as the Deputy Minister of Culture and Communications.
Mrs Marland: So the question still stands. It is my understanding that chauffeurs are for cabinet ministers, not deputy ministers, so --
Mr Ostry: I am not a deputy minister. I am the chairman of --
Mrs Marland: But you have a chauffeur?
Mr Ostry: Yes. The remuneration package, if you like, is one which the board of TVOntario is fully familiar with and the finance committee fully supports.
Mrs Marland: Last year, I understand that your chauffeur earned $52,937, in the same period that his base salary was in fact $26,500. Can you tell this committee how your chauffeur could possibly have earned twice his base salary in overtime?
Mr Ostry: I expect he has earned it by putting in the time which he has clocked with the supervisors and for which he is paid the union rate.
Mrs Marland: His total earnings in June of last year were $7,000, and in October of last year were $7,700. Mr Ostry, I am sure you are aware, under the labour laws of Ontario, that the Employment Standards Act controls the number of hours an individual employee can work. How is it possible that you can be in compliance with the Employment Standards Act and have your chauffeur earn twice his salary in overtime?
Mr Ostry: I hope I am in compliance with the act. Nobody has told me I am not. He is a member of the union, which very jealously guards these issues, so I am not aware that we have broken any laws.
Mrs Marland: Is he out driving around while you are watching the nine televisions? How could he put that number of hours in? It is a very earnest, serious question.
Mr Ostry: The union agreement makes provision for double time on weekends. The union agreement also makes provision for meal penalties and for standby time, so that the amount of remuneration he receives in overtime is not directly related to the number of overtime hours he works.
Mrs Marland: Would you be willing to file with this committee the details of your chauffeur's earnings in the last two years, what hours he has worked, and precisely where those hours were?
It is also my understanding that you sit as a member of the board for the Stratford Festival. Is that correct?
Mr Ostry: No, it is not.
Mrs Marland: Do you have an association with the Stratford Festival?
Mr Ostry: No, not at all.
Mrs Marland: Does your chauffeur drive you to the Stratford Festival?
Mr Ostry: If he does, it is on my time.
Mrs Marland: Okay. Another question I have for you: Would you be willing to file the information of your chauffeur's overtime and his regular time hours for the last two years?
Mr Mills: The only possible concern would be if the driver or the union objects to an invasion of privacy on that grounds. The Authority, I think, would have no objection.
Mrs Marland: I understand that. Could we also know whether it was cleared with the Ministry of Labour under the Employment Standards Act?
Mr Mills: I do not think there is a provision for clearance, but I think what you are asking is, have we offended the provisions of that act?
Mrs Marland: Yes, that is what I am asking.
Mr Mills: We can certainly endeavour to find that out.
Mrs Marland: It has also been suggested, Mr Ostry, that TVO bought a table for a dinner in Ottawa honouring your wife Sylvia and some other people. Is there any truth to that allegation that 10 people attended at a table at this dinner in Ottawa?
Mr Ostry: The dinner was in Toronto. It was to honour four people: apart from my wife, I believe John Munro from BC, Claude Castonguay from Quebec and one other distinguished person. TVOntario has from the beginning of the establishment of that forum been a supporter of it and bought a table at the dinner, which is very well attended. I believe Mr Harris was there that night.
Mrs Marland: TVO did not pay for Mr Harris's ticket for that dinner.
Mr Ostry: They did not pay for mine either.
Mrs Marland: That is the question. Are you saying that TVO bought a table at that dinner?
Mr Ostry: Yes.
Mrs Marland: At what cost?
Mr Ostry: Fifteen hundred dollars.
Mrs Marland: Is there a receipt for that?
Mr Bowers: I am sure there is a receipt for it, yes.
Mrs Marland: I would like to have that receipt tabled for the committee, please.
It has also been suggested that prior to the Provincial Auditor's investigation of TVOntario there was shredding of documents at TVOntario's office. I am asking if that is so. It is an allegation.
Mr Ostry: If the suggestion is that documents were being shredded because auditors were moving in, the answer is no.
Mrs Marland: TVO does have a shredder.
Mr Ostry: TVO may own more than one shredder. There may be shredders in many offices. There is a shredder in my office.
Mrs Marland: Could I ask you, Mr Ostry, about this report? This is a request for space accommodation, phase 1 proposal call. It was prepared in April of this year by the IBI Group. The suggestion that one must take from this proposal call is that TVOntario was looking to either relocate or take additional space. In the meantime they have spent over $2 million on their present location, which is leased, and we understand the lease expires in another two years. We also understand that the IBI Group has now been dropped as consultants in this location-for-space search.
Can you explain why you, as CEO and chairman of the board, would have allowed TVO to spend over $2 million on a building which it leases when it is at the same time currently out looking for additional or new space?
Mr Ostry: Yes, certainly. TVO's lease expires, I believe, in the fall of 1994, so it is three years. We have an option in our existing contract to lease for another five if we wish. So it is not at all certain that we will move. We have occupied those premises since, I think, 1972 and, given some of the answers I have given to Mr Ward and others about some of the difficulties we have living in a building that is not designed for our purposes, the board agreed to move to the process you have described by indicating the document you have.
We do not and the board does not see any conflict between the question of the lease ending and trying to discover what the market can produce in the way of other premises should we wish to move.
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Mrs Marland: I do not see any conflict either. The question is, why would you spend $2 million renovating where you are when you are out looking for new space?
Mr Ostry: We spend every year, as anybody occupying many tens of thousands of square feet does, a considerable amount of money for both maintenance and renovation in that building. We spent the $2 million over two or three fiscal years and the main push for the need to spend that came from the desire of the board to see a wider range of programming and a greater capacity to respond to immediate needs by creating the boxes. The ripple effect of that over two fiscal years led to the expenditure you are speaking about. Mr Bowers can give you the details of that.
Mr Hayes: I was going to get into that very same question in asking you why you spent the $2 million over two years when you plan on moving out in a short period of time. Just how much square footage, for example, a rough figure, do you feel you need more than you have?
Mr Ostry: I think we have a figure that was given to the consultants who have been working with us for a number of months. I do not have the figure in my mind. It is 240,000 or 250,000 square feet.
Mr Bowers: It is in the order of 240,000 square feet. I do not have those numbers in front of me, but that was a projection of our needs as of 1994. We currently occupy about 225,000 square feet.
Mr Hayes: These may be just accusations again, but there has been some talk about the natives being able to produce native films about natives. Has this changed now or do they have that access to be able to do this? I know you talked about up in Wawatay where you have some co-operation there and you are working jointly, but I understand they have really had problems getting films by natives about natives in TVOntario programming.
Mr Ostry: Perhaps my colleague Mrs Anne Rochon-Burnett would speak to that. She has a special interest in native programming.
Mrs Rochon-Burnett: I have been on the board for four years and there has been a great expansion. There is a great visibility of native people, especially these last three years, on TVOntario, as duly following our TVO board of directors' adoption of the native policy. We go way back too, because in 1988-89 a precedent happened at TVO: a program called Full Circle Native Way was completely developed and produced totally with native people.
I do not understand why you are making this statement exactly, because even in the native community they are very happy to see what is happening at TVO presently.
Mr Hayes: Excuse me, I did not make the statement. I am saying that I have heard these things and I want you to clarify it and tell me if this is so or if it is not.
Mrs Rochon-Burnett: No. There are really extremely great happenings and we are working further, of course, because the policy is very young. We requested some moneys in our last budget which we did not receive, but as soon as we are able to put a native co-ordinator at TVO we will have more facilities to produce for even more needs.
Mr Hayes: Mr Ostry, do you have in-house counsel as part of the employees, legal people within --
Mr Ostry: Yes, we do, chiefly because there is so much contract work. They are specialized, really, in the kind of programming contracts we do with various people, all the issue of rights and that sort of thing.
Mr Hayes: You may correct me if I am wrong. This is another thing we are hearing: that you have in-house people and yet you hire external legal counsel, such as Mr Mills. Could you explain why, if you already have in-house counsel, you would hire counsel from outside TVOntario?
Mr Ostry: I could try to explain it, but historically that is the way the legal advice has evolved. There has been a counsel to the board, who has been Mr Mills from the day TVO was invented -- he helped draft the legislation -- and there is the day-to-day business of TVO, which requires an examination of a whole range of needs, particularly from the programming departments, with respect to contracts that are drawn up. Most of the work done by the two lawyers who are on staff is contract work, and the work that Mr Mills does is of a qualitatively different character. I do not know if he wants to comment on that.
Mr Mills: I am not sure whether it is helpful or not, but originally, when the Authority was a very small and young organization and because I was retained originally to help establish it, my firm did all of the legal work for TVOntario. As the organization grew, there came a time when it was appropriate to have house counsel, so one lawyer was hired and his chief responsibility was the drafting of contracts and so on. The Authority's board over the years has discussed the issue and felt that if it wanted to have a senior corporate counsel on staff, the cost would exceed the cost of a part-time senior corporate counsel, which they have in me and other members of my firm.
At the present time, however, there are at least three external law firms that do different kinds of work for TVOntario. There is one firm that does labour work, because the Authority is very much involved in specialized labour matters. There is another firm that is involved with CRTC matters, and I am involved primarily with the board's responsibilities.
The Chair: Mr Perruzza, did you want to take a few minutes?
Mr Perruzza: Sure. It is a rough day. I would hate to be in your chair today. I have a couple of quick questions. I wanted to deal with a table here for staffing. Mr Bradley touched on it briefly. I just wanted to get a comment from you and then I want to go back to something that Margaret has touched on as well.
Your entire staffing number is 555, but it strikes me that when I work out some of these ratios, your senior management ratio with your middle management and administrative staff and technical staff is one to five. Do you see that --
Mr Ostry: Which is one to five, which is the one?
Mr Perruzza: Your senior management ratio to your middle management ratio is one to five. The way I work it out is you have one senior manager per five middle managers, and that figure has stayed relatively constant from 1986 to 1991. I would like to get a comment from you on that. Is that, in your opinion, an appropriate ratio? Is that something that is needed in the TV business?
Mr Ostry: I am just looking at these notes on our ratios and it seems to me that they have been consistent for the whole period I have been there and before.
Mr Perruzza: In no way, Mr Ostry, am I directing the question in a way that --
Mr Ostry: No, the reason I say it has been the same is that I assume from that that historically that ratio is what has produced an effective management structure. So I assume that in the business that is --
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Mr Perruzza: In your time at TVOntario, has the administrative structure ever been reviewed, specifically the top end of the structure?
Mr Ostry: The most senior end has been reviewed, because I have reviewed it, but other aspects of it within each sector have also been reviewed and there have been revisions.
Mr Perruzza: So in reviewing that, that to you is an appropriate number?
Mr Ostry: Yes.
Mr Perruzza: With the nine TV monitors -- and I do not understand this and I want to understand this a little bit better. You are in your office five days a week?
Mr Ostry: At least.
Mr Perruzza: On average, how many hours per day?
Mr Ostry: I arrive about 10 past 8 and I leave, depending on the problems, around 6.
Mr Perruzza: During that time, about nine hours a day excluding lunch, how much TV would you say you watch per day?
Mr Ostry: The machines are on all the time. Obviously, the sound is off when somebody is in my office and I am not always in the office.
Mr Perruzza: I will ask the question again. How many hours on average would you spend in your office? Do you leave for three hours a day, during your lunch and then meetings with --
Mr Ostry: Meetings absorb the time. Not all of them are in my office.
Mr Perruzza: So you would be in the office about six hours a day on average?
Mr Ostry: Five to six.
Mr Perruzza: Of that time, how much time do you spend watching TV?
Mr Ostry: I do not watch it like people watch TV. I see the screens. I can see what is going on when I am reading, or when the phone is ringing, or when I walk in and out. I will just give you an example. This morning I was reading some of these papers, and although this has probably existed for some time, and it has to do with your question about concentration to a degree and what you get, I noticed for the first time that on la chaîne we have a slide which says when we are coming on the air. Radio-Canada is not on the air either but, rather than a slide, they have a continuous turn of what is coming on at different times in the course of the day. Mr Bensimon is here. He will hear from me tomorrow that I think that, attractive as the slide is, the information on Radio-Canada is much more valuable to a viewer in the course of the day, who may be using his machine to move across the screen. That ought to attract more viewers to la chaîne.
Mrs Marland: And today is the first day you noticed that?
Mr Ostry: I noticed that particular one on la chaîne.
The Chair: Sorry, Mr Perruzza and Mr Ostry, we will have to move on. Mr Grandmaître.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Ostry, you have always referred to TVO as an instrument for education, not to be confused with commercial TV, and rightly so. Why is it so important for TVO to compete against the private sector? Is there a possibility that competition will not take over TVO, but will diminish TVO's interest in Ontario? Recently you signed an agreement with a Japanese public broadcaster, NHK if I am not mistaken, in order to compete with the private sector.
Mr Ostry: There is some misunderstanding. We do not compete with the private sector in terms of cash. We are competing with all the noise out there, the 30 channels that are going to go to 100 or 200. Everybody is doing that.
The purpose of the partnerships, like the one with NHK, is again not a competition with the private sector. It is because the costs of making programs have risen so dramatically over the years that very few, if any, broadcasters can themselves produce -- I am sorry Mr Bradley has walked out -- programs that cost the kinds of money that environmental programs, for example, cost. You need partners to do that, and very often more than one. The kinds of series we would acquire in the market are likely to be in competition with PBS or the BBC or the CBC. They are not likely to be with a commercial network because of the nature of the programs.
Mr Grandmaître: So where is the real competition to TVO?
Mr Ostry: We do not think we have competition in terms of the quality of our programs. The competition, as I say, is for people's attention.
Mr Grandmaître: You think TVOntario or TVO has a long life in Ontario?
Mr Ostry: Yes, I do.
Mr Grandmaître: Especially from the type of questions that have been fired at you this morning, I think people are really questioning TVO.
Mr Ostry: It has been here for 20 years. It has built a large, loyal audience. It is supported by the teachers of this province, unlike any other system. It has produced programs that are the pride of the industry. People with children in this province know, as we know from our surveys, that they trust the children's programs produced by TVOntario more than they trust any others, whether it is preschool or younger children, say grades 1, 2 or 3.
I think at a time -- and why I made the reference towards the end of my opening remarks -- when legislators all over the world are talking about the difficulties in restructuring education so that societies can eliminate illiteracy, dropouts, improve their competitiveness, to do any of those things in a period of time that is meaningful in terms of the competition, I do not know a tool at the disposal of governments that would be more effective than the use of video and broadcasting.
Indeed, in places that are more competitive than we are, in the United States, instead of having endless task forces and royal commissions and investigations into what should be done about finding the solution to skills training, retraining on the job and the rest, the American private sector, huge corporations like Ted Turner's, Whittle and Hughes Aircraft, which is owned by General Motors, have gone into the beginnings of educational broadcasting, and all of them are seeking public assistance, that is, from Washington.
They are at the very beginnings, but the only point I am trying to make is that there will be at some point an overflow into this country because of the nature of satellites and the cable systems. If we do not build on what we have as the best now, which is better than they have at the moment, to get into these areas that some of you talked about, in skills, we are going to be faced with programming that does not fit our curriculum, that does not answer the needs of the Ford Motor Co of Canada employees or those in Sudbury or Kapuskasing, but will be carried anyway by the cable systems. So I think the need and opportunity for video production for education and for broadcasting has never been greater and the opportunity has never been greater.
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Mr McGuinty: Do I understand correctly that earlier you indicated you did not intend to seek reappointment as chair and CEO?
Mr Ostry: No. I have been there long enough. I have been there too long now, judging by the questions.
Mr McGuinty: You feel you have exhausted the experience?
Mr Ostry: No. I have been there six years. I think the place in terms of the quality and quantity of production and its structure and management is a lot better than it was when I arrived. I think the challenges I have just described to your colleague, Mr Grandmaître, are such that a younger person should come in and move it forward, to deal with some of the things we have talked about today: new channels for skills, contributing to what I would hope one day to see, a Canadian learning channel, and to expand the base, which is the most powerful base in this country.
Unlike Access Network in Alberta, which had to go to the CRTC to get into the commercial business, was refused and immediately fired 15% of its staff in the last two months; or Knowledge Network in British Columbia, which does not have the money; or Radio- Quebec, which has had to pull back all its regional stations and cut its budgets; we have managed to maintain and expand the programs we do at the same time that we support its quality.
Mr McGuinty: One of the things that has become apparent to me here today, as I am sure it has to you, is that a number of the questions have focused on you personally, this matter of the TVs in your office and the chauffeur. What should that tell me? We are talking about a sophisticated organization in excess of 500 employees. I am not sure exactly how much money you spend on an annual basis, but why is it we are spending that much time? Can you account for that?
Mr Ostry: Actually, I think this sort of thing goes on everywhere and all the time in North America now. If you pick up the current Time magazine, its main article is devoted to just that. I may have had it because I was reading it earlier in the office this morning. They are talking about themselves, but we have been there first. It is a nation of finger-pointers. The problem is that Canadians have great difficulty living with anything successful. Leave me out of it: The institution is an incredible, remarkable success. It is hard to get at the institution; it is easier to get at me and my package and the car and the driver and the television sets and all the buzzwords that evoke ill feeling and jealousies at a time of recession when a lot of people are suffering, and all those things. I think I understand it.
Mrs Marland: I am not jealous, I am just defending the public purse which supports you.
The Chair: Mrs Marland has kindly given her next block of time to me, and I just want to ask a couple of questions about my own biases in this respect. I tend to be more of a fan -- I will publicly admit it -- of PBS than TVO. From my perspective, anyway, in terms of competition for people's attention, it seems to be able to grab my attention and the attention of my family much more readily than TVO can. Of course, one of my interests is in the political side of things and I find PBS offering a considerable number of politically oriented programs.
Mr Ostry: That is true.
The Chair: One of the things that interests me, especially in New York state -- and I found this lacking in constituents in my own riding, coming to the Ontario Legislature and not having any basic understanding of the operations of the Ontario Legislature or its committees. Looking at the PBS channel in Watertown and viewing Inside Albany, which is a weekly show on the happenings within the state Legislature in the state of New York, it seems to me that is an appropriate role that TVO should be playing and has not been playing.
In fact, I believe, and I stand to be corrected, the only thing you do in reference to the Ontario Legislature is rebroadcast question period at midnight, which a lot of people now complain about. They cannot stay up to watch it at that late point in the evening. I would certainly like to hear your views in respect to why you do not see that as a responsibility in terms of your education mandate, to make sure that the citizens of this province are more well informed about the folks making decisions on their behalf.
Mr Ostry: But I do not disagree with you at all, Mr Chairman. I do not. I think we should.
The Chair: You have been there six years. I am not throwing this again at you as chairperson, but it is certainly a responsibility of the whole board.
Mr Ostry: I think I can try to answer that. I do not know whether it will satisfy you. If you want to go back six years, when I came in six years ago, with the minister and the Premier talking about crises and huge problems, the fact of the matter is the place had not been doing any new programming for ages. It had been receiving a tiny increase, a base grant, that did not cover anything at all, and it was projecting a deficit of $7 million on a base income of around $30 million or something. So the resources were not there for anything.
When we began covering the Legislature in question period and I came to government ministers, I did not like the idea of covering question period without contextualizing what people would see during the day, or even if it was rebroadcast at night for those who would stay up. It has just taken longer than it should to get into some of these kinds of programs you are talking about. We have done possibly more on la chaîne, but also we did a series on provincial and municipal governments on the English side as well, as a series, not as what you are talking about, which is a weekly program on that. I do not disagree with you. Maybe my successor will move more speedily on that than I have.
The Chair: Talking about la chaîne, what were the origins of that network? Were they basically political in nature? Did this originate within the board of TVO or was it within the inner ranks of government? Just how did it develop?
Mr Ostry: I can tell you what I know. I was not in the cabinet room when the decisions were taken in Ottawa and Toronto. The extension of the French service from the 17% that it had begun with from the start to a full-blown network was at the time I was the deputy of Culture and Communications. It was the first priority of the board at the time. There are no board members who were there at the time, but Mr Mills might remember. But I remember the chairman at the time telling of that; it stuck in my mind.
When Mr Marcel Masse was appointed the minister at Department of Communications and came to pay his first visit to the provincial minister, who I believe was Susan Fish, he wanted to have a press conference. Nobody had discussed what the subject matter was going to be, and the people from the press here would understand that, being a public servant, I am not big on ministers going into press conferences. I have nothing to say to these people, and we had a meeting on what they were going to say. There were four of us in the room, the two ministers and his deputy and myself, and it was agreed that one thing that they had agreed on was that there should be an expansion of the service of TVO in French and that they would take to their respective cabinets a request to do that on an experimental basis. That was the beginning of the process.
They did that. It was agreed at both jurisdictions after a few weeks. Announcements were made based on some numbers that TVO produced at the time, which were in the circumstances, as it turned out, really not adequate to run a full network. To my knowledge, that is how it occurred. You can decide whether that was political or cultural.
The Chair: What percentage of your budget goes to la chaîne?
Mr Ostry: We do not divide the budget that way because it is an integrated service and there are common services that are shared, but I would say about a third, about 30%, 35%.
The Chair: Are you happy with that?
Mr Ostry: What I am not happy with was the amount of money going to both networks. I think the amount should be increased for both.
The Chair: In some respects, that is a political answer. I guess I am talking about the audience you are trying to appeal to, with the French-language network consuming one third of your budget. I am wondering if you as the chairman are happy with that. You obviously had this decision delivered to you in respect to the establishment of this network, and now you are suggesting that one third of your budget is going towards this operation. It seems a little lopsided from my perspective.
Mr Ostry: It is steep in a sense, but the feds pulled out of the experiment and in a sense that increased the percentage that had to be found to accommodate it. Again, if you like, this is political, but it seems to me that we in this country, and Ontario has always been a strong supporter of the view that public services are for everybody; just as we might spend -- I do not know; we have not measured it proportionately in terms of time and resources -- on natives or on people in wheelchairs or hard of hearing, we agree that in terms of public service we should try to deliver the service fairly to as many people as we can, regardless of their background or incomes.
The Chair: I guess I would argue there is a responsibility on your shoulders as well to ensure that in a time of scarcity of public dollars those services are delivered.
Mr Ostry: That is a difficult issue, but the board has discussed it.
The Chair: Yes. Thank you very much. We are going to break for lunch right now and reconvene at 2 o'clock.
The committee recessed at 1223.
AFTERNOON SITTING
The committee resumed at 1402.
The Chair: I am going to call the meeting to order. Going in the caucus rotation, the next questioners will be from the government caucus.
Mr Frankford: You have a maximum of 13 members on the board?
Mr Ostry: Yes.
Mr Frankford: But right now you only have eight?
Mr Ostry: That is correct.
Mr Frankford: Looking at the background of the members, you have, I think, at least two lawyers.
Mr Ostry: Yes.
Mr Frankford: Can you give any other indication of the general background of the members?
Mr Ostry: One of the lawyers is sitting on my right, but I think it is important to say that he is probably one of the most important entertainment lawyers in North America, and therefore the expertise he brings to the board that relates to the kinds of contracts and partnerships and rights issues and the like is very important. The other lawyer, Norm Forest from Sudbury, for years was chairman of the board of the university there and active in his community and has a higher education side, apart from the fact that professionally he is also a lawyer. The vice-chairman, Erica Cherney from Peterborough, has also had a long experience in relationship with Trent University, apart from being associated with small business. Suzanne Rochon-Burnett is in the broadcasting business in St Catharines with a radio station there. Mr Bradley would know; maybe others.
We have lost a first-rate schoolteacher-principal from the Toronto region who needs to be replaced. We have lost a representative from Kapuskasing, from the separate school board, who again brought a very important dimension to the discussions around the table. We have lost a member from Thunder Bay who was very active in her community.
It is a small board. We need not only regional and ethnic and expertise representatives; we need people who can also help us with what I was talking about earlier, the new or the changed opportunities that present themselves, in order to encourage the government and the Legislature to support new activities in the field of education, particularly as they relate to skills training, to distance education and to a number of the areas in education where politicians have been very vociferous in calling for changes.
Mr Frankford: How long have you had those vacancies?
Mr Ostry: One vacancy is nearly 12 months old. I raised this with the new government shortly after it formed the government. It has not been filled. The other four completed their terms at the end of June.
Mr Frankford: I see from the list of people's appointments here that it seems everyone is in his or her second term.
Mr Ostry: Yes, everyone left is in his or her second term.
Mr Frankford: That suggests you really should get some new people to learn what it is all about.
Mr Ostry: I hope so. That is not in my authority. These are government order-in-council appointments. There has been a new system instituted. I cannot comment on how it is working. We are looking forward to the appointments, I can tell you that. It is hard on the others.
Mrs MacKinnon: I was wondering if you could describe to me a bit, or to the rest of us, employee morale at TVOntario, please.
Mr Ostry: I would say that at the moment it cannot be very high, because of the atmosphere that has been created by the kinds of discussions we had earlier this morning. Morale, to the degree that I can recall from my knowledge of the people who run human resources and from my own personal experience, has been very high for the past two or three years. When I came in, the difficulties of deficits I described earlier made it difficult to do programs and to add new things. Television is an industry where the programming is central to it, where these people have to be actively doing new things for the audiences or it begins to atrophy. When there was a long period of not very much activity in that respect, morale was low, but it picked up, and by 1987 and 1988 it was very high.
Mrs MacKinnon: How far have you managed to advance in regard to pay equity?
Mr Ostry: Not as far as we would like, but I would like somebody to speak to that. We have taken a number of steps on our own before and now, with the new legislation. I think to get the details of it we need somebody to explain exactly.
Mr Bowers: We have posted a pay equity system for our non-union staff. That happened back in January of last year. We are still negotiating a pay equity system with our union staff, with NABET. I think we made a breakthrough in the recent past when we agreed on a questionnaire and a classification to use, so I think we are going to be able to proceed fairly quickly. But we had a long, difficult negotiation with our union to agree on a questionnaire and a classification system. We have only made some progress just recently.
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Mr B. Ward: Is most of the production in Toronto or is it diversified throughout Ontario?
Mr Ostry: There is production we do in-house, which is clearly done in Toronto. There is production which we share with independent producers, some of whom are in Toronto but also in outlying areas. There is production we share with other national or international organizations. I do not know if Don wants to add anything, if you are looking for percentages or that sort of thing.
Mr B. Ward: Perhaps you could just enlighten the committee on how much would be done in Toronto and how much would be --
Mr Duprey: By definition, most of the creative resources are in the Toronto area and some in the Ottawa area, so we take advantage, whether it is in the independent sector or in the freelance sector, of the talent where it is available. As Mr Ostry has said, we produce in and around the province with our own crews to reflect as much of the province as possible on our airwaves. We increasingly work with the independent production sector. Over 25% of our resources go to independent production companies, whether as licences, commissions or co-production arrangements. These companies are located in large measure here, because that is where the concentration is, but we favour companies wherever they may be located. We are working with companies in Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Ottawa and various parts of the province.
Mr B. Ward: Provided they have the facilities to complete the necessary work.
Mr Duprey: That is always the difficulty, their access to technical resources.
Mr B. Ward: Is there any more time left?
The Chair: You have a minute.
Mr Ostry: It may be a little different in the French service, if you are interested in that. Otherwise you can move to your question.
Mr B. Ward: Looking at the programming, since your term of office, since you took over, on a global budget -- you have a general operating budget -- has the percentage spent on programming increased, decreased or remained about the same?
Mr Ostry: It has increased.
Mr Bowers: Perhaps it would be useful to add something supplementary. Mr Galloway and myself were commissioned by the board during the previous administration to bring to the Premier of the time an initiative in science, which resulted in something like a $10-million additional input that went directly into original programming.
At the time I joined the board in 1986 and Mr Ostry came on, there was a clear decline in the amount of original programming TVO had to do. The government of the day was invited to decide whether it in effect wanted to have two or three people sitting in Europe buying the best programming in the world and have nothing that spoke to the people of Ontario, or in the alternative whether they wanted to make a commitment to an educational broadcaster that not only acquired the best programming available in the marketplace, but also created original programming both for the people of Ontario and for export. It had been the initiative of the government at the time to go to the latter. As a result, particularly in the science area, there has been a great increase in new and original programming, both on its own and in co- operation, particularly with the Japanese but with others as well.
Mr B. Ward: What is the Canadian content of the new programming, the percentage?
Mr Ostry: It will be 70% this year.
Mr B. Ward: About 70%, ballpark figure?
Mr Ostry: In the English. It is slightly less in the --
Mr B. Ward: French.
Mr Ostry: Yes, 63%.
Mr McGuinty: With regard to this issue of the same person holding the offices of chief executive officer and chairman, I think you indicated earlier that you see that as something that is in the best interests of TVO.
Mr Ostry: I do.
Mr McGuinty: Can you elaborate on that a bit? I think some people might level the criticism that there is a potential for conflict there of the policy and operations.
Mr Ostry: I think there is greater potential for conflict when you separate them, because you create two paths on subjects that are intimately connected: policy and operations. I do not think it is an accident that in Canada 80% of the corporations have those positions joined. In the United States it is over 50%. Again, I am really only familiar, on the public side of broadcasting, with the CBC experience, the BBC and NHK. The general consensus is that it works better joined.
Mr McGuinty: Moving on to another matter, then --
Mr Ostry: Could I just add one thing? I am thinking of Mrs Marland's references to costs and concern for Ontario taxpayers. If you split the positions you will add to the cost. I do not know how much you will add. It depends on what packages you or the board decide to honour with respect to the employees, but it will go up; it will not go down.
Mrs Marland: Another car and chauffeur, you mean.
Mr Ostry: Probably. That certainly would happen in the CBC.
Mr McGuinty: If you had to make a rough estimate, how much of your time do you think you could categorize is being spent in your capacity as CEO and how much as chair?
Mr Ostry: You see, that is why I say it is difficult to separate. In fact, I do not chair our board meetings; they are chaired in our system by the vice-chair so that there can be more questions about the operations if that is a problem, rather than trying to deal with policy. But boards tend to deal with policy issues, not with operational issues.
It would be very difficult for me to say how much time I devote in one day to being a CEO or a chairman. When the jobs are combined, your mental attitude to it is to deal with the problems. Some of those problems relate to how you deliver the goals that relate to the policies. So the "how," if you like, is a CEO position but the policies themselves are the chair's. They are just married. They are inseparable in our system. They are Siamese twins.
Mr McGuinty: The former minister of Culture and Communications, Rosario Marchese, had contemplated splitting the positions. Had he consulted you in that connection?
Mr Ostry: No. I knew the minister had the proposal before him. I did not know he had actually accepted it, though I knew he was considering it. But he never discussed it with me. I did send him a document, the only document I know that actually deals with the subject, which was written a year or so ago by the then president of the CBC, because the subject came up in Ottawa about the split. It is the only analysis I know actually based on information collected from the corporate world; an interesting paper.
Mr McGuinty: For 1991-92, your submission requested a base grant of $68.3 million but you ended up getting only $62 million, as I understand it. What effect will that have on TVO generally, and specifically will we be seeing more reruns, repeats of old shows?
Mr Ostry: When the base grant fails to meet inflation and you have added to it what I will call "taxes" that relate, some to the issues of equity -- I do not know if we were able to get any extra money for equity. There are two or three areas on top of that which were not included in our original submission.
That loss of a few million dollars will affect the whole institution. When you budget you take the $63 million and divide it and try and sort out in the process, given your priorities and goals, how you can diminish the impact of the shortfall on each one of the items.
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Mr McGuinty: Can you tell me what percentage of programming hours are produced by TVO and what percentage are acquired from other producers?
Mr Ostry: It varies between the networks.
Mr Duprey: What percentage is produced and what percentage is acquired?
Mr McGuinty: Yes.
Mr Duprey: For the first time, this year it is about 50-50 in terms of what we term production, commission, co-production, which were about 520 hours versus abut 535 hours of acquisitions. Historically it has been much higher and I think as Mr Levine alluded, there has been a serious attempt to enhance what we make and what we originate. For the first time there is a better balance. It is half and half.
Mr Ostry: On the French side, it is different.
Mr Bensimon: On the French side, production is higher, about half of it co-produced, commissioned or dealt with on a pre- buying basis.
Mr Ostry: Does that language make sense? I mean pre-buys and the rest.
Mr McGuinty: Yes. If you have to make a choice between funding acquisitions and productions, which way do you go?
Mr Ostry: I wish the choice were that simple. We literally cannot buy the programming we want to develop to respond to the Ministry of Education's Ontario schools curriculum requirements. With the advice of teachers across the province in various committees, we design the programs for those.
We can do programs that are not very costly: the kind of program the chairman suggested earlier that is done in New York; the programs we do on the arts side on books, or WorkWeek where it is a matter of having a few people in the studio and the chair there to deal with a subject matter, as in public affairs.
Where the costs are enormous is in programs and series that are either drama, music, the plastic arts, dance or theatre. There the costs are so enormous -- we are talking millions of dollars for a series -- that you must go into the market to see whether there are programs or series in the world market that would legitimately fit into an educational or lifelong learning schedule.
Mrs Marland: I just want to place something on the record. This morning Mr Ostry referred to the fact that I had eaten at TVO, and I wanted to confirm for those people who might be curious that there were perhaps other members of this committee who joined me with other MPPs last fall for the campaign to raise funds for TVO, at which time we were fed in one of the rooms with food which I understand was donated.
Mr Ostry, I would like to ask you, did you recently, or did TVO to your knowledge recently spend money at the Westbury Hotel for a meeting of senior executives?
Mr Ostry: I have no idea.
Mrs Marland: Do you have meetings in hotels in Toronto?
Mr Ostry: My impression is we do not.
Mrs Rochon-Burnett: We had an advisory council meeting at a hotel. We stayed at the Westbury.
Mrs Marland: I cannot hear you.
Mr Ostry: She was saying that there was an advisory council meeting -- that is, of the volunteers -- at the Westbury Hotel.
Mrs Marland: At the Westbury Hotel?
Mrs Rochon-Burnett: Yes. That would be a few months ago. All meetings were held at TVOntario, but they were put --
Mr Ostry: You mean people from the council slept there?
Mrs Rochon-Burnett: That is right.
Mr Ostry: They did not meet there.
Mrs Marland: So you used the facilities of TVO for your meetings.
Mrs Rochon-Burnett: The people come from all over the province for those meetings, so of course we have to put them up because they come for a two-day meeting -- three days sometimes -- but the meetings were held at TVO.
Mrs Marland: You are aware that I asked about this 20th anniversary book in the Legislature and I received a letter from your Mr Mayot. Mr Ostry, can you defend spending $25 a copy on this book, which has an extremely expensive format, to celebrate the 20th anniversary? I understand you printed 5,000 copies. It has to be the most expensive format this kind of report can have in terms of art, photography, very expensive paper, etc. You are asking the public to support TV Ontario and you spend $25 a copy for this élite book. Can you defend that? Do you think that is good judgement on your part?
Mr Ostry: I can explain it. If you ask me whether I would spend $25 a copy, I would not, but that is not exactly how the thing occurred.
Mrs Marland: That is what his letter told me.
Mr Ostry: It ought to explain that in fact we had a sponsor, a supporter who backed out after the thing was well under way. Is that not what the letter says? It was a question of making a judgement at that point whether you stop the investment you have already made in it, which is advanced, or whether you continue it. I agree with you that it is unfortunate. One would not plan to spend money.
Mrs Marland: Did TVO pay to have the chairman of NHK, the Japanese television station with which you have an agreement -- it is my understanding he was flown to Cleveland for a baseball game at the time he was over here signing the agreement with TVOntario. Do you know who paid for him to go to Cleveland to see the baseball game?
Mr Ostry: We paid.
Mrs Marland: TVOntario paid?
Mr Ostry: Yes, we did.
Mrs Marland: How much would you have paid to send the chairman of the Japanese television station to Cleveland to see a baseball game?
Mr Ostry: We paid $2,100.
Mrs Marland: You paid $2,100. Why in heaven's name would TVO spend public funds on such a junket?
Mr Levine: I would like to respond by putting this in context. I am a professional in the entertainment business. I have acted for executives of every television network in the country and have put together, among other things, the Terry Fox Story, Anne of Green Gables and the Struggle for Democracy. I can tell you that television in 1991 costs approximately $1 million per hour to produce; that is, dramatic television. This is a worldwide phenomenon that you can check with any network in the world: about $500,000 a half-hour. Prime documentary programming costs $500,000 to $600,000 an hour to produce -- for example, Struggle for Democracy. We are talking about relationships which could yield to TVO several hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
The question of whether judgements are sound or not, whether a baseball game in Cleveland or a dinner at the Westbury is an appropriate expense, I think has to be judged against the context of what the upside is for the public purse of finding partners. For example, in the Struggle For Democracy, I personally spent four round-trip tickets to England to get to Central Productions. When they invested $1 million, I thought that $10,000 or $15,000 was well spent. It is in that context that we, as a board, have been aware of certain budgetary considerations and have supported the executives at TVO in their judgement. We do understand that, in retrospect, certain judgements may have been ill-founded, but I think it is very important for the committee to appreciate what costs are in this business. It is unlike other businesses.
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Mrs Marland: You are absolutely right. It is unlike other businesses, but I would suggest to you, Mr Ostry, as chairman, that this is not compared to any other network in the world. We are dealing with a publicly funded television service here that uses not only taxpayers' money allocated by the government; it is also, as we talked about this morning, by public subscription. I am one of the MPPs from this Legislature who has been on television begging for public funds to support this programming, and you are spending $2,100 on a junket for a Japanese television network chairperson to see a baseball game in Cleveland. I think that is indefensible. I think the argument about the world scene and the world competition -- certainly I can see the necessity to have him here in Toronto, and even probably pay for his expenses in Toronto, but to fly him down to Cleveland for a baseball game is, I think, unbelievable at best.
You answered that question and I am more shocked. I had hoped the answer would be in the negative. I had hoped that the information was incorrect, that the incident did not take place.
I would also like to get more to the meat of TVOntario than this, in my opinion, rather flagrant disregard for the use of public funds, such as the things we have already talked about. But I want to get to the heart of TVOntario. I want to know whether it is true that you took, and when I say "you" I am talking about the people responsible for the operations of TVOntario, an amount in excess of $500,000 was taken out of the programming budget last year and used some for some of the expense of the renovations and the 44% increase in the chairman's budget. Where did that money come from? In fact, was money used out of the programming budget?
Mr Bowers: In the study your research people did for you, you will see that the programming budget in 1989-90 was $44.4 million, out of a total of $79.9 million, so that is something over 50%. I do not have the exact calculation. You can see that back in 1986-87, the programming budget was $30 million out of a total of $59 million, something just under 50%. So the amount of money we have been devoting to programming has been going up. The other point I would make is that many of the renovations we have done were done for the benefit of programming. Many of the increases in the research area were done for the benefit of programming. We do research for the benefit of programming. In addition to the moneys that we spend directly on programming, which are increasing, other moneys and other increases which you have commented on have been done for the benefit of programming.
Mrs Marland: I am sorry; you have not answered the question. I understand very well that the money spent on programming has increased. The money that TVOntario has received has also increased over the years by the same table to which you refer. Also, on the same table that you are using, I noticed that in 1988/1989 the administration was $7.3 million, and the following year it went up $1.1 million to $8.4 million. I have not actually worked out those percentages, but I would suggest to you that it is very questionable why the administration would be up $1.1 million in one year, which I would very quickly guess is probably an 18% or 19% increase. But the question still stands, was money taken out of the programming account last year to go towards the cost of renovations, or any other area of expenditure in TVO? I know that your budget is submitted to the ministry and I know that when the ministry approved it, the money for those renovations was not in last year's budget presentation. So where did that money come from?
Mr Bowers: There is no such thing as money that belongs to anybody at TVO. Every year we do a budget, and we attempt to fund all our activities based on their priorities as we try to assign them, and we identify certain activities. It is impossible for me to answer your question because the money comes from the general revenue that TVO receives on an annual basis.
Mr Waters: I have a couple of questions. In your opening remarks you said that 75% of the teachers use educational videos. What percentage of that do you people actually create for them, or were you referring to what you did?
Mr Ostry: I am not sure we have those figures. I believe the 75% was of all videos, but the largest proportion of that is ours.
Mr Waters: It is created by you?
Mr Ostry: Yes. We can let you have the actual studies and the surveys without any difficulty.
Ms Kuplowska: It is just a little lower than that which would be created by us, because in our questionnaires to teachers, we are asking them what percentage they are using for educational programming in general, and TVOntario. Sometimes some teachers do not often -- they will respond to one and to the other, but the TVOntario programming you are looking at is about just under 75%.
Mr Waters: What would it cost to create one of those, an educational video of the quality that we could use in a school system, on average? Just a guesstimate; I do not need exact figures.
Mr Duprey: It varies, but it is $150,000 to $200,000 for 15- or 20-minute programs. They are very expensive because they require a considerable amount of ascertainment and research and evaluation. We have achieved a level of success with our programming, in particular in schools, because of the kind of dedication we have had to the research and to the formative development of those programs.
Mr Ostry: I think it is useful to recognize that the reason TVO's videos, and the school side of the curriculum, are as successful as they are, and distinguished from other material in the international market, is that as Don and Olga were explaining we tend to spend the money on research and advice and testing with teachers and students before we make the pictures, which as was said costs $100,000. But we have invested quite a lot of money, time, energy, and people to make sure the picture that is going to be produced is the picture the teacher wants to use in the classroom, and that the pupil will respond to. They are then monitored after that, and tested, so that if changes should be made in it they will be made, to make it even more successful. That is where a lot of the money goes.
Mr Waters: In the distribution of these, do you manage to recoup your costs, or do you actually make money?
Mr Ostry: We do not make money on it. The school systems, as we all know, are short of money. We have tried to move the sale of videos through the school boards at a higher price every year, but we have not had full recovery yet. We are trying to move towards that, full cost recovery. We have also tried to arrange with the largest number of libraries we possibly can within the province, so that these are available in the libraries for teachers and pupils to use.
Mr Waters: Is there much of a market for that product outside Ontario? In other words, do you sell it to the Manitoba board or to some boards in the United States?
Mr Ostry: We market this material in Canada through our sister institutions in Alberta and BC. The return on them is not that great. It is not subsidization, but there are standard market prices for these. It is not a huge market, the school systems everywhere, including the United States, where we dominate that market as a foreign distributor. Though we dominate the market, we make only about -- $4 million? I do not know what the number is.
Interjection: It is $4.5 million.
Mr Ostry: It is $4.5 million in that market as the biggest supplier of foreign product in the system.
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Mr Waters: In our background paper that was prepared for us, there was one area of comment about TVOntario and the north. The last paragraph interested me. It said: "Four out of nine boards reviewed in northern Ontario, according to the study, respondents in the northern boards were vocal in requesting a greater role in TVOntario's program development. They felt that TVOntario's programs tended to be designed by and for the people in large urban centres." I would appreciate your comments on this, because although not coming from the extreme north, I do come from north-central Ontario.
Mr Ostry: I think we have a reputation of trying to be as responsive as we can to the north. We in fact took the initiative in distance education in pulling institutions together so that we could do more in this area. We have been the key instrument of television extension in Northern Ontario programs. I think you must be familiar with all of that. Olga will tell you more precisely about what you asked, and Lawrence Martin from the far north and the Wawatay Native Communications Society could add to that.
Ms Kuplowksa: I am not exactly sure which study you are quoting, but certainly we spent a lot of time testing and getting information and feedback from teachers across the whole province. I have just been given the reference. In this case, now that I know from which point it is, it probably is an expression that teachers would like to have even more input and more participation. But certainly we can show and present the various studies that are carried out throughout the province during different stages of the development of our school programs, either ascertaining teachers' needs and determining the difficulties they are having in teaching different subject matter, and once the programs have been produced, monitoring exactly how they are being used, and also testing with students themselves.
Mr Waters: Do you ever take your professional people to the area?
Ms Kuplowska: Definitely.
Mr Waters: Unlike some members of the panel, I think it is quite healthy to travel around the province to get a different feeling of what the needs are of the individual groups. I know there is a cost related to it, but I think it is a well-served cost.
Ms Kuplowska: Definitely, depending on the budgets we have, we do travel. When we cannot travel, we certainly are in person-to-person contact. So it is not a question of sending out questionnaires. It is a question of interviewing the teacher on the phone. So, in fact, over the course of a year, we will have interviewed, in French or in English, over 2,000 people. So that is just to give you some sense. This is, of course, all within very controlled budgets. But no, we definitely travel around the province.
Mr Waters: It was just that I found this to be a bit of a disturbing statement. I think I want to make sure.
Ms Kuplowska: I think we may have taken it out of context, but basically you will get that range of comments. I think, if anything, we are interpreting it as an interest on the part of teachers to continue inputting.
Mr Martin: If I could just comment on that, I think you have to realize when you are talking about the north and what is available in the northern communities, it is not like the northern Muskoka area.
Mr Waters: No, no, that is what I mean.
Mr Martin: So TVOntario, being the only channel in many of the northern communities -- TVO pays a real big, significant part in the education material for those schools. Of course, you are going to get all kinds of comment from the teachers at those places, because that is all that they have access to, other than the stuff that the Ministry of Education -- maybe just to keep that in mind.
Mr Waters: Okay. I just wanted you to alleviate my concern over the last page. If I could, I would like one last question. Also in our research data, we had a series of tables. Table 3 -- and I do not know where this comes out of what you have given us -- says: "1990-91 unaudited: total revenue, $91.4 million; total expenditures, $91.6 million." That leaves $0.2 million. Where do you recoup it and how do you go about that? It is the first time, by the way, that I see that. I know we have press and that in here. Every other time, your expenditures have not been as great as your revenue.
Interjection: There was 1986-87.
Mr Waters: Oh, no. In 1986-87 you were in the same position.
Mrs Marland: Where are you, Dan?
Mr Waters: I am on page 8, table 3. I was just wondering if you could explain where this money is going to come from, and if it does come from general revenues of the government, how you justify --
Mr Bowers: We are running a surplus this year, and we have run a surplus every year since 1986-87. The reason for the discrepancy is that we operate on an accrual basis rather than a cash basis and each year there is a carryover of deferred funds for projects that are not completed. As it has happened in this particular year, it would appear as though we are spending more than we are receiving, but the reality is that there are deferrals into the next year and there were deferrals from the previous year into this year, so there was additional money coming into the year to cover the apparent increased expenditure.
Mr Waters: I should --
Mr Ostry: We are not coming back tomorrow morning.
Mr Waters: Okay. Going on the same lines -- because down the road, who knows? -- what did you do in 1986-87, because the same thing happened, only it has been audited and you did spend more than what you brought in. How did you get the difference in money? Or could you tell me?
Mr Bowers: Unfortunately, I was not here at that particular time. I believe we funded that deficit out of the budget. We reduced the budget in the following year. That was the first year, I think, that Mr Ostry came on board, and as you mentioned, we were faced with a severe potential deficit. By cutting down, we were able to eliminate the deficit coming into the year and we have operated in a surplus position ever since.
Mr Ostry: We can get the details for you, but I can assure you we did not have a deficit, because one of the first things we have done was a resolution passed by the board that we could not function with a deficit.
Mr Waters: My concern was strictly that if you were in a deficit position, did we as the government automatically have to pick this up --
Mr Bowers: No.
Mr Waters: -- or was it something that would be transferred into the next year's budget and be allowed for?
Mr Bradley: I would like to pursue for a moment the entertainment of the guest from Japan, the sum of money which was mentioned. Was it $2,500 for the flight to Cleveland?
Mr Ostry: No, $2,100.
Mr Bradley: So $2,100, sorry. Could one not draw the conclusion, if we have watched activities that have taken place within the Japanese government in recent years, the number of people who have resigned for various reasons, the change in leadership and so on, could we not define what was provided as a bribe?
Mr Ostry: I could not, but I do not know what any number of other people might. Mr Shima came here to sign a treaty with us that had been negotiated the over previous year or so. He was an invited guest. He happens to have been somebody well known in the United States as a baseball fan, he was an invited guest of the Cleveland baseball team, and the issue came up to us as to, how does he get there? Since he was our guest, we agreed to make that possible. But I do not personally believe that treating guests in that way is somehow a matter in which we assume they are being bribed. I believe, and I think you would know from the movement of government people and politicians around the world, that very often foreign countries make arrangements, and they are generous arrangements sometimes, to satisfy the convenience of individuals who are visitors and guests. But we had no reason to bribe him. The money was not going to him; it was going to an airline.
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Mr Bradley: The reason I ask is that governments and agencies of government have to deal with what are perhaps different practices in different countries, and that may have been an instance, but when you are dealing with other countries, do you engage in practices which are effective in those countries? We in this country assume, for a contract or something of that nature, that we hope no one has to be bribed. We recognize it has probably happened in the history of this country over the years, but it generally is not considered to be a practice in this country that bribes are necessary. However, we do watch when people have to deal with certain other countries. I am told by people who deal with those countries that unless palms are greased or something, you do not get anywhere, that it is an accepted practice. The United States government, as you know, has gone through this problem. There have been some problems with the United States Congress questioning some of the activities related to the United States government and other governments and how they get things through in certain other countries. Do you feel obligated to do this in any specific case?
Mr Ostry: To bribe?
Mr Bradley: To make officials feel as though they should be doing business with you by providing any favours to such officials. Is that ever engaged in by TVO?
Mr Ostry: Not to my knowledge. I would hope not. We do not profit, in that sense, from anything we would do that way. I mean, individuals do not. We have dealt for years and years with the BBC and PBS and others. We tend to deal with public institutions. NHK is a public institution. I may be wrong; it may be that the public institution and the commercial side are different, but I am not aware that in what I am talking about there are examples of bribery. There may be that I am not aware of.
Mr Bradley: I am putting this in the context more of a dilemma that you as an Authority might face, as opposed to looking at anybody who is going to profit personally or anything, when you have to deal with other countries and deal with other organizations outside of this country, if you face that dilemma at all, because some agencies obviously do. We read about these things taking place dealing with certain countries and I am wondering if you are confronted with this. It appears as though this is not the case with the kind of people you deal with, but certainly it has been the case with either the private organizations or government organizations dealing with other countries.
Mr Ostry: I cannot say that I am aware of that at all. In this case, for example, we would deal with the protocol office of the government. The signing was in the Lieutenant Governor's. There were officials present. The whole itinerary of the president was known to the ministry. There was no kind of underhand or -- somebody bought a ticket to put him on a plane with one or two of his people.
Mr Bradley: Another area I would like to look at is the area of the transfer of funds from one activity to another. I am trying to recall whether your agency would be subject to Management Board approval in transferring money. I think it was suggested that money was transferred from programming to administration. If that were the case, would you require the specific approval of the Management Board of Cabinet to do so? I know ministries do; I do not know whether your agency would.
Mr Ostry: No, I do not think so. We are schedule 3, I think, and as the chief operating officer was explaining to Mrs Marland, we make the budget. The estimates or the request for base funding are not totally earmarked in every respect. Am I providing the accurate information? I do not want to give you misinformation about things I may not be perfectly knowledgeable about, but I think that is the case, so it would not go back.
Mr Bradley: The third area I would like to explore, which would be a bit of a personal interest of members of this committee, and the chairman I think alluded to it in his questioning or remarks, was the moving of the question period of the Ontario Legislature, a much-loved program in years gone by, I am sure, in the provincial constituency of St Catharines, to 12 o'clock midnight, when many people are fast asleep.
Mr Ostry: More are watching. It is a growing audience.
Mr Bradley: If they do not have a VCR, it is a problem. I used to feel that perhaps 3 o'clock in the morning would have been a good time to show it at one time. Now, of course, I think 10 o'clock may be more appropriate. But seriously, for the sake of the committee here, because I did receive a reply to a letter from you, why would you move that to midnight, when it seems to be less accessible to more people than when it used to be shown at 11 or 11:30?
Mr Ostry: I think it is important for the English programming service to describe to you scheduling problems, because they are very severe.
Mr Duprey: Yes. As we try to produce more programming and make more programming about Ontario for Ontarians available, we are constrained by the programming hours we have at our disposal. As the chairman has alluded to, what we are working to do is to see if we can provide a weekly analysis of what is taking place in the House which would give some form and some structure to it, as opposed to just the gavel-to-gavel. We would continue to provide that at that hour, but we could, with a half-hour at a better-placed time, provide some synthesis. That is very much in our programming priorities and we are exploring that now.
You may know we had Canvass Ontario, where we were following the legislative committee on the Constitution, and we felt that worked quite successfully. It kind of introduced us to working with the Legislative Assembly channel people, so we are trying to move in that direction.
Mr Bradley: That was well done, by the way. That production was well done.
Mr Duprey: We are aware that there are on the legislative channel some other repeats of question period as well, and we appreciate that it is somewhat awkward, but we are just pressed in terms of available program hours. It is an hour an evening, and we are trying to amortize our own programming as well by doing some judicious repeating at a later hour to reach as many people with the programs that we are producing ourselves. So we are trying to satisfy all the interests.
Mrs Marland: Mr Ostry, you said a few minutes ago that it was the kinds of questions that were asked this morning that demoralize the staff at TVOntario. I would suggest to you that it is the kind of information those questions are generating that will demoralize the staff at TVOntario.
Could you tell us when this infamous trip to the Cleveland baseball game was for the Japanese television chairman?
Mr Ostry: I cannot give you the date, but I can give you the --
Mrs Marland: Can somebody tell me when it was?
Mrs MacKinnon: May of 1990.
Mrs Marland: I do not want the answers from the committee.
Mr Hayes: Do you want the answer or not?
Mrs Marland: I would like the answer from the person who said it cost $2,100. That is what they are here for.
Mr Bowers: I do not have that knowledge with me. I recall the figure because I was aware of it. I do not have the information of when the trip took place. I can certainly find out and advise the committee. I just do not have that information at my fingertips.
Mrs Marland: Could you, Mr Ostry -- you have the date?
Mr Ostry: I have a date from someone here who said May, 1990, but I do not have the day in May.
Mrs Marland: If we could have that confirmed, please, the date in 1990?
Mr Ostry: I will be pleased to do that.
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Mrs Marland: Could you explain to us --
Interjection.
Mrs Marland: Ellen, I do not think it is fair to interrupt and take up my time. Mr Ostry, could you explain how a fare to Cleveland gets to $2,100?
Mr Ostry: How?
Mrs Marland: You said this gentleman was a guest of the Cleveland baseball team.
Mr Ostry: No, I said he was invited by us. He was our guest.
Mrs Marland: All right. How is it that it cost $2,100 to Cleveland? I am sure the round-trip fare is not more than $300.
Mr Ostry: I assume that, given his itinerary, it was necessary not to take a commercial flight. That is the only way it could be $2,100. It must have been some little plane that was rented.
Mrs Marland: And you are not concerned about this? In your response to Mr Bradley you said it was just the price of an airline ticket. Now we are learning it was a chartered plane.
Mr Ostry: I did not say anything to Mr Bradley about the price of an airline ticket.
Mrs Marland: We have it on Hansard; we can review it, but not to get pedantic. Are we saying this was a chartered aircraft?
Mr Ostry: I believe so, yes.
Mrs Marland: Who went with him from TVO?
Mr Ostry: I am sorry. We can provide this information. We did not bring all the information from May 1990 on the airplane with us.
Mrs Marland: I would appreciate receiving that, if the committee could have that information.
Mr Ostry: I would be glad to provide it.
Mrs Marland: Mr Ostry, when you fly, do you fly first class?
Mr Ostry: Yes, as long as the distance is beyond an hour.
Mrs Marland: Beyond one hour you fly first class. Who else in TVOntario flies first class?
Mr Ostry: Nobody, to my knowledge.
Mrs Marland: No one. Any other board members?
Mr Ostry: I do not believe so. I do not know.
Mrs Marland: Why do you fly first class?
Mr Ostry: I would have to discuss my own personal physical problems going back to 1970-something.
Mrs Marland: I understand you have a back problem.
Mr Ostry: I had the agreement with Treasury Board at the time and it was agreed, on the basis of the medical evidence, that I should be permitted to do this. When I came to join the provincial government here in 1980, I think it was, I indicated --
Mrs Marland: You brought all those benefits with you?
Mr Ostry: I indicated this was the situation, and that is my explanation.
Mrs Marland: I have a back problem and I fly economy with an Obus Forme.
Mr Ostry, I would like to ask you also whether you could tell us what the cost was for three members of the executive branch, and I understand it is possible that those three members were Howard Krosnick, Bill Roberts and Olga Kuplowska, that they were on a travel trip around the world to get information for you and contacts to do with globalization. Can you tell us about that trip, what it cost and whom it involved? Have people from TVOntario travelled overseas?
Mr Ostry: Certainly. The television business is an international business.
Mrs Marland: I understand that. I am simply trying to find out what TVOntario has been spending money on. Does anybody have the records of those expenses?
Mr Ostry: Oh, yes.
Mrs Marland: Could this committee have them?
Mr Ostry: No problem about that.
Mrs Marland: All right. Could this committee have a breakdown of the expenses of the office of the chief executive officer and the chairman of the board for the past three years?
Mr Mills: You could not have it immediately because it is one of the items, as a result of the questions you and others raised, Mrs Marland, that the Provincial Auditor is looking at. We are constrained from doing anything in relation to those items while his review is pending. We expect it to be completed and released within the next four to six weeks. We are hopeful it will be that soon. Once that happens we are not under the constraint any more.
Mrs Marland: You are saying that the Provincial Auditor has prohibited you from giving information about expenses and operation?
Mr Mills: One of the terms of the review being undertaken by the Provincial Auditor, who happens also to be the auditor for TVOntario in the normal course of events, was that we would not divulge information about the audit or comment on it publicly until the review is completed and released to the public. Fortunately, today nothing has come up which intervened in that, but this is the first issue.
Mrs Marland: Mr Ostry, would you give your commitment to this committee that when the auditor's report has been tabled, you will give us a breakdown of all the expenses associated with your office and your staff?
Mr Mills: We had better understand, Mrs Marland; I thought what you first asked for was the details of the chairman's expense account.
Mrs Marland: Yes, and the staff in his office. When the administration increases by $1.1 million, from $7.3 million to $8.4 million over one year, I think the public needs to know what kinds of personal expenses and entertainment costs --
Mr Mills: You will not find it in the expense accounts.
Mrs Marland: Wherever it can be found, would you provide it to this committee?
Mr Ostry: We will certainly try, yes.
Mrs Marland: In response to my question about this book, you mentioned something -- I would have to read Hansard to find out -- but you made an offhand comment that it was supposed to have been paid for or subsidized by someone.
Mr Ostry: Yes, by a corporation, by a company --
Mrs Marland: I cannot hear your answers, I am sorry.
Mr Ostry: We did a budget that related to the 20th anniversary and it included that publication and a number of activities around the province. Telesat Canada was underwriting a portion of that to the tune of over $200,000, and in the case of the --
Mrs Marland: Well, it only cost $125,000.
Mr Ostry: That is not the only thing we did on the 20th. I am talking about the whole --
Mrs Marland: I am only talking about this.
Mr Ostry: As I said to you earlier, I am saying that if I were starting from scratch and the proposal to publish that out of our budgets were presented to me, I would refuse to do it. But that was not the situation when that occurred. When that occurred we understood there was someone who was going to foot the bill for the publication of that work.
Mrs Marland: That was prior to its being published?
Mr Ostry: That was at the time that it was a proposal.
Mrs Marland: Okay. So how is it that it was published in 1990, and when Mr Mayot wrote to me in January of this year, he did not refer to that at all? He simply told me the cost was $125,000 for 5,000 copies. There is no explanation in his letter to me that talks about the fact that you had not budgeted $25 a copy for this book.
Mr Ostry: That is unfortunate. I do not know if Ross wants to say anything on his own.
Mr Mayot: What we were trying to do was answer the question about what costs were and not spend a lot of time in terms of other information. I think at the same time a letter went to the ministry which followed up and it did identify the fact that when we intended to have this book published, there was very much a firm offer of underwriting the costs of doing it. Unfortunately, that was retracted.
Mrs Marland: Unfortunately, I am not the ministry, and I raised the question so I think I should have had that information. But you are saying you would not do it again.
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Mr Wiseman: I would like to start by saying that of all of the committee members except maybe Mr Bradley -- but he has not been in a classroom recently -- I have probably used your product more than anybody in this room, and I can tell you that my students and I have found it to be very useful and very enlightening. It has contributed to some of the best discussions about politics and history that I have had in my classroom, especially the series the Struggle for Democracy. That was an excellent series, and it came at an excellent time for me because we were studying that in one of the courses I was teaching. Your series Origins; The History of Canada, is another one I have used intermittently. I did not get a chance to use the early parts because when I was teaching high school the history was just the 20th century. The other series that you have been able to bring from Europe, a series by James Burke, has been also exceptional in terms of promoting discussion in the classroom.
I do not know how you measure that in dollars and cents, but I can tell you that in terms of intellectual stimulus, it is very good to have that kind of resource. From everything you have heard this afternoon, I think you need to hear something positive.
Mr Ostry: We are relieved to hear it.
Mr Wiseman: I also have two young children. They are constantly glued to TVOntario, so you are doing something right there as well.
The one question I do have about some costs are the research and development of 1987-88 and 1988-89, when it seems to have been about half of what it was in 1986-87. Was that partially because of the deficit in the year before that? Is that where you made up some of the costs?
Mr Ostry: I guess it was in 1986 when we looked at the projected deficit. It was a year in which we had to decide to cut 50 positions. I think we sorted that out through attrition, but we eliminated 50 positions as a start to reducing the cost, because the fixed costs of our labour are half the costs of our operational budget. Many areas got cut, but one of the areas that got cut was research and development and as soon as we could restore that, we did.
Mr Wiseman: Yes, administration, support and sales, equipment lease, all of these went down from the year before.
Mr Ostry: Mrs Marland is out, but I think we cut everything except programming -- is that right? -- the only part that was not touched, or hardly touched. You see, one of the costs that are in the administrative increase costs that she talks about, moving the $1-something million from $7 million to $8 million, or whatever the numbers were, if you look at the increase of $10 million or $15 million in programming, the increased money into programming creates throughout the whole system additional costs, including administration. The quantity just does that.
Mr Wiseman: The other question I have was sort of brought up with the questioning about the trip to Cleveland. It is within the realm of doing business. Would you say that TVOntario is forced, by its mandate and by what it has to do, to be in the ethos of doing business? Does it have to operate within the same boundaries and parameters that are out there for other businesses for it to survive and do business? Do you understand what I am getting at?
Mr Ostry: You will tell me if I am wrong by my answer, because I think there are really two kinds of answers. TVOntario is affected, just as any commercial network, by technological change. If there is an improvement in quality of pictures, we have to make sure it is that. If there is an increase in the number of programs on cable, that is additional competition for us, just as it is for the operators out there who are looking for an advertising dollar. But we are looking for a viewer. It is fragmenting the market, in that sense.
Where it is different is in the programming, and there we tend to deal with other public broadcasters who are, apart from the competition in the environment that I described in a limited way, dealing with a different kind of product. The problem there is that the cost of making that product in the past was much lower than it is now. The explosion in western Europe and the increased cableization in the United States have created a demand in the market for that upscale quality product which public broadcasters before used to have to ourselves. So the competition for product and people's attention is far greater, and we are affected by that just as commercial stations are. As I say, I do not know if that answers your question.
Mr Wiseman: It filled in the blanks okay. Another question: Do you get any corporate sponsorship?
Mr Ostry: Yes. You talked about Origins, the English and French history series.
Mr Wiseman: That was a Petro-Canada series.
Mr Ostry: No, it was CPR. It occurred just when I arrived or just shortly after. They put up something on the order of $600,000 or $700,000 for that series. It did not pay for the whole thing, but it was a major contribution to our being able to do that in two languages with the quality it had. It has a shelf life of years and has been a superbly successful series.
Mr Wiseman: I would agree with that. Is your corporate sponsorship down at this time?
Mr Ostry: It is up. It has never been very great. There is not the same -- you talked about ethos -- business attitude in Canada to the public sector as you have in the United States where there are many more foundations and corporations quite happy to put up money for PBS, given the national audiences it is able to put together in its system through affiliates, than we can command, confined to Ontario in that sense.
If you went to a McDonalds or to Petro-Can, they would say: "But we're a national organization. If we're going to underwrite something, we want the thing to be seen across the country." We cannot guarantee that. Sometimes the programs are bought by our sister institutions; sometimes they are not.
Mr Wiseman: This satellite agreement with the Japanese firm: how successful has that been? Have you had a chance to do any evaluations of that?
Mr Ostry: It is not a satellite agreement. The treaty with the Japanese is to expand the process we started many years ago with two or three producers who were interested in science and environmental programming. They built personal partnerships, and the moneys we were putting in together were fairly equal. But as the relationship grew, they established something called Scienceview, which brought in many other countries of the world, so that the partnership expanded and the quality of the programming, because of the influx of more partners financially, both in the making and the distribution of the programs, increased to the point where it was agreed that, given that as a core example, we should try and move from there to technical co- operation, through exchange of people, to see how much more we could do together which saved money.
The NHK relationship has been a very lucrative one for TVOntario, because they have tended to put up a disproportionate amount of the money while we have put up, if you like, the creative and intellectual input to the programs which they have been prepared to accept. From our point of view it has been quite a wonderful partnership and we hope to move it forward.
They are members of something called Pac Rim, which involves the Australians and the British and the Americans on the Pacific seaboard who are in PBS, and again, it is the constant need of the public sector trying to find the equivalencies that produce the economies of scale that mergers and buyouts have done for the commercial sector, because that is what has changed the production costs for each one of the distributors.
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Mr McGuinty: Mr Ostry, I was wondering how it is you break down the kinds of programming offered. Would you term all the programming as being educational? Is that a fair statement?
Mr Ostry: That is our licence.
Mr McGuinty: That is your licence. I guess trying to define whether something is educational might be like trying to find out whether something is art, but in any event, programming for children, adolescents, adults. I guess I am most interested in the programming for adults. Some of that, as I understand it, qualifies for accreditation with post-secondary institutions, is that correct?
Mr Ostry: Those programs for home studies are for adults of all ages. Some are designed for credit courses, and they are mostly in distance education.
Mr McGuinty: My concern would be that perhaps there -- and I am just speculating here; you can correct me if I am wrong -- may be some duplication. That course may be offered in a particular community where, perhaps, I could simply attend the course in a classroom, an existing building with an existing staff, a teacher, or I can watch it on TV. Is that possible?
Mr Ostry: It is possible in a theoretical sense, but I do not think that is how these things are designed, because we prepare these with colleges.
Mr Duprey: In this case we are discussing distance education, and what we try to provide is an equality of access to the people throughout the province. If you are favoured because in your community you have a university or a post-secondary institution or a high school that offers that program, someone else in another community may not be so privileged.
What we are doing is using technology to be able to distribute that program and allow a student elsewhere to access that university through a credit and follow the program through our television network. We are doing the same with direct teaching to high schools. We are moving into opportunities where small high schools cannot offer programs comparable to larger high schools, so it is in that model we are developing.
Mr McGuinty: You term something distance education. Does that mean that that format, for instance, would not be offered in a larger metropolitan centre?
Mr Duprey: There is a phenomenon of distance where what one witnesses is that people learn in different ways. All learners do not like to go to a classroom to learn, and so we are being approached by various associations and organizations -- the Ontario Hospital Association, the Ontario Fire College, the OPP, and others -- who feel a need to offer their skills-training programs via television for students near where they are offering them institutionally, because there is resistance on the part of individuals to attend a formal classroom situation, or they have shift work, or there is a variety of impediments such as their home life or a variety of other reasons which prevent the individuals from following the course, so this is an additional opportunity to ensure equality of access.
Mr McGuinty: I guess there would be a cost on a per capita basis -- maybe it has not been calculated by you -- of delivering that program to a student sitting in a classroom. You can compare that to the cost of delivering that program to someone in his home. How do those costs compare?
Mr Duprey: Again, what we attempt to do is partner with existing educational institutions. We do not attempt to set ourselves up to provide the credit ourselves. We associate ourselves with post-secondary institutions, school boards and institutes, credential-granting organizations whose object it is to provide that training.
We help manage the learning via the television network as a supplement. In some instances, people may gather together in a formal classroom but that particular classroom or institution does not have the wherewithal to hire the teacher, and therefore he or she is brought in from a distance. So it is an apple and orange situation.
Mr Ostry: If I may continue just one step further, apart from what we are doing and the question you raise in the context in which you raise it, along the road in the future, ahead, the decline in costs in delivery from satellites, the expansion of cable everywhere, the decline in the cost of small dishes to pick up signals from anywhere, and the decline in cost of types of interactivity whereby you could deal with it at a computer at home tied to your screen, or on telephones, into academic centres or the like, you raise a very fundamental issue in education some time down the road, but maybe not that many years, where the issue of how much is in the classroom as we have known it, how much in the university as we have known it and how much is going on at convenient hours for people at home at all ages is going to take place. It is going to have a huge impact on the structure and funding of education. There is no question.
Mr Duprey: Our skills channel proposal that Mr Ostry alluded to is an example of how we want to reach the learner in the workplace to support the learning in the workplace in terms of enhancing productivity.
Mr McGuinty: I see that certainly as an avenue that we ought to capitalize on as the technology becomes available. My only concern I am trying to express is that if we are going to increase the amount of education that would be delivered by broadcasting, we ensure that we are not ending up in a position where we are duplicating. That is all.
Mrs Marland: Mr Ostry, could you give me the name of the NHK chairman who was entertained on that trip to Cleveland?
Mr Ostry: Shima, S-H-I-M-A. That is his surname.
Mrs Marland: What is the first name?
Mr Ostry: His initial is K.
Mrs Marland: I noticed that at the beginning of this year we tried to get some information from Mr Stan Pekilis, who is the co-ordinator of public accounts with the accounting, policy and reporting office of the Treasury of the Ministry of Treasury and Economics. We requested a breakdown of expenses claimed by members of the board of directors of TVOntario and we were told that the ministry does not receive a detailed listing of expense information. Apparently they only get a lump sum amount. Could you confirm whether that is in fact the operating practice of the board?
Mr Ostry: I am not sure what we give the ministry. The Ministry of Treasury you are talking about, or the ministry of --
Mrs Marland: I am talking about the Ministry of Treasury and Economics, which deals with the finance.
Mr Ostry: I do not think we submit anything to them.
Mrs Marland: To whom do you report a breakdown of the expense claims and the honorariums paid to the board of TVOntario?
Mr Ostry: We do not report those outside the institution. They are examined by the internal auditor and the finance committee.
Mr Mills: Perhaps I can help, Mrs Marland. The honoraria paid to directors are not fixed by the board; they are fixed by the cabinet. We are told what they are and to pay them.
Mrs Marland: What are they?
Mr Mills: At the present time I believe the board members get $175 for a meeting and the vice-chairman $200. Those are rates that are paid to other agencies as well.
Mrs Marland: Does the chairman receive a per diem on top of his salary?
Mr Mills: No, not to my knowledge. Then the expenses of the directors we are required to pay by statute. You asked earlier about travel. The policy of the organization is that all directors, like all employees, have first-class train travel and tourist economy air travel.
You asked about the chairman's travel expenses. That was not something the board has jurisdiction over. When Mr Ostry was appointed, I was communicated with by the Premier's office as the funnel for the board, if you will, and we were told what his terms of remuneration were and what the terms of his benefits were. One of them was that because of a medical problem, he was to travel first class on any flight over one hour in duration. We were told he was to have his car and driver transferred from Queen's Park, and his salary, as I think I mentioned, is determined by order in council.
The expenses of the organization are all reported to the board's finance committee. That is the responsibility of the board, to vet those finances. Similarly, the board's expenses are vetted by the internal auditor and then are part of the annual audit procedure by the Provincial Auditor.
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Mrs Marland: But since Mr Ostry is indeed his own boss, because he is the CEO and chairman of the board, how can we obtain a list of his expenses claimed as the CEO?
Mr Mills: You have asked for them --
Mrs Marland: I have requested them for the last three years.
Mr Mills: -- and we have indicated that as long as we are permitted to give them we will give them. We have no reason to keep them from you.
Might I just say, Mrs Marland, since I have the microphone for a moment, you mentioned earlier, and I was not given the chance to reply, that I had refused information you had asked for on behalf of the Authority. I think what you should understand is that I had a call as the secretary of the board from a librarian in the legislative library saying could I please provide to the library details of all the individual expense accounts of each of the directors and each of the senior management officers at TVOntario.
I explained that was beyond my responsibility as secretary of the board. I said if it was important for someone to have that information, would they please ask for it in writing and indicate why they wanted it. I would take it to the board. I do not want the committee to be left with the impression that TVOntario tries to hold back information. I have had the good fortune, the privilege certainly, to serve this board for 20 years. To my knowledge we have never tried to be secretive about its affairs.
Mrs Marland: That leads me to the next question. Just before that, Mr Ostry, you have an apartment in the ManuLife Centre.
Mr Ostry: Yes.
Mrs Marland: Is that paid for by TVOntario or yourself?
Mr Ostry: It is paid for by me.
Mrs Marland: Okay. Mr Ostry, with your experience now with TVOntario, do you feel that a government-funded organization like TVOntario should be exempt from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act?
Mr Ostry: For an agency as open as we are, it would not make a great deal of difference because the freedom of information act requires applications and in some cases financial remuneration for the searches. I do not know it would make a great deal of difference, I honestly do not.
Mrs Marland: So what you are saying is that "as open as we are" would mean that without the tool of the freedom of information act the public could access information about the financial operations of TVOntario, since it is a publicly funded institution?
Mr Ostry: Within the constraints that the secretary of the board has referred to.
Mrs Marland: So do you think it is appropriate that TVOntario pay $1,600 for a table at a dinner, for example, the April 16 dinner this year? Are there many dinners like that for which TVOntario buys a table of tickets? I can perhaps understand one or two people going, but how can you defend that kind of expenditure of public funds?
Mr Ostry: I defend it because I believe the senior members of this institution, given an opportunity once a year to support a public policy service forum which depends on private and public assistance and which is designed to be a bridge between the public and private sectors, should be supportive.
Mrs Marland: You mentioned this morning in your comments that perhaps it is time a younger person should take over.
Mr Ostry: I do not want to be accused of saying anything against anybody beyond the age --
Mrs Marland: No, I can only paraphrase your comments, since I do not have the benefit of instant Hansard, but you did refer this morning to the fact that perhaps it was time for someone else -- let's say that -- to be taking over. I am wondering, in light of those comments this morning and some comments you made in the scrum, and in light of some of the admissions you have given to the committee today about some of the things you would have done differently had you them to do again, does this mean you are possibly considering stepping down before the -- is the end of your term September 1992?
Mr Ostry: Yes, it is.
Mrs Marland: Are you considering stepping down earlier?
Mr Ostry: I have been considering that for some time.
Mrs Marland: So what does that mean exactly?
Mr Ostry: It means I am considering it.
Mrs Marland: Can I get back to the study about the space accommodation? Is it true that the IBI Group has been discontinued as the consultants for TVOntario on this program?
Mr Mills: The IBI Group was retained to do a number of things for the Authority, including a study on what the future of production requirements will be, relative to space requirements. It became apparent, after that booklet you have held up was issued, which is an invitation to the landlords of the area to indicate whether they would be interested in having TVO as a tenant and, if so, on what terms, that they intended not only to continue as TVOntario's consultants, but to advise some of the people who would be submitting responses. Obviously, that was a conflict we could not accept, so we terminated the arrangement and had to hire a different firm to carry on the work.
Mrs Marland: What is the current status? Are you going to continue spending money, Mr Ostry, in your present leased accommodation, while you have not made a decision about whether you will be moving?
Mr Ostry: We are required by our lease to pay money to --
Mrs Marland: No, I am not talking about rent. I am talking about significant renovations, as in the past two years, in excess of $2 million. While you continue to look for alternative accommodation, knowing that your lease is up in two or three years, are you still considering perhaps spending money where you are?
Mr Ostry: If you are asking me whether we will not spend any money on renovations for the next three years, I would have to say that we will. There is no way you can run a place with 550 people, with changes taking place, and assume that you will not be making changes. We have the moneys annually in our budget for that purpose. Nobody can operate a building -- in effect, two -- of several thousand square feet with the turnover of staff and the rest without spending money on it.
Mrs Marland: So if you were to vacate that building three years from now, you are going to say in the meantime you would spend money on renovations?
Mr Ostry: I would first have to know whether we are going to move, and we have not yet decided that.
Mrs Marland: And when will you be making that decision?
Mr Ostry: I suppose when the government lets us know that we can, after it has an examination of the material we are collecting through the consultants we have.
The Chair: Sorry, Mrs Marland. We have to move on to Mr Ward.
Mr B. Ward: It is hard to believe we still have some questions for you.
Mr Ostry: I do not know if I have any more answers.
Mr B. Ward: I have a new question for you. If I am a filmmaker in Canada, particularly from Ontario, or involved in or would like to be involved in the film industry, what opportunities can TVO offer me? Can you give some examples?
Mr Ostry: The programmers will be annoyed with me. If I were in the filmmaking business, I would not want to go to TVO, which is in the television business --
Mr B. Ward: That is what I meant when I said film.
Mr Ostry: -- and it is a narrower area, educational television.
Mr B. Ward: Yes, as it pertains to TV.
Mr Ostry: In the Toronto area, with the centre that Norman Jewison set up to train people in the film industry, which is comparable to one in London and one in the United States, and the number of independents that have grown, in part as a result of Telefilm Canada's capacity to feed that independent industry, and the fund that was provided for the CBC to draw on to assist with Telefilm Canada the making of films, and particularly drama, for television distribution -- there are a whole range of opportunities, and TVO would be a very good place to learn the trade. Does that answer your question?
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Mr B. Ward: I guess so.
Mr Levine: Mr Ward, if I could amplify that, because my responsibility is programming, there is a worldwide trend, even among public broadcasters, to increasingly utilize independent producers in their work. It is happening very dramatically at the CBC where, for example, its in-house drama production is almost entirely gone, and virtually all of their productions, such as Anne of Green Gables, for which they have taken credit for years, was in fact produced by an independent producer. This is now statutory in the United Kingdom, that at least 25% of the production of the BBC and the independent network -- their equivalent of CTV or Global -- must be provided by independent producers.
Similarly, TVOntario has increasingly sought outside independent producers to bring programming ideas and to work with TVOntario in developing them, as well as, of course, having their own internal producers, so this is an ongoing activity and an increasing activity. Because the unit cost of production at TVOntario is so much lower than the other networks, primarily because they do not do drama, it is far less attractive for an independent producer who could, for example, be producing a $1-million-an-hour drama in which the CBC and other foreign networks would participate, rather than coming to TVOntario to do a skills at $10,000 an hour. There is just a lot less room for running a private sector company out of TVO, but there is an increasing amount of it notwithstanding.
Mr B. Ward: If the opportunity were there, would the suggestion be perhaps that TVOntario should head into the drama area, to allow opportunities for --
Mr Levine: It is too expensive. If you take a look at a $90-million budget, if you wanted to pay for dramas, you could produce 90 hours. As you see from the quick-glance statistics, there are hundreds of hours, both produced and acquired. Rather than producing a dramatic hour at $1 million, it is a lot cheaper to go and buy the best films in the world for $25,000 or $30,000 a run, which is what TVO is doing, for example, with Saturday Night at the Movies.
Mr Ostry: We have submitted to the government a request, together with the independent film-producing community, for a fund of some $7 million or $8 million to assist in the production of types of documentaries that are dramatized. That, for example, because of the existence of Telefilm, would produce an opportunity for people in the business to get on with their trade and to strengthen it at a time of recession.
Mr B. Ward: I knew I would get it eventually.
Mrs MacKinnon: There is one paragraph here in this paper in front of me that intrigues me, Mr Ostry. You state that public broadcasters around the world joined together to share their experiences and pool their resources in order to compete with the private sector. As one who is not very technologically involved -- an egg-beater is about my style -- could you please explain that? I have an idea that maybe you have a vision of this being rather the whole globe. Am I right?
Mr Ostry: I would like to answer in two parts. Today, there is a sea change in co-operation within the public sectors in television and broadcasting. In Europe, the Germans, the Italians and the French have very close working relationships in production and distribution. The European Community is trying to stimulate that at the same time as it is trying to establish a quota on the import of American drama -- fiction, as they call it.
In the United States the PBS system is totally different; it is very difficult to find a central body to co-operate with. We have to deal with individual PBS stations, and that is very time-consuming, but we manage to do it from time to time.
I made a reference earlier to Pac Rim, where there are a number of public broadcasters, including the CBC, NHK and others. The concentration there is largely on environmental and science-technology programming. A total of X number of people -- 20% in each case -- come together to pool their resources and their distribution facilities in order to make these programs, which they otherwise could not afford by themselves; they simply would not be made.
You open up a whole other area, however, when you talk about the world. It is a mystery to me why the lead has not been taken by some of the world's great public broadcasters in establishing world services where the commercial systems would never go. It is one thing for Ted Turner to do news all over the world. Why the BBC or NHK would want to compete with that is beyond me when there is an unbelievable hunger for educational material, cultural material, skills material; when Intelsat in Washington is going to have a surfeit of transponder time; when governments -- with peace breaking out around the world -- are now going to have to deal with huge ecological and feeding problems in global terms.
Why we cannot produce two or three world services in these social areas in education for the benefit of all mankind, I do not know. The related costs are not huge. I am talking now about costs related to something else. If you want to start building schools all over Africa and Asia, and man them and train teachers and do all that, we are all going to have very long beards -- those of us who grow them -- before anything is done that is measurable in their lives.
On the other hand, there is a huge opportunity for a country like ours to take a lead in this area, because we are a leader in communications and because the quality of our education -- which people may criticize from time to time -- is, in fact, in world terms, relatively high. With partners like the Japanese or the Germans and others, there is enough programming now on the shelf.
If you foresee having world services in two or three years, you would have been able to produce enough to begin the process slowly of distributing this information that is of such great value to the other societies. When I talk about "global" in the terms that you mentioned in another level, that is what I mean.
Mrs MacKinnon: Thank you very much. It sounds interesting.
The Chair: Mr Ostry, I have one quick question and then we will move to Mr Bradley for the last questions before the afternoon winds up. We will have you out of here by 4 o'clock.
We talked about la chaîne earlier, and I think the figures you gave us earlier is that there are about 180,000 people tuning in at some point during the week to the French-language network. Is that the figure you used? Do you have anything in terms of average viewer time?
Mr Ostry: We have the researchers and the French network trying to work that out --
Mr Bensimon: Two and a half hours.
The Chair: So we are getting 180,000 people tuning in for approximately two and a half hours per week, and that is chewing up one third of your budget. Do you still want to comment on whether that is a fair allocation of resources?
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Mr Ostry: I think that successive governments, and the TVOntario board, and legislation like Bill 8 and the sense of responsibility that is there, provide us with really one alternative. Either you have a full network to service the Franco- Ontarian and francophile people of this province, either you have an interest in their receiving the quality of education that comes across the English side, or you do not. I think that is a political decision; and our board, which is not in politics, took the decision some time ago, when the Secretary of State of Canada decided to pull out, that it would try and sustain it as best it could.
The Chair: One quick question in this line, though. There is a board, and your staff; you are the experts in this area. Do you not believe that the needs of those 180,000 viewers tuning in for two and a half hours a week could be met through the one network? You were looking at something like 17 hours of French-language programming prior to the establishment of this network.
Mr Ostry: It was 17%, yes.
The Chair: Was that not a feasible way, perhaps, of continuing to meet those needs rather than establishing a network which is chewing up one third of your budget?
Mr Ostry: Well, I do not want to argue with the Chair.
The Chair: It is a political argument.
Mr Ostry: But, to be fair -- I do not have the numbers here with me. I do not know how many English-speaking people in the province of Ontario were receiving the signal in 1974. I do not know what the numbers are compared to the numbers of those people in this province. It takes time to grow.
The lack of transmitters and the extension of the service to cover all of those who want -- I mean, according to some stats, there are something like one million people in this province who want to watch and work in the French language. That is beyond the indigenous Franco-Ontarians, who are described in another way. I think that is a political decision as to whether you want to support a service to those groups.
Mr McLean: I have a supplementary on that, Mr Chairman.
The Chair: Make it short.
Mr McLean: Of course, my questions always are.
On Sundays I turn TVOntario on. Nine times out of 10 it will be in French. Is that normal programming for Sunday?
Mr Ostry: That is a policy which the board has been struggling with ever since we extended the network: the issue of switched Sundays.
Mr Bradley: Saturday and Sundays.
Interjection.
Mr Ostry: Just Sunday. Before they had the network, you had the Sundays in French and there was an audience that had been built up for 17 years watching that, and the concern was that we would lose that audience in the process. We have done surveys now twice and brought back reports to the board as to whether we should or should not switch, and it is still up in the air. It is still an issue.
Mr Bradley: You mentioned a couple of times a potential for your retirement some day, whenever you see fit to retire, and I am interested in the position -- not personally interested in the position --
Mr Ostry: Why not? It is an important job.
Mr Bradley: I have viewed the committee work today.
I am interested in the kind of individual who you believe, some time in the future, would fill this position, in the context of the articles you have written and the speeches you have delivered on your concern about patronage in government, and the fact that a position like this could potentially be filled by a person who is a known and active member of a political party, as opposed to one who is not, and that as a result, the Authority -- even though I recognize that the chairman and the chief executive officer does not control everything by any means within the Authority -- there is the danger of it changing philosophy politically.
We have John Crispo who contends the CBC is a bunch of leftist wing-nuts. Most people would disagree with Mr Crispo on that, but he makes that suggestion. We have in the United States the suggestion on the part of some members of the Republican Party that CBS is the tool of the Democratic Party. I am looking at those kinds of things.
What kind of person, in terms of how involved politically that person is, should be in a position such as yours, or a comparable position in another authority? I realize that is a difficult one to put before you.
Mr Ostry: I think in the end it is a judgement. Let me move it out of Canada for a minute. Jay Rockefeller announced he was not running today. His wife is a Percy. His wife was appointed by a Republican administration to chair the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A few years later she was offered the job of running the Washington, DC, station for PBS. She is a very political person, but her interest in public service broadcasting is so well established in the community that nobody would ever question that she would use that base to distort what Lehrer, who feeds into the New York system for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, says. Nobody would dream of that.
If you see how the commercial side is in such deep trouble, and there has been a long series of problems with the public sector in different parts of the world for the last five years, I think the person who has to come in here has to have a stomach to sustain all kinds of criticism but has to have a commitment to the value of a public good in this area of education and culture. That has to be the first commitment, and a recognition that the only way you can deliver that good is if you have the support of enough of the community where you are based, which is why we spend a huge amount of our time and energy absolutely confirming the community roots of the institution all over this province. That strength allows you to move out into the world supported by that, and the legislators here and the governments of the day, and co- operate with people with similar value systems in terms of the products they want to deliver.
There is a difference between appointing somebody who happens to be a Liberal or NDP or a Conservative and appointing somebody because he is. I think that is a fundamental difference, because in the secondary case, if you are delivering information and education, the product will become suspect in the mind of the public. That is what you have to be careful of.
Mr Bradley: Again, in the context of the fact that I personally -- and I watch a lot of TVO programming -- see no partisan bent in TVO, and the potential is always there for that to happen, particularly in public broadcasting --
Mr Ostry: Particularly if we get Inside Albany. Then we will be here every week.
Mr Bradley: The potential is certainly there in the right circumstances. That is why I asked that question. I have a concern that public networks, the CBC -- I recognize it is in a different context than yours, but there are many similarities -- and the BBC in Britain and TVO in Ontario, be without that partisan, philosophical bent that can enter into it if the board is full of people with one point of view or other, be it an ultraconservative, ultraliberal or ultrasocialist point of view.
Mr Ostry: But you would all prevent that, would you not, from happening?
Mr Bradley: We would certainly try. One of the responsibilities of this committee is to review all appoint ments. I will not go into the observations that those of us in the opposition have on that process, but I am sure all of us want that goal. I did ask that question out of context, because it is an extremely important role that TVO plays and perhaps I am getting on the record, as much as possible the hope that your successor 10 or 15 years from now, when that person is appointed, will reflect a non-partisan -- I will not say non-political -- approach to public broadcasting.
Mr Ostry: I certainly agree with that.
The Chair: Mr Ostry, thank you for your appearance here today along with your colleagues. We appreciate your testimony.
Mr Ostry: We appreciated the opportunity, Mr Chairman. We hope that of the things we have tried to draw your attention to, from our skills channel through to the support on the part of some of those who believe it should be supported, like la chaîne, and our base funding will be part of your deliberations when you come to make your recommendations.
The Chair: Members of the committee, if you will turn to your agendas, you will note that at this juncture we were to consider the report of the subcommittee on committee business. At the request of Mr Hayes, we are going to delay that consideration until tomorrow. Mr Hayes indicated that he wants to consult with his colleagues in respect to the report before we deal with it at open and full committee.
Mr McLean: We dealt with it this morning. We now have the report from the clerk. If he wants to add two names or three names to that list, could he do it now, being that we had our subcommittee meeting and that is over? This is the report from that subcommittee.
The Chair: It is a procedural question. I will have to refer to the clerk.
Mr McLean: I have no objections.
The Chair: I assume the other parties would have no objection. Under those circumstances we can do virtually anything.
Mr McLean: Okay.
The Chair: We are going to move into a closed session. Hansard can depart.
The committee continued in camera at 1602.