The decade-long battle to bring French radio to Jasper is finally over.
The Jasper chapter of the Association Canadienne-Française de l’Alberta (ACFA) recently learned Radio-Canada, CBC Radio One’s French counterpart, will begin broadcasting in Jasper on July 1, 2017.
It may still be a year away, but if all goes according to plan it will be the first time French radio will be broadcast in the Canadian Rockies.
“This thing has been ongoing for a number of years, but the French community in Jasper has been exceptionally patient and didn’t get discouraged,” said Pierre Guérin, Radio-Canada’s regional manager for Western Canada.
“They kept the request alive and now it’s finally coming through.”
To make it happen, CBC recently filed three applications to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to install three new transmission towers. The first tower will be installed in Jasper, followed by Banff and Lake Louise.
“There is all this technical work that has to happen—surveys, the equipment, installation and testing. So it is a lengthy process,” said Guérin.
At this point, Guérin is unsure where the radio transmitters will be installed, but said if there are already CBC transmitters set up—like in Jasper—then Radio-Canada may be able to piggyback off those transmitters.
The push to get French radio in Jasper started nearly two decades ago, but only gained traction in 2007, after Jasper’s ACFA collected 300 names on a petition demanding access to the station.
“During that time the AFCA and École Desrochers were doing a lot of interviews with Radio-Canada, but we were unable to hear the interviews so it was a bit of a paradox,” said Jasper’s ACFA regional director Geneviève Arcand. “So that’s why we did the petition.”
Despite the association’s best efforts, Arcand said the petition fell on deaf ears.
The association was told by the broadcasting company at the time that setting up transmitters in Jasper was not one of the company’s priorities and would likely not become a priority in the future.
Instead the ACFA was told it had other options if Jasper’s Francophone community really wanted to listen to Radio-Canada.
“They said we could go online and listen to things two hours later or we could listen to it on Sirius Radio, but if you listen to Sirius then all you get is the Quebec channel—so we’re here in Alberta but we’re hearing all about some traffic jam in Montreal,” Arcand said.
The new transmitters will broadcast Radio-Canada’s Alberta programming.
“When you’re living anywhere else you take the radio for granted—it’s there and you can listen to it if you want, but when you are here you just don’t have that option,” Arcand said.
What was most frustrating for the association, said Arcand, is that there are already CBC transmitters in Jasper that provide English programming.
“We’re not sure on the details that go into broadcasting a radio station, but for us it was just hard to understand why they could have the English channel but not the French,” Arcand said.
Looking for more help, the ACFA contacted the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages in 2009. The office told the association it had good grounds to file legal complaints against Radio-Canada for violating articles 24 and 41 of Canada’s Official Languages Act.
Jasper’s ACFA also started working with the ACFA in Edmonton to help push the issue further.
However, somewhere between switching staff, moving offices and working on numerous other projects, Jasper’s ACFA lost its steam.
“At some point we were just disappointed by the amount of energy we had to be putting into this,” Arcand said. “And then one month ago we got this news and we don’t know why they changed their mind.”
Guérin partially attributed the lack of French programming in the region to $115-million worth of cuts the company faced in 2012 under the former Conservative government.
“There are a number of requests we receive and we have a series of criteria we use to analyze them, but in a situation where we were looking at budget cuts...then all of a sudden those requests can’t be a top priority,” Guérin said.
Earlier this year, the Liberal government committed $225-million over the next two years to CBC/Radio-Canada to help reverse those previous cuts.
“It opens up the opportunity to look at those requests again and see what we are able to do with them,” Guérin said. “When we look at the number of French people who live and travel through Jasper, Banff and Lake Louise then it makes perfect sense to finally set up transmitters in all three areas.”
“We are super happy that this is finally happening,” Arcand said. “But at the same time it’s disappointing we had to fight for something so basic.”
