Industry committee  If I may, I'll just add that the CRTC is also not just sitting on their hands and scrolling through emails and saying, “Oh, there's no unsubscribe button here, let's go after that company”. All of their investigations are triggered by complaints, so these are Canadians who are taking advantage of the current regime and are filing submissions and complaints saying, “Hey, I got this.

Industry committee  Enforcement of CASL relies on a spectrum approach. The CRTC, which is the main enforcer, issues information on compliance, educates business associations, and then if there are problems, issues warnings, reprimands, seeks voluntary consent orders, and finally if necessary issues administrative monetary penalties, or AMPs.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, there is one. It's a partnership between Ryerson University and Deloitte.

Information & Ethics committee  Good afternoon. Another area that requires a new rule is data retention and destruction. Can consumers in the future be sure that the information they have provided, or that was extracted from their habits, will be destroyed or no longer used when the reasons for why they gave that consent are gone?

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, in relation to local news, generally our position is that the local stations are in a better position to provide local news because of the history of having professionalism. It is usually labour-intensive reporting. In regard to community stations, if they want to move into local information and local news, in our view the access programming threshold—the requirements set out by the CRTC—doesn't actually prevent Rogers from moving into local news, because the access programming just means that the idea needs to come from a community member and that the member need to be involved in producing that programming.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think you would have to tread very carefully in considering Roger's proposal, if it's the same as what they submitted to the CRTC. The urban markets they proposed to move the money from were just Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. In their proposal they could move the money or have the flexibility to reallocate either to community stations or to over-the-air stations in smaller communities.

Canadian Heritage committee  We see generally right now that the obligations are for local programming, not local news. Regarding Omni, I think, we've mentioned the budget cuts. I know the CBC as well have decided to cut their late evening newscasts and their weekend newscasts in Ottawa. We consider Ottawa to be actually an urban market.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, we were.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll try to address several parts of that question. There are several reasons for proposing what is actually skinny basic and pick-and-pay together. Rogers mentioned before in the previous meeting that the way consumers are accessing content is changing and that's partly why PIAC and other consumer groups had advocated for these different options.

Canadian Heritage committee  Not in relation to your local over-the-air stations or your community stations.

Canadian Heritage committee  Even with the popularity of digital media, independent non-profit community media still play a vital role in informing, engaging, and empowering local communities and marginalized groups. This is especially true in Canada where many communities do not have a local over-the-air station.

Canadian Heritage committee  Good morning. Madam Chair, honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, or PIAC, to appear this morning to discuss the media and local communities. My name is Alysia Lau, legal counsel at PIAC; and with me is Geoff White, external counsel to PIAC.

Canadian Heritage committee  We'll be sharing our time.