Canadian Heritage committee  It's such a fundamental question, and it goes to the heart of what you're dealing with here, I realize. What I would say about the CBC and the advertising issue is that it's been put in a bit of a box in terms of having to compete with the private sector for advertising. You're always going to be looking over your shoulder.

Canadian Heritage committee  Residuals are just something that should always.... All rights that start with the producers should be subject to negotiation in terms of any licensing of those and any kind of fair split on revenues.

Canadian Heritage committee  Normally the costs are borne by the producer. A broadcaster will be involved--to a relatively small portion of the budget, to 20% or 30% perhaps—but the costs are incurred and financed by the producer. Sometimes broadcasters will get involved in an equity manner, where they take a share of the production.

Canadian Heritage committee  Without commenting on any of the board members or the current CEO, we like the kind of CTF board approach with board representation from the industry, industry players, and stakeholders, balanced by independent board members. So there is some knowledge of the industry, as well as some knowledge of other greater governance issues.

Canadian Heritage committee  Again, that is a great question. There has always been a bit of a frustration with the CBC for not doing more in the feature film area. And I know there are reasons for that. I think the current CBC management is very interested in looking at film in some ways, doing more. But the current view is that they like to focus on series since these tend to be better audience builders.

Canadian Heritage committee  First and foremost, it's probably a funding issue. Typically in terms of how a film is released right now, the conventional broadcast of a film could be two or three years after the theatrical release. As you know, a film will usually get a theatrical release for some time, and then specialties, pay-per-view, and ultimately some kind of DVD release.

Canadian Heritage committee  In terms of contract agreements in particular, there can be a bit of a shorthand to contracts and the licensing of products, and it can go very quickly. What you're often looking at is a kind of short-form/long-form situation, where some of the critical details of a commitment will be done relatively quickly to enable a production to move forward to secure financing.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm not sure I understand your question entirely, but we would see the CBC as having a slightly different mandate from the conventional broadcasters, and certainly the specialty broadcasters. Our basic view on the CBC is that its production side, and in particular its acquisition side, should be properly funded to fulfill its mandate.

Canadian Heritage committee  It comes down to good public policy and how things are funded—and recognition that the CBC's role is somewhat different from the conventional sense.

Canadian Heritage committee  The first part of your question was about feature film, is that right?

Canadian Heritage committee  That's a great question, because “terms of trade” is thrown around quite a bit now. Probably the first question should be on what exactly it is. Over the last decade, the CRTC has shown interest—in terms of licensing some of the new specialty channels and the licence renewals of the conventionals—in encouraging broadcasters to establish terms of trade agreements with producers.

Canadian Heritage committee  That's another very good question. When you look at our existing agreement with the CBC, it's quite lengthy. It's a sort of comfortable accord with a lot of nice language and good intentions on both sides. Ultimately it's not that useful as a negotiation framework. Frankly, with CTV we're trying to come up with a briefer, more succinct document that's more fundamental and ultimately more useful.

Canadian Heritage committee  That's an excellent question. My understanding is that it's largely a money issue, ultimately, in terms of additional residual payments that would need to be made, so they're in the ironic situation of having the rights to a lot of their own programming, but the additional dollars involved would, in their view, be prohibitive and make it virtually impossible for them to broadcast it.

Canadian Heritage committee  To be fair, actually, no, I don't know the details. I do know it was a similar issue in terms of how that was done. Mario's point is well taken; in many cases the BBC's programming, up until very recently, was fully commissioned programming with a producer, so to a large extent the BBC would basically retain all rights.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would just reiterate what I said earlier, that I think it's a very important issue. An interesting recommendation to come out of this committee could be to get the stakeholders together and look at how this could be done. Particularly when you look at the multi-platform world we're living in now, with so many different ways of accessing content, I can't imagine there wouldn't be some interest on the CBC's part to find a way through that.