Canadian Heritage Committee on May 9th, 2006

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Chair, it's great to be back on the committee with you. I think this committee has done some really strong work in a very collaborative sense, including our recent film study and the Lincoln report.

I'm intrigued by the issue of museums; it's an issue very dear to my heart. My concern, however, is the timeline, and I think we do need to sit down with a calendar and block off how much time we have for issues and where we need to put our priorities.

I would suggest at the outset that there are going to be two issues we're going to have to deal with. Come this fall, we know that the copyright legislation will probably be coming down, unless the parliamentary secretary can tell me otherwise. So we will have to block off a fair amount of time to deal with that legislation, because a lot of eyes will be on us. That's going to put a certain amount of pressure on the timeline in the fall.

The other issue is television, as has been mentioned. A number of issues are coming together pretty much at once. We do have the review of CBC. I think it is the mandate of this committee to look at CBC, especially in terms of regional programming and domestic drama content and where we're going with that. This ties into the CRTC review of the television licences, which I think raises a question that we need to ask as a committee: what is the status and success or failure rate of our domestic content standards? That's also tied in very much to what's happening over in Geneva with the GATS, where we are the subject of an audio-visual request that has serious implications for the future of domestic television content quotas and our ability to maintain our own preferred tax rates. Those negotiations are ongoing. We are a requestor nation at the GATS in terms of telecom, which ties into broadcast. So what I'm suggesting is that these issues are all coming together right now and that we as a committee need to be able to look at them.

I would suggest that television and broadcast be our initial focus, and we're going to have to figure out the time and how to scope that. As we get through that and come up with a report and a clear direction, the other issues will fall into line and maybe we can start looking at a calendar between now and probably the late fall or Christmas in order to be able to balance out these priorities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Right now with the speeches that have been made and the accolades that have been given, that's great. I urge everyone to get a list, and we'll have a very stringent meeting on Thursday to try to set our priorities.

Yes, Charlie, I can agree with you inasmuch as we have to look past July at what we have. We want to be able to figure out how many days we have and whether we can do justice to our list in that time and make sure that one item follows the other.

Yes, Jim.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I was just going to suggest that we will want to consider at the beginning of the meeting on Thursday whether we want to have it in camera or not. As a critic, I was always opposed to in camera meetings as a matter of principle, until I got into a few of them, when I realized that we could be much more candid and frank about the establishment of priorities. I will be leaning that way, but it will obviously be the call of the committee. It's something we will have to consider, so I'm just putting it on the table.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

When are we going to debate the motions mentioned by Mr. Kotto, namely those motions having to do with the order of questioning or notices of motion, for instance? There's also the matter of documents that must be produced in both languages before they can be tabled, and so on and so forth. Are we going to discuss this today or at the start of Thursday's meeting?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I would say we'll deal with them at the beginning of the meeting on Thursday.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Chairman, regardless of their nature, can we receive notice of these motions?

[The Clerk]

I could circulate the motions to members' offices this afternoon when we're back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.