Thank you.
Good morning, and thank you to the committee for hearing us.
I'd like to talk a bit about the state of the children's television industry and then pass it on to my colleague Steven DeNure to talk about how the CTF and the alliance work hand in hand and the influence of each on the other. Really, our concern is for consumers of the work of the CTF and ACT. That's why we speak on behalf of children.
Canada has built a strong children's television industry over the years. It's a healthy mixture of public policy and private initiative. Activity of this sort--this public-private partnership--is usually the result of a cultural need. That's “cultural” in the broadest sense of the word. It's how we behave, in the way that medicare was Canada's answer to a cultural desire for comprehensive cradle-to-grave health care for all citizens, necessity being the mother of invention.
You may ask what the cultural need was that the Canadian children's television industry answered. I think the answer can be summed up in a sentence. In Canada we have to compete for the attention of our own children. Virtually no other country is in this position. We're unprotected by geography, and in the case of English Canada, we're unprotected by language. We have a media giant as a neighbour that is able to broadcast into our airwaves. It considers our territory as a domestic market for them.
How do we compete for the attention? Our sense of being Canadian comes not only from the values and services that Canada affords, but from the optimism and opportunity to create our own social experiment collectively. Being Canadian means being part of it all--the plagues and the pleasures.
A distinguishing factor, I think, is that Canadian society provides its citizens with a form of basic trust. Basic trust is a concept I'm borrowing from the field of child development. It's an essential common ingredient that enables children to grow, to experiment freely, and to develop. It's a gift that parents give their children: a fundamental belief that the child is welcomed into the family and into the world simply for her own sake. Without this, the world is cold and inhospitable; with it, doors can open.
Canadian society strives to provide a fundamental belief that we welcome and value our citizens, and like the nurturing parent, Canadian children's television passes on that sense of basic trust. This is one of the distinguishing factors about Canadian television programs in the international marketplace. It's their tone. It's the reason channels such as PBS want anywhere from 25% to 50% of their kids' shows to be from Canada.
Canada is always being replenished with new citizens: children who experience Canada from immigrant homes with parents who pass on their personal heritage. Who will introduce them to Canadian culture, how we do things, our social expectations, how we treat each other?
Children's television is no less powerful a cultural tool than the stories read in school or passed on by parents and grandparents. Depending on your generation, who doesn't remember The Friendly Giant or Mr. Dress-Up or Bobino?
If we want future generations to feel as committed to carrying on the Canadian experiment and as connected to the process as we are, we must provide them with the opportunity to participate in the process from the beginning. By the time children have finished primary school, they have spent as many hours watching television as they have going to school. That may be unfortunate, but it's true. Shouldn't we insist that the TV they watch and the stories and characters they identify with and learn from reflect our best efforts and our best wishes for them?
I'm now going to pass on to Steven to talk about how the CTF influences the work we do.