At the moment, there are satellite subscription fees. They are collected primarily by the specialty broadcasters: Newsworld, RDI, The Sports Network, and MuchMusic. All these specialty channels, essentially delivered by cable, now collect from the cable company a subscription fee that is passed on to the public.
At its TV policy hearings in November and December, the CRTC looked at many issues. One of the hottest issues was this question. Should over-the-air broadcasters, CBC, CTV, Global, CHUM, TVA, and so on, be allowed to say to Rogers or any of the cable distributors that they can't have the programming unless they pay a fee? We haven't yet heard from the CRTC on that.
By the way, Ted Rogers, the pre-eminent cable czar in this country, before the CRTC, opposed the idea. But he said if we're going to do it for anybody, we should do it for the CBC, and we shouldn't do it for the other guys because they make lots of money. We would endorse that. We think this is another way, a reasonable way, to help fund our public broadcaster. For instance, adding $2 or $4 to a cable bill or satellite bill is certainly not going to be thrilling for consumers. But it would provide a new source of additional revenue to help pay the cost of public broadcasting. We're saying some of it could be used to reduce advertising.
We would certainly hope this committee would not say all of the new funding for the CBC should come in that way. We think some of it needs to come from Parliament. The government of this country has to step up to the plate and start properly paying for the delivery of our public broadcasting service.