Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank our witnesses for coming to meet with us today. I have just one question, but a long preamble.
The producers have told us generally that if they did not generate more revenue, they were going to have to cut certain services being offered at the moment. The distributors, including Rogers and yourselves, tell us that in the end, there is no problem, if we look at these companies overall, we see that they can afford to lose some money in specific areas, but that generally, their activities are extremely profitable. That is roughly what we are hearing from the various witnesses who appear before us.
You brought along with you a rather lengthy brief. Like the representatives from Rogers, you refer to a tremendous number of facts that tend to confirm very rationally what you are saying. The text is very well written. It states that these people are investing less and less in Canadian productions and more and more in foreign productions, particularly American ones. These people claim to be losing money, but this often refers to products they bought abroad and that have nothing to do with local distribution.
I confess that I have a favourable bias toward your point of view, but that does not mean that this could not change. I find it logical. However—and this is where I have some reservations—I am not an anglophone; I watch television in English from time to time, but I watch more television in French. And one thing seems clear to me. Most of the programs in English that I watch seem to be American in one way or another—whether they are imports or series or feature actors who are quite clearly American.
On the other hand, when I watch television in French, I never see or almost never see that type of thing. The news is really designed in Quebec for Quebeckers. Television series are made from A to Z by Quebeckers and for Quebeckers. There are very few American programs presented in translation. Variety shows—and here we are talking about Quebecor—such as Star Académie or others are produced in Quebec by Quebeckers. The same goes for advertising. People tried for a long time to use advertisements produced in Toronto to sell products here, but they had to stop, because people were simply not buying these products. The advertising has to be produced in Quebec if products are to sell.
Mr. Péladeau's company, Quebecor, seems to be dealing with problems that are totally different from the other companies. You say that the truth of the matter is that the companies have done nothing to promote Canadian programming. That is not true of Mr. Péladeau. All his programming is home grown, and he pays what it costs to do that. He is making money, or at least I hope he is, and I hope he will continue to do so like the other companies. In any case, his problems are totally different from those faced by other producers of television programs. I come now to my question.
If as a Member of Parliament I conclude that your comments are valid for the Canadian side of the market, that producers like CTV and Canwest really do not have any problems because they are producing fewer and fewer Canadian programs, but that this is not the case for Quebecor, do you think I would be justified in saying that a different solution should be applied to Quebecor, perhaps even as regards broadcast rates?