Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you for taking the time to hear us this morning.
The Canadian Film and Television Production Association, or CFTPA, welcomes the occasion to speak with you on the opportunities and challenges related to emerging and digital media. As was mentioned earlier, Mr. Séguin is with me here today. He's the association's senior vice-president of policy and I'm the association's chief operating officer and chief legal officer.
Our president, Norm Bolen, would have liked to be here, but he had a scheduling conflict as he is a board member of Hot Docs and his attendance was required at that festival.
As many of you know, the CFTPA is a national trade association that represents the most successful Canadian independent screen-based media production entrepreneurs working in the English language market in television, feature film, and interactive media. We have close to 400 members and they are located in every region of the country.
Together our members are responsible for a large majority of the more than $5 billion in production activity that occurs in this country each year, and the 130,000 jobs this work sustains. With a few exceptions, our members are virtually all small and medium-sized businesses.
We take this opportunity to congratulate the government for having committed this past March in the throne speech to launching a digital economy strategy for Canada. We understand, through media reports, that a national consultation process will be launched in the near future. The CFTPA and its members look forward to participating in that process.
We also applaud the standing committee for having initiated its own study on emerging and digital media. We believe it's important to have a broad and open discussion on this vital subject with as many decision-makers as possible participating in the dialogue.
Before addressing some of the specific questions outlined in this study's terms of reference, we will share with you our thoughts related to digital media in general and the national digital media strategy in particular.
Marc.