You are all using up my time.
It is good that I have more time: I am going to need it because I have several questions. I am going to make some comments and then end with a question.
I am a little uncomfortable telling you this, Mr. Engelhart, but you do not provide a lot of service in Quebec apart from wireless. But I am still going to pass on some comments I have received about Rogers, and they are not fun to give or receive.
I have heard that Rogers may not be a good corporate citizen and that you may be in the business of television like someone else might be in the business of selling handbags. But making television is a privilege. It is a privilege to be able to provide one's fellow citizens with information and entertainment.
Making television is a privilege. But Rogers has a “bottom line” approach, meaning that its interest is in knowing how much can be made. This is why you take positions that are not very beneficial to artists. Let me explain what I mean. On Local Programming Improvement Fund royalties, for example, you produced an advertising campaign whose logic just did not stand up to intellectual scrutiny. In your advertisements, you said things that—forgive me for saying this—were not even true.
Then, in regard to copyright, you want to take money away from artists in Canada and in Quebec, whose average salary is $23,500. They need that money for sure.
Think of something else. Attack the companies that produce optical fibre, not artists making $23,500 per year. You say you have to pay more here than in the United States. We understand that; we pay more for a lot of products here than in the United States. Canada is a big country, with a lot of remote areas to serve. And we only have 30 million people, whereas there are 300 million in the United States. Population density alone means that we pay more for most things.
Then you say that Rogers is in the business of telecommunications, not broadcasting. But he who controls the medium controls the message. You must surely see the proof of that in your huge world of convergence. Quebec is a world of convergence, too, with Vidéotron and Quebecor. Wireless companies that are only subject to the Telecommunications Act will be moving into broadcasting now. I do not even need to give you examples of that, you know them better than I do.
For all these reasons, when you undertake some digital initiative or make suggestions on digital development, we cannot help believing that you are more interested in your profit than in the welfare of the artists who should be the ones profiting, than in the Canadian public that wants Canadian content and than in the Quebec public that wants Quebec content.