Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Simms has ceded to floor to you, Mr. Richards.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Wait now, hang on, hang on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Oh, you haven't. Okay.

Mr. Simms, would you like to retake the floor?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Yes, I think I'd better. I've ceded much too much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Go ahead.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

You know what, I'll give you something at the end. How's that? All right. That's if I have time.

Well, actually, I just wanted to dig further into some of the issues Mrs. Crombie brought up earlier.

First of all, on Pelmorex, is that how you pronounce it? I'm kidding. I used to work for them.

When it comes to the issue off the all-channel alert, what Shaw said was basically that there was the indemnity issue. They don't want to be sued, for lack of a better word, in case of wrong information and so on. How do you respond to that?

[Paul Temple]

Well, that's a legitimate concern. No one wants to be sued. I think everyone expects government to take full responsibility for the content of their messages. That's one of the issues the industry and government are going to have to work out. In that sense, that's a reasonable concern to raise.

Having said that, there are a number of broadcasters who are interested in participating, and I think that over time, they will. I know that throughout Alberta they participate in the Alberta system, and I don't believe they have any special protection.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I have just a quick comment. After dealing with Hurricane Igor in Newfoundland, the thing that was most required, other than water, milk, and food, was information. I represent a riding of 190 communities, sparsely populated, and some local communities don't have formal organizations. All you have left is either the radio or the television. I think this is a serious issue we should look at in the public safety committee, and maybe even in this committee as well.

[Paul Temple]

We've distributed Environment Canada warnings for over 20 years now, and we've never been sued, touch wood. So we're doing it.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Well, that's true. Yes, I wasn't sued either.

[A voice]

Yet.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Yet.

Ms. Edwards, I like what you had to say about the over-the-air. I just described my riding, and you can well imagine that the OTA issue is near and dear to my heart. But Ms. Bell was here from Global, Shaw, and she says that they're now investing in non-mandated areas. Are you skeptical of that?

[Catherine Edwards]

No, they said they were going to do that--that's Global. CTV hasn't yet committed and neither has the CBC. The CBC, out of over 1,000 transmitters that it has--retransmission sites--has only committed to upgrade 27 of them. So that's an enormous loss in infrastructure.

Our concern is that those towers are sitting there. We know that communities and municipalities are capable of maintaining this infrastructure over time and using it. For example, south of the border there are little communities in Utah that are using transmission towers to offer all of their residents free wireless Internet.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Sorry to interrupt. I'm going to try to save some time here.

What you outline is a way of investing in this. You talked about the space that is vacated that you could use for community access. Have you received any positive responses from the major players?

[Catherine Edwards]

We're in those talks at the moment.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

May I ask with whom?

[Catherine Edwards]

For example, with CTV, the VP of engineering told me last week that they have always leased space to small, local broadcasters and that they would entertain cost-sharing deals to upgrade to a digital transmitter in a market that they're not planning to upgrade right now. So those are ongoing.

I'm a volunteer, so this is information we're collecting free right now. This is why we're saying there needs to be a coordinated, funded campaign to collect these kinds of information, because I can't do this on my own.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I would love to ask Ms. Milligan and Mr. Seguin some questions, but I'm actually going to cede the floor to the conversation that wasn't quite done--Mr. Richards.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Simms.

Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I certainly appreciate it. I take back all the bad things I've said about Liberals over the years. They can keep their word, occasionally. I appreciate it, Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

No problem.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I couldn't resist.

I will just pick up where we were, talking about the programming and the types of programming.

I'm curious. Going a little further into it, with movies, is described video available in a theatre or if you rent a DVD? Is it available in that format?

[Yves Seguin]

There's been some experimentation in movie theatres, with described movies, so it does exist. The technology does exist. It could be more prevalent than it is, because it's quite rare that you will actually see a movie that is being advertised and played with video description available, unfortunately.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Do you have statistics? Is it more prevalent with television programming than it is with movies?

[Beverley Milligan]

We're beginning to get some statistics around television. It's virtually in all major movies. It is available on the DVD. However, at the cinema, persons with the disabilities are not necessarily going to be able to go to the cinema and enjoy that movie with their family.

To put it all into perspective, what we're talking about here for descriptive video is this. There is technology that exists out there that can be brought together to bring the cost of descriptive video down to less than $1,000 an hour, for one hour of programmng. If you put that into the context of what producers pay for an hour of programming, it's very minuscule. It's all right there.

We do have statistics and we'd love to provide them to you. I just wanted to give you a sense of perspective in terms of how realistic what we're asking for is.