Thank you.
I'll just go through our seven recommendations very quickly because we don't have a lot of time, but I thought it would be important to go over them.
They involve three areas. One is the regulation needed to deal with vertical integration. We don't have anything very detailed to offer you, but we do support measures that we've heard proposed to ensure that the new and growing companies aren't able to throttle Canadians' access to content, aren't able to push out smaller independent and public broadcasters from the airwaves and from the Internet. What we're suggesting is corporate separation be instituted to ensure that the pipes remain separate from content in these new big companies.
The second big area is CBC. We think more money needs to be given to CBC for local content on all platforms.
The third main area is that we believe a local content strategy needs to be included in Canada's digital strategy, and we're really concerned so far that content does not seem to feature big in the government's thinking about the digital strategy.
So just to go over the recommendations, the first, as I said, is to implement a rule requiring the separation of operations and management between content distribution and programming elements within a single company, and measures enabling the CRTC to act on infringements against this rule.
The second recommendation is to provide additional funding to CBC for new local programming on all platforms in underserved and unserved communities. Frankly, we don't think stable funding is enough.
Number three is make support for independent local programming on all platforms a priority in cultural and broadcast policy. Further to that, direct the CRTC to undertake a strategy for radio, television, and digital programming in smaller communities that builds on the success of the local program improvement fund and includes community media initiatives. At the moment, the LPIF is only available to public and private broadcasters. We think that the only way local media is going to grow in smaller communities is with the involvement and support of local communities themselves. It doesn't look at this point like major professional media organizations are going to be putting a lot of investment back in the smaller communities of this country. Every time we see consolidation—this is not new, the vertical integration is the newest element of it—we see larger media companies with less interest and less investment, especially in smaller communities, but frankly in local programming across the board. We need to try to reverse that. We need a strategy for that, and I think the heritage committee is a good place to start on a content strategy for our smaller communities.
We also urge the heritage committee to recommend reserving broadband in the coming spectrum auction, or auctions, for public and community broadcasts and other uses.
Number six is include a local media initiative strategy in Canada's digital strategy. Implementation of these initiatives could be funded in part with a small portion of the proceeds from these future spectrum auctions.
Finally, number seven is to establish a coordinated national education campaign on the transition to digital television that among other things will target local communities that stand to lose their over-the-air signals, letting those communities know what they could do to replace this service for their residents.
Thank you.