Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
The study is about opportunities and challenges, and I wanted to pull those two together, because this is where the catch-22 comes in of people not knowing where to go. The opportunities of the digital media are extraordinary: anywhere in the world people can have information, knowledge, learning, and content. It can be anything you can think of--any information, any entertainment.
This is an important opportunity we don't want to miss. I think it's the greatest thing since the printing press was invented, but the challenges that come with it are what I am hoping, out of this meeting, we would be able to square. It seems to be a difficult circle to square, and how we do that is what I wanted to pursue in my line of questioning.
For instance, I was glad to read in your presentation, which I think is good, that access to broadband is being widened and that the government has a progressive policy on widening it. Growing of broadband is good, but you were asked by my colleague, Mr. Scarpaleggia, about what places you can turn to. While access to broadband and to Internet and to digital media is important, the question is, what happens when you have that access? The challenge, therefore, is how you allow all of this. The Justin Biebers of the world, in a little basement, come up with a grand, wonderful design, get it out there using this brand new piece of technology, and hit the world with a bang. That's the wonderful thing about it.
The challenge is how people who are using it--the Justin Biebers of the world, and anyone who uses the technology to reach this global audience--can maintain their copyright, their own creative content, their intellectual property. It has to be challenged, and I don't know how we're doing on that.
It's my understanding that the United Kingdom has been moving forward and is not just pursuing digitalization, but getting ahead of it. We're pursuing it still. The thing is that every day, even while I'm speaking to you now, something new is going on. Something is happening, something is changing, and we keep trying to shove the toothpaste back into the tube. I wondered whether there are lessons we can learn from what they're doing in the United Kingdom.
I wanted to apply that question very specifically to the CBC, given that the CBC is a public broadcaster and has to depend very much on government funding to bring it fully into the use of digital media for disseminating and marketing its content, as we see the BBC has been doing throughout the world. Everywhere you go you can pick up BBC on the digital media. You can't do that with CBC yet. We know that our ability is hampered because we don't have market distribution. Could this digital world be used by the CBC for distribution? Could CBC be our distributor using digitization? How do we pay for it? Do you have a plan to help them because they don't have the same access to market funding as the other market-based broadcasters?
The other question I want to ask is whether there is any intent to look at the Broadcasting Act, because these are now broadcast media. Broadcast media is no longer radio and television; broadcast media is Justin Bieber sitting in the thing and using digital media to go out there to reach everybody. Are we looking at this in a proactive way? Are we asking whether we should look at the Broadcasting Act? Is there something we can do to take advantage of the opportunity while dealing with some of the challenges of intellectual property?
I haven't even gone into moral rights. You take something Justin Bieber did and then go and play with it in the basement, and it turns out something brand new, but you're using Justin's intellectual property and tickling it to make something new. That is about intellectual property; it's about moral rights. We have not talked about moral rights in this country, but I know that Europe has dealt with moral rights.
How are we going to deal with all of this? These are difficult questions, I know. I'm asking you to go “blue sky” and be creative in your thinking.