My name is Cathy Edwards. I'm the spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations. CACTUS represents the views of Canadians who believe that participation in the broadcasting system by ordinary Canadians is fundamental to our democracy.
CACTUS and approximately 20 other organizations wrote to the Prime Minister in September asking for a coordinated government education campaign in advance of the digital transition. Signatories include Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, the Canadian Conference of the Arts, the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Media Guild, OpenMedia, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, the Documentary Organization of Canada, and academics from York, Ryerson, McMaster, and Concordia. Today's presentation has been informed by these and other groups.
I listened to Monday's meeting and congratulate you on the pertinent questions you all raised. Most concerned the number of Canadians who will be affected by the digital transition either because they may have to invest in new TVs or converters, in areas where signals are being upgraded to digital, or they may lose free OTA service altogether. A few queried the nature of the public education campaign to inform Canadians about the changes.
The first part of my presentation addresses these topics, since our take on some of them is different from what you heard from the CRTC. Second, while continuity of service is a major issue because so many Canadians rely on TV for information and entertainment, the CRTC presentation touched on other issues that we believe will actually have more impact on Canadian communications and media diversity in the long term.
Regarding the number of Canadians who may be affected by changes in TV service on August 31, Madame Lavallée touched on the key issue when she cited research by the Canadian Media Research Consortium. The majority of those who rely on free OTA service—and as a single mother, I'm one—are those who cannot afford cable or satellite and are least able to afford new TVs and digital converters. These include the elderly, immigrants, the handicapped, and Canadians in rural areas with fewer economic opportunities. For example, 90% of the residents of some first nations communities rely on free OTA TV.
Many such rural areas also lack broadband Internet, and many of these groups—the elderly, the handicapped, and immigrants—are less likely to obtain information from other sources like the Internet, as Bev mentioned. While it is true that Shaw has been asked to provide free satellite equipment and a selection of local channels to its direct-to-home customers as a result of its purchase of Canwest, free access lasts only until the end of Shaw's next DTH licence term. Within its service area in western Canada, when Shaw renews its DTH licence, it can charge whatever it sees fit. We therefore view this arrangement as a gateway to move low-income Canadians who previously relied on free OTA TV onto paid services. We note that while a similar satellite solution was offered in Bell's initial tangible benefits package for its purchase of CTV, that offer has since been taken off the table, as has Bell's offer to upgrade CTV transmitters to digital outside the mandatory markets.
We also note that the numbers cited by the CRTC of Canadians who will lose free OTA service on August 31 include only those who will lose service initially. As Mr. Angus noted on Monday, analog broadcasting is unlikely to continue forever. The CBC has said that within three years, the satellite network that supplies its analog transmitters will be decommissioned. The CBC will be unavailable over the air outside the 31 mandatory markets. For example, by 2013 there will be no Radio-Canada available over the air east of Rimouski and no CBC in Newfoundland outside St. John's.
We suspect that similar decommissioning will be pursued by other broadcasters, so free OTA TV in rural areas is likely to suffer a slow death over many years, affecting many more Canadians than current figures suggest. As Mr. Angus also said on Monday, even in areas where residents continue to have some OTA TV there will, indeed, be a hodgepodge.
In Mr. Del Mastro's riding of Peterborough, CTV will be available on digital while the CBC will continue in analog. To switch between them, residents will have to first turn off their digital converters, using its remote control, and then use the TV remote to tune in the CBC. If you buy a digital converter with no pass-through function, it'll be even more cumbersome. You'll have to unplug your antennae from the back of the converter and then plug it into your TV each time, but how will residents of Peterborough know this with no coordination among the education campaigns of individual broadcasters?
Appendix C summarizes how each of your ridings will be affected. The clerk has assured me you'll get copies of those appendices afterwards.
Ms. Crombie is correct that the CRTC has reversed its original recommendation that the government undertake a coordinated national consumer education and awareness program. We have backed the CRTC's original recommendation at every opportunity.
Recently, as an intervenor to the Bell-CTV ownership transfer, we and several other public interest groups recommended that $10 million of the roughly $200 million that will be spent on tangible public benefits be directed toward a national education campaign to fund a national call centre, an expanded and more user-friendly heritage website, and neutral PSAs to air on TV to drive viewers to the website and call centre.
The problem with an industry-led approach, as Bev mentioned, is that while independently owned broadcasters would have a vested interest in their viewers finding their signal post-transition, the BDUs that own Canada's private broadcasters have the reverse interest: to push Canadians onto cable, satellite, and telco services.
A colleague recently received a call from a near neighbour of Ms. Crombie and Mr. Chong, in Oakville, who was dissatisfied with how much he pays for Cogeco. When he phoned to cancel his subscription, he was told that after August 31 he would no longer be able to receive OTA TV. My colleague was able to tell him that thanks to the digital transition and his proximity to the U.S., he would receive more and better-quality signals free over the air than ever before, so he bought an antenna.
With regard to Mr. Armstrong's query about how vertical integration affects the digital transition, vertical integration is one of the main reasons a neutral, government-led information campaign is crucial.
Appendix D is a screen capture for the website of the independent authority that is overseeing France's transition. You can enter your postal code and find out exactly what is happening in your neighbourhood. All of this information is known in Canada and could be made available equally simply.
On the underfunded heritage website that we have, Canadians are advised to call their local broadcasters. In my case, there were 15 separate links. There's also nothing to warn you that outside the mandatory markets, you will almost certainly find yourself in a complicated hodgepodge. Compared with France's, our hybrid analog-digital solution and our enormous geography will generate much more confusion.
Our first recommendation is to renew our call that a coordinated national education campaign be undertaken as soon as possible under the leadership of the CRTC and by a working group that includes a range of industry and civil stakeholders.
I'd like to turn now to the more fundamental issue: that we as a country may fail to leverage the full digital dividend.
We've recommended that complete and user-friendly information be made available to individual Canadians as viewers, but it is perhaps even more important that comprehensive information be made available to civil planning authorities.
More than 100 remote communities that have never had CBC, Global, or CTV repeaters offer residents over-the-air rebroadcasting services for as little as $40 per household per year. These municipalities negotiate their own deals with satellite providers to bring in remote channels, they raise their own transmission towers, and they then can offer whatever other local services they wish, such as a community channel, free wireless Internet, cellphone service, mobile TV, and other new applications yet to be imagined—and all for less than a tenth of the price of satellite service.
The advantage of digital transmitters is their capacity for signal compression. In the old days, communities had to buy one box for each channel. Today they can buy just one for a fraction of the cost and can multiplex TV and other services together, so our second recommendation is that any national education campaign about the digital transition must inform remote and rural planning authorities about their options—about the new horizons that should be opening up to them, rather than closing. We urge each of you to demand this information for your ridings.
We fear that as broadcasters quietly decommission analog transmitters and towers over the coming years, this infrastructure will be lost to rural communities forever. Conversely, informed communities that step up to the plate to maintain their transmission infrastructures will have a stake in the new digital economy.
As well, it's not just rural Canadians who are losing out. While the digital dividend in other countries will result in more over-the-air TV channels and competition, here in Canada the transition is poised to do the reverse. The CRTC on Monday said that many digital channels can fit into the spectrum formerly occupied by one analog channel. While that is true in theory, Industry Canada has allotted each existing Canadian broadcaster a full six megahertz digital channel. This is the same bandwidth each used to have for analog TV—a “whole channel”, as we understand it on the dial—and it's in order to broadcast in high definition.
HD doesn't require the full six megahertz. Appendix F in the document you'll get is Canwest's presentation from Spectrum 20/20 in Ottawa last year, which shows that it intends to use only two-thirds of its six megahertz allotment for HD.
In effect broadcasters, who are collectively owned by fewer and fewer BDUs, are being given scarce real estate to squat on, rather than offering it for competition and new service by under-represented sectors such as our own. Add to this the fact that channels 52 to 69, once available for TV, are being slated for a spectrum auction, and it may soon be even more difficult for new broadcasters to get on air, especially in major population centres near the U.S. border.
Other countries have not pursued this approach. Appendix G presents a recent TV guide from L.A., in which as many as a dozen standard definition channels are multiplexed together, enabling all kinds of new content. Appendix H is a reprint of an article about the digital transition in Kenya, where many more free OTA services will soon be available, with more space for local and regional production in standard definition. In Canada, therefore, the emphasis on HD appears to be crowding out diversity.
Third, we recommend to the CRTC that all OTA services share their six-megahertz digital channel allotments in tight urban markets or with other services belonging to the same owner.
