Canadian Heritage Committee on March 2nd, 2011

[Catherine Edwards]

Go for it.

[Beverley Milligan]

Let's look at what was committed to by Shaw. It was $38 million for this to reach 200,000 households; what does $38 million do if you have a strategic, comprehensive framework through which you are trying reach every Canadian by applying it more strategically than just throwing it to 200,000 households and assigning a timeframe to it and a rollout and all of these things?

All we are asking for is that somebody make sense of this. That's it. When the framework makes sense, let's do the proper and necessary outreach.

I agree with you. I think the CRTC is trying very much to do the right thing; it just takes more leadership than that of the CRTC to do this.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

You said it was only 200,000 homes, but really what we're talking about is the homes that cannot receive a digital signal for whatever reason. They're in an area the CRTC has looked at and where the CRTC has said, “We're not going to make you install this digital transmitter in this region, which means you will not receive digital signal”. In those areas they have indicated they won't see you left without service. Our concern is with those who would be impacted, i.e., they would no longer have any signal. In think that is why they've gone with a very targeted approach.

If you look at it and say they are ensuring through this very targeted approach that the people who are impacted directly are going to be looked after, if we went with a pan-Canadian view on this and said we were just going to throw it out right across Canada, invariably we'd be taking in well in excess of 90% of households that watch television that aren't looking for a program, that aren't going to be impacted by the transition at all. I'm just curious as to what is wrong with the targeted approach to this when it seems that a targeted approach is, in fact, what's needed?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Del Mastro.

Madame Edwards, go ahead.

[Catherine Edwards]

I'm not sure I agree that just because the CRTC expected it from Shaw this time around, they will next time. In our experience as community broadcasters over the years, there used to be very high expectations of cable companies on the delivery of community television service, and over the years it's simply eroded. As well, if it's not a political priority at the time, nothing happens, so I don't agree with you there with Bell and CTV, whereas Shaw....

We don't think these suggestions for public tangible benefits come from nowhere. We believe they come out of informal conversations between the CRTC and these companies. When Shaw put forward their public benefits package, at that time there did seem to be a strong CRTC direction to encourage multiplexing, the kind of thing I'm talking about with community broadcasters so that local communities could share channels in a tight spectrum. That was in the Shaw deal, as well as this satellite arrangement. Bell and CTV initially had offered the same things, but they have taken it off the table, so I'm not sure there is the same direction this time around; in the same way, last summer the CRTC was advocating for a government-led education campaign, and now they're not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay. Thank you, Madame Edwards.

Madame Crombie is next.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you to our witnesses again.

Ms. Edwards, I'm really concerned about the inadequate performance of the Prime Minister's communications teams in responding to inquiries. It has taken six months for you to get a response to your letter on coordinating a national education campaign in advance. Have you heard anything from anyone? Did the minister respond?

[Catherine Edwards]

Yes, and we did copy all of you on this letter, by the way, so I hope you've heard of it. We did get a letter just saying that it was going to be led by industry.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Nice.

Ms. Edwards, you also made a comment that you can't afford the conversion. It's going to affect many single mothers, elderly, handicapped, disabled people, and aboriginals. What is your estimation of the costs, and did you agree with the CRTC's estimates? You've obviously been through the transcripts. You know they were estimating $30 for a digital converter and $300 in remote communities for a satellite dish. We had been told that the aggregate costs were about $64 million, but who knows? They could be much higher. What are your estimates, and do you both agree with those estimates? How punitive is it?

[Beverley Milligan]

If you take what we found in the U.S., which is that one-third of all households will have someone with a disability, then we're looking at, according to the CRTC estimates, 300,000 households having someone with a disability or being run by someone with a disability. That's a big number. It's going to affect people with disabilities quite significantly.

[Catherine Edwards]

As for my own decision not to have cable or satellite, it's partly income-driven. I'm actually here today as a volunteer. As we all do, we have money for certain things and we figure out our priorities. In my case, there's a whole range of structural problems with the Canadian broadcast system, which means to me that there isn't much on cable or satellite. They're all re-purposing programming because we've taken away genre specificity. We've taken away sources of funding support for local programming so there's very little of that. There's a whole other range of reasons that I'm satisfied with the free channels that I get. Ottawa is served by about 15 free French and English language over-the-air television channels, so we're in a unique position here because of that.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I had asked this on Monday. I'll ask you as well about what you think the fairness is of the government earning over $4 billion in the spectrum sale and yet not offering Canadian consumers a subsidy to offset the purchase of these digital converter boxes or satellite dishes. What's your opinion on that? Do you think the government should be offering a subsidy as well?

[Catherine Edwards]

I definitely think that with the amount of money the government stands to make in the auction, they could be doing a better national education campaign that could offer free equipment. That would be a logical part of it. I agree that it's a huge amount of money.

[Beverley Milligan]

What we've actually filed is that there should be a buyer's premium put on top of that $400 million, and that represents 10%. It's consistent with how auctions occur all over the world, and that kind of fund could begin to address these types of issues.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I was interested in whether the digital signal will include captioning and what the cost would be to provide the captioning.

[Beverley Milligan]

The digital signal will include captioning. Industry Canada takes care of those types of standards, the technical standards. The pass-through will be digital. There's still some lag and other issues associated with it, but for the most part, the distribution of the content will arrive safely.

The question is whether it is even captioned or described in the first place.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I'm concerned as well for rural Canadians. Currently they have access to the over-the-air rebroadcasting services at about $40 per household per year. Obviously I think they'll be one of the groups that are most severely penalized. It'll be the most punitive, with the lowest access at the higher cost.

Are there other options available to them? What are your comments about the cost they'll now need to incur?

[Catherine Edwards]

That particular number you were just quoting was taken from my talk. It was the fact that since the seventies and eighties, before satellite was available and when there wasn't cable in rural areas, a lot of rural communities had the gumption to stick up their own transmission towers and negotiate with signal providers from big cities to bring channels into their own communities. For example, in Valemount, B.C., where there's actually a community channel as well, one of our members brings in three remote radio channels and six remote TV channels. They rebroadcast it from a tower over the air and they charge people out of the tax base. It comes out to about $40 a year. That includes paying a coordinator to offer a community channel. A community of 1,500 has community TV. This is something that can also be used for offering wireless broadband in rural communities that are also likely to be left behind by the commercial system.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

You may have one last question, Madame Crombie.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

You recommend that 10% of the spectrum freed up by digital transmission be reserved from the auction for public use and innovation. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

[Catherine Edwards]

This is what's going on now: Industry Canada is asking how that auction should proceed, and there's a whole series of public users that at the moment are having to buy back spectrum from the private sector. I'll give you one example from Mr. Angus' riding in Timmins. A lot of remote areas around Timmins, including parts of Timmins, don't have broadband Internet. Some of them don't have cellphone access on remote highways as well, which is dangerous. Public entities and municipalities are getting together and are having to put out RFPs to private vendors to ask how much it would cost to put in hot spots and cellphone services to these areas. They'll come back and say that the business case means they need as least this much, so the municipalities are making up the difference. What they are having to do is effectively buy back spectrum from the private sector that has been previously auctioned.

It was originally a public resource. What we're saying is that in this upcoming spectrum auction, some of the spectrum should be kept back for public administration. It will probably happen on a local basis so that these public user groups can make sure that there is fair and equitable service for Canadians. In this way broadband could be another use of that rural transmission infrastructure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay.

Thank you, Madame Edwards.

Mme Lavallée ou M. Pomerleau.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

My question is first for Mrs. Edwards, and then Ms. Milligan.

I just heard my friend, Mr. Angus, tell us that some people are going to have their television cut off in August. I hadn't thought about it, but the telephone is going to ring, not at the CRTC office, but at my office.

[Catherine Edwards]

That's right.