Thank you for that great question.
In your riding, we used to do a newscast. It was called “First Local”, as you may remember. In 2010 the CRTC changed its policy on community television and required us to spend on and exhibit more access programming, which is programming created by and for the community. Everything we do on community channels is created by, for, and with members of the community.
When it came to the daily news show, we felt that it needed to be produced more by the entity itself rather than being community produced. When the regulation took effect in 2010, we had to withdraw from that program in order to meet the regulatory obligations on access spending. We understood that we took away a very valuable service. We had to do that in all the 905s, embrace it, and embrace the new framework. When we appeared before the commission in January, we explained to them that if the commission felt there was a dearth of local news in smaller markets, we could reinstate these newscasts if they went back to the pre-2010 access formula.
So that would be one thing: to support our proposal at the commission to go back to the access level of 30% rather than 50% in order for us to create those local newscasts.