Evidence of meeting #31 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was crtc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Laizner and Mr. Hutton, for your information, the statements I referred to were taken from testimony given at the May 10 meeting.
My colleague Mr. Vandal had put this question to Mr. Jagdish Grewal, from the Canadian Punjabi Post:
“Where is your competition?”
Mr. Grewal replied the following:
“There's the IPTV box. The last two weeks, about five or six daily 24/7 channels have started in the Punjabi language here in greater Toronto and they are going after our business people to promote their stuff on TV.”
Earlier, Mr. Blais provided a good answer to the question put by the chair of the committee about the taxes that are applied to circumvention services. He said that that question would have to be put to the Department of Finance, which we understand.
Next November 22, you will be launching your study on the large conventional television consortiums like Bell, Shaw and Rogers. We hope that they will not try to conclude an agreement based on the fact that since the other services do not pay taxes they should not pay any either, and that, like Netflix, they do not want to provide Canadian content, or would like to have smaller quotas.
Dare we hope that you will not entertain this tax argument in the negotiation of an agreement? I want to say to my good friends in the telecommunications sector that they are quite right and that we are a very mediocre society if we do not make it our business to collect taxes on circumvention services. That said, can we be sure that that will not be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations?
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Broadcasting, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I cannot know what arguments businesses will present to us. I have been working with regulations for 25 years, and businesses do indeed ask for regulatory concessions. Sometimes we agree to grant some, and sometimes we refuse.
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Broadcasting, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I can't speak for the CRTC, nor can the chairperson speculate on what will happen. People will make their representations, and then we will see.
The CRTC television policies aim to ensure that there will still be quotas, even though this may be less practical in future. Funds are allocated to that. There are financial obligations and our policies will continue in that vein.
We have already amended our policies several times to help these enterprises. So they are going to have to put forward some very solid arguments if we are to grant reductions.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Mr. Hutton, you said that there will still be quotas, even if this may not be very practical in future. This concerns me somewhat, because as we speak—
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I'm sorry, Mr. Nantel. I wanted to ask one quick question.
Have you heard from campus and community radio stations when you were doing some of your hearings? I noted that only $5 million was distributed, in nine to 10 years, to 113 campus and community radio stations. They're a diversity of voices. They're representative of a particular community. How can $5 million last 113 campus and community radio stations over 10 years?
Have you discussed how they need to be given a better opportunity to survive and exist?
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Broadcasting, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
We've gone through a variety of policy looks. Campus and community radio wasn't the subject of the Let's Talk TV conversations. That's on a different side of our house. I believe the fund you're speaking of is a fund we created at the CRTC with respect to our own policies, which asks private broadcasters to contribute funds toward the development of the community industry, so we've gone from no support to creating a certain level of support.
I think community radio is also under challenge, because part of their funding from other sources of government has been challenged. Those who rely on advertising find a challenge there as well.
There is a challenge with listenership, and various people are going to other platforms, but as with radio generally, private radio is doing a really good job and continuing to have great success.
Radio costs a lot less than television. Compared with television, there are huge significant differences with respect to the radio business, which has great success. Serving Canadians locally is about a billion-dollar business compared with the television business and the overall broadcasting business, which is in the multiple billions of dollars.
Radio is less expensive. We've made certain choices and we created that fund and asked radio broadcasters to support community radio, and we think it's been a success to date.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much.
I want to thank you for being here, Mr. Hutton and Ms. Laizner. Thank you very much, and thanks to the committee.
Mr. Van Loan...?
