Thank you, Mr. Pelletier.
Members of the committee, it's a pleasure to meet with you.
We support Bill C-10, which confirms that online broadcasting is covered under the Broadcasting Act and sets out how the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) should regulate online undertakings. That being said, Bill C-10 needs to be improved to ensure that essential aspects of the current Broadcasting Act are not eliminated and that certain shortcomings are addressed. Given the limited time available to us today, we would like to make only two recommendations on matters that are particularly close to our hearts.
First, the requirement to make predominant use of Canadian creative resources must be maintained. Already, over the past 10 years, the foreign location and service production in Canada has grown from 30% to 52% of total production, while independent production of programs recognized as Canadian has decreased from 48% to 35% of total production. The foreign location and service production was 78% U.S.-based, with production almost exclusively in English.
We do not want any new version of the Broadcasting Act to endorse foreign location and service production as a substitute for truly Canadian production. This is why we do want the act to make predominant use of Canadian creative resources. By retaining the text of the current act, the CRTC could continue to tailor this requirement to online undertakings according to their nature, as the wording of the act already provides the CRTC with this possibility by stating: “unless the nature of the service provided by the undertaking... renders that use impracticable.”
The floor is yours again, Mr. Pelletier.