Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon to the committee members.
My name is Troy Reeb. I serve as executive vice-president of broadcast networks for Corus Entertainment.
On behalf of our 3,500 employees across the country, I want to thank you for inviting us to discuss Bill C-10, which we are urging Parliament to pass without delay.
Before getting into the bill, I want to provide a brief overview of our company. We're very proud to be Canada's leading pure play media and content company. We have Corus Studios, a leading producer and distributor of Canadian lifestyle programming; Nelvana, a premier animation studio; Kids Can Press, Canada's largest independent children's book publisher.
Lastly, Toon Boom, our Montreal-based division, creates software for international studios.
All told, our Canadian-made content is exported to 160 countries around the world, but our bread and butter remains broadcasting here in Canada. We operate 15 Global TV stations, 39 radio stations and 33 specialty channels, in both English and French, such as YTV, Séries Plus and Food Network Canada. We are the proud home of Global News, one of Canada's largest news organizations, delivering thousands of hours of local, regional and national stories every year.
To emphasize this, Corus is a pure play media business. We have no cable or telecom assets to subsidize us. We are an independent, publicly traded company competing in a trillion-dollar global entertainment sector. We think we've assembled the vision, the team and the expertise to build an international media powerhouse right here in Canada, but even the best people and ideas cannot overcome badly outdated regulation, and that's why your work today is so important.
You've already heard from many stakeholders about Bill C-10, and no doubt each of them has an interest in the Canadian broadcast system, but we have to remember that what the Broadcasting Act is really about is the rules for broadcasters operating in Canada. This act enables a web of regulations, policies, conditions and codes that touch every level of our operations. They dictate how much we have to spend on certain kinds of shows, when those shows can go to air, the types of songs we can play on our radio stations, the number of commercials we can sell to advertisers and from whom we can buy our programs. I could go on and on.
Most of these rules were designed for an industry that doesn't even exist anymore, one where licensed broadcasters enjoyed privileged access to Canadian audiences. That is no longer the case. We're doing everything we can to adapt and compete, but in far too many cases, the old broadcasting rules make it impossible to do so. After more than 10 years of escalating unregulated foreign competition, five years of rolling policy consultations, and one devastating pandemic, we simply cannot wait any longer.
Bill C-10 is not perfect, but it gets one big thing right: It will finally bring foreign digital broadcasters into the regulatory fold and start to level the playing field for Canadian media. For us, this is reason enough to support it.
Let me be clear. New players should not have to play by the old rules. The level of regulation currently applied to Canadian broadcasters is simply untenable in a world of open competition. Going forward, all players—foreign and domestic, digital and traditional—must have a more flexible, less onerous set of obligations than Canadian broadcasters have now. All players should be able to contribute to the system in ways that make sense for their audiences and their business.
Here at Corus, news is a prime example. We're very proud of our work at Global News, and we're uniquely able to provide news through local stations across Canada that foreign streamers will not and cannot replicate, but local news is a very challenging and expensive business. While it's still highly popular on all platforms, it is entirely dependent on ad revenues that have been increasingly siphoned away by foreign Internet giants.
For many years now, we have offset our losses in news by providing internal cross-subsidies from more profitable entertainment programming, but now our ability to do that is also fading fast. Foreign digital broadcasters are siphoning away those profitable audiences with no obligations in return to support Canadian content or communities. If this continues, we will soon face some very difficult decisions, as other Canadian broadcasters already have.
Going forward, news should not represent just one of our many obligations but should be recognized as our primary public service contribution. Giving us more flexibility to compete in other parts of our business will provide us a more sustainable way to cross-subsidize news in the future.
Now, as I've said, this bill is not perfect. In our written submission, we will propose amendments to improve it.
We're also strongly urging this committee not to amend the bill to empower the CRTC to regulate private dealings between broadcasters and producers. That kind of amendment would further benefit producers who are now enjoying record profits at the expense of Canadian broadcasters, who are seeing record declines. The CRTC already rejected this “terms of trade” approach six years ago, and there is no compelling policy reason to reverse course now.
In closing, Canadian broadcast policy has always depended on strong private broadcasters. We want to continue creating Canadian jobs and serving Canadian communities, but we simply can't do that when faced with a regulatory environment that allows foreign players to scoop profits out of the country while leaving us as Canadians with all the obligations.
By prioritizing equity between foreign and domestic players and signalling that obligations should be suitable for individual circumstances, we believe Bill C-10 can help us begin the difficult work of building a fairer and more sustainable broadcasting system, and we urge you to move it forward.
Thank you.