Thank you, Chair.
First of all, I thank Ms. Dabrusin and wish her a happy birthday. It's actually my sister Heather's birthday as well, so I wish my sister a happy birthday along with that.
As you mentioned, I'm not an official member of this committee. Despite the fact that the Green Party got 1.2 million votes in the last election, clearly one-fifth of what the Liberals and the Conservatives got but 50 times fewer seats than the Liberals and 40 times fewer seats than Conservatives, because we don't have official party status, I do not have a voice or a vote on committee. However, I have been studying this bill. I've followed the witness testimony in committee and I've had my own meetings with a number of organizations so that I could question them myself.
This amendment adds a definition of “community element” to the act. The broadcasting policy for Canada in the act states that the Canadian broadcasting system comprises “public, private and community elements” and that each element “shall contribute in an appropriate manner to the creation and presentation of Canadian programming”. However, there is no definition of “community element”, nor is there a description of what an “appropriate manner” means.
Community element is needed now more than ever. It's the voice of smaller communities and minority voices. It's a platform for democratic discourse. It's a way for media literacy, a training ground for people in communities who want to learn about broadcasting and television and radio, and it's an incubator for Canadian talent.
I've had some discussion with members of the committee and the word “non-profit” stuck out to them, because the definition in the amendment as written says:
“community element” means the participation of members of the community in the non-profit content production of community media in the language of their choice, as well as in the day-to-day operations and administration of community media;
Many of these community television organizations are connected to major cable companies: Shaw, Rogers, Cogeco, and so on, which are for-profit companies. However, when the cable companies got their monopoly to provide cable in a community, part of that was to provide community television. The intent of community television was for it to be non-commercial. That might be a better word than “non-profit”, but rather than trying to cram a program into 22 minutes so that you could get eight minutes of commercials, there were no constraints on that. There are no commercials on community radio or community television. There are sponsorships from businesses for programming, but it is not the same as the commercial radio or commercial television.
Therefore, I'm hoping that the members of the committee will support this definition and that they see the need for changing the word “non-profit” to “non-commercial”. This might need to be done, but I think it's important to define what the community element is in the act.
Thank you.