Yes.
The community element is really about community cable and community radio. It's a non-commercial element to broadcasting. Here in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we have CHLY Radio, which is a community college radio station. It's a non-commercial radio station. Students and community members can use it for a learning process. They can pitch shows to the programming committee and then they put together radio shows. They can be talk shows. They can be music shows. There are a series of rules they have to follow in terms of Canadian content for music. With television it's the same thing.
There was a time when you learned about community television through shows like Wayne's World. I started in community television in 1986 at Skyline Cable in Ottawa, before going to school to study broadcasting. That was where I learned about all the different processes for broadcasting. It's what inspired me to go into television.
It's also a place for organizations and community members to be able to have a public discourse to bring their ideas forward. Because it's non-commercial, it's not driven by the element of money and trying to sell eyeballs to advertisers. The purpose is really to bring the community voice into the broadcasting system. It's really important in terms of things like democratic debates. On our community television station here and on community radio, we get debates for city council elections, provincial elections and federal elections. It gives another opportunity for people to hear what's happening in their community.
There are many different ways that community television and community radio are used. The key thing is that it's not a commercial entity, so there isn't an impetus to have to sell eyeball time for commercials. That's a really important element for our democratic system, for open discourse, and as a training ground for people who want to learn about broadcasting and who want to bring their talents forward.
We've seen lots of people who've worked in community television go on to have careers as actors. Tom Green, from Ottawa, is one example. There are lots of examples of people who started their career fooling around on community TV.