How did the regulatory regime enable it? Through bold regulatory decisions that were made over 50 years ago to harness the power of Hollywood for the greater good of Canada through creative regulatory measures that put Canadian broadcasters at the centre of the broadcasting ecosystem.
Licence rules required partnerships between foreign and Canadian broadcasters, creating such success stories as Discovery Canada, a partnership between Bell Media and Discovery. Another example is simultaneous substitution rules that ensure that broadcasters can monetize all the Canadian viewership and generated revenues that could be funnelled back into news and Canadian shows. These solutions were not always obvious. It took the vision and fortitude of your predecessors to bring our ecosystem to life.
Let's be clear. Today these rules no longer work. Our access to popular U.S. shows has become increasingly challenging and expensive. Foreign streamers are bidding up the costs of programming acquisition. Even more concerning is that major U.S. studios have either cut out domestic broadcasters all together or are about to do so. Disney+ and Paramount+ are already using their own streaming platforms to reach Canadians directly. Others like HBO have launched their own OTT platforms in the U.S. and could still choose to do so in Canada. With the ability to go directly to Canadians on an OTT basis, we are starting to see these platforms refuse to sell us their content all together.
Why does this matter? It matters because it puts all we do—and by "we", I mean all that Canadian broadcasters do—at risk. Canadian broadcasters produce Canadian news that quite simply is essential to our culture, to protecting our democracy and to our national sovereignty. Let's not delude ourselves. The entire Canadian broadcasting ecosystem is funded by profits generated from foreign content. We cannot expect broadcasters to continue to produce and support the Canadian content that we do without access to foreign content and partnering with foreign players.
We can ensure the central role of Canadian broadcasters by securing access to foreign content. We can also incentivize foreign streamers to partner with Canadian broadcasters, much like foreign linear services have done for decades. We believe Bill C-11 should explicitly enable this. That is why we are proposing two important amendments to clauses 3 and 5 of the act today.
Finally, we wanted to let you know we are supportive of both the CAB's and Unifor's proposed amendments. A copy of them, as well as our specific amendments to clauses 3 and 5 of the act, are attached in our submission that we sent to the clerk.
Thank you for the opportunity to present our views. We look forward to answering your questions.