I live in Bellingham, Washington, and my wife, who is unfortunately not with me, is fully bilingual. She listens to French radio on Comcast Cable, which is the local cable provider and about as American-owned as you can get. She has access to at least three or four private stations--I'm not talking about French CBC--that broadcast music and news in French. She listens to them all the time. Unfortunately, my French has not picked up fast enough to learn it.
I think the point is that the means of transmission carries the content, the means of transmission doesn't determine the content; consumers determine the content.
There happen to be a lot of Canadians who live in Whatcom County, where I live, which is just south of Vancouver. I'm sure Comcast finds that it's not a big profit-maker, but they find it worthwhile to dedicate a small portion of their broadband capacity to providing French-language services to their subscribers. That illustrates the power of the market to produce solutions for minority consumers. I'm very fond of giving that little example.
It is a relevant challenge to say that telecommunications isn't like anything else, because it carries content, and content is culture, and culture has diversity--different people like different culture--and therefore we can't apply economic principles to telecommunications. I would turn that completely on its head. I would say it is the opportunity for new suppliers to find new uses for their capital to meet the needs of new consumers. That really is the power of the marketplace.
Can I say that every consumer in Canada would be happy with the market system that might be created if we allowed unrestricted foreign ownership? No, I can't say that. The market isn't perfect. There may be certain types of cultural demands that really are not profitable to provide.
What do we do about that? One of the things we can do is to be honest to society and say that we value this culture even though it can't generate a profit for even the most efficient producer, so let's subsidize this directly. I don't think we should say the market system is the villain so let's throw it out, when we can solve that problem by being honest in saying this is a social need so let's subsidize it directly.