I'll continue in French.
The fact is that Canada does not make sense to economists. They do not like large, sparsely populated areas. They think that people who live outside of cities should pay for that privilege, and that policies that support rural Canada are wrong-headed. We disagree—and so do Canadians, especially those who are fortunate enough to live in places like Erin, Nipissing or Chicoutimi.
But let us be clear. Allowing foreign ownership of our telecommunications companies will bring these very hard questions to light, and will pit rural and urban neighbours against each other. Of course it's easier to serve densely populated countries like Korea and Japan—but members of this House have always acted to ensure that in this country, all Canadians can access the communications services they need, across five time zones, from coast to coast to coast.
Then there is the spectrum issue. The licences held by telecommunications and broadcasting companies are temporary permits to use the spectrum owned by Canadians. But last year the Supreme Court of Canada decided that today's commercial realities mean that licences are a type of property that is subject to seizure during bankruptcy. If we allow non-Canadians to own Canadian telecommunications companies, are we inadvertently giving non-Canadians ownership of our spectrum? We don't pretend to have the answer—but this is a difficult question that must be addressed before we allow foreign ownership.
Finally, you've already heard that untangling telecommunications from broadcasting pipes will be a messy business, if not impossible. Foreign ownership of our communications system—broadcasting and telecommunications—puts Canada on a path that threatens its domestic and cultural sovereignty, as well as its national security. As an organization representing thousands of people in the news and information business we are particularly concerned about what this might mean for the content of Canada's news media. Foreign ownership will influence style and substance of content of our news and information programming.
For example, last year, the CRTC asked the Federal Court of Appeal to decide whether Internet service providers are broadcasters or telecommunications service providers and it hasn't decided yet. But even though section 36 of the Telecommunications Act prohibits telecommunications companies from interfering with the content they carry, the CRTC lets Internet companies throttle content under specific conditions. U.S. wireless carriers have already censored text message content for both political and business reasons. Should Canadians be required to balance their constitutional right to freedom of expression against lower cell phone rates? How, in any event, will they even know when content is being censored?
In conclusion, let us repeat what we said at the beginning of our presentation. CEP supports and encourages a strong, healthy and innovative communications system. But we submit that before recommending foreign ownership of these systems, this committee needs evidence to explain why telecommunications rates have remained high despite deregulation and increased competition. You need evidence proving that foreign ownership will reduce rates, and evidence demonstrating that Canadians' socio-economic interests will be better served if Canadian companies sell our telecommunications system to foreign interests. We do not believe this evidence exists.
And we agree with other witnesses that Canada needs new communications legislation to unite our telecommunications, radiocommunications and broadcasting acts, specifically to require the federal regulator to serve the public interest.
So before this government changes foreign investment levels in this complex sector, it should first establish a communications ministry to provide reliable data, solid analysis, and impartial research to answer the questions we have raised.
Going forward, Canada needs strong legislation to protect the interests of this country and its citizens—not just the interests of a few extremely large corporations and their shareholders. The Canadians who created and paid for our telecommunications infrastructure left us with a communications system that for decades was the envy of the world. Canadians still have the talent and expertise to improve our system. Our engineering, technical, and business schools are second to none. Parliament must ensure that this talent, expertise and education are employed by Canadian companies to improve their performance and our communications systems.
We have other information to give you, but we have limited our presentation to five to seven minutes. We were told this morning that we had 10 minutes. So we apologize. We'll have other concrete examples to give committee members later on.
Thank you.