Good morning.
My name is Solange Drouin. I am Vice-President and Director General of Public Affairs at ADISQ.
First, I want to thank you for inviting us to appear before you today to discuss and consider with you the important issue you have undertaken to study under your current terms of reference.
I will tell you at the outset that ADISQ believes ownership is key in the development of Quebec and Canadian song. Perhaps I can add a few words about the organization I represent.
ADISQ is a professional association representing producers of discs, entertainment and videos that mainly develop the careers of French-speaking Canadians both in and outside Quebec. For more than 30 years now, ADISQ has been carrying out its mandate to implement a legislative, regulatory and financial framework to foster development of French Canadian song. We do not favour Canadian ownership for purely ideological reasons, but rather because it has proven itself, I would note, for more than 40 years. The people who adopted these measures were great visionaries and, in the current context, I hope to convince you that they still are.
This extent of Canadian ownership is good for artists, for businesses and for Canada. Today, the Canadian music industry is doing well and businesses are prosperous. We are very pleased about that. I would like to illustrate how we in our industry view the role that Canadian ownership has played. Independent Quebec producers, who I am representing today, are responsible for more than 95% of released albums of Quebec singing artists. When it comes to buying discs, 4 out of 10 Quebeckers choose discs by Quebec artists rather than those by international artists. This is a great success for which we are envied in a number of markets.
However, this has not been a spontaneously-generated result. It has been made possible, of course, by the talent of the artists and the vitality of the entrepreneurs, but also by all the government measures that have been established in a sustainable manner, that have had their effects and are still having those effects. In analyzing all government measures, it is very easy to understand why Canada and Quebec were champions of implementation of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Nationally, we believed in the lasting impact of the cultural policies in place. As I said, one of the key parts of our success in our industry has been the imposition of quotas by the CRTC on French-language radio stations. As I hope you know, this is a 65% quota for French-language vocal music.
This window guarantees us access to the Canadian audience and also enables singing artists to reach their audience. The act of creation must not be dissociated from distribution. To promote creation, you have to be concerned with the successful distribution of that creation; you cannot have one without the other. This 65% requirement for French-language vocal music and 35% Canadian content, as you know as well, was made possible by the fact that the government was able to exercise control over Canadian businesses. Obviously, in actual fact, that made a difference, and today, the results I was talking about are possible.
In the music industry, we unfortunately saw an eloquent example of what could happen to content requirements if the Canadian ownership condition were not in place. We witnessed that experiment very recently. In 2005, XM Radio and Sirius Radio applied to the CRTC for a pay audio programming undertaking licence. Those two companies proposed to use a foreign satellite to broadcast their products in Canada. As that was not permitted, the CRTC had to assess the possibility of using a foreign satellite to provide a programming service. The government deviated from its principle regarding the use of Canadian satellites for the purpose of that service. What happened? XM Radio and Sirius Radio unfortunately convinced the CRTC that, in view of the lack of capacity of the foreign satellite broadcasting their products in the United States, the CRTC could not set requirements on the French-language and Canadian content levels it would have wished to have. Consequently, in its decision, it granted ridiculous French-language content percentages. I repeat what I said at the time. It was only 10% French-language content, whereas it was 65% for radio stations, for example. When the CRTC analyzed this kind of service way back in 1995 or 1996, 25% of stations had to be francophone.
Our Canadian service is what it is because of the lack of space on a satellite we do not control. So there is a ridiculous amount of francophone and Canadian content that isn't any better.
For us, this is really a very practical and important illustration of what the lack of Canadian oversight of programming services could do even with a broadcasting act. The ownership principle, which was frequently criticized in that decision and for which we were not heard, tells us that you really have to control the entire chain of distribution channels in order to really achieve our ends and implement our policy.
Today, as we know—and I would be very open to the idea of discussing this with you—the distribution channels we're talking about have increased in number and diversity. The music industry—I'd like to talk about that, if you give me the opportunity during the question period—radio and telecommunications are going through major upheavals. The telcos are now users—I would emphasize that we said that—and the distribution businesses offer telecommunications services, and it's not over.
There have been study groups such as yours, and commissions, and reports have been produced for more than 15 years. It's not as though we have just started talking about convergence. I was here 15 years ago and they were talking about convergence at the CRTC. I was at ADISQ, but they were talking about it at the CRTC. The situation is merely accelerating right now. I'm somewhat surprised today to hear people deny this convergence as we're talking about it. This is in your working group and study group documents. I'm a bit surprised that this convergence isn't an established fact for everyone.
In its wisdom, the Government of Canada took care to develop telecommunications and broadcasting legislation by issuing governing policies in each of the sectors, concerning, obviously, foreign ownership, national sovereignty and content. The first step, in my view, before doing what you are doing today, which is to assess one aspect of that policy, would be to review all of those policies in order to consider whether they are still on track, whether they are obsolete today since, as I was saying, they were implemented more than 40 years ago. In our opinion, the real question would be to review the policy as a whole and then we could perhaps see whether ownership is the right way to go. You've come up with a measure before even analyzing whether anything should be changed. There's nothing to be removed from the telecommunications and broadcasting policies. They were well thought out. There were really more intelligent people than us in government 30 and 40 years ago.
We think that, whereas convergence should mean there are more of these governing policies addressing businesses that take on a number of functions, some claim that convergence should put an end to policies. In their view, the more different functions a business takes on, the fewer obligations it has toward Canadian society. It's quite surprising to hear that. With all due respect, we assert that it is the complete opposite that should occur.
In conclusion—and I know I have probably almost finished—I would like to go back to one point and the objective that have been referred to here, and to continue on the fact that consumers are entitled to better service and the lowest possible price. This is a highly praiseworthy objective, as Maureen Parker said earlier.
I have six points for your consideration, and here's the first. In my opinion, this isn't an ideology that we should pursue blindly, in the sense that it must not be the only focus of our case analyses. If consumers got what they wanted, that would be the best service for nothing. As a French friend of mine recently said, I want to pay nothing for my steak and chips. And that's what consumers want. That can't be the only thing.
