The reason we brought it up in the context of NAFTA is that this is actually an issue where Canadian interests and U.S. interests can be somewhat aligned. By that I mean, you've seen the submissions from some of the U.S. broadcast groups, such as the National Association of Broadcasters, who represent U.S. over-the-air border stations that spill into Canada. They've long complained that they're carried by cable distribution systems in Canada for free, so they're not paid for their signal in Canada.
Similarly, we operate over-the-air stations in Canada, and cable companies can pick them up and distribute them and we're not paid for that content. That's completely unlike other channels. If you take, for example, TSN or Sportsnet, those channels have two sources of revenue. They have advertising revenue and they have subscription revenue. Every cable subscriber in Canada pays a fee to their cable provider, and a portion of that goes back to TSN or to Sportsnet. It's not true for over-the-air television stations, all of which are carried on cable.
The reason that oddity exists is section 31 of our Copyright Act, which gives cable systems the right to retransmit over-the-air signals for free. We could solve the U.S. problem and the Canadian problem if we eliminated section 31 of the Copyright Act and simply allowed over-the-air stations to negotiate with cable companies the fair value of their signal.
That regime exists in the U.S. It's called a “retransmission consent regime”. NBC Buffalo negotiates with the local Buffalo cable company and they come to an agreement. If they don't come to an agreement, the signal isn't carried. We would like that opportunity for our stations in Canada. That will give us access to the same revenue stream that our competitor channels have and it would give us fair remuneration for what's a very valuable product to Canadians and allow us to continue to fund local news and employ Canadians in local markets.