Thank you, Mr. Speaker and members of the House, for the opportunity of being able to speak in this House. It is a rare opportunity for some of us.
The question I am raising tonight is a question that I raised in the House on March 15. It concerns Rogers' takeover of Maclean Hunter and the virtual monopoly that Rogers Communication will have on the information highway.
Rogers Communication with this takeover will have some 43 per cent control over Canadians who are hooked into the cable system. In Ontario it is over 70 per cent.
My question to the government was to request it to either set up a special committee of Parliament or to ask the standing committee for the Department of Heritage to have special hearings, not just on Rogers' takeover but on the whole question of what is the public interest in the information highway.
I acknowledged in my question that both the CRTC and the Competition Tribunal will have to hold hearings and approve this takeover. My position is we must first define what is in the public interest in terms of the evolution of the information highway.
Mr. Rogers might be quite correct in claiming that we need large monopoly type organizations or companies in order to compete with the Americans and to take full advantage of the technologies available. If he is right then basically what he is saying is that he is a natural monopoly like telephone, like power and other utilities. If that is the case then we must look to make certain that the proper regulations are in place. This type of work, I suggest, should be done by a parliamentary committee.
I noticed later last week that the government had set up a commission under the chairmanship of Mr. David Johnston from McGill University. The discouraging part, when I read about this in the Thursday, March 17 edition of the Citizen , is that most of these hearings will be held in private and not open to the public.
I wish to underline the importance of an open public process in which all the players, including the public, can participate. I would also suggest that this is a creative way of using members of Parliament and the existing committee system. I could envisage working very closely with the departments involved, including the Department of Canadian Heritage, the bureaucrats in that department working with the committee, to work together on a co-operative basis to develop a position of what is in the public interest.
I was also somewhat encouraged by the response of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry. I believe that the parliamentary secretary left open the possibility of using members of Parliament either in a specially struck committee or in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to deal with this issue. I believe this is an issue that should be dealt with by committee and utilizing the work of the House.
Let me again underline the importance of what is happening here. Never before has a development of this magnitude, that is Rogers' takeover of MacLean Hunter, been seen in the Canadian history of cultural industries. It creates a virtual monopoly. It is a turning point in Canada's technological and cultural future. Therefore, it is essential that the public interest be defined and that this be done through a committee of the House of Commons.