Mr. Speaker, I live on a small island on the coast of British Columbia. In common with my fellow islanders and hundreds of thousands of other rural Canadians, I can only receive two or three regular TV channels. We have no cable TV and no prospect of getting cable, but that is not our complaint.
Here is the problem. The air around us out there is filled with a cornucopia of good TV programs and movies but our government here in Ottawa says we may not receive those programs because it is illegal.
If a Canadian company were to make this programming available, my neighbours would be happy to buy Canadian but there is no such company. Therefore tens of thousands of rural Canadians
are being made to do without or break the law by receiving American signals.
It is just as wrong for the Canadian government to deny its citizens the ability to legally receive TV signals as it is for the Government of North Korea to dictate to its people what they will hear and see on radio and TV.