Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to enter into the debate on Bill C-216 introduced by my colleague from the riding of Sarnia-Lambton. I applaud his initiative in this matter.
Generally I recognize the importance of maintaining the cultural industries within our country. I believe it is part of the mandate of the CRTC to ensure that there is a cultural identity that goes from sea to sea to sea. I also believe this is part of its mandate that the CRTC attempts to do reasonably well.
Having said that, I also realize that the concept of dividing up our country into areas where cable providers can function is a method of granting monopolies. From someone who believes in free competitive forces in the marketplace, I have initial reservations about that process.
I have also realized that there is a significant advantage to Canadians rationalizing their marketplace to provide enough revenue for some of these businesses to do research and development. We are talking about convergence in the communications businesses throughout Canada. Canada has been able to compete internationally and allow the penetration in telecommunications because we have taken these initiatives.
When creating a monopoly it must be done with a certain degree of caution. We do not want people to use their market areas in such a way that they disadvantage their customers. This is the essence of the bill. It attempts to address a practice which for some reason has become acceptable to the cablevision industry but clearly is not acceptable to everyday Canadians. Why do I say that?
Most of my riding is serviced by the Rogers cablevision network system, on which I do a program once every two weeks. When this process of negative option billing was introduced, there was an immediate outrage among my constituents. It would appear that governments had allowed the monopolistic part of the CRTC regulatory environment to gouge them. It was not really any different from a neighbourhood theatre sending a bill to someone for a movie they have never seen or ever desire to see. This is what we did to average Canadians.
It was not that Canadians were upset about the concept of Canadian content. Maybe if somebody took the time to explain to them the need for Canadian content, they would pay more themselves directly or they would agree to support it through their governmental system, as we do with the CBC, or possibly through public broadcasting arrangements. The bottom line is that they were not given the choice and that is what upset them.
I talked to my local cablevision company to see what was the fallout to this, what actually happened after the smoke cleared. Rogers said it was sorry and so on but the bottom line is that most people, after having been given the option to send in a little card to say they want out of the system, did not do that. In reality, the negative option billing system was successful for Rogers and that industry.
Why do we need negative option billing in the first place? It is interesting to note a comment from Mr. Watson who was a director at the time. He said: "Outlawing the negative option sales tactic"-I underline the word tactic-"would decrease subscribers' acceptance rates, cut cablevision services expected revenue and choke new channel source of cable fees and advertising". What he is saying is that this tactic was designed for the express purpose of making people pay for things they would not normally have. He is saying that if they were given this choice, they probably would not do it.
We have set up a governmental process that is unacceptable to the average Canadian. It is clear that the essence of this bill is to address that wrong. For that reason, it is highly appropriate.
A number of other things were going on in the cablevision industry at that time. There was a concept of consolidation. In my area it used to be Maclean's. Maclean's became Rogers and Rogers became a huge organization. Part of that consolidation cost a lot of money. People got some money out of this. They were paid off and so forth. How will that be financed for rationalization? It will be done through a fee structure. That is exactly what this is all about. The CRTC acquiesced in that situation. Possibly it saw the rationalization of the cablevision market to be a long term goal for Canada. Maybe it is. I have not really taken the time to study all that.
However, the bottom line was that Rogers, in particular, gave a new definition to the word over-extended. Indeed, by subsequently reducing its rates, I suspect it is having financial problems.
Nobody took the average Canadian into consideration. Some of my colleagues have noted that at least two provinces already have legislation in place that prohibits negative option billing. In addition, the industry is attempting to develop the technology to give recipients of cablevision the choice.
At the time, a Regina company had the facilities to give certain numbers, approximately 9,000 of its 50,000 subscribers the option to say no. If they did not want certain channels coming into their houses they did not have to pay for it.
The industry realizes the importance of individual choice. As I understand it, the industry is now working on the technology to provide that very service. In four or five years from now people will have the choice of channels. They recognize the importance of consumer choice. It appears that the menace of negative option billing is still within the system today. The purpose of this bill is to eliminate it.
In conclusion, I believe this has told us that we must have another way to sell Canadian content. Maybe we need to allow free access to home environments for a period of time so that people can become adjusted to new programming and learn to accept or reject it. People cannot be charged for services they did not ask for. It is just not fair within the existing marketing system.