Mr. Speaker, when this bill first came to the House, I referred to it as being a band-aid or a small piece of trim on a far larger problem. My opinion remains the same.
Our problem is that government after government, Liberal or Conservative, keep on moving forward and never really solve the real problems with respect to Canadian content, with respect to the CRTC, with respect to the CBC. I therefore recommended to my colleagues in the Reform Party that we begrudgingly support the bill.
It was rather interesting that the result of the vote on the bill at second reading was that 147 of the members of the House voted in favour of it and only 25 voted against it.
I listened with interest to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and I quote from his speech of last week.
-I am pleased to rise today to speak on the hon. member's bill, and would like to take advantage of the same opportunity to congratulate him on the effort he has put into it.
I, and I believe most of the other members of this House, share the objective sought by the hon. member for Sarnia-Lambtom in introducing this bill. We all agree that Canadians must be able to fully express their opinion on the programs they receive in their homes. We all wish to ensure that that Canadian consumers receive the programs they want at a reasonable price.
He goes on to say very specifically:
I congratulate the hon. member for his initiative.
To suggest that statement was somewhat less than genuine might be best put if I read what he went on to say. He said:
This bill would, unintentionally, restrict Canada's capacity to guarantee Canadian content and the availability of French programming outside of Quebec. As a francophone from outside Quebec, I believe that access by the regions outside Quebec to French programs is essential-
It would be impossible for me to support such a bill that would take away the flexibility of the Canadian government. That would also go for Canadian content. It would also go for the rural regions. It would have a negative impact right across Canada.
It is clear the MPs are against negative optioning. The new president of the CRTC has indicated that she prefers the positive option. The cable companies have indicated that they are against and they do not intend to use it.
Why do we have laws? With due respect to the shareholders and the management of the cable companies, I suggest that when they went ahead and used negative option billing and received a resounding rebuke from the people of Canada should be enough of a warning to us as members of Parliament that we should be taking steps to protect the members of the Canadian public from such activity as was undertaken by the cable companies. I suggest that this was totally disingenuous on the part of the parliamentary secretary, who after all was speaking for the heritage minister and the heritage department when he said: "I congratulate this member on his wonderful bill but I am not going to support it". It was significantly disingenuous.
Then we read in the Globe and Mail over the weekend about some of the background that has now become public.
Mr. Bureau argues that passage of the bill would effectively kill the chances for success of any new French-language speciality service.
Astral has a stake in two speciality channels that were approved this month by the CRTC: the Comedy Network and Teletoon, an animation station that will be broadcast in English and French-
"To put it simply, new French services just won't be able to survive."
The bill has other opponents, including the CRTC and heritage minister Sheila Copps, who say it could hamper the commission's ability to require cable distributors to offer services that it feels should be available to all in the national interest.
The front benches of the government have suddenly woken up to the fact that as opposed to the steps that they have consistently taken time and time again to bring in their own vision of what Canada is all about, this bill will give Canadian consumers freedom and opportunity which the government would prefer they not have. In other words, those 23 speciality channels which the CRTC just licensed, without a form of negative option billing, probably will never make it to air or certainly some of them will not.
The most blatant form of negative option billing was the one that was undertaken in January of last year. Members will recall that new channels were tacked on and a bill arrived in the mail box of the householder. This was rather sneaky because when many people receive a bill they simply pay it. Many people would have taken a look at that bill and because there was only $1, $2 or $3 added to the bill, would have ignored the extra charges and paid it.
I do not believe that any cable company, either in Quebec, Ontario or any other province, would have the audacity to do that kind of blatant negative option billing.
What I believe could happen and I know this is the reason why the heritage department and the heritage minister is so opposed to this is that the cable companies could be offering different packages. With new technology they can now come up with different bundles or groups of offerings of channels.
If I want to receive a particular channel then along with it comes all of this other material. If these channels are so good why are they not prepared to stand on their own? Why will cable companies not say it will cost you 75 cents to see French cartoons? Why would they not say it will cost you 50 cents to see speciality programming whatever the speciality programming is?
I suggest the reason for that is because there is money involved and where money is involved there is influence. I am rather interested in the number of people who have been working the Liberal backbenches on this one. The list of lobbyists who have worked opposing the bill reads like a who's who in the Liberal Party.
For example, the former minister of communications, Francis Fox, Liberal strategist, Michael Robinson who appears Thursday morning on CTV, the former CRTC guru, André Bureau, who I just finished reading, worked on the Liberal MPs to oppose this bill.
I suggest to the backbench Liberals that they might want to give very serious consideration and ask themselves if it is more important that they fall in line with the very encrusted Liberal hierarchy and the front bench, or should they be making representations in this House on behalf of all Canadians?
This bill has been something of a sleeper. I commend the member who brought it to the House. I sincerely commend him because he took action on behalf of the people in his constituency, on behalf of the people in Ontario and indeed, by extension, on behalf of all people who receive cable in their homes. He brought forward this bill that is going to stand in the way of the kind of manipulation that there has been, not only by the cable companies but indeed by the heritage ministry, of what is good and what is not good, what is Canadian and what is not.
This Canadiana idea and keeping it under control I suggest is the core of what is behind the front bench going against this.
I ask Liberal members: When we had a vote in this House of Commons of 147 to 25, how in the world can any of them even contemplate changing their vote? This is truly going to be a time of counting, a time when we are going to see those who have the backbone to stand up to the front bench.