Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking to the amendment to Motion No. 10 which deals with the addition of the public interest phraseology into the amendment.
I applaud the member from the Bloc in bringing this forward. I think it is an interesting initiative and in general I support the idea that we need to make sure these quasi-judicial bodies like the CRTC are in fact operating in the public interest.
I think she has some legitimate concerns to question whether or not they actually are. I am not sure that this is the best way to deal with that concern, but I do applaud her for bringing it forward.
Why I share her concern regarding whether the CRTC is actually operating in the public interest is not so much really with the telecommunications side, but I certainly do share her concern in general when it applies to the CRTC on the broadcast side.
For example, we have a decision coming out of the CRTC in the next week or two where again they will be ruling on the ability for single faith channels to be broadcast within Canada. Whereas just recently they did approve a Playboy channel to be broadcast in Canada, they are eliminating single faith channels from being broadcast in Canada, continually turning down that decision.
It will be very interesting to see if the CRTC will actually allow those Canadians who are pursuing this kind of broadcast channel to be allowed to have access to that.
This is the kind of accountability that I believe the member for St. Albert was calling for, accountable back to the people.
To say that we are always operating in the public interest, as per the member's motion here, I think that can be demonstrated to not always be the case by these quasi-judicial bodies. People who are part of the public need to have some input into the process to say what is in their best interest. It seems to be that there has been some disconnection from the public interest as expressed by the public and what is actually happening here. I hope that we see some change from the CRTC particularly having to do with the broadcast side of it.
Yes, we do need to make sure that the public interest is part of the CRTC's mandate. I concur with the member from the other side though that by adding the public interest in this clause you would tend to want to add the public interest to every single clause in the entire act. I would think it should be implied that the CRTC is acting in the public interest throughout the act. To put it in one section and not have it in all the others tends to suggest that the other sections are not acting in the public interest.
I would suggest that maybe this is not the best way to approach it but I do concur with the member's intent. Beyond just adding the words “public interest”, what we really need and for a long time what this party has been calling for is a complete review of how the CRTC exercises its decisions that are in the public interest. There is some substantial breakdown there that needs to be dealt with on behalf of Canadians.
That is what we are primarily calling for in relation to this motion on the floor today. Again, I applaud the member but I think this might not be the best approach. We would call for a comprehensive review of the CRTC's mandate.