Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your perspicacity. You realize I was repeating what the hon. member for Sarnia-Lambton just said about the amendment.
Since certain claims were made about the position of certain associations or cable distributors, I assume he realizes that we must get back to the position taken by these people. We will be very close to what happened a few days ago, because we know that the bill before us has come back with an amendment from the other place.
So what happened in the other place on April 8, 1997? As you know, the amendment proposes to reject the amendment from the other place. So what happened? I could not be more relevant.
Well, the Association des consommateurs du Québec-and I was about to say this when I was interrupted by a point of order-the association submitted a brief on the bill. In its brief, it rejected claims that the bill will be beneficial to Quebec consumers and to the French speaking public in Canada as a whole.
Always with reference to what we received from the other place, I would like to repeat certain comments that were made in one of their committees, the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. The comments were made by the Hon. Francis Fox. You will recall that not so long ago, Mr. Fox was the Liberal Minister of Communications, and so you could hardly call him a member of the Bloc or a sovereignist. We can assume that these comments are representative of the beliefs of a staunch Liberal.
He said that what is at stake is a long list of concerted efforts by successive Canadian and Quebec governments to provide for the development of a French audiovisual resource offering a wide variety of quality programming. Supporters of Bill C-216, and he did not doubt they were well intentioned-and I have no doubt about that either-were in fact undermining all these efforts to which they seem to be oblivious.
I might also add that, in this case again, I am in agreement with what Mr. Fox said. He goes on to say, and this is particularly interesting, that the bill should be amended and he lists a number of reasons for doing so. First, this enactment flies in the face of all that has been done in the past 15 years. It does not have its place in the main section of the Broadcasting Act, which reflects a positive view of what our system should be. It changes the rules set after careful consideration by the designated authority: the CRTC. It changes the rules ex post facto between licensing and connection, ignoring the most basic rules of natural justice.
Mr. Fox adds that nowhere in the bill is the francophone issue, be it in Quebec, New Brunswick or Manitoba, taken into account, making any plans for new French language services an impossible dream.
He then refers to production and creation, saying that all the commitments made to the CRTC will disappear, whene CRTC decisions were contributing to consolidate state of the art technology in Montreal, for instance, production companies, which are of source of pride to the industry and which owe at least part of their success to this control: Coscient, CINAR, Les Productions La Fête, Softimage, Prima Film, SDA, Malofilm, and so on.
We are talking about a independent producers market worth $350 million. When Mr. Fox makes such comments and the Bloc Quebecois takes the position it has taken, it is to defend the interests of Quebec and those of the Canadian francophone community. For our hon. colleague to feel that we are acting against the wishes of consumers, this can only be explained by his taking an anglophone view to the issue. If I were an anglophone from another province, like our colleague from Markham-Whitchurch-Stouffville, I would probably jump up and say: "Come on, let us pass this legislation". But I would do so because I do not know what the situation of our francophone population really is with respect to cable distribution.
I want our colleagues in this House to understand that the Bloc's position is not intended to affect anglophone consumers in any way. At the time, at second reading, I urged the hon. member for Sarnia-Lambton to amend his bill, so that it would only apply to cable services provided in English. Had he done so, I would have been pleased to support his bill. In fact, I have here with me the transcript of the comments I made at the time, on September 16, 1996, but I will not go back to them, because I could be ruled out of order for quoting such antiquated excerpts.
I will say it again. Had the hon. member for Sarnia-Lambton had the foresight to restrict the scope of his bill to English-language cable services, there would be unanimity in this House. But the member tried, like many others before him, to get involved in Quebec's affairs. Of course, if we had achieved sovereignty, neither we nor the hon. member would have to deal with this issue. But Quebec is not yet a sovereign nation. It is still part of the Canadian federation and, on behalf of my fellow Quebecers and francophones from across Canada, I must say no to this bill.