Madam Speaker, I rise to offer my support of the motion. I wish to commend my colleague for introducing it. I also wish to commend the Parliament Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage who worked diligently on encouraging as many of her colleagues to support this important initiative. The parliamentary secretary has asked me whether or not I would support the motion. She encouraged me to do so, and I am willing to support it.
The motion would support the right to communications of the deaf and hearing impaired and set up a fund to research and develop the technologies required to assist in this endeavour. The government is already committed to ensure that all Canadians have access to our broadcasting system.
Television has become an integral part of our lives and one of the primary sources of information for all Canadians. Can members imagine seeing an important event on television but not being able to hear what was being said or reported, or hearing the newscast or program but not seeing the visual images? This was the world for many hearing and visually impaired Canadians until the discovery of closed captioning and voice print.
What is closed captioning and how does it work?. Closed captioning translates the audio portion of a television program into subtitles, also known as captions. These captions usually appear at the bottom of the television screen and generally scroll in unison with the program being viewed. To view closed captioning the viewer requires a caption decoder chip in the television set or a separate decoder.
Let us look at the National Broadcasting Reading Service and La Magnétothèque. They are providers of services for the visually impaired, also known as voice print. Voice print is provided by the National Broadcasting Reading Service and La Magnétothèque via a newspaper reading service 24 hours a day, along with other programming to assist persons who are blind, visually impaired or print handicapped. Generally voice print is delivered over a secondary audio programming service, SAP.
How do we ensure the growth of these important services? We do so as we implement a variety of tools to ensure that our hearing and visually impaired citizens have access to our diverse stories. It only makes sense that as the dependence on television increases so should our resolve to provide the hearing and visually impaired with access based services.
An example of this resolve is included in subsection 3(1)(p) of the Broadcasting Act which states:
programming accessible by disabled persons should be provided within the Canadian broadcasting system as resources become available for the purpose;
To this end the Government of Canada has undertaken many initiatives to ensure that this service continues to grow in both official languages. Currently closed captioning is a mandatory requirement to obtain funding from the Canadian television fund.
The CRTC, the body which regulates our broadcast airwaves, makes it a requirement to provide these services and has set out clear goals that Canadian broadcasters are expected to meet. For example, major broadcasters such as CBC, CTV and Global must caption at least 90% of all programming during the broadcast day as well as local news, including live segments.
Medium size broadcasters and smaller stations are encouraged to meet the same standard while specialty services must also work toward that 90% goal.
Challenges for captioning in French include a small market base and the fact that captioning technology was initially developed for the English language market.
Other examples of resolve include the simplification of the Canadian film or video tax credit as announced in the February 2000 budget. The Department of Canadian Heritage now requires that all certified productions be closed captioned for the hearing impaired. This is an especially important point because now even more Canadian stories that are set to film are shared with even more Canadians, thanks to services like closed captioning.
It is important to note as well that even with these positive measures in place, we face challenges that call for even more resolve. For instance, closed captioning in French is within a small market base that was originally designed to facilitate an English language market.
It is a fact that television has become an essential tool in the debate and exchange of free ideas. These ideas are the very same ones that help sustain and grow a democratic society such as ours without exclusion. All Canadians, including those who are hearing and visually impaired, deserve to be joined in debate and exchange ideas.
I support the initiative to commence with discussions on the important issue of closed captioning. I suggest to everyone that they make their concerns known to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in the course of its review of the Canadian broadcasting system.
I conclude by congratulating the minister and her very able parliamentary secretary who have brought this issue to our attention, as well as the member of parliament who proposed the motion. It is my hope the motion will be adopted unanimously by members of parliament.