As we know, Mr. Speaker, this bill, numbered Bill C-52, was in the House when the House prorogued. We are now into the third session. The bill fundamentally remains the same. As the former vice-chair of the heritage committee of the Parliament of Canada, I stand opposed to Bill C-2 because it is exactly the same as Bill C-52.
I must say that I have a tremendous amount of sympathy, as my colleague from the Liberals has just pointed out, for the fact that the broadcasters who play by the rules are being put at a fundamental disadvantage. I understand and am very clear on that issue, so what we need to do, then, is take a look at the rules.
I am going to discuss the specific concerns I have about the bill in just a second, but I want to point out that there is a fundamental problem here. Canadians want choices. Canadians want to be able to make the choices of the entertainment that they are going to be viewing on the television sets in their homes.
One of the classic examples that comes up annually is with respect to the advertisements, which companies pay a tremendous amount of money for, exhibited during the Super Bowl. Many people in the U.S. actually watch the Super Bowl not for the football but for the advertisements, and certainly some of them are highly creative.
The fact that there is a restriction under the CRTC rules in this instance, where CanWest Global has bought the feed of the Super Bowl for distribution in Canada, basically means that CanWest Global can then realize the advertising revenue for the size of market that it has in Canada. I would have to guess that for every 100 million people who might be viewing the Super Bowl in the United States, one would think, theoretically at least, that there would be 10 million in Canada. Those numbers obviously do not apply although we are one-tenth of the market size. The fact of the matter is that people in the United States are overall more enamoured of the Super Bowl than people in Canada.
Nonetheless, CanWest Global will pay the producers, that is, the NFL and other owners of the rights that have been negotiated, with respect to that programming. They will pay for the privilege of being able to broadcast in Canada so that the advertisers who choose to advertise in Canada to the Canadian audience will then know that they have that captive audience.
Therein lies the problem. The problem is that the Canadian audience understandably wants to have the choice of whether it is going to see those commercials or not. As a matter of fact, I suppose it could be argued that in many instances Canadians will actually get some kind of zapper that will enable them to do away with commercials entirely with the exception of the Super Bowl. It comes down to a question of the rules and regulations made at the direction of this Liberal government; the CRTC then formulates the specific rules and makes sure that those rules are enforced.
Our position is that to put up some kind of an electronic wall or to attempt to put up some kind of an electronic wall is a facile and useless waste of time. It does not make any sense with the numbers of programs that are becoming more and more available as a result of technology. I am not just talking about television programs; I am also talking about things that are available on broadband Internet. It is only a matter of time until people in Canada are going to be able to get past the current restriction of satellite in any event.
This bill, which goes after the companies that are trying to bring in satellite equipment, would work if we were at a standstill in technology, but the fact of the matter is that we are not at a standstill in technology. As a matter of fact, technology is in an explosive state at this particular point.
According to the Liberals, Bill C-2 would prevent equipment from entering Canada. If the bill is to prevent the importation of satellite decoding equipment, satellite communication equipment and satellite receiving equipment, if it is to prevent those pieces of equipment coming into Canada, I wonder how the government is doing on the illegal importation of assault weapons, handguns and items of that type. How is it doing with the cigarettes that are coming across the border? How is it doing with the transportation of marijuana from British Columbia and the transportation of cocaine back into British Columbia?
The government is not doing very well, in spite of the fact that many resources are in place to try to interdict the importation of commodities like that which are seriously detrimental to our society and are not only costing our society money, but also costing our society in terms of lives and values of our country. We are not doing very well, because we do not have sufficient resources or sufficient technology to stop the importation of guns, drugs and other things of that nature. How in the world does the government believe it is going to be able to interdict the importation of the equipment that we are talking about in Bill C-2?
What it comes down to is this. We can have a theoretical big brother approach to this particular question, or we can be practical and pragmatic and realistic. Recognizing that Canadians want choices, we could work in concert with the United States regulator. The Canadian government could work with the U.S. government so that it could give direction to the CRTC and the U.S. government could give direction to the FCC. They could work out the technology of how this is going to end up working.
The beauty of that approach is that with United States viewers being ten times the number of Canadian viewers, we can imagine that if the CBC were to be broadcast not just in Canada but in wide distribution in the United States, we would be able to determine very quickly how many viewers would want to see the CBC. We would be able to determine how many viewers would want to see Canadian programming by Canadian writers.
I will ask the House to please bear with me as I go back to an example that does have some parallels. We had a totally protected wine industry in Canada. Quite frankly, the majority of the product was inferior. It was not a good product, period, full stop. And oh my, when the free trade agreement was negotiated and our wine producers were going to be subjected to the world market, they no longer had protection for their inferior product and people said the sky would fall.
But you know what, Mr. Speaker? Canadians are great at competition. If we give Canadians a level playing field, if we give them rational, reasonable rules to make sure it is a level playing field, whether it is France, the U.S., Australia or any other wine producing area, we will be superior because we are Canadians and we know how to do the job.
Basically that is what I am asking for instead of getting into more and more protection, just as we had the protection for wine producers who now without protection have a far superior product. As the heritage critic for the Conservative Party, I say that without protection we will end up with a far superior product in terms of the entertainment value that we can bring to the audience, not just the audience in Canada but ten times that audience, which we can have access to in the United States. We must have a broader vision, because I believe in Canada and I believe in Canadians' creativity.