Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak to the motion at hand, which concerns the government's desire to force through the disastrous bill, Bill C-10, to modernize the Broadcasting Act.
I will step back 40-plus years, when a young Kevin Waugh got into the broadcasting business. There were a lot of opportunities from coast to coast. I started as a midnight disc jockey in Yorkton. I came to Saskatoon. I worked at a radio station and did the summer news. Then I went over to Melfort to do farm news, which I knew very little about. Then I eventually went into sports and news. I was then hired at CTV Saskatoon where I spent nearly 40 years of my broadcasting career.
When the bill was introduced, I jumped at the chance to get involved. The broadcasting business has been talking about this for the last 30 years. We talked about the CRTC, broadcasters, stations going dark, layoffs in the industry. We talked about this for decades and it finally culminated in about the last five years. All of a sudden stations were going dark. Radio, TV, newspapers, everything in the business was turned upside down.
It was interested in what the Canadian heritage minister said a couple of moments ago when he said that they missed something when they introduced the bill in 1990. For the minister, when we look back at the bill if it does get passed, we will look at you and your ministry and say a lot has been missed.