Canadian Heritage committee  I'll be quick, but to address your first question, today BCE contributes, I think, $900 million a year; 30% of our media business revenues are reinvested in Canadian programming, which ultimately the artists and actors share in; and 5% of our broadcasting distribution revenues are ploughed back into the creation of Canadian content.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll start. Certainly we can win the war against piracy, if we're provided with the right tools to win that war. As I said earlier, there are over 40 countries around the world that have recognized and are confronting the same piracy problem we're confronting. The solution that they have adopted, which has had a 75% to 90% success rate, is having Internet service providers block access to that pirated content so it's no longer available to the consumer who wants to consume pirated content.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would echo the comments that have been made.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would just add to your last point that while the notice and notice regime is an imperfect remedy in the sense that it doesn't address streaming—it addresses downloads, as Pam said—it does, I think, play an important role in educating the consumers who receive those notices that they may be unwittingly consuming copyright-infringing content.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, we get requests to send notices to infringers from content owners, both inside and outside of Canada, if that's your question.

Canadian Heritage committee  If we didn't comply with the notice and notice regime, yes, we'd be subject to penalties, but we comply. Like Rogers, we send out millions of notices every year. We comply with the regime.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll try to break down what I think your question is. You're right that today we find ourselves in a regulated ecosystem that is much different from the unregulated ecosystem with which we compete. I guess our perspective on it is not necessarily to look to the ISPs to contribute to culture per se, but perhaps to that parallel ecosystem—the Netflixes of the world and the Amazon channels, and all of the over-the-top, non-Canadian services that are coming here, filling a market need and serving Canadians, but also taking revenue out of Canada while making no contribution to Canadian culture.

Canadian Heritage committee  Certainly any traffic that travels on the broadband pipe is good for business, but the other perspective is all of that traffic on the broadband pipe requires continuous investment in building out that network in order to be able to serve the appetites of viewers—

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  What he described was the retransmission regime whereby U.S. border stations are authorized under the current Copyright Act to be retransmitted by cable and satellite providers like Rogers and Bell.

Canadian Heritage committee  Copyright royalties are payable every time a signal is retransmitted, so there is a payment in the form of copyright royalties, and there is a legal right to retransmit those signals. Our perspective as the largest operator of Canadian over-the-air television stations is that if we're focused on supporting Canadian culture and artists, there's certainly a case to be made for the Canadian over-the-air stations to be remunerated when they're retransmitted in Canada.

Canadian Heritage committee  There are numerous examples in other countries of regimes that allow for intermediaries to block access to pirated content. I think in the FairPlay application, we cited 47 other countries that have those regimes in place to help protect the remuneration of artists by blocking access to piracy.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable committee members. My name is Robert Malcomson. I'm senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at BCE. Thank you for your invitation to provide Bell's views on copyright reform that will help ensure artists and content creators are paid for the work they create.

Industry committee  You asked what we've been doing in terms of educating enforcement agencies. We've worked for the last year and a half with the CBSA to help them understand how many set-top boxes are being imported into Canada every day, because most of them are made outside of the country and are brought in over the border.

Industry committee  I think you're right that education is a key component of making sure consumers understand the implications to the cultural industries of consuming illegal content. Certainly, I think we could collectively do a better job of educating Canadian consumers. I suggested that if in the notice and notice regime there were a copyright infringement notice sent to a Canadian who is consuming—perhaps unwittingly—copyright infringing content, a notice that made that Canadian citizen aware that there was another legal source to get that content that supports our domestic ecosystem, perhaps that could be a very personal and effective way of educating that particular consumer.