Canadian Heritage committee  Exactly.

Canadian Heritage committee  I believe I made myself quite clear when I spoke about this proposal. We must leave it up to the different industry stakeholders to decide, through the negotiation process, the value of their respective services. We have made representation on several occasions to the CRTC. Eventually, we agreed to a transition period during which we would move from a highly regulated environment to one that is less regulated, where market forces and players will decide the fair values of these services.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. Members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, allow me to introduce my colleagues. To my left is Pierre Dion, President and Chief Executive Officer of TVA. To my right is Serge Sasseville, Vice-President of Corporate and Institutional Affairs at Quebecor Media.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll start by answering the first question. What was the purpose of the legislation? What was the legislator seeking to do by creating obligations for the cable distributor which was, at the time, a monopoly? Well, this monopoly has completely disappeared. As you know full well, Canadians benefit from a communications system that is this effective because billions of dollars were invested in it.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think we have been loud and clear. We are committed to Canadian production. We're committed to this industry. We are ready to be under the microscope of the CRTC for the amount of money that we are committing to put in the system. This is, I think, our real solution. At the end of the day, we believe that because we are accountable to our shareholders, our auditors, and the population in general, we will be in a good position to talk and think about providing a decent solution for Canadians.

Canadian Heritage committee  This is what we've said. We are providing a solution, but where the CTF will end up, again, is not our decision, nor do we have the capacity to figure that out. It's a government issue. I'd like to mention something. It's not because we're private that we are not servicing the public.

Canadian Heritage committee  I mentioned in my presentation, Mr. Abbott, that we started ringing the issue many years ago. More specifically, we did it in writing to the CTF by a letter from our representative, Mr. Pierre Lampron. I think it was dated—

Canadian Heritage committee  —May 2005. We have been seeing inertia all over, since the inception of this. I had the chance to be part of many public presentations from the industry. I had the chance to meet with CRTC officials, as I mentioned. It's not something that we raised yesterday morning, because we are concerned about our industry and we want to make sure that it will remain strong and viable in the future.

Canadian Heritage committee  —with the exception of public money that will fund Radio-Canada or CBC, and those will be the only capabilities to withhold and build our Canadian industry.

Canadian Heritage committee  If the government wants to continue contributing to the Canadian fund, obviously it's the government's decision to do so.

Canadian Heritage committee  If we were to take what the CEO of Radio-Canada is saying, TVA doesn't receive any money, as Radio-Canada doesn't receive any money. It's received by the independent producer. That's the system as it works today. What we're looking for is to change it, because at the end of the day, we think it's not positive and constructive for the Canadian industry.

Canadian Heritage committee  Mr. Member of Parliament, I disagree with you, because you have a weakness in the way you perceive the marketplace. Our competitor is not Radio-Canada. Our competitor is this difficult revolution, the way in which we are using different channels for the distribution of content. It comes from the Internet, from VOD.

Canadian Heritage committee  I can't agree with the fact that Radio-Canada is our competitor. It is one of our competitors.

Canadian Heritage committee  Mr. Angus, I invite you to look at the amount of Canadian content on specialty channels, especially the one in French. There's not so much.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Kotto. What we are suggesting is to improve and increase the financial contributions to Canada's broadcasting system and, more particularly, as you may suspect, to the Quebec French-language space where most of our activities occur. You said earlier that 16,000 jobs were in jeopardy.