Canadian Heritage committee  I shall give the floor to my colleague, Ms. Gill.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that a lot of the programs we have in place, including the tax credit program, are very important for the industry. As for other private funding, such as what Telus provides for community programming, those types of programs will continue to be important. As the CRTC ha

Canadian Heritage committee  Other than our community programming, Telus does not own any content programming services of any kind. We are strictly a distributor. To the extent that we operate in the community and we produce community programming, we have an innovative model that we thought would be useful t

Canadian Heritage committee  The innovative aspect of it is that it's creating...it is building an audience prior to funding being allocated. That in itself is something one would hope is at the basis of some of the funding that will go to Canadian content, because ultimately, creating content that will neve

Canadian Heritage committee  The Storyhive success, the innovation that we've brought to the table for the committee today, as far as we know, no other competitor is doing that type of platform. We certainly would agree with Mr. Provencher that consumers have to come first in determining some of the progra

Canadian Heritage committee  Without getting into specifics, we don't have a specific recommendation, except to say that adding the consumer into some part of the decision-making process has been successful for us with Storyhive, and we believe there is a big lesson learned that can translate to other forms

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. Good morning, and thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you on this important issue of media and local communities. My name is Ann Mainville-Neeson, and I'm vice-president of broadcasting policy and regulatory affairs at Telus. With me i

Canadian Heritage committee  Telus certainly has looked at launching various programs, and we have offered numerous grants to communities. We have a system for philanthropic activities that we administer through community boards. Various boards across the country comprise both members of the community as wel

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, we will.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would hate to pre-empt my colleagues who will be speaking next week at the CRTC hearing. Certainly this is an important issue, and one that we believe is dealt with. It's an important social issue for all to have access to broadband. We also need to keep in mind the tremendous

Canadian Heritage committee  First off, our community programming service is not monetized. Instead, it is a public service that we offer to the communities we serve. It's part of our philanthropic efforts in all the various communities, and it's also part of the required contribution that all broadcast dist

Canadian Heritage committee  Other than TV....

Canadian Heritage committee  Right. Essentially all of our funding goes for Optik Local, a television platform. It is video-based, available on various other platforms, but it is a video service. If you're asking if we contribute to print media, it's only through our other philanthropic efforts to the exte

Canadian Heritage committee  Most of the grants go to the grassroots organizations in the community. They are determined from the ground up. They are determined by the communities themselves. I can give you examples in Ottawa. I was a member of the Telus community board here. We received anything from appl

Canadian Heritage committee  Each community board certainly does extensive research. These community boards themselves are composed of some very prominent members of the community. Here in Ottawa we had the head of the United Way, for example, who obviously has a very keen understanding of what the need is i