Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to appear and provide you with Cogeco's perspective on the media and local communities. My name is Louis Audet, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cogeco. With me today is Nathalie Dor

Canadian Heritage committee  Of course, Mr. Breton. To answer your question, my first observation is that democratic countries around the world refrain from regulating Internet content because they know it presents a risk to democracy and the free flow of ideas. We object to the Quebec government's decisio

Canadian Heritage committee  I think so.

Canadian Heritage committee  We have been working in community television for a long time, probably around 50 years. We are very familiar with it. We stick closely to the model established by the regulatory body. We have been praised for this on a number of occasions. At the CRTC hearings last fall, we offer

Canadian Heritage committee  We commented on the matter to the CRTC a few weeks ago. We identified three types of problems. First, the underserved communities not too far from main centres need help building networks in areas where doing so is not cost-effective. This could be done using the $500-million in

Canadian Heritage committee  Madam Chair, just give me 30 seconds. This is important.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. The third case is for Canadians who are not the most economically advantaged citizens. They may live in communities that are well served, but they may not be able to afford the service. In this case, we have advocated a telecom stamp system that would be initiated by

Canadian Heritage committee  It's hard to encapsulate the thought in one sentence, but I guess what we're trying to get at is that you already have a CBC, which does a fine job, in our opinion, of reflecting Canadian values and broadcasting news and information from a Canadian viewpoint. They are doing an ex

Canadian Heritage committee  What we did there is when CTV decided to shut down its station, we set up. It's a small team. It allowed us to cover local news in North Bay. We didn't have to provide international or even provincial news, because it was already provided by networks. The community was deprived o

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, we're present in 32 of them, but what we have proposed to do is deploy that service to seven communities in Quebec and seven communities in Ontario where there are no local television stations currently in operation. I could provide you the list if you wish.

Canadian Heritage committee  As you know, we sold our signage subsidiary in January, basically because we concluded there was little opportunity for market growth. It was also becoming practically impossible to expand our activities geographically when major players were determining business opportunities to

Canadian Heritage committee  Interestingly enough, it's not Americans who do that; it's Canadians.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. The radio advertising market is relatively stable in Canada. The income has been fairly stable at about $1.4 billion for three or four years. The advantage of radio is that people listen to it rather than watch it. As a result, it hasn't been replaced by the Internet. That'

Canadian Heritage committee  Our employees in the United States say that our regulatory body, the CRTC, helped our industry by launching the Let's Talk TV initiative and by requiring that program packages be divided into smaller units. They told us that, as Americans, they would like to enjoy the same advant

Canadian Heritage committee  That's an excellent question. As I was trying to tell you, the American model must be avoided. Local television stations also have retransmission fees. All things considered, programming costs are much too high in the United States for consumers. In Canada, however, I think we h