Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. Good morning. As mentioned, my name is Troy Reeb. I currently serve as the senior vice-president in charge of Global news, radio and station operations for Corus Entertainment. In a previous capacity, I also served six years as chair of the broadcast consortium on deb

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. You did that right, even without a green screen behind you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's an interesting question. The consortium has taken flak in the past for the fact that a lot of its discussions took place behind closed doors, in camera. I would say to the members of this committee that you know that the kinds of conversations you can have in camera around

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm sorry, it's not my determination to say whether that's the case.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll jump in on this one. First, I'm assuming that you're not advocating that another company's product should be pushed onto a private broadcaster's airwaves. Leaving that aside, the fact of the matter is that, as part of the consortium, there was a negotiation not just with

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not trying to imply that at all, but I have no idea what kind of deal Rogers Communications may have done to create that debate. They were the producers of the debate behind the scenes. We knew for a fact as members of the consortium that one party in particular was seeking v

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll reiterate what I said in my presentation, the more debates the better. Perhaps the consortium process would not have been necessary in the past had the campaigns been longer and parties been more willing to participate in more high-profile debates. It would be fantastic if e

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, I will speak for my organization, because I can't for my colleagues. Our preference is that there be as light a touch as possible. The independence of our news organization is sacrosanct to us, and we don't believe that there should be heavy regulation to try to mandate so

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Some would say that happens but....

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I may.... Whether it's one or the other, from our perspective—and I think I am speaking for my colleagues now—the news organizations would want to have significant say there. It's important to have.... CPAC was referenced earlier. CPAC runs vigorous debate on television every

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I wouldn't pretend to answer your question with another question, but how broad is that change to the Broadcasting Act? There are 300-plus licensed channels in this country. To be clear, at Global, our local stations are not required to cover national news. We are not mandated to

Procedure and House Affairs committee  First off, I won't fully disagree with Mr. Burman's comments on that. I've been involved in lots of debate negotiations not only at the federal level but at the provincial level as well. I would say that the front-running party in the election often has the hammer in terms of how

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I won't. I'm not here to justify our news coverage. I'm happy to talk about the debate participation.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If you would like me to respond to that—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —there was lots to criticize in the production of several of those debates. However, the bottom line comes down to, I'm not going to flip the switch and put on to our network a product that we're not familiar with. If someone hands you a sandwich on the street, you might be hun