Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen members of Parliament, Mr. Chairman, thank you for welcoming us here today. For two years, Quebecor Media has been trying by every means at its disposal to alert all those concerned, whether they be politicians, public servants, reg

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll do it with pleasure, Madame. I think we fully agree with all the members and the chairman here that we're proud of this country and proud of this industry. Since we are involved on a day-to-day basis, we produce—I mentioned in my presentation that it's more than $109 millio

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. We just mentioned that we were ready to contribute more than our actual contribution to the Canadian Television Fund.

Canadian Heritage committee  We had one. We've been proposing a solution. Since the objective of the law is to contribute to the Canadian programming industry, I don't think there is an obligation to contribute to a fund; the obligation is to contribute to the Canadian programming, or the Canadian broadcas

Canadian Heritage committee  What the fund is all about is not what has been said in the law. The law is to contribute to the Canadian broadcasting system. We believe as an organization that we're contributing more than any other broadcaster—any other private broadcasters—in terms of contribution. So—

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 jo

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

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  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  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. I

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  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

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  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