Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting us to be here today. We are really pleased to be here this afternoon. My name is Janet Yale, as you know. Here with me is Monique Simard. Beside me is Monique Simard, a member of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislat

Canadian Heritage committee  My colleague, Monique, just referred to the panel's recommendations regarding Canada's news industry. I'd like to pause on that for just a minute, because there has been some confusion about the problem the panel was actually trying to address and what we actually recommended. Al

Canadian Heritage committee  If you don't mind I'll speak in English. Let me say that we made it very clear, both in the telecom section of the report and the broadcasting section of the report, that we believe in a free and open Internet. In our telecom recommendations, we proposed that one of the objec

Canadian Heritage committee  We made it very clear that we do not intend to regulate the news or in any way interfere with journalistic freedom of expression.

Canadian Heritage committee  All I can speak to is what we said in our report, and I want to be clear that we did not recommend that media organizations be licensed based on their content perspective or on any other basis. That's not our vision. In fact, our report recommends that we further enshrine the pr

Canadian Heritage committee  We're going to be close to 90% of Canadians having broadband coverage, I believe within a year. The question is how do we get that last 10% done. Obviously, it is a case of looking at the mix of federal and provincial programs, as well as the broadband rollout plans of the facili

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a great question to look at: What is the right way to have an independent regulator that looks at all the issues in front of us? We studied the models available in other countries around the world. We had a report done just to look at that. We were particularly influenced

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that's a great question. One thing we recognized explicitly in our report is the need for collaboration at the federal, provincial and even the municipal levels. One recommendation we made is that the minister should report annually to Parliament on the status of broadban

Canadian Heritage committee  I just would add that we looked at the funding of public broadcasters around the world, and of the OECD countries, CBC/Radio-Canada is pretty much at the bottom of the list at about $30 per person per year, whereas if you look at the U.K. and other countries that are really well

Canadian Heritage committee  The recommendation is that the government enter into an agreement with CBC/Radio-Canada, a five-year agreement, with a clear understanding of what they would be expected to deliver and the resources necessary to deliver it, with an annual report through the CRTC back to Parliamen

Canadian Heritage committee  We addressed it in a number of different ways. We certainly have to balance the rights of individuals to freedom of expression. We spent some time already talking about the importance of free speech. There's freedom of expression on one side and illegal content on the other. Wha

Canadian Heritage committee  We didn't really get into the definitions of what is urban versus rural versus remote. What we focused on in the telecom section was making sure that every Canadian, no matter where they live in Canada, has broadband connectivity. It really was a question of who doesn't have broa

Canadian Heritage committee  With respect, I think what we said is that every Canadian, every person in Canada, no matter where they live, expects and deserves to live a connected life. We've made it about the individual, not about the community.

Canadian Heritage committee  Fair enough and—

Canadian Heritage committee  If you look at our report, we really start with the principle of universality of service and we propose enshrining in the telecom act, as an objective, that everyone, no matter where they live, deserves to have universal broadband connectivity in a safe and secure environment, at