Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear before you today on this important piece of legislation. My name is Kevin Desjardins. I'm the president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. The CAB is the national voice of Canada's private

Canadian Heritage committee  First, now is not the time to add new regulatory obligations on Canada's broadcasters. You may hear from groups who have enjoyed growth over the past decade as they benefited from the broadcasting system, and they will be seeking greater assurances. They may even suggest that the

Canadian Heritage committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to return today on this important piece of legislation that I am pleased to be able to address. My name is Kevin Desjardins and I'm the president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I think absolutely.... We would say that we don't see Bill C-10 as an opportunity to find new rules and regulations to impose on our domestic private broadcasters. As I say, we feel there is an abundance of obligations and requirements—reporting requirements—that are already

Canadian Heritage committee  I can't speak exactly to the last quarter or whatnot. I do know that effectively, over the last seven years, broadcasting at large has been losing money, certainly on the TV side. We've seen independent producers that have basically seen about seven years of growth, while we've s

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. Effectively, within the last decade it's been a really dramatic change in terms of what the advertising landscape looks like in Canada. Now 50% of it is going to online services. That's a whole new competitor. I would say that 80% of the online advertising that's done in C

Canadian Heritage committee  There are really the two giants of the online—

Canadian Heritage committee  They have the scale and the ability to be able to take advertising and distribute it. They're certainly much larger, and they're able to undercut the prices of, for example, a Canadian company trying to get into this area. They would be able to undercut that company by virtue of

Canadian Heritage committee  —to capital markets around the world, and if we want to say that, well, they can do that, and Canadian operators can only bring in—

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't think that it's attempting to change the behaviour; I think it's attempting to recognize the behaviour. I think that part of the problem that we have is that the Broadcasting Act is still looking at broadcasting as if it were 1992 and not as it is in 2021. It's very much

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for your question, Ms. Bessette. Yes, absolutely. The Broadcasting Act has been behind the times for too long, as I just told Mr. Shields. There's quite an urgent need to pass this bill. If it isn't done now, we won't get around to it again for a year or two. However,

Canadian Heritage committee  I think I would want to reframe that and say that it's not about reducing CanCon. That's not what we've been talking about. I think it's about being more flexible about the sorts of CanCon that Canadian broadcasters can invest in. Right now there are fairly strict rules on what s

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about this important bill. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, or CAB, is the national voice of Canada's private broadcasters, representing more than 800 members around t

Canadian Heritage committee  The main thing you would see is that you would have an amount of money that could be reinvested within those organizations themselves. In some ways, a taxation dollar—I'm not sure if it's the first or last dollar out—could be retained within the broadcasting companies and could a

Canadian Heritage committee  I would make the distinction and say not “production funds” but rather “production” itself. There is that distinction. In terms of how much is being put into production, it's just under $2 billion per year. That doesn't include news, which, between TV, radio and specialty, is so