Canadian Heritage committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Gary Maavara, and I am vice-president and general counsel of Corus Entertainment Inc. Joining me today is Sylvie Courtemanche, who is our vice-president of government relations. We thank the committee for the opport

Canadian Heritage committee  Meanwhile, we must recognize that not all programming that is appealing to Canadians will be financially viable. CBC will continue to need a stable funding base to fulfil the goals we've set for it in this regard. The CBC should also have some freedom to evolve. We think the CB

Canadian Heritage committee  The way it works is that we have a contract with them whereby they deliver a certain portion of the broadcast day to us, and we use the rest of the program service for scheduling our own local news and that sort of thing. We also purchase programming that we fit in around the CBC

Canadian Heritage committee  I'd be delighted to. Corus, for example, is one of the largest producers of children's programming, not only in Canada, but in the world. When one looks at all the various policies, whether they reside at the Canadian Television Fund or in terms of CRTC conditions of licence—For

Canadian Heritage committee  Basically, if you look at the 24-hour day, the CBC has a portion of the day being pretty much all of the prime-time period, sort of eight o'clock to midnight, where they run their sports, their news, their dramas, and that sort of thing; and then we would have a section of the da

Canadian Heritage committee  Let me start with the question of quality. We're quite proud at Corus of the fact that we think we're one of the best producers of Canadian children's programming in the world, and also that we really understand how to identify terrific independent production. To give you an ill

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the CBC—they're capable of defending themselves—are terrific creators of a market for Canadian programming, literally from coast to coast, and from both in-house and the independent community. One should also understand that if the CBC or anybody else is producing somethi

Canadian Heritage committee  Our view, clearly, is the CBC should continue to follow the model that it's following now--in other words, be commercial in some parts of its day and not so commercial in other parts of its day.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  We're quite proud of the fact that we do that in the local community by running a really popular local service that delivers viewers to the prime time CBC signal, so we do play a role in that, absolutely.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I am, very much so.

Canadian Heritage committee  There is a range of positions they put on the table. Fundamentally, our view is that this country—and you certainly don't need Corus to tell you this—ust isn't big enough. We sell programming in 120 countries around the world, so we know the world market pretty well. You simply c

Canadian Heritage committee  It depends a little bit on the channel that we operate. I guess fundamentally one of the things that we're going to have to look at as policy-makers and as regulators and as broadcasters is that the system is very rapidly moving from linear-scheduled programming to on-demand. A

Canadian Heritage committee  We are the controlling shareholder of the documentary channel, so we know Ms. Hodder's colleagues quite well. It's a category one specialty service, and I think it's been around for seven years.

Canadian Heritage committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman Schellenberger and members of the committee. My name is Gary Maavara. I am executive vice-president and general counsel of Corus Entertainment. With me today is Sylvie Courtemanche, who is vice-president of government relations. Mr. Chairman, member