Canadian Heritage committee  They might, but maybe it's time for new people in the CRTC.

Canadian Heritage committee  It was important to us as a guild to make sure we had new media written specifically into our collective agreement, because if you don't start dealing with it now, you are not going to have the opportunity later on to backtrack and get stuff in place. So I would say to the CRTC that they're missing the boat.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't see why not. If regulations are put in place, the broadcasters or whoever owns the new technology will make the changes to fulfill them. I believe Europe has recently decided to go in this direction, so why can't we? We're not a third world country, so we should be able to be at the leading edge of this.

Canadian Heritage committee  We just negotiated terms in the independent production agreement--this isn't with CBC but with other producers--whereby we'll get a separate remuneration the day it goes onto the Internet, based on what we call distributors' gross revenue, the amount of money they make from distributors and broadcasters.

Canadian Heritage committee  The other thing to realize is that a lot of CBC dramatic production, production that you see on CBC television today, is actually made by independent producers. They have licence agreements with the CBC. So the CBC may have licence rights but not the ownership. As an example, I would assume Intelligence is owned privately, with a licence agreement with the CBC, and for some of the series that have come out of Nova Scotia or the Maritimes, it's the same way.

Canadian Heritage committee  On that question, I don't think it's our job to tell the CBC how to get their programs on the air. If they're a professional company, shouldn't they be able to work this out? If there are competing rights, you negotiate the rights with the owners. I don't think it's our job to tell them how to get it on the air.

Canadian Heritage committee  If you're talking about Internet broadcast for CBC-owned productions, we're actually in negotiations with them on that right now. But my understanding is that currently there's nothing stopping them from broadcasting it. I don't believe we have specific words in an agreement around it.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't believe the CBC operates on the basis of specific funding envelopes for regions. I don't know if the best solution is always to make sure there's some sort of equitable distribution of resources across the country, but even if some regional funding resources were put into program development....