Canadian Heritage committee  Finally, in terms of, for example, the Canadian Television Fund—which is now the Canada Media Fund—the problems there were the inability of the board to embrace new platforms. For example, they would fund conventional television programming, but they would not fund or support oth

Canadian Heritage committee  We don't agree with fee-for-carriage on any basis because there's no justification for it. We serve as a delivery mechanism, and I'm sure it's the same in Quebec as it is in the rest of Canada. The whole way and nature in which the cable policies were structured over the last 40

Canadian Heritage committee  Right. So that's a tremendous accomplishment for the system. The second part of all this is that when this policy was worked out, cable was given a monopoly. That monopoly is gone. In Winnipeg you have a choice of five distribution television services. We have to compete, and we

Canadian Heritage committee  Part of the issue is that there are certain availabilities we don't have access to. We've always wanted access to those. The commission is now reviewing that. We're saying, okay, rather than stopping people from increasing their advertising situation, we want to be able to use mo

Canadian Heritage committee  It is a matter of making certain choices. There are also regulatory requirements in terms of obligations to carry a number of duplicate services, which we would love to--

Canadian Heritage committee  They can do that already.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, we understand what they're saying, and it's the absolute truth that if you have entities that are subsidized, then you have to start looking at them as entities and doing something about it if they're not coming up to the mark. Part of having this kind of synergy among se

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, we do not believe in funds. We have the position that funds just become subsidies of uneconomic behaviour. We believe regulatory obligations are the best way to proceed. We don't look for funds. When we invested in satellite services, I think in the first year we lo

Canadian Heritage committee  In terms of local programming, we think local programming is important. We do have one local television station that we happen to own. It was part of the cable system we purchased in Kenora. We believe it's a successful operation and we continue to plan to make it a success. We t

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, we don't believe it is in a state of crisis. We do know Canwest is facing significant financial issues. We do know CTV has taken certain writedowns, but as was just pointed out, they're a private company and we don't know what their numbers are saying. We believe th

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, as you point out, we don't agree that there's a crisis. We feel that television is probably entering a golden age. We think it is an exciting period. The development of high definition, the relationship to the Internet, webcasting--all of those choices are there for

Canadian Heritage committee  In terms of the two markets, let me first deal with the English language market, because you do have that information in front of you from the CBC. The CBC showed a chart, which is quite interesting. It shows a number of shows they've produced through CTF funding, and they had on

Canadian Heritage committee  It's been a process that I would describe as, “Yes, we know about your concerns and we're going to take care of them”. That process has been going on for quite a period of time.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would say over the past five years.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think Mr. Barrett indicated at the hearing when he appeared that he knew the BDUs had been unhappy for 10 years. I would say that's been the nature of our concern. There have been various issues. We were concerned about audits, and then we were told the Auditor General was goi