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The final report from the Information Highway Advisory Council will not be available until early September, but the following recommendations are among those already approved by the culture and content subcommittee.

– With appropriate safeguards, government policies should permit equitable access to production funds, distribution opportunities and tax measures for broadcasters and independent producers, including multimedia producers.

– Formal, enforceable access rules to strengthen priority carriage for all licensed Canadian programming services on all distribution systems. (Echoing the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ proposal.)

– In order to encourage investment in the digitization of its collections, governments may solicit competitive bids from the private sector for licences to reproduce in digital form and market its holding in museums, art galleries, libraries and other heritage institutions.

– The government should take steps to encourage the digitization of cultural holdings with a view to promoting and facilitating the use of Canadian content in interactive multimedia applications.

– Given the precarious state of the Canadian book publishing sector, structural policies to ensure the industry’s long-term viability should include investment incentives, as well as access to funds designated to multimedia programs. AV