Montreal: A coalition of seven Quebec professional associations, representing producers, writers, performers, distributors and others, has told the Heritage standing committee reviewing the broadcasting system danger lies ahead if telecom and cable companies come under the control of foreign ownership.

APFTQ president and director general Claire Samson, representing Quebec film and TV producers, told the committee the Canadian broadcasting system is a programming success story, especially when compared to the status of Canadian products in non-regulated sectors like movie exhibition, video and record distribution.

Creative talent within a regulated framework, says Samson, has resulted in a vibrant Quebec broadcasting industry where typically 27 to 29 of the 30 top-rated programs are Canadian, produced in Quebec. And she says those historic gains for Quebec program creators should not be lost or compromised.

In a two-hour, mid-April presentation, the coalition told the committee if there really is a demonstrated need to further open the market to foreign capital, cable and telecom companies should be reclassified as conduit-only providers and obliged to divest of all their broadcast-programming holdings.

The coalition expects the foreign-ownership issue to emerge as the toughest issue on the review agenda.

‘And the committee essentially told us that,’ says Anne-Marie Des Roches, director of public affairs with Union des Artistes. ‘There’s lots of pressure from broadcasters and cable operators to open it up. They are lobbying and a lot of people are listening in.’

Richard Paradis, president of CAFDE, representing distributors and exporters, told the committee all the recent convergence acquisitions in Canada were struck at high-market value, ‘and nobody seemed to have a problem finding the money within the Canadian market.’

Paradis says the pressure to open up to foreign investment comes from the telecom and cable sector because those operations were historically deemed as ‘pipes,’ simple distributors of content. ‘But since then they have decided to get involved in broadcasting, so we said, ‘That’s their problem and if they want to be in broadcasting then they should live by the rules.’ ‘

Des Roches says if foreign media conglomerates end up owning the Canadian infrastructure, they’ll ultimately increase program dumping and use bottom-line and shareholder considerations to undermine content production financing.

Paradis says if the cable companies are losing market share it’s because they haven’t been entirely innovative in competing with the newer DTH providers. ‘They had a monopoly for so many years and now they’re paying for it. They didn’t see the competition coming and they didn’t believe it,’ he says.

Des Roches says the entire Quebec industry supports the fundamental premise of the Broadcasting Act.

‘Canada has one of the best broadcasting acts in the world, and if it’s not broken why fix it? It was designed in 1991 to be technologically neutral and I think it still fits the bill.’

Des Roches says the coalition wants government to continue to have the political will to act – to maintain an effective regulatory regime through the CRTC, defend private copyright holders and sustain financing for Canadian content production. ‘The message to the committee is don’t weaken any of it, otherwise it will all fall apart,’ she says.

The Heritage committee was particularly interested in the coalition’s position on the Internet.

The coalition urged the committee to press the CRTC to review its decision not to regulate the Internet, in the same way government is currently reviewing Canadian content rules. Specifically, the coalition wants government (the CRTC) to examine Internet usage by the large Canadian media companies, major IPS operations, the role of content portals (CanWest, Quebecor Media, Bell Globemedia) and Internet broadcasting. Paradis says operations, such as AOL Time-Warner, are tailoring or ‘selling information’ in favor of advertisers.

‘There’s a reason we should be considering [Internet] regulation because it’s no longer democratic in the way people think,’ he says.

The other Quebec associations sharing the Heritage review presentation, ‘Insuring Cultural Diversity Through a Strong Canadian Broadcasting System,’ are the ARRQ, representing film and TV directors; SPACQ, representing music publishers and composers; SARTEC, representing writers in radio, TV and film; and ADISQ, representing Quebec’s professional recording industry.