MONTREAL — Quebecor wants to pump more than $35 million per year into a new private fund to finance Canadian television programming, according to plans unveiled by CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau Monday afternoon in Montreal.

‘We are proposing a new formula. The CTF is out of date,’ said Péladeau at a press conference at the offices of Quebecor-owned TVA, the province’s largest private TV network. ‘This will put money into the broadcasting system. It will create jobs and Canadian content. That’s what we want.’

It is Quebecor’s latest move away from the Canadian Television Fund, in turmoil since western cable giant Shaw Communications and Quebecor-owned Videotron pulled their support in December and January, respectively. Videotron puts roughly $19 million into CTF each year and, like Shaw, has complained that CTF is poorly managed.

Péladeau submitted his proposal for the fund — which would be under the control of the Quebecor Fund — to the CRTC and Heritage Minister Bev Oda on Monday, pledging $109 million over the next three years. But there’s one hitch: Quebecor will hold the copyright to everything the fund finances.

‘Audiences want Quebec content, but they are fragmenting. In order for us to be viable we have to be able to use content on all kinds of different platforms,’ he said.

According to Péladeau’s plan, content financed by the new fund will be produced by Quebecor’s JPL Productions and distributed on the media giant’s multiple platforms, including TVA, and cable/Internet provider Vidéotron.

Asked by a reporter if his company and Shaw have been working together against CTF, Péladeau said no.

The news comes partway through hearings by Parliament’s heritage committee into the CTF meltdown. Representatives from the Writers Guild of Canada, broadcaster S-Vox and the Department of Canadian Heritage, including Oda, are due to appear Tuesday morning, followed by the Directors Guild of Canada, the Alliance for Children and Television and CBC on Thursday.

S-Vox general counsel Brant Kostandoff tells Playback Daily his company supports the CTF, but adds that the committee should be sensitive to the concerns and frustrations.

‘There needs to be an appropriate balance between the interests of those distributors and funders of the CTF, and the parties that benefit from it,’ he says.

The hearings began last week with Shaw Communications refusing to back down on its demands for increased accountability.

‘CTF has created a culture of entitlement,’ said cable boss Jim Shaw in a release after the hearings, again taking direct aim at CBC by alleging that the network ‘is one of the main reasons’ for CTF’s failings.

CTF, meanwhile, released a counter statement, detailing the fund’s positive impact on the domestic TV industry, which formed part of its presentation to the committee. The document outlined highlights and awards for English and French CTF-funded programming.