MONTREAL — The Conservative chair of the heritage committee says the Canadian Television Fund needs to change, and is defending the withdrawal of payments by Shaw Communications and Videotron as a last-ditch effort by the cable companies to have their voices heard.

‘Shaw and Videotron have been trying to get their ideas across to the heritage committee for a long time. And [withdrawing payments] got them there,’ says Gary Schellenberger, MP for Perth-Wellington and chair of the standing committee on Canadian Heritage, in an interview with Playback Daily.

‘To condemn their actions as almost illegal is unfair.’

Schellenberger’s remarks follow strong criticism of the cable providers — who caused a panic in the TV industry when they stopped contributing to CTF for a number of weeks — in a heritage committee draft report released this week.

Most Tory members on the committee opposed the report’s recommendations, which were written in large part by NDP Heritage critic Charlie Angus. The report also calls upon Heritage Minister Bev Oda to condemn the cable providers.

‘Mr. Angus maintains Bev Oda did little. And that’s totally wrong. The minister met with all the parties involved, and she wrote a letter asking them to resume payments,’ says Schellenberger. ‘The whole thing has cleared up, so what ever she did seems to have worked.’

While Schellenberger believes the CTF does work, he says ‘there are problems with it’ — a point supported by both the cable companies and a 2005 report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser, which warned of poor governance at the fund.

The heritage committee report will go before Parliament in mid-March along with a dissenting report from the Conservative members, says Schellenberger.

Schellenberger also takes issue with Angus’ criticism of the CRTC’s closed-door review into the CTF, which the NDP MP said made him ‘uncomfortable,’ in an interview with Playback Daily yesterday.

‘These kinds of discussions must be done in private. In a way it’s to protect the little guy. This way an independent producer can say what he likes without fear of consequences,’ says Schellenberger.