We welcome the CRTC’s 2010 TV policy for private broadcasters. Now hold them to it.

That was the message from industry guilds and unions to the CRTC as they addressed on-going license renewal hearing for English-language television broadcasters.

The Canadian Media Production Association, representing major producers, told the regulator it accepted private broadcasters need flexibility from the new CRTC policy to adapt to consumer demand in a digital world.

“But increased flexibility for broadcasters should be a tool to achieve the goal of increased support for Canadian programming. It should be a means to that end. It should not be an end in itself,” CMPA president and CEO Norm Bolen told the CRTC hearing.

The CRTC’s group-based TV regulatory regime, unveiled in March 2010, aimed to give English-language private broadcasters more flexibility to offer high-quality programs of interest to Canadians.

The regulator ordered the industry’s three largest ownership groups – Shaw Media, Bell Media and Rogers Media – to spend at least 30% of their gross revenues on Canadian programming.

In return for that floor for production expenditures, the major broadcasters can shift resources among their English-language conventional TV stations and specialty channel to meet that obligation.

The Writers Guild of Canada, during its appearance in Gatineau, Quebec, warned the CRTC against private broadcasters using flexibility to air cheaper homegrown programming as they move away from quality Canadian dramas and documentaries.

WGC executive director Maureen Parker told the CRTC “it feels like we’re back in 1999, having the same discussions with Canadian broadcasters trying to nickel and dime the CRTC to minimize their obligations.”

Parker said Canadians can get U.S. series from stateside channels.

Canadian broadcasters, by contrast, should be about homegrown dramas and documentaries, she said.

“We’re prepared to work with the 2010 TV Policy set out by the CRTC. And they should be too,” Parker argued.

Canadian actor Tyrone Benskin, appearing before the CRTC as part of a delegation from ACTRA, the actors union, told the regulator that the group license renewal hearings need to undo the damage of the CRTC’s 1999 TV policy, which also relaxed rules for private broadcasters.

“We worked relentlessly to make the CRTC see that there was a problem, and they did. Now we need to make sure the new policy takes us forward, not backwards by resulting in more Canadian programming, not less,” Benskin told the regulators.