Another player entered the lobbying arena last month when Our Public Airwaves, a new advocacy group calling for more funding for public broadcasting, debuted in Ottawa with an open letter to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

‘You need only turn on your TV…to witness the overwhelming assault on our national consciousness [by] American programming,’ writes OPA executive director Arthur Lewis to committee chair Clifford Lincoln. ‘We strongly believe that there is an urgent need to rebalance our broadcasting system so that Canadians are also provided with a greater choice of primetime Canadian entertainment.’

OPA calls for ‘a substantial increase’ to CBC coffers to bolster Canadian television and claims that Canadians must make ‘a serious effort to repatriate a portion of the popular culture… [or] risk the nation itself.’ The group had hoped to make a formal presentation during the committee’s recent public hearings but missed the deadline.

A former reporter and producer for CBC in Ottawa, and one-time president of the Canadian Media Guild, Lewis and others formed the group in 2001, shortly after a three-day broadcasting conference in Ottawa. Our Public Airwaves formed with support and seed money from the CMG, and also has close ties to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and other teacher unions across the country.

‘Teachers have been fighting major battles against the encroachment of private interests for years,’ says Lewis, on the phone from Ottawa, adding that educators have been ‘overwhelmingly supportive’ of OPA. ‘Our arguments really struck a chord.’

OPA’s 100-or-so members include former CBC president Tony Manera, former CRTC head Pierre Juneau and Canadian Teachers Federation president Doug Willard.

Lewis, now at work building OPA membership, hopes to see a gradual reversal of CBC funding cuts that he says have hampered the Crown corporation since ‘not long after Elvis left the building.’

‘The federal broadcast policy in the last couple of decades has looked for private-sector solutions, and we feel it is time to take a fresh look at public broadcasting,’ says Lewis. ‘The deficits are gone now. We’re in a surplus. Let’s start adding a couple hundred million [dollars] this year, and another $100 million next year, and so on.’

-www.publicairwaves.ca