Mandate satellite TV distributors to carry all CBC regional signals: House committee

A Parliamentary committee is urging the CRTC to require satellite television distributors to carry all of the French and English regional signals of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp./Radio-Canada. In a new report examining the role and responsibilities of the CRTC in developing Canada’s two official languages, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages states that the CBC has developed a network of regional radio and television stations that need to be maintained and promoted. Yet in some markets, the regional signals of the CBC are not available, notes the report released last week. "The committee expects the DBS providers to offer regional signals of the national public broadcaster in both French and English. The committee is therefore calling on the CRTC to work with these providers to correct the current shortcomings," the report concludes. The report further states that the committee "would follow developments closely over the next few years to ensure that appropriate action is taken to correct the situation." CBC management calls the recommendation good news for all Canadians, and is asking the CRTC to turn the recommendation into policy as soon as possible. To force an official response from the government, the committee has asked the government to respond to the report. The government has 150 days to answer in writing. "You can table a report and let it ride, and the government makes note of it and that’s it. Or you can ask for a response. It’s a mechanism that obliges the government to respond, so that’s what we did," says committee chair Mauril Bélanger. "We want the government to tell us whether or not it will accept our recommendations, and if not, why not. Then, we can act on that." If the recommendations were implemented, it would mean that satellite TV distributors Star Choice Television Network Inc. and Bell ExpressVu LP would both have to put up an additional 18 regional CBC signals. Star Choice currently distributes two of 10 French-language CBC signals and seven of the public broadcaster’s 17 English-language signals. Bell ExpressVu carries three French-language and six English-language CBC signals. The two satellite TV operators are unlikely to add the additional CBC signals unless directed to by the CRTC. In fact, a proposed agreement between the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) and Bell ExpressVu moves in the opposite direction, suggesting that some CBC signals be blacked out. Bélanger notes that the report has no legal basis, only moral suasion. "We will follow up on this in the sense that we will pay attention to (CRTC) decisions, to communications and exchanges of letters," he tells Canadian Communications Reports. "We have only moral suasion. We have no legal authority. But I believe that the CRTC has to at least pay attention because as Parliamentarians, we are people who have a mandate to represent, and we are also speaking on behalf of the House because we are a creature of the House." Bélanger says the committee is especially interested in the government’s response to two report recommendations that involve it. The report suggests that the government add the CRTC to its list of 29 designated federal institutions involved in areas of intervention that are critical for minority-language communities. If the CRTC were added to the list, it would be required to prepare an annual or multi-year action plan after consulting with minority official-language communities to determine their needs. The commission would also have to provide an annual update describing its achievements and a summary of the impact of its decisions on minority official-language communities. The CRTC has resisted being added to the list on the grounds that the Broadcasting Act spells out a series of objectives and that it cannot favour one goal over another. Moreover, the commission says it already deals with minority-language issues in its reports to Canadian Heritage. The second recommendation calling for government action suggests that the Governor in Council order the CRTC to make it mandatory for all distributors, regardless of size, to distribute both the video and audio signals of Parliamentary debates carried on the Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) in both official languages. Currently, some small cablecos are exempt from this obligation. The committee also wants the CPAC signal to be protected from displacement by closed-circuit video programming. That recommendation stems from observations that some hotels replace CPAC with pay-per-view movie channels. Another recommendation asks the CRTC to develop a concept of a bilingual market to better serve markets that have significant proportions of both French- and English-speaking people. The CRTC currently identifies markets by the mother tongue of the majority of the population in the area being served in setting policies. The CRTC launched such a process in 1999, but a year later in Public Notice 2000-38 it pointed out that "there was no consensus among the comments received regarding how a bilingual market should be defined."

Mandate satellite TV distributors to carry all CBC regional signals: House committee

News | 02/13/2003 5:00 am EST

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