:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm absolutely delighted to be here.
During the day I'm the vice-provost and chief librarian at the University of Alberta. But I'm here representing the Canadian Association of Research Libraries as its president.
We're an organization of 29 of the largest university libraries in the country, but our membership also includes three federal organizations: the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, Library and Archives Canada, and the Library of Parliament. Although the last three institutions do not take any part in our advocacy, they are there simply to be part of that network, which is providing Canadians with research content for their various uses.
Over the course of our 30-plus years, we've developed a capacity to partner in the research and higher education arena. We seek effective and sustainable scholarly communication activities. And we promote public policy, encouraging research and broad access to scholarly information.
We've done that over the years also by way of spinoff organizations. The three in particular that will be part of this presentation are the Canadian Institute for Historic Microreproduction, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, and an organization called Canadiana.org.
We do welcome this opportunity to participate. The issues that you're dealing with are important issues, and they are particularly important to us. Although we have our few minutes today, you will be getting an extensive brief from us that will touch on a number of areas that I won't be touching on today. But they are certainly areas that are important for your energies, issues such as digital repositories, libraries as publishers of digital materials, and, most importantly--and I'll say one or two words about it later--the archiving of digital content.
Today I want to focus, though, on what is actually question five in your inquiry, and that is looking at digital content and particularly where digital content intersects with our users--Canadians of every socio-economic grouping--and making sure those individuals have access to the emerging and digital media.
Certainly, CARL encourages government to continue its efforts to extend broadband coverage to rural and northern communities so that all Canadians can have access to that content. We encourage the federal government to continue its program of ensuring that public libraries have computers that patrons can use for their learning and civic engagement, particularly in the rural areas and in the north.
We also encourage the government to continue to support the development of the library and archives community across Canada by way of the programs of such organizations and institutions, such as Library and Archives Canada and CISTI, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information. Both are very important to our well-being.
All of these programs are important in providing the means for researchers, teachers, students, and all Canadians to obtain the information they need in their research, education, and self-development activities.
But the means of access to digital content is only one factor in the digital equation. CARL has been advocating for a long time that government has a direct role to play in providing digital content for Canadians and in so doing to protect existing materials for future generations by digitizing Canada's documentary heritage.
If you come away with one recommendation from my presentation today, it should be that the Government of Canada needs to take a leadership role in preserving Canadian heritage by investing in the digitization of Canada's documentary heritage.
Many of you know well Tom Jenkins of Open Text. He is one of Canada's entrepreneurs and part of our team. He is on the Canadiana.org board. He was quoted in The Globe and Mail a year ago or so, saying that
much of Canada's knowledge and creative output remains on shelves in books, journals, government publications, research reports, films and TV productions, and archives. Less than 1 percent is online. We must mobilize our knowledge resources while supporting and encouraging those creating new content.
The digitization of Canada's documentary heritage has been a strong interest for CARL for many years. Canada's research libraries have the responsibility for the long-term preservation of that heritage and the mandate to make it available to Canadians. Digitization is the current approach to achieving both aims.
Canada's documentary heritage is held in paper or other analog formats in libraries, archives, museums, and other facilities. Of older documents, there are few copies available and they are often in an extraordinarily fragile state.
Once scanned, the lifespan of the original is greatly increased, and the information carried by the original will survive even if the original itself does not. Digital preservation entails its own challenges, to be sure, but they seem to be more tractable than those of the long-term preservation of the physical artifact.
I would say parenthetically that with the leadership of Library and Archives Canada, plus the leadership of many of my CARL colleagues and the CARL libraries, we are developing a network of what are called trusted digital repositories across the country to ingest just the kinds of materials that we're today encouraging you to support the creation of.
The more important reason for digitizing Canada's documentary heritage is to increase access to and use of it by Canadians and by others interested in Canada. Documents dispersed across many libraries and archives are difficult to discover and difficult or expensive for a researcher to consult. Interlibrary loans of rare or fragile documents are often not possible and travel to consult items is unaffordable for many. Many of you will recognize that as the condition today--at least I hope you recognize that.
That sentiment actually was stated in 1976 in one of the royal commissions of the government of the time, which looked at the same situation that you're looking at today, except in a different medium. The medium of that time was microform. It's the same issue, though: making Canadiana accessible to all Canadians.
There are many projects under way today. I'm not trying to suggest to you that we are not without progress. Things are happening. Library and Archives Canada, as I've said, has digitized many Canadian government documents. Your own Library of Parliament has digitized the debates of the House of Commons and Senate for almost all of the 20th century.
The University of Toronto Libraries are working with others, including my own institution, the University of Alberta, to digitize millions of out-of-copyright books. My own institution, the University of Alberta, has embarked upon a digitization project of 30 million pages of early Canadiana--Canadiana published up until 1923. Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec has digitized a great many collections of French language materials. As a more niche example, but an example representing a lot of things happening in the country, Simon Fraser University has a project to digitize publications relating to various immigrant groups in the country.
So a lot of things are happening, but “digitization” is a word that covers many processes. I won't go into them all today. It's complex. It's difficult. It means assigning what's called “metadata” in terms of being able to find things, indexing the text itself, and just making everything discoverable online. These are challenges, to be sure.
But they're all excellent projects and they're all precedents from which you can build a multi-institutional national project. As you can imagine, they represent a very small percentage of the voluminous number of documents that have yet to be protected. That volume is estimated to be at about 40 million titles, and we can't even estimate the amount of manuscript or archival materials we should be looking at.
The federal government has not been without a contribution, and we do want to thank the Department of Canadian Heritage. For example, in the CARL context, we had a grant of $200,000 to support the creation of a software tool that is now assisting all of our libraries in doing what I just mentioned: assigning metadata to digitized collections. I think a couple of you were actually there; I know that Mr. Uppal was there a year or so ago when we launched that. It has been used extraordinarily well.
There is a bit of irony in all of this. For some of those projects I mentioned, it's a bit of a sad reality, I guess--the University of Alberta project, for example, and the University of Toronto project--in that most of the resources for the digitization of Canadiana in those projects are coming from an American philanthropist and not from Canadian sources or the Canadian government.
We think there should be maybe be a little more investment. We don't want a Google, particularly, where we have to digitize our heritage and then buy it back. That's something we are trying to avoid if we can do so.
We note that the recently launched digital consultation mentions the need for digitization. We'll make further comments on that through the process they're engaged in.
We also believe, however, that the development and marketing of value-added services around the collections might present cost-recovery possibilities, and certainly it represents possibilities for partnerships with the private sector.
Many of those materials I mentioned just a few minutes ago are being used by educational publishers, by all sorts of individuals in the educational media exploiting what we already have digitized. And we can only assume that the more content that's out there, the more opportunity there will be for those kinds of private sector partnerships and those kinds of private sector publishers. It's a big industry and we think we can contribute to it.
The availability online of our national wealth of historical documents would be a boon to that creative sector, saving writers and other creators much time and trouble and encouraging cultural creation in and about Canada.
I want to briefly touch on the issue of copyright. The research library community firmly believes and asserts that creators should indeed be compensated for their work. The issues we project to you today with regard to retrospective digitization primarily focus on out-of-copyright materials. But we did want to suggest that CARL is in the process of compensating creators and publishers to the tune of about $250 million a year through our usage of those materials, through our purchase of those materials, and through licence fees we pay to Canada's various collectives.
As an association, we have participated in the government consultation, and we would be pleased to provide this committee with a copy of our comments. Our libraries want to be a part of the discussion when the government introduces the new copyright reform package, which we hear will be fairly soon.
We thank the heritage committee for inviting us to present today. We have appreciated the opportunity to underline for you the engagement of Canada's research libraries in the use, dissemination, and even the creation of digital media. We would be pleased to answer any of your questions.
Thank you.
:
That would be me. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Mark Jamison and I am chief executive officer of Magazines Canada. Jim Everson, our executive director of public affairs, is with me. Due to illness, my colleague Jocelyn Poirier sends his regrets. Jocelyn is a member of the Magazines du Québec board as well as the Magazines Canada board, and he is president of the TVA group, but unfortunately he is ill and he cannot be with us.
We appreciate that the committee is focusing on digital media. This is an environment that magazine publishers have embraced. We thank you for having us.
Canadians have benefited considerably over the years from progressive federal policies in the magazine sector. As the digital economy and new consumer demand evolve, policies need to be updated to continue to provide value to Canadian readers.
We would like to spend a few minutes talking about magazines today and tomorrow. Different monitors have the slides in French and English.
First, I have just a few words about the industry and Magazines Canada. Our national association provides advocacy, marketing, and professional development services for Canada's consumer, cultural, and business magazines. Members are mostly independent titles located in all parts of Canada, publishing in French, English, and aboriginal languages as well as many other languages.
Member magazines are Canadian owned and controlled, and that's a point we want to stress, plus the fact that most of our magazines have 80%-plus Canadian content. Together, our magazines deliver 700 million print titles annually and attract millions of readers online. The $2.2 billion Canadian magazine industry provides direct and indirect employment to some 13,000, and that includes all our creative people—writers, designers, illustrators, and so on.
Are we tanking on the French slides here?
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We underline that while government investment is appreciated and important, total government investment in the magazine industry in Canada by all levels of government collectively is less than 4% of the industry's value.
Federal policy on magazines is working. Over many years, Canada has developed and refined its magazine policy into quite a sophisticated set of tools. In the digital economy these tools will need refining but not replacing.
On the one hand, we have modest government investment that has garnered a high level of success. On the other hand, we have a completely open world marketplace for magazines here in Canada within which our Canadian publishers have been successful. To ensure that the success continues in the digital economy, we will need to update and refine the current tools, not replace them.
When we say that federal policy is working, here is the proof. The number of Canadian magazines continues to grow. Canadians want Canadian content, and magazines are delivering this. With this reader interest, magazines drive economic activity across Canada and create high-quality jobs.
Canadians spend about 41% of their money on Canadian titles when they purchase magazines. Canadian magazines also have 80% of the subscription market in Canada. This compares very favourably, for example, to the percentage of film time and television time devoted to Canadian content.
In this slide you see how the growth of print magazines over the last decade has parallelled the growth of the Internet. Even through this economic meltdown, magazine readership has been very steady.
In addition, magazines are read by everyone. A common theme and discussion is that young people are abandoning the print medium, but nothing could be further from the truth. The largest segment of print magazine readers are in fact people between the ages of 18 and 24. As you can see, it's pretty steady across all of the age groups.
However, as Canadians demand more access to Canadian content in new and different ways, our magazine publishers are responding. As time spent on the Internet increases, time spent on consuming other media will change. Magazine brands are responding to Canadian expectations by creating enhanced content on websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and whatever else they'll invent next week that we don't know about. We want to show you how this is evolving.
Here is an example of Canadians' capacity to work together. Magazines Canada launched the digital newsstand just late last year. With 145 titles participating in both official languages and reader response growing, the project is supported in part by the Canada Periodical Fund. It demonstrates how this public-private partnership can achieve results in a digital economy.
The digital newsstand and related websites provide Canadians with options to access Canadian-created content. These digital formats also allow publishers to enhance core content with links to related sites, government information, business opportunities, and so on.
New platforms allow smaller publishers greater reach at home and abroad. Our magazines take Canada's cultural business commerce, communities, and policy ideas everywhere in digital. An example is Sky News, a small-print circulation magazine based near Belleville, Ontario. It's devoted to astronomy, with a very dedicated print readership of about 5,000 per issue. This is typical of small niche magazines. Look at what happens in the digital age: it is now attracting astronomy geeks worldwide.
Quality Canadian content has always been exportable, and now in the digital age it is much more portable. It's early days for this digital newsstand, but it is already opening doors for magazines of all types to reach even more readers at home and abroad. This will only grow with the right public-private nurturing, and we thank the Canada Periodical Fund for its help with that.
Unfortunately, Jocelyn couldn't be here, but I have to talk a little bit about Clin d'oeil. It's a proven magazine brand with a strong market in Quebec. It's a fashion and beauty magazine that shines in many different ways. One of them specifically is that it has also become a broadcaster; it is no longer just a magazine. It is doing all the Twitter, all the blogging, and everything you can imagine, but it is also the broadcaster of a web series called “Comment survivre aux week-ends?” Now in its second season, this series has been downloaded almost 1.6 million times. The story line comes from stories in the magazine, and there are other related things. Music and other story lines are also available. It's typical of where magazines are going. They're becoming portals for all types of content: film, music, as well as long-form magazine journalism.
When we talk about platforms, we have to include face-to-face events, and Cottage Life in Ontario represents that. The story here is the value a magazine like Cottage Life brings to businesses that advertise in the magazine, true of many magazines. Because Cottage Life is read by cottagers, it attracts advertising from Canadian businesses interested in that market, as does its show. A lot of business is done by people who share in a community built around this magazine. Without the magazine, its live show, its web presence, and other extensions, a lot of Canadians would be mail ordering for cottage supplies from U.S. businesses instead of buying them from Canadians. This is a point we really need to underline: the value of brands and making business happen.
The Alberta Venture brand is a regional business-to-business and business-to-consumer powerhouse. On multiple platforms it drives business, celebrates Alberta's business leadership, and promotes Albertans who demonstrate excellence. Readers across Canada also appreciate this brand, and it puts them in touch with issues and innovations by Alberta business people.
I want to end with Hockey News on this portion, apparently because Canadians like hockey--until last night. Hockey fans have found Hockey News a very important part of their lives. Hockey fans get updates, news dailies from up-to-the-minute scores, and so on on their PDA devices. That PDA download is something in the neighbourhood of 500,000 of just the platform and 4.5 million page views monthly.
So in a world of digital platforms, print, online, TV, radio events, mobile iPads, where's Canadian content in Canadian consciousness? Right up front. Let's take a look at this one for a second. Step aside American Idol; five Canadian magazines beat out hot American TV shows like American Idol in audience, and by a long shot. Millions and millions of people read Canadian magazines.
Why are we doing so well? Once again, it's Canadian content. Our success in achieving this is in a crowded marketplace. It should be underlined that there are over 100 titles available per Canadian of all types, foreign as well as domestic, and we compete in a global marketplace right here at home.
We give a lot of credit to the Canada Periodical Fund, now in its new iteration. It has been redesigned to provide magazine content creators with the flexibility to manage funds strategically, for example, to reach Canadians and international audiences with homegrown content on multiple digital platforms. We think it's key. We would like to see it reinforced as we move ahead. We would like to see it retain its current funding level, including the $15 million the Government of Canada ensured it had going into this round. We would like to see that renewed.
To close, succeeding in a digital economy, we'd like to see a robust CPF continue. We believe the Canada Council is doing a great job moving to the digital age. We are looking for copyright reform that supports creators so they will stay in Canada while ensuring ease of access to Canadian users of our content as well as international users.
We believe in-career skills development is absolutely essential to help our competitiveness in the digital age, and we believe supporting industry collectives to drive innovative marketing distribution and monetization will really help us.
Finally, we'd like to thank you for your time. We appreciate the Government of Canada's investment, and we invite you to join Friends of Canadian Magazines in either language.
Thank you.
Mr. Ingles, you are not the first person from the field of literature or libraries to come before us and set out the issues within the world of documentation as they relate to digitization. It is my understanding that there were four issues of interest. I would like to hear your comments on that.
I will present the first three and then talk about the fourth, i.e., copyright.
The first issue is the digitization of documents. I take it that, when you talked earlier about documents, you were not only referring to written documents, on paper, but other forms of documents as well. The digitization of documents, if I understand correctly, is the first issue. For representatives of the book or publishing sector, the problem is one of content, but that is not an issue for the library sector.
The second issue is Google. We know that Google has digitized millions of books, whether in French, English or Spanish, and sent letters to publishers stating that, if they objected to that, they simply could take the company to court. The industry in Quebec is waging a major battle against that. I would like to know whether you were affected by Google's actions, and what your response was .
The third issue is government assistance. You told us that you received a $200,000 grant to support the creation of software.
:
Very well indeed, actually.
As you said, the first challenge is digitization. In many ways, it's the easiest, but it's very expensive. It's easiest in terms of technologies involved. Those are sophisticated today. We know what we're doing and we know how to do it, but really it's just the cost of doing it.
The interesting thing about it, however, is that it's also a job creator, because we need to set up our sites and we need to utilize those sites in terms of doing that mass digitization--and the mass is huge.
In Quebec, just as an example, some of that digitization capacity is being developed by our first nations, so it's becoming job creation in the Quebec context. So there are some really interesting spin-off benefits, but it is a huge challenge for us.
Of course, just digitizing something doesn't make it accessible. It doesn't lead to its discovery. In and of itself, that's another item.
I don't want to leave you simply with the idea that the retrospective digitization is all of the problem. My colleagues here have talked very persuasively and very articulately with regard to the digital or electronic versions of those magazines, and I applaud them for that.
I hope they're considering the preservation of those files, not for five years, not for ten years, but our challenge within the research library community is to think of that preservation for 500 years. That is our challenge. I think we are the only ones in the country thinking in those terms. That's where trusted digital repositories come into the fray.
Google has been an interesting component of our lives. Access to all of the Google files is not yet a part of our service array in Canada. It probably will be, but there are still legal things to overcome.
But it worries me as a Canadian, perhaps not in my current role, that much Canadian content—thank heavens not as much as they think—has been digitized by Google, and we're now going to have to go in and somehow buy it back, retrieve it from another foreign repository. That gives me a certain amount of angst, I have to admit.
We would like to see more government assistance, particularly in making in-roads into those huge digitization projects that I mentioned. There's a lot of content out there. We think that content can be re-purposed in many ways by the cultural sector, the private sector, education, all sorts of things. Whether it's $1 million or $10 million or $500,000, as we nibble into it, it's an important--
:
Thank you very much for that opening. I don't know how much clock I have to burn...? One minute.
I'll waste a little bit of it to say that we share a bit of heritage. I also was a trustee of the Ottawa Public Library, from 1978 to 1983 or 1984, before I moved west.
There are a couple of things I would suggest. First of all, in all honesty, I know it's not politic necessarily to come in with one's hand out and say we need more money, but there has been very little real investment in the retrospective digitization of our heritage, particularly from our memory institutions. There has been some contribution, and I would be the first to applaud it, through the CCO program in Heritage Canada. I myself, for example, have sat on the board of the Virtual Museum of Canada for 10 years, and I've seen some great and wonderful things happen there, within that digital space. So I do think there has been an investment, but I truly, honestly think there needs to be more.
I think because we are memory institutions in that way, there also has to be more support for Library and Archives Canada, for example, to help us develop these trusted digital repositories. I know it may sound foolish to you to worry about a 500-year horizon, but that's the kind of thing we worry about, and we need to worry about it. If no one had started to worry about the print publications of the previous centuries, we'd have nothing to digitize and we'd have no heritage to look back on. So we have to look ahead, but we have to understand what it takes to look ahead, and the investment.
There are many things that we want to rely on the private sector to do for us, but there are many other things that we need public support to do.
:
Good morning, Mr. Chair, committee members and staff. First of all, I would like to thank the committee for inviting Astral to participate in its study on emerging and digital media.
Astral is a Canadian media company, active in the fields of specialty and pay television, radio, new media and out-of-home advertising both in the francophone and anglophone markets across Canada. The impact of the evolution of digital media on the broadcasting sector overall is, for us, a matter of the utmost importance. We have all been witnessing an acceleration of the pace of technological change that has been causing dramatic upheaval in the means of access to content on a variety of platforms. For a business such as ours, this no doubt presents enormities—I am sorry—opportunities—
Some voices: Oh, oh!
Mrs. Carole Lavallée: Was that a Freudian slip?
Mr. André Bureau: Yes, madam, I am being well looked after this afternoon.
Some voices: Oh, oh!
Mr. André Bureau: —but it also adds challenges. Our imperative is to find sustainable business models. We must adapt our TV and radio services in order to remain relevant in the broadcasting value chain in light of the emergence of new competitors; we must invest and progress in the interactive media and evolve in order to remain connected to our audiences.
[English]
We have followed the hearings of this committee over the past few weeks and have drawn two principal conclusions therefrom. First of all, the scope and complexity of the unresolved issues we all face, whether they be (a) public initiatives for the creation of a Canadian digital content, namely funds, tax credits for production, assistance in the digitization of content, assistance for the development of talent; (b) the current copyright scheme; (c) access to the new distribution platforms by both consumers and creators; (d) the adequacy of the current regulatory system in light of this new environment; (e) piracy; (f) Canadian ownership rules; and (g) the impact of international treaties on the ability to adopt measures favouring Canadian businesses. This situation is further complicated by the fact that the policies and rules originate from several stakeholders, organizations, or government departments, without the optimum coordination necessarily being present.
Secondly, while the debates have clearly been informative and have better enabled us to identify the collective issues, it is, we submit, unfortunately not in the space of several hours and individually in a one-hour timeframe that one can propose exhaustive solutions. It seems to us imperative that we take the time and take advantage of the existing expertise to find solutions together.
We have built the Canadian broadcasting system on a solid foundation based on public policies and with contributions of the pillars of the system: private and public broadcasters, independent producers, and broadcasting distribution undertakings. Our Canadian broadcasting policy has provided the necessary conditions to enable the creation of and access to content that reflects Canadians' distinctive perspectives and ideas. It has been a key measure in supporting a Canadian cultural sovereignty within the overall North American context. It has also enabled the development of an important and vibrant Canadian economic sector.
Sophie.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman Schellenberger and members of the committee. My name is Gary Maavara. I am executive vice-president and general counsel of Corus Entertainment. With me today is Sylvie Courtemanche, who is vice-president of government relations.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, Corus very much appreciates the opportunity to take part in this proceeding. We believe it is important for us to outline our perspective on digital interactive media markets in Canada and abroad. As you know, Corus is one of Canada's leading media and entertainment companies. We have extensive radio holdings across Canada that serve the ridings of almost all of the members of this committee. We have several national specialty and paid television services and three over-the-air television stations serving the communities of Peterborough, Kingston, and Oshawa.
We employ people across Canada, from Quebec to B.C. We also own Nelvana, one of the world's premier producers of children's animation programming. Our program library currently comprises some 3,300 half-hour episodes of Canadian-produced and co-produced content.
Kids Can Press is Canada's largest publisher of materials intended for children. Some of our brands in that book company include the popular Scaredy Squirrel and Franklin the Turtle, and the iconic Babar, who is everyone's favourite elephant.
Over the past several years we have been exploring new and innovative ways to capitalize on new technology-driven markets. To accomplish this we have been continually upgrading our physical plants and training our employees so that we can remain relevant to Canadians. For example, we are two days away from moving into Corus Quay, which will become part of the rebirth of the east end of Toronto's waterfront. The mega-million-dollar investment will establish one of the world's most sophisticated media centres.
We are making this investment in recognition of the fact that we need to be able to compete with the best that the world has to offer. We are competing with the world, and the world competes with us right here in Canada.
Corus provides Nelvana-owned Canadian content to multi-platform channels such as KidsCo in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and qubo in the United States.
We also have a direct-to-consumer digital download strategy. The result of all this is that today, our productions are available in more than 160 countries worldwide in more than 40 different languages.
Why are we talking about foreign markets, you ask? Of course because that is where the market is that will allow us to expand our Canadian presence. New technologies are not just about threats; they provide us all with opportunities. But we must be thoughtful, nimble, and strategic to succeed.
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In our recent appearances before the CRTC, we have argued for an approach to policy and regulation based on what we call the Corus “big six”. We think that our big six principles are particularly relevant to this proceeding. Allow me to list them one at a time.
The first principle is to embrace the merits of fostering a Canadian-owned but globally competitive industry. It must be explicitly recognized that we compete in the world market. Of course this has always been the case in traditional broadcasting. Our policies are built upon the realities of our small market, which evolves in juxtaposition to a huge market. Digital media simply broadens the scope of the problem. The adjacent market is now the whole world.
Government and regulatory bodies must align their domestic policies and rules so that we can have a Canadian-owned system that is globally competitive. We can no longer shelter our domestic market. The barriers that we have built to protect Canadian media can become a confining trap if we are not mindful of the change.
The second principle is to increase the probability of success of the Canadian media industry by encouraging the creation of larger and stronger enterprises.
Corus is a significant player in the Canadian market, but we are very small on a global scale. Google spent roughly US$1.5 billion on research and development in 2007. That amount is greater than the revenue last year of the entire Canadian radio industry. So we must all recognize that the problem is worse in the digital realm than it was in traditional broadcasting. This makes it very challenging to fully participate in the new media world.
The third principle is to develop a Canadian industrial strategy for our sector. As has been the case in other industries, we need to look at our business from a strategic perspective. Strategic thinking means making decisions about what the priorities are for the system. That was one of the themes raised during the Canada 3.0 Conference.
As an immediate first step, we recommend the creation of a panel of experts to report on the state of the media environment and about what government should do. This approach was successfully implemented with the recent telecommunications review panel, as well as with the process that led to the Caplan-Sauvageau report in 1986.
The fourth principle is to recognize that private media enterprise success is what will lead to a stronger cultural system, not the current system of progressive fees, conditions and tariffs.
Imposing a regulatory system of conditions, tariffs and quotas on new media participants will not promote a greater Canadian presence in new media. In fact, it is likely to have just the opposite effect. Furthermore, the commission should make no attempt to regulate the new media activities of Canadian broadcasters. As we have said, this would only inhibit, not enhance, our ability to prosper in the digital universe.