The Canadian Conference of the Arts urges the CRTC to put communities back in community television

Ottawa, ON (May 4, 2010) — Today, Alain Pineau, National Direc­tor of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA), urged the CRTC to put com­mu­ni­ties back in com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion. He also deplored the lack of data made avail­able for a full eval­u­a­tion of how cable oper­a­tors use the $ 130 mil­lion they col­lect for com­mu­nity television.

The cur­rent hear­ing explores how best to achieve the social and cul­tural objec­tives of com­mu­nity broad­cast­ing as set in the Broad­cast­ing Act. Over the years, cable oper­a­tors have dras­ti­cally changed the con­cept of com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion and have reduced the num­ber of avail­able com­mu­nity sta­tions. Some provinces now have only one com­mu­nity chan­nel and in gen­eral, there has been a decrease in orig­i­nal com­mu­nity pro­gram­ming in Canada as com­pared to ten years ago.

“This impor­tant issue can’t be dealt with fairly within the con­fines of this cur­rent hear­ing,” said Pineau. “We need a broader and bet­ter informed pub­lic debate on this impor­tant cul­tural and social pol­icy issue – one that is based on fac­tual analy­sis of the cur­rent sys­tem and of the alter­na­tives in front of us.”

Based on the evi­dence avail­able, CCA favours the pro­posal put for­ward by the Cana­dian Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­mu­nity Tele­vi­sion Users and Sta­tions (CACTUS) which calls for giv­ing own­er­ship and con­trol of com­mu­nity tele­vi­sion back to com­mu­nity based orga­ni­za­tions. CACTUS also pro­poses the cre­ation of some 250 multi-media com­mu­nity cen­tres at no addi­tional costs to Cana­di­ans.  This pro­posal has received the sup­port of a large num­ber of cul­tural and civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions; how­ever, the CRTC seems reluc­tant to take com­mu­nity sta­tions away from cable.

The CCA invites the CRTC to do the following:

- Pre­pare a report  on the debate based on the cur­rent hearing;

- Demand from cable oper­a­tors detailed reports on their man­age­ment of the cur­rent model and what they pro­pose to do with com­mu­nity television;

- Keep the sta­tus quo for one more year as each party presents its case to Cana­di­ans across the country.

The Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) is the old­est and most widely based umbrella orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing the full spec­trum of the arts and cul­ture sec­tor in Canada, both Eng­lish and French.  Its mis­sion is to be the national forum for the arts and cul­tural com­mu­nity in Canada; to pro­vide research, analy­sis and con­sul­ta­tions on pub­lic poli­cies affect­ing the arts and the Cana­dian cul­tural insti­tu­tions and indus­tries; to fos­ter informed pub­lic debate on pol­icy issues and seek to advance the cul­tural rights of Canadians.

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