Source : Winnipeg Sun

Group fights foreign ownership of broadcasters

Don't sell the messenger. Fans of Canadian television and telephone services are being urged to fight increased foreign ownership of the telecommunication industry.

Ian Morrison, spokesman for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said the federal government is under heavy pressure from cable lobby groups to relax the Broadcast Act, which caps out-of-country interest at 47%.

"All we want the government to do is nothing," Morrison told a standing-room-only meeting in Winnipeg yesterday.

"We want to maintain it at current levels."

Friends are joined in their fight by the Council of Canadians, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP). Their campaign is criss-crossing the country in anticipation of a federal election.

PROFITS OUT OF CANADA

"Whoever owns the messenger owns the message," warned Peter Murdoch, media vice-president of CEP, which has 150,000 members in Canada.

Murdoch said foreign interests would take their profits out of Canada, while increasing rates and homogenizing programming with American shows. A Canadian perspective would be erased, he added.

"In order for us to protect our culture, we have to protect our telecommunications industry," he said.

Stephen Waddell, the executive director of ACTRA, which has 21,000 performing members, said foreign owners of Canadian communication networks would likely be Americans driven by the bottom line -- not Canadian content.

He suggested concerned voters tell their MPs that Canadian stories are too important "to be sold off to foreign interests."

St. James-Assiniboia MP John Harvard, a former broadcaster and member of the Commons heritage committee, said a battle is brewing between his and the industry committee over relaxing foreign ownership rules.

The fight is not about being anti-American, he added, but about pride of ownership over Canadian talent and content.

"This is not like selling clothes or lipstick. This is our culture," he said to applause from the crowd.

Morrison said once the rules are relaxed for cable and radio and telephone companies, the mainstream television networks would want the same playing field.

Lobby groups for the four family-owned cable giants in the country -- Shaw, Rogers, Videotron and Coneco -- are applying pressure in Ottawa right now, he added, noting they are driven by wealth and nothing more.

"Relaxing the rules ... would be to put billions in the pockets of these four families," he said.

© Winnipeg Sun