Source : Ottawa Citizen

It has become a question of when and how, not if.

According to insiders, Heritage Minister Bev Oda is poised to make some fundamental changes to the Canadian Television Fund that may include a reduction in the CBC's portion of the $250 million annual budget, a new role for the video-on-demand segment of the market and accommodation for other new media platforms that didn't exist or weren't commercially viable when the fund was created in 1996.

Given the growing acknowledgment that changes to the current fund structure have become an inevitable development, Ms. Oda's challenge is how to frame that restructuring and how to engineer its roll-out, with minimum disruption to Canada's financially fragile independent television production sector.

At the end of the meeting with senior executives from Canada's cable companies, Ms. Oda clearly foreshadowed a fund overhaul by noting that the industry "pointed out that they believe that the broadcasting system's new realities are not being recognized by the current structure of the CTF."

Those pending changes, furthermore, would provide some context for the corporate words that echoed through the House of Commons yesterday.

NDP Heritage critic Charlie Angus confronted Ms. Oda in the House of Commons about remarks made by a senior executive at Shaw Communications, one of the cable companies that has suspended its payments to the TV fund as part of a protest to the way it's administered.

Following the meeting with the heritage minister on Jan. 31, Shaw's Ken Stein was quoted as saying the fund is "Dead. Done. Gone."

Which it may well be in its current format.

"I expected to be completely and publicly up-ended if I was wrong," says Mr. Angus of his public challenge to Ms. Oda. "But, I got absolutely no sense that she has any contrary position."

He also claims that her past record as a CRTC commissioner reveals her "historical antipathy" to a mandated TV fund contribution for Canadian cable operators.

That said, just last week, Ms. Oda committed $200 million of her departmental budget to help support and stabilize the fund over the next two years. She also met yesterday with fund chairman Douglas Barrett to get his perspective on the bitter standoff.

Following that session, Mr. Barrett declared his appreciation for her personal efforts and noted, "We believe Minister Oda is committed to assuring the continuity of the Canadian production system and to doing what she can to find a solution to the current challenges."

Ms. Oda also announced yesterday that she plans to hold sessions with other TV fund stakeholders next week, including representatives of Canadian producers, directors and broadcasters.

But Mr. Angus, who successfully passed a motion calling for parliamentary hearings on the future of the fund, insists that Mr. Barrett is merely "putting on a brave face."

"The money from Heritage is meaningless if Shaw and Videotron pull out," he insists. "When the cable barons say they will ignore the terms of their licence, the CRTC becomes voluntary."

He adds that the federal regulator has already been "undermined" by the Harper government, and by Industry Minister Maxime Bernier in particular.

To date, the CRTC has still issued no comment on the dispute between the TV fund and Shaw and Groupe Videotron, although it is the body that would be required to enforce any action against the two cable players because it regulates their respective operating licences.

Resolution of the fund's situation has now bumped the heritage committee's proposed mandate review of the CBC from the top of its agenda as well.

That process was slated to begin next week and a list of themes and questions for those who plan to make submissions to the committee has now been issued.

But Mr. Angus insists there's no point in analysing the CBC's situation until the fund, with which it is so closely involved, has been hammered out.

In other words, Ms. Oda is no longer the only one to delay a review of the public broadcaster.

© Ottawa Citizen