Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here.

I am going to read a quote from a letter that I think has already been mentioned. It was signed by the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, the National Congress of Italian-Canadians, the Canadian Ethnocultural Council, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations past president, Ryerson University, and the Yee Hong foundation. A lot of these organizations and their members are represented in my constituency, and are very concerned about cuts.

Their letter states as follows:

On the 7th day of May—Asian Heritage Month—...Rogers announced the elimination of all newscasts on its OMNI TV stations. For over 30 years OMNI TV has played a vital and essential role in reflecting and connecting Canada’s culturally diverse and multilingual communities. OMNI TV news programming creates a voice for Canada’s ethnocultural communities to challenge social injustices; it provides programming that pertains to their needs; and more importantly it gives these communities information that the mainstream media does not provide.

From what we've learned, this decision was made without consultation of community members and leaders, who have watched and benefited from OMNI TV for decades. In my opinion, and I know in the opinion of many who have written to me specifically, Rogers has abandoned the spirit of OMNI TV's licence by eliminating the local Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Italian news programming. We feel it's systematically dismantling OMNI's ability to meaningfully serve the multilingual audiences.

I know you said, Mr. Pelley, that you have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders. That means, quarter over quarter, trying to turn a profit. Your vice-presidents, in a conversation I had with them before, mentioned that not really much has changed: we still have services or programming in the same languages, it's just a pop-culture, news-ish kind of conversation show that's happening now.

But that's not what the communities are looking for. We know that well over a million people rely on OMNI for the news they're receiving on what is happening in this country. You may say that it's not making money....

Well, let me hear what you have to say. What is it you can say about the seniors and many people in my community in Scarborough who rely on the Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi, and Italian to get news—not just current events conversation but news on what's happening in our country—in their language?

Rathika Sitsabaiesan

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