Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting us to appear in front of your committee.

Before we begin our remarks, I would also like to thank the Algonquin Anishinabe people for having us here as a guest on their unceded, unsurrendered territory. I'd also like to thank them for being stewards of the land and waters in this area since time immemorial.

I'm Scott Shortliffe, executive director of broadcasting. I'm joined by my colleagues Scott Hutton, chief of consumer and research; and Rachelle Frenette, general counsel.

Before we get to your questions, we'll briefly touch on two things. The first is the CRTC's role with respect to official languages and official language minority communities. We have decided to divide our five minutes. My colleague, Scott Hutton, will speak briefly on French culture and how it's been reflected in our decisions and as a result of our recent proceedings.

Starting with our role, as you know, the CRTC is an independent quasi-judicial tribunal that regulates the Canadian communications sector in the public interest. We hold open public hearings on telecommunications and broadcasting matters and make decisions based on that public record. We're responsible for achieving the policy objectives of the Broadcasting Act. The Act recognizes, among other things, that the English- and French-speaking communities have different requirements. We must consider the impact of our decisions with this in mind. In fact, the Online Streaming Act stated specifically that while the two communities share common aspects, it is our duty to consider “the minority context of French in North America”. This is something we strive to do in all of our decisions.

Over the years, the CRTC has established regulatory policies that take into account the different needs of the French-language market. These include, for example, the requirement that French-language commercial radio stations play a certain percentage of French-language music each week. We also require broadcasters in Canada to make certain culturally relevant channels available in markets where there are official language minority communities. These include important French-language channels such as TVA, ICI-RDI and MétéoMédia. These measures are, in part, how we are fulfilling the mandate given to us by the Broadcasting Act to make English- and French-language broadcasting of equivalent access and quality across Canada.