Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-18. I would like to take this opportunity to draw attention to the 35th anniversary of Telefilm and its major achievements.
Some of its huge successes have already been mentioned, such as Da Vinci's Inquest , Un gars, une fille , Road to Avonlea , Les filles de Caleb , Million Dollar Babies , North of 60 , La petite vie and, of course, the miniseries on Pierre Elliott Trudeau, which we all liked and will remember for a long time.
I want to tell the House about another miniseries called FranCoeur . It is being shot in the beautiful community of L'Orignal, Ontario. I thought that the Speaker currently in the Chair would have a special appreciation for the community of L'Orignal, his home town, where his father and his grandfather were born, both of whom were elected in the riding of Prescott a number of years back. Your ancestors, Mr. Speaker, lived in L'Orignal.
With FranCoeur being shot in our part of the country, francophones outside and inside Quebec have the opportunity to learn about the French fact in the region I represent.
Like every francophone outside Quebec, I grew up watching television programs produced by the French CBC, in Montreal. All we knew was that post office box 6000 in Montreal meant “Radio-Canada” and that kids watching children shows could write there to take part in a weekly draw, but I do not remember what the prize was. Never in those shows did we recognize anything from back home, from the region I have known all my life.
Today, it is different. Not only TV series such as La petite vie and others were filmed where they were supposed to be happening, but we also have a TV series originating in my area, Alfred, L'Orignal as I said, Lefaivre or other communities in the riding I have the honour and privilege to represent in this House.
Like me, Mr. Speaker, you will recognize, if you have the opportunity to watch the TV series FranCoeur , how pleasant it is to watch something on TV you know in real life. It is a rare occurrence for francophones outside Quebec. It does not happen often. At any rate it never used to happen before.
Even for people living in rural Quebec, it is probably not a common occurrence. Just about everything was filmed in Montreal. As a matter of fact, a while ago, the whole structure to fund cinema depended on audience ratings, which meant that if it was not filmed in Montreal it was a flop. All that to say that people in our area felt cheated in this respect.
I would be remiss not to congratulate the hon. Sheila Copps—now that she is no longer a member of this assembly, at least for now, I can call her by her name—for personally intervening on May 26, 2003, to grant extra funding to keep the mini series FranCoeur alive. It was so successful that this year Radio-Canada bought it to broadcast it across the country.
I would like to go back to something a Bloc Québécois member said earlier. I hope I misunderstood him. He said that somehow culture should come under the authority of the Quebec government and not ours. That would mean in fact that, since the critical mass of francophones in Canada is in Quebec—any francophone in Canada knows that of course and is proud of it—without favourable audience ratings in Quebec, French programming in the rest of the country would disappear. This is the Canadian reality. When they speak, Bloc Québécois members should not forget, as they so often do, the francophones living in a minority situation such as those in the riding I have the honour and privilege to represent in this House.
This is what it is important to point out. Telefilm has an important role to play, as has the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The Minister of Canadian Heritage has an extremely important role to play to make this linguistic duality a reality in Canada.
I cannot agree with some of the remarks by Conservative Party members that we can eliminate all definitions of Canadian content and it will still work. If we did this, they would be the first to say that people have abused the system and have broadcast programming that was not really Canadian, because the rules were not tight enough. We know them; this is what they would say in such a situation.
It takes strict rules to define Canadian content. We agree that these rules are developed in consultation with the industry. Otherwise, the strongest people would get the subsidies, would do most of the work elsewhere and would maintain that there is Canadian content because one of two scenes from Canada were added. So there is a reason for these clauses.
Personally, I support the minister and this bill. I want us to keep the proper rules that we have now.
In conclusion, I take the opportunity not only to express my support for this bill, but also to congratulate Telefilm Canada for its good work in the past. I invite it to keep a vigilant eye on the issues of minority language communities. This was done in the case of Francoeur , which I mentioned earlier. It was difficult to ensure that those in charge of these programs will recognize that we exist, although this is happening now. This vigilance must be maintained not only for francophones in my region, but also for Acadians, Franco-Manitobans and other French communities.
I want Canadian francophones to learn to know each other. I want Quebeckers, our cousins, to learn to know us also, because we exist. This is also important.
The same applies to the English-speaking minorities across the country as well, if they live in a particular region of Quebec, so that the rest of the country can get to know them as well. This is all part of Canada. This is all part of the Canadian reality.
Perhaps we watch too much television. Perhaps all these things are true. But the fact remains that so long as people do that, that is to say, watch television or use those kinds of vehicles to learn about one another in this great country, this is the way that we become aware of each other's existence. That is why it is important for the minorities across Canada, all of them, to be properly recognized, because that is the Canadian reality. Telefilm Canada can help and has helped us achieve that and so has public broadcasting in general in this country. That is why I support the bill.