Chapter 10: The State of the System – Northern and Aboriginal Broadcasting

Aboriginal People's Television Network

In this chapter, the Lincoln Report describes the importance of Northern and Aboriginal broadcasting. Over the past few decades, the CRTC has licensed several northern and aboriginal local community broadcast undertakings, but the availability of programming content is relatively scarce because it is primarily in English and does not adequately reflect native peoples and their lifestyles. In response to these complaints, the CRTC established a committee that would oversee aboriginal and northern people’s concerns called the Extension of Service to Northern and Remote Communities.

To fund aboriginal programming, the Commission created the Northern Native Broadcast Access Program (NNBAP). This was ultimately a measure designed to ensure that natives have access to funds that would allow them to produce quality programming, provided that they would create distribution agreements/arrangements between existing broadcasters.The NNBAP was a highly successful and great way to fund aboriginal content. However, in 1991, the Television Northern Canada Incorporated (TVNC) was created, which led to the creation of a specifically Aboriginal network. Following its creation, the Broadcasting Act was amended to encourage the “special place” of aboriginal culture in Canadian broadcasting and later, the CRTC granted TVNC a license to operate The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN).

According to witness statements gathered by the Lincoln Report, witnesses have described the difficulty of maintaining their position as aboriginal/northern community broadcasters because of “money, equipment, travel, training, and predictable (stable) funding”. These issues are of central concern because these independent community broadcasters are having a difficult time sustaining their businesses in a highly complicated industry with rapid technological change.

The Lincoln Report attempted to address these issues by offering solutions—particularly a non-discriminatory policy. Despite witness statements, the Lincoln Report describes an even worse situation in which the death of several native stations are growing—this needs to be solved immediately, according to the Report. Essentially, the Committee believes that there should be  funding allocated to capital costs (i.e. equipment replacement costs), funding for programming content as well as aiding in distribution costs, training, evaluation for renewed funding as well as guaranteed carriage agreements between mainstream providers.