The Cable Public Affairs Channel (), better known by its acronym CPAC ( ), is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

specialty television channel owned by a consortium consisting of

Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company operating primarily in the fields of wireless communications, cable television, telephony and Internet, with significant additional telecommunications and mass media ass ...

Vidéotron Vidéotron is a Canadian integrated telecommunications company founded in 1964. It's active in cable television, interactive multimedia development, video on demand, cable telephony, wireless communication and Internet access services. Owned by Qu ...

, Cogeco, Eastlink, and

Access Communications Access Communications Co-operative Limited is a Canadian telecom cooperative based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The cooperative provides internet, cable television, telephone, smart home and security services to residential and business customers ...

. The channel is devoted to coverage of

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

and government affairs, including carrying a full, uninterrupted feed of proceedings of the

House of Commons of Canada The House of Commons of Canada () is the lower house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Monarchy of Canada#Parliament (King-in-Parliament), Crown and the Senate of Canada, they comprise the Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of Ca ...

, with three audio channels, one untreated feed and, with the assistance of interpreters, one in each of the official languages.

Synopsis

CPAC's main purpose is the broadcast of proceedings of the House of Commons. Other programming includes meetings of The House of Commons and

Senate of Canada The Senate of Canada () is the upper house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Monarchy of Canada#Parliament (King-in-Parliament), Crown and the House of Commons of Canada, House of Commons, they compose the Bicameralism, bicameral le ...

parliamentary committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...

s, occasional

Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

proceedings,

political convention The terms party conference (British English, UK English), political convention (American English, US and Canadian English), and party congress usually refer to a general meeting of a political party. The conference is attended by certain Delega ...

s, conferences, committees and coverage of general elections. CPAC also airs the proceedings of certain

Royal Commission A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia. In republics an equi ...

s and judicial enquiries. CPAC is similar to services in other countries including

C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American Cable television in the United States, cable and Satellite television in the United States, satellite television network, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a Non ...

(United States),

EuroparlTV EuroparlTV is the webTV of the European Parliament. The service includes news, debates, interviews, educational videos, archived content as well as live streaming of parliamentary sessions and committee meetings. All videos are subtitled in all 2 ...

(

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

), La Chaîne parlementaire (France), Phoenix (Germany),

BBC Parliament BBC Parliament is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel from the BBC that showcases parliamentary content from across the United Kingdom. It broadcasts live and recorded coverage of the British Parliament (House of Commons o ...

(United Kingdom), Arutz HaKnesset (Israel) and TV Câmara and TV Senado (

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

), some of which (particularly C-SPAN) occasionally supply programming to CPAC.

History

Television broadcasting of the proceedings of the House of Commons began in 1977 after a motion approving it was adopted by the House, with broadcasts commencing in October of that year. The

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC; ) is a public organization in Canada tasked with the mandate as a regulatory agency tribunal for various electronic communications, covering broadcasting and telecommunic ...

(CRTC) allowed cable companies to carry the broadcasts on their specialty channels as an interim measure. In 1979, the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...

was given a temporary network licence to begin live coverage of the proceedings (which had been airing on a tape delayed basis until then), leading to the creation of the CBC Parliamentary Television Network. A permanent licence was granted to the CBC the next year. In 1989, the CBC and a consortium of cable television providers made a joint proposal for the creation of a new entity, the Canadian Parliamentary Channel (CPaC) that would carry the proceedings of the House of Commons and committees, along with proceedings of royal commissions, enquiries, court hearings and provincial legislatures, and public affairs programming. A review of parliamentary broadcasting resulted but the CPaC proposal was not acted upon. In December 1990, the CBC announced that as a result of budget cuts the CBC "is no longer able to bear the cost of operating the English- and French-language parliamentary channels. The government will seek the views of the Speaker of the House and consider means of maintaining the service." The CBC announced that it was discontinuing its role as the parliamentary broadcaster effective April 1, 1991. As an interim measure, the House of Commons' Board of Internal Economy negotiated a temporary contract with the CBC to provide parliamentary coverage for an additional year while the Board considered proposals to take over the service. In 1992, the Board came to an agreement with Canadian Parliamentary Channel, Inc., a consortium of 25 cable companies, to take over the CBC's role; the new service received its licence from the CRTC in 1993. While the Canadian Parliamentary Channel's name was soon changed to Cable Public Affairs Channel to reflect the greater diversity of programming and the cable industry's ownership of the service, the ownership structure continues today. The shareholders of Cable Public Affairs Channel Inc. are cable companies

(66.75%),

(21.81%), Cogeco (6.73%), Eastlink (3.77%), and

(0.92%), with a small stake held by technology company Vecima Networks (0.02%). To date there have been few, if any, accusations of influence by these cable companies on CPAC's editorial policy. Indeed, some CPAC promotions (featuring Tom Green) have claimed that because it is owned by the cable industry, "not the government", it is more independent than other broadcasters, such as the national public broadcaster CBC, which also provide extensive political coverage through various outlets. During federal election campaigns, the network frequently airs '' Campaign Politics'', a documentary series in which each episode profiles one individual

electoral district An electoral (congressional, legislative, etc.) district, sometimes called a constituency, riding, or ward, is a geographical portion of a political unit, such as a country, state or province, city, or administrative region, created to provi ...

through interviews with candidates and voters.

Choice of feeds

In 2003, at the behest of the

(CRTC), CPAC and its carriers started to allow television viewers to choose which language they can hear the service in, putting the feed of one language on the service's main audio channel and the feed of the other language on its

second audio program Second audio program (SAP), also known as secondary audio programming, is an auxiliary audio channel for analog television that can be broadcast or transmitted both over-the-air and by cable television. Used mostly for audio description or ot ...

channel. Some cable systems also offer the two feeds on separate channels for easier access. CPAC has also offered a "floor" feed, a feed that does not carry any simultaneous translation, although due to the changes noted above, it may not remain in use over cable or satellite television. A choice between all three feeds are offered on CPAC's free Internet video stream available on the channel's website.

Senate proceedings

Proceedings of the Senate were historically not carried as the upper house had not agreed to allow its sessions to be televised. Then, on 25 April 2006, Senator Hugh Segal moved that the proceedings of the Senate be televised. The motion was referred to the

Senate Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament The Senate Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament (RPRD) () is a committee of the Senate of Canada. As a standing committee, the rules of the Senate re-establish the committee at the opening of every new session of th ...

for consideration; although the motion was approved, broadcast of senate proceedings was not launched at that time apart from selected committee meetings."Senate expected to start regular TV broadcasts after move to Government Conference Centre"
'' iPolitics'', March 10, 2018. Full broadcast of Senate proceedings launched for the first time on 18 March 2019, concurrently with the Senate's temporary relocation to the Government Conference Centre.

Non-political programming

From February 12 to 28, 2010, CPAC simulcasted the V network's coverage of the

2010 Winter Olympics The 2010 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXI Olympic Winter Games () and also known as Vancouver 2010 (), were an international winter multi-sport event held from February 12 to 28, 2010 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with ...

. V (since renamed Noovo) does not have wide availability outside

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, unlike previous rightsholder

Radio-Canada Radio-Canada may refer to: * CBC/Radio-Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation *Ici Radio-Canada Télé, the CBC's main French-language television network *Ici Radio-Canada Première Ici Radio-Canada Première (formerly Première Chaîne) i ...

or even rival private network TVA. This had caused some concern with francophone groups outside Quebec, thus, CPAC was chosen because of its mandatory carriage on the basic service of all cable and satellite providers, as well as the fact that the House of Commons was not sitting during the games. Although CPAC's conditions of licence do not normally permit the channel to air sports, it received special authorization from the CRTC to permit this simulcast. Since 2009, CPAC has also had the authority to carry entertainment programming on July 1 in order to cover

Canada Day Canada Day, formerly known as Dominion Day, is the national day of Canada. A Public holidays in Canada, federal statutory holiday, it celebrates the anniversary of Canadian Confederation which occurred on July 1, 1867, with the passing of the B ...

celebrations on

Parliament Hill Parliament Hill (), colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern bank of the Ottawa River that houses the Parliament of Canada in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. It accommodates a suite of Gothic revival buildings whose ...

or elsewhere.

On-air staff

Past and present hosts associated with the channel have included: * Esther Bégin * Catherine Clark * Omayra Issa * Dale Goldhawk *

L. Ian MacDonald L. (Lawrence) Ian MacDonald (born 1947) is a Canadians, Canadian writer, columnist, broadcaster, public speaker, and diplomat.

* Ken Rockburn * Michael Serapio * Alison Smith * Martin Stringer *

Mark Sutcliffe Mark Sutcliffe (born July 14, 1968) is a Canadian politician who has been the 59th mayor of Ottawa since 2022. Before entering politics, he hosted ''Ottawa Today'' on 1310News radio. Sutcliffe is the first Chinese Canadian and person from a ...

* Peter Van Dusen * Paul Wells

References

External links

*
Television and the House of Commons
Report on the history and impact of parliamentary television by the Library of the Parliament of Canada {{DEFAULTSORT:Cpac 1992 establishments in Canada Specialty television channels in Canada Commercial-free television networks Companies based in Ottawa House of Commons of Canada Legislature broadcasters in Canada Television channels and stations established in 1992 English-language television stations in Canada French-language television networks in Canada Senate of Canada