Distribution List
[x] Prime Minister
[x] Office of the Prime Minister (PMO)
[x] PMO Cabinet Secretary
CC: Foreign Affairs Minister
CC: Culture Affairs Minister
CC: Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs & National Security

Subject
External Affairs: Claims over Artic: Radio Broadcasting: CBC-SRC North

The US and European Union currently refuse to fully recognize Canada's land and sea claim in the Artic.

Canada has historically done little (beyond diplomatic lobbying) to fix this ambiguous and unproductive geopolitical stalemate.

The following recommendation proposes that CBC North have a federally funded (DFAT, Culture) shortwave broadcasting network that can be used to exert sovereignty over this sparsely populated region of Canada.

CBC North runs a AM / FM / TV network for Artic residents. Yet in spite of CBC North's extensive coverage of the Artic there are still millions of square kilometres that the CBC-SRC will never be able to reach with its current broadcasting network transmission facilities.

In a matter of speaking CBC-SRC corporation has failed to meet the news and information needs of all northern and rural residents. The mandate to serve these residents has been in place since the 1970s. This mandate is to provide a basic information radio service to all of Canada's regions.

Most of Canada's populated remote areas can be reached cost effectively with two shortwave transmission sites. Shortwave is an ideal media for delivering radio programming to remote regions during morning, daytime and evening hours. The proposal before you is for a transmitter site in British Columbia that could serve western and northern Canada and a transmitter site in Newfoundland that can reach Labrador, Northern Quebec and regions in the high arctic that are poorly reached by the BC transmitter site.