Good, thank you. And I certainly do appreciate the programming that CBC provides.
Along that line of thinking, I would like to talk a little bit about a commitment that our government made in the Speech from the Throne. I'll repeat it:
Our Government believes that Canadian families should be able to choose the combination of television channels they want. It will require channels to be unbundled, while protecting Canadian jobs.
I live close to your riding. I live in a rural riding in southeastern Manitoba. And simply to qualify my comments, I don't have a cable subscription. I have a TV subscription that is commonly referred to as “farmer vision”, which is the free to air stuff. Shaw was kind enough to send me a satellite dish and provide me with the four essential channels for my area, which I get.
Now that I've been privileged by my constituents to serve in this capacity here in the Government of Canada, I stay in a hotel and I actually have access to cable network TV and I'm amazed how much I have to surf through the channels, when I do actually have time to look at the TV, to find a channel with good programming. The frustration of many Canadians has been that they have to pay for all these channels that they really don't like. A lot of times they are channels they don't want in their homes and, unfortunately, more and more Canadian parents are allowing the television to be the babysitter. I think that's sad because there's stuff coming in that they don't want in their homes and they don't always have the parental control that they need.
Can you give this committee an update on where our government is in fulfilling this commitment?