Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. In a speech yesterday at the Canadian Club in Toronto, the ex-president of the CBC, Tony Manera, showed that cutting the CBC's budget by more than one third will seriously jeopardize the current mandate of the Crown corporation. At the same time, the new president of the CBC, former Conservative minister Perrin Beatty, said in reference to the cancelling of entire programs at the CBC that we are running out of time to make difficult decisions.
Will the Prime Minister confirm that his new appointee to the helm of the CBC is ready and willing to cut as much as one third from the CBC's current budget and to lay off between 3,000 and 4,000 employees?