Information & Ethics committee  Sure.

Information & Ethics committee  I'll be happy to write to you, Madam Chairman.

Information & Ethics committee  Monsieur Del Mastro, Madam Chair, we are accountable in a whole bunch of ways. I'm not going to go through my remarks again. I think you know how many people look at us, and how transparent we are. Right now the Auditor General is doing one of his special exams. This is going to be a thorough review of what's going on at CBC/Radio-Canada and a report will be filed, in the same way as the 2005 report, which was the last time that the Auditor General came.

Information & Ethics committee  Madame, first off, the answer was no to a third party, because we already have a whole bunch of third parties that look at us on a constant basis. Another layer of accountability on top of everything we do I think is unnecessary, and that would be a waste of taxpayers' money. It would be a waste of our time--time is money--and a waste of our resources.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Dusseault, I would like to make a distinction. Once the people are appointed by the government, they no longer report to the government. There is no longer a link. No one on the board is the eyes or ears of the government. These people are accountable to us and to the corporation.

Information & Ethics committee  CBC/Radio-Canada directors are appointed by the government. That has always been the case. Their role is the same as the role of any director on any board. They have a legal obligation for oversight. The work is done through various committees, including the Audit Committee, for our figures; the Governance Committee for the way we are managed; the Human Resources Committee for reviewing salaries for management, our incentive plans and all employment issues; and the Real Estate Committee, which oversees the way our buildings are managed.

Information & Ethics committee  Our challenge, before the court, dealt simply with section 68.1 and the way it applies to us. I don't think anyone has any lessons to learn from the conclusions of the decision apart from the commissioner and ourselves, Madam Chair.

Information & Ethics committee  Madam Chairman, I welcome any question on accountability. Actually, I really enjoy talking about accountability and governance, because we realize the importance of receiving $1.1 billion from taxpayers and making sure they understand the value of the $34 each Canadian gives to CBC, allowing it to deliver the services it does—in two official languages across six time zones, in a country as large as ours.

Information & Ethics committee  The answer is simple. We received 491 requests from Mr. Drapeau's office during the first six months that we were subject to the Access to Information Act. We took a look at the BBC. The population of England is about 70 million people. The BBC get about 80 requests per month; we figured half of that.

Information & Ethics committee  At the corporation, the Auditor General plays the same role as the large accounting firms in any public company. The Auditor General normally sits down with us in January or February. As you know, CBC/Radio-Canada's fiscal year ends March 31. His team comes to see us, looks at how our money has been spent, what accounting systems we are using and how we report our financial statements, our balance sheet as well as our expenses and revenues.

Information & Ethics committee  Oh, yes, we are making plans. Like any smart and reasonable management team and board and strategic community board, we understand what that would mean to us and we're trying to see whether we can improve on the first pass in trying to take the body blow of a substantial cut in our revenues.

Information & Ethics committee  The national public broadcaster realizes the importance of being in the regions. It's the second very important thrust of our 2015 strategy. We understand also the need to respect the minority language communities across the country. I don't know what the cut is going to be. We have submitted the proposals, as I said, under the deficit reduction action plan in a very engaged way.

Information & Ethics committee  We share your interest. And we are on the record--and Konrad, the chair, actually said this to you--that we actually wanted to disclose how we spend the local programming improvement fund money that we have access to or use in the context of that fund. I think it's important. Rogers also stepped up and said yes, let's disclose it so that people who actually pay for the LPIF money....

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely.

Information & Ethics committee  All I can say on that is perhaps the information Mr. Del Mastro had, for example regarding the cost of advertising in Sun Media newspapers, was not the information we were familiar with. Perhaps his information was somewhat dated. I am in no way presuming that Mr. Del Mastro was acting in bad faith when he provided that figure.