Official Languages committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to appear today to talk about the upcoming Vancouver Olympics. As you know, with me today is Mr. Sylvain Lafrance, Executive Vice-President, French Services, for Radio-Canada. As you also know, CBC/Radio-Canada has been the official Canadian broadcaster of the Olympic Games for the past seven Olympics.

Official Languages committee  It is correspondence between CTV and ourselves on the subject under discussion this morning. It is quite relevant.

Official Languages committee  Yes, we would like to table some documents with you this morning.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Madam, it is clearly much more expensive for CBC/Radio-Canada or for any other Canadian broadcaster to create an hour of programming, if it happens to be drama, than to buy an hour of programming from the United States. This is at the root of the problems of the Canadian economic model.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't, sir, for two reasons. First, you're assuming that the public is going to pick up the tab for fee-for-carriage. This is the conversation that's been in front of you for a number of days now, and you've heard from different broadcasters how they would treat the fee-for-carriage impact.

Canadian Heritage committee  I duly noted your comments. As you know, we had this conversation last week. These stations, these two one-person operations are important, as are the other 798 people who were part of the cuts at CBC/Radio-Canada. We're going to look at everything once we understand the impact of some of the programs we have, and we're trying to create some margin of manoeuvre in our regional programming questions.

Canadian Heritage committee  That's a very important question. The model that we want to use in Windsor is the model that we are already using to cover francophone issues in Alberta and in Saskatchewan. According to this concept, teams of three people, for example from Calgary to Edmonton, cover the province of Alberta.

Canadian Heritage committee  I presume you're still talking about the redevances, about fee-for-carriage.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm sure you read in my introductory remarks that CBC/Radio-Canada attaches great importance to the possibility of receiving some of these fees. This is one of the three possible solutions that I suggested to you, Ms. Lavallée, in my opening remarks.

Canadian Heritage committee  The financial problems that CBC/Radio-Canada is currently experiencing are not problems of the English network versus the French network or radio versus television. The entire corporation is being affected by what's going on. The entire economic model of CBC/Radio-Canada is being affected.

Canadian Heritage committee  This is why we continuously remind this committee that when we talk about fee-for-carriage, the local improvement fund, and the suggestions of any other initiative that comes from government or the CRTC, you need to include this for CBC/Radio Canada or we're going to be back in front of you telling you about job cuts.

Canadian Heritage committee  Madam, your question is very precise in nature. I would have to follow it up with a better answer than the one I could give you today.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure.

Canadian Heritage committee  As you know, this is not a CBC issue; it is an industry-wide issue. The CRTC's working group came out last week with a suggestion of some kind of hybrid plan. Right now CBC/Radio-Canada has eight transmitters covering about 47% of the population. One of the plans we submitted way back when was another hybrid plan, which was for 44 transmitters covering about 80% of the population, so depending on where we end up in the conversations that are going on right now, it's going to be between eight and 44.