Information & Ethics committee  That's the job that surely our journalists are hired to do, which is to do the best possible journalism. If access to information requests happen to be a tool for them to go deeper into a story, I assume they would, yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Within the law. Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Maryse will tell you the spirit of our guidelines. I will simply remind you that as I said a few minutes ago, we wanted to make sure our guidelines were vetted and reviewed by somebody from outside of the organization, so that we wouldn't be so excited about our guidelines because we wrote them that we would forget what was the spirit of the guidelines.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for that. Madam Chairman, I'd like to make a point very clear. The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting are not friends of CBC. We have no link with this organization whatsoever. I've never spoken to Mr. Morrison. I've never had conversations with Mr. Morrison. I don't know this gentleman.

Information & Ethics committee  I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity. I was asked why we continued to turn to the courts whereas our concern only affected journalistic material, which is already protected under other pieces of legislation. I would simply remind you that section 68.1 specifies that all requests regarding our programming, our creative activities and our journalistic sources are excluded from the act.

Information & Ethics committee  The Information Commissioner went before the court 180 times to try and interpret the legislation, following all kinds of requests that came from federal entities or entities subject to the Access to Information Act. In an effort to protect our right to a clear interpretation, we found ourselves before the court.

Information & Ethics committee  Unfortunately, you're bringing anecdotal evidence to me. I'm not sure what that means. I assume that no other broadcaster is in Red Deer, Alberta. Right?

Information & Ethics committee  I have two little girls, one three-and-a-half years old and the other six months. I am very proud of our children's programming, both at CBC and at Radio-Canada. All aspects of our programming will be reviewed. I share your appreciation for our youth programs and navigating our websites to see our youth programming.

Information & Ethics committee  Frankly, it depends on how your question would have been worded. We're very open about what we want to do with the regions right now. We want to go back in the regions. It's very much core to the plan. The plan is Canadian programming in prime time, and a much better connection with the seven million Canadian who we think are underserved or not served by CBC/Radio Canada.

Information & Ethics committee  I wasn't there when that happened.

Information & Ethics committee  I can assure you right now that the way we cover events is as efficient as we've ever been. I'd like to remind this committee that we have two networks, en français et en anglais. We have radio platforms, television platforms, and we have the Internet that we feed now constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not sure there is a question there, sir. If the question is how we got people to cross over and work for us, maybe they wanted to work for CBC, the public broadcaster, and what we bring to Canadians.

Information & Ethics committee  This is how things unfolded. We diligently looked into the matter. I explained to you that we looked at the situation in England. The BBC, which is five times larger than us, was receiving approximately 80 requests per month. We considered that the population in England is 70 million whereas in Canada it is 35 million, in other words half.

Information & Ethics committee  We never appeared before the Standing Committee on Heritage or the government to ask for more funding for our 2015 strategic plan. We are fully aware of what is happening in Ottawa and we have taken part actively and collegially in the exercise requiring that we present two scenarios, one a 5% cutback scenario, as well as a 10% cutback scenario, in the context of reducing the deficit.

Information & Ethics committee  No, sir, $64,000, if you do the ad.