Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely not.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the hard reality we all have to face with the public broadcaster is that the responsibility of that broadcaster, very simply put, is to reflect the reality of the nation. We know that the Broadcasting Act of 1968, for example, contained a clause that was intended to cast

Canadian Heritage committee  Can I give you a little background to this dilemma? It's one the CBC has faced for a long time. When the cuts began to get serious in the early 1990s, one of the great dilemmas that was debated internally was this. How do we reconcile the need to be a national public broadcaster

Canadian Heritage committee  May I answer in English please? My French is a trifle shaky.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a very difficult issue. I come back to the arm's-length question. I think what you have to do is be prepared to say we're setting up a process and a system. We have appropriate and reasonable oversight over that system. The system is equipped to hire and fire the right peopl

Canadian Heritage committee  I think what it really comes down to is taking the view that when you spend money, you have a right to know what you're getting for it. The Broadcasting Act, as we all know, provides the basic guidance. But the process of interpreting the CBC's mandate has been a pretty random a

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Arthur. Ladies and gentlemen, while the question of adequate funding for the CBC is obviously a very serious one, we believe that the premise for any such funding of national public broadcasting has to be an understanding of what the broadcaster's job is and a mutual