Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks to all of you for being here today.
Thank you for taking the time and the trouble to come here today.
I love radio stations. I listen to them. All Canadians listen to them, and they perform a great service, very enjoyable. I think in probably many cases the music component is an extremely important part of it. In fact, I think one could go as far as to say that in many of these cases, if they didn't have the music, there wouldn't be the station. The question is one of recognizing what the value of that music is.
I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a broadcaster, but I can do my math. I've got some figures here from the Copyright Board. Those figures were provided by broadcasters, by yourselves. If I look at the past five years, it would seem that the profits before interest and tax—this is averaged over the 644 stations, and I'm dealing with all of them—average about 20%. Most companies and enterprises in this country would be delighted to have that kind of money.
If I also look at how much is paid out in royalties in the country, you pay out about $85 million in royalties to a number of different organizations, which represents about 5.7% of the $1.5 billion industry. As I say, I can do the math here, and I'm having real, serious difficulty understanding why the amount of money that you're paying in royalties is such an unacceptable burden. I'd like you to enlighten me on that quickly, and I have some other questions.
Thank you.