I was going to respond to Mr. Abbott's request for praise.
I will acknowledge that the government provided for two years at $100 million each, while the former government did it one year at a time. The minister deserves credit for that, so I acknowledge that. I will save my praise until there is an increase commensurate with the fiscal capacity that the government now knows. That would be praiseworthy: to see the kinds of investments in culture that have been made in other areas, given the fiscal capacity.
In terms of the second part, while I agree with Mr. Rabinovitch that the minister was gathering the facts, the truth of the matter is that in terms of whatever authority she drew upon, just before appearing before the committee on Tuesday, to insist that the companies make their money payments, she could have used the same authority before, because she knew there was a problem. She knew they should do that. She said so. She said she was waiting on the CRTC to say that, but at the end of the day, whatever authority allowed her to do it last Tuesday could have been exercised two months ago. That would have perhaps mitigated some of the crisis.
So my acknowledgments come, I think, with some mixed feeling.
Having said that, I appreciate very much the explanations that have been given. As for whether the money goes directly to the CBC or to the extent to which it is the consumers' money that we are talking about, Mr. Chair, they've done a good enough job explaining the position and informing the committee, so I really don't have a particular question to put.
I did want to respond to Mr. Abbott's invitation to acknowledge the minister's interventions. Again, though, I would hope that given the capacity the Government of Canada has inherited fiscally, we could see a significant increase in support to culture as it relates to the CTF, as it relates to the public broadcaster. Hopefully, in the course of the public broadcasting review that we're about to commence, we'll hear that kind of language from the government as well.
Thank you very much for being here and for informing the committee on this very important subject.