I think what it comes down to is a belief that because we are always dealing with new citizens to Canada, and particularly citizens whose first language is not English or whose English is developing, there is a tendency for them to grow up--and this is certainly true for the pre-school ages up until age five or six, when children enter the school system--enclosed within a community. Yet those are the most powerful years, when children learn to imitate the behaviour of those they see and learn to acculturate into the larger society. So you're dealing with a group of children who come into our country and are given no indication of what it means to be Canadian until they get to school. Then, depending on the school system that they get to and depending on the circumstances and the experience they have and the language they've managed to pick up, they are hit with the law of the jungle gym--to call it something else--of what happens to them in school. So that's one way I think television helps.
The other way is that there's a great body of evidence, tested both by Canadian universities and by the Children's Television Workshop in New York, that television designed for the youngest children actually has a very positive effect on numeracy, on literacy, and on school readiness, and that when you're looking at a society or a group of children who don't have the benefits of Canadian culture, which is to say they can hear and absorb what's on the radio and television widely, they need programs that are designed especially for them to help redress that.
So I do think that's an important function that television does.