Firstly, Mr. Abbott, I'd like to take this opportunity to reinforce what I said in my opening comments and praise the minister. I thought the minister acted very quickly and gave a very clear signal by putting forward the $200 million--$100 million per year for the next two years. It was a very clear sign that this part of the funding had been stabilized, and it was a very clear sign of the government's intention to maintain some form of independent production industry funding. So let it not be said that I did not praise the minister.
I believe, sir, that this has been set up as a partnership among the cable operators; the satellite operators--in other words, what we call the BDUs; the independent production industry--and this is one of the main reasons it has developed to the extent that it has--and the broadcasters.
I think the CBC's role is very unique because of the fact that we have this shelf space to show the programming when people want to watch it. We don't have to show it against a hockey game on Saturday night at 10 o'clock. We can show it at 9 o'clock on a Wednesday, when people are actually watching, and give a Canadian program a chance to do well. We can also do other types of programs, like documentaries, etc., in core time.
I think the solution is a continued debate. I think the solution is for all of the partners to come to the table and discuss what is really wrong, if anything, what can be made to work better, and how we allocate in order to make sure it works better.
But also, let's not forget in those discussions the objectives of having quality Canadian programming and different kinds of Canadian programming at hours when Canadians are watching. If we put that all together, we at the CBC would be very excited people to be involved in that discussion with the various partners. And it's for the same reason, sir, that we favour the mandate review. We are a public institution, and we believe that we should be reviewed on a regular basis as to the type of programming we're doing, the extent to which we're using the various technologies, etc.
One of the major issues that has been raised by Quebecor is whether the fund is up to date in terms of its recognition of the new forms of delivery systems. We at CBC like to say that we are platform agnostic. We don't care how people get our programs; we just want people to get them. If people listen to radio programs on their iPods, all of a sudden we have a brand new generation of 18- to 35-year-olds listening to radio, because they're listening to it when they want to.
It's the same thing with the CTF. We want to use it to create quality Canadian programs in the various genres, and we want to participate in that discussion.