Thank you.
Perhaps we can put some questions to the first presenters. Then we can bring in the next people, and hopefully at the end we can have an open forum.
There's one thing I'd like to say. Along with thanking the committee for coming here, a couple of you have mentioned the short notice. I've always been an honest person, so I'm going to tell you that when we set out to do the study on the CBC, on our public broadcaster, it was supposed to start in January. Then we had a little problem with the Canadian Television Fund, which took a few meetings; that held us up in terms of going forward with our public broadcaster meetings.
Again, being very honest, I'll tell you that we had Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and St. John's, Newfoundland, but we didn't have anyone in the north. We picked Yellowknife because we felt it was very important to come to Yellowknife. It was brought up in our meetings, and we discussed it; that's how we put things together.
So it was short notice for you folks, but it was also short notice for us. It also maybe shows why we were late today; we had some problems.
When we're sitting around our table in Ottawa discussing the CBC, we never forget the north. We also never forget the francophones outside of Quebec. It's brought up, at just about every meeting when we talk about CBC/Radio-Canada, that this involves all francophones in Canada.
Mr. Bagnell.