Thank you.
Mr. Chairman and committee members, welcome to Vancouver. My name is Anne Ironside. I'm a Vancouver-based member of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting's advisory council and a strong supporter of Canadian public broadcasting.
Friends is a watchdog group for Canadian programming and the English-language audiovisual system, with the support of 100,000 Canadians, 25% of whom live in B.C.
Appearing with me is Ian Morrison, a Friends spokesperson. As you know, Friends submitted a brief to your committee on February 26. We've also encouraged our supporters to actively participate in your important investigation.
I want to make four points, our essential message. The first is that the CBC board of directors should be chosen at arm's length from patronage, drawn from the best and the brightest Canadians, and this board should have the authority to hire, and if necessary fire, its CEO.
Almost four years ago the Lincoln report recommended that:
In the interests of fuller accountability and arm's length from government, nominations to the CBC's board should be made by a number of sources....
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Is it somebody's cellphone?