Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to thank you for your presentation.
As a French speaker from the West, the portrait you have painted seems a quite accurate picture of the situation that I myself experienced. I went to the West coast about 30 years ago and I took advantage of French Radio-Canada's success which helped me develop and continue to live in French. So, I benefited from CBC's good work in our community. The budget cutbacks which began around 1995, when the Liberal government was in power, really affected our public broadcaster. And now, the current Conservative government is trying to undermine the Internet's neutrality. So, we're concerned about our culture from this point of view.
You suggested instituting an accountability framework. You did a good job of stressing how important regional programming is. I have noticed on several occasions how irritated francophones outside Quebec are when they hear reports about what is happening with the Mont-Orford Park. They're irritated because they don't hear about what is going on locally, and about parks in their region; they hear about the temperature in the Saguenay but not about the temperature in Vancouver. You talked about developing a standard-based accountability framework.
Could you be more specific about what these qualitative and quantitative standards would be, and how they would improve things?