Thank you.
I'm really pleased about the digital presentation, because I think this is key to where we need to go if we're going to distribute Canadian content that will be respected around the world. So I'm pleased to see you bringing this forward and some ideas on how we need to make this so--for instance, amending the act, etc.
I think Bob touched on something that is very important. Most of us sit here and talk about the CBC, and we continue to talk about CBC radio and CBC television, but those are not the only media anymore. If the world is going to see CBC and listen to CBC, we can no longer limit ourselves to just getting a million people watching Little Mosque on the Prairie. We have to look at how we are seen around the world as an international entity. To do that we have to talk about this new digital media.
You haven't mentioned something that Bob mentioned. Music is key, but I think Bob mentioned the idea of a copyright act. The U.S. has strong copyright legislation and we don't. If we're going to start getting into digitalization, we need to talk about how we can protect the creator and find a balance between protecting the creator and at the same time distributing broadly and widely.
I just want to ask Bob a question about the Copyright Act, and if you have a comment on it. I think it's key. How do we do it? We should have done it 100 years ago--well, I'm just kidding, but we should have done it yesterday. Talking about doing it tomorrow, I gather that digital media is changing every day as we speak. We're running to catch up. So I think this is a very key part of how the CBC can sustain itself.
Everyone talks about funding. You talked about a new way of funding, and I remember that the 1996 Canadian broadcasting report on the CBC talked about it. People said earlier that we should no longer do commercials--the BBC doesn't do commercials--because having to get commercial advertising means we have to do the great dumbing down. We have to be popular and go into some sort of competition, with the dumbing down of the media we get from around the world--some of these really ridiculous programs we see.
If we're going to have programming integrity and deal with quality, as Bob said, so people around the world can eventually look to the CBC as a place where you can have quality, everyone will want to watch the CBC. It's not only about Canadians telling stories to each other, but Canadians seeing the world from a Canadian perspective and presenting the world to others from our perspective. That is a huge piece of what we have to do.
So I would like to hear Bob talk a little bit about how we could deal with funding the CBC without having to go to advertising. There have been many suggestions. One of them in 1996 was to have a communication distribution tax levy, which the BBC does. The BBC is funded through a levy. Each person in the United Kingdom pays a tax to allow the BBC to exist. The BBC is then responsible directly to Parliament, and it reports every year to Parliament on how it is fulfilling its mandate.
I would like to hear someone discuss how we could do this with the CBC and create a body that is responsible to Parliament. Parliament would decide who was going to be the head of the CBC and who was going to run it. They would need to have the ability to do so and not just be some bureaucrat whose name is put forward, but somebody with an understanding of broadcasting, all digital media, etc.
How you see that happening? Do you think it's a good idea to create the CBC as a body that's directly responsible to Parliament, reports once a year, does away with advertising, and gets a tax levy from Canadians to fund it? It's a big question. Every time you talk about a tax levy everyone says, “Oh my gosh, no more tax.” But if we want to create something that can stand on its own and be like that great body, the BBC, then we need to be able to talk about the CBC and its future, and not just how to keep it running along on its old track that it's been running along on for so long.
I'm going to open it up for you guys to just throw in what you have.