Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for attending today. We've had a fairly broad discussion about the new media as they relate to broadcasting in general. However, as you know, this is actually a study of the future of public broadcasting in Canada, so my first question is going to be general. The second one is going to focus more on the CBC.
There's a suggestion in the report that was just finished by the CRTC that there may be a digital gap developing between Canada and the U.S. None of the witnesses expressly stated that, but I tried to connect the dots, and I think what I read was that there was an intention originally to stay about two years behind the U.S. in terms of converting to a fully digital environment in Canada. There's some evidence that came before the CRTC that indicated that gap or that difference in timing may be over four years. I believe it was the Canadian Association of Broadcasters that suggested that if we don't provide more programming in HD, Canadian viewers will end up watching more American programming, which actually does offer HD.
So I have two questions. Is my understanding of the report correct? Secondly, is there an intention to actually establish a fixed date on which that conversion has to be done? As you know, most of the major European countries have gone to a fixed date, anywhere from 2007 through to 2012. The U.S., I believe, is February 2009. Canada doesn't have a fixed date.
Could you answer those two questions?