Thank you.
Thank you for coming, because I think your presentation is vital. There are huge minority communities of francophones around this country. In British Columbia, for instance, there are about 65,000 francophones, but they're not all in one place; they are scattered all over the place. Only Vancouver really gets any CBC French language programming; with the Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique, they get some media covering what they do. But in Campbell River and in other areas of B.C. up north where there are huge francophone communities, nothing is said, nothing is done. I think the problem most people underline is that from the CBC, people in Quebec and across Canada have no idea of the minority communities of francophones in British Columbia. And CBC's mandate is not only to reflect Canada to others, but also to reflect regions to Canada.
That brings me to what we were talking about earlier, which has to do with the digital medium. With new digital media, CBC has an opportunity to do this, to be able to reach and link digitally the small communities across Canada, especially francophone minorities, and to make sure this is nationally available, so that Quebeckers know what the regional diversity of Canada is about in terms of the francophone minority. Francophones get Quebec media very easily, but there is no other flow.
I would like to ask your opinion on this. Do you think that if the CRTC, instead of waiting 10 years, became proactive and decided to look at Internet licences, so that the CBC could develop not just radio but also TV on the Internet to move across this country, this would be one way of bringing a linguistic reality in terms of bilingualism and the francophone reality across the country? Do you see an Internet licence from the CRTC as an integral part of this, so that the CBC could move into the digital media? As we heard earlier on, it's not merely francophone communities but also rural communities who cannot have access any more because cable companies now have all the infrastructure for digital, and people can't afford to buy a lot of that digital access through cable and the box they have to buy, at about $400 each.
So moving into the Internet would be a great way of introducing a whole new group of young Canadians to the francophone minority, which could also be done through iPods. Do you see that development of an Internet licence as the crucial thing? How do you think we can get the CRTC to understand that that should be done now and not in 10 years' time?