Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee.
We would like to express our appreciation to the committee for giving us this opportunity to present our ideas concerning the important task that you have undertaken, a review of the mandate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—Société Radio-Canada. This is an opportunity for your committee to promote changes. In our opinion, these changes are important and urgent.
Canadians need a public broadcaster. This conclusion has been supported by several stakeholders your committee has already heard from, by every review of the Canadian public broadcasting system carried out since its creation in 1936 and by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in its June 2003 report.
Therefore, the fundamental issue is not the necessity of having a public broadcaster, but rather what kinds of services CBC and Radio-Canada should offer their audience. With some limited but important exceptions, our focus will be on English television. This is not because the other services are without merit or problems, but because English television is the service with the most difficult challenges. For this reason, we are going to concentrate our comments on English television.
But as we acknowledge the problems facing English television, we should also point out that CBC as a whole remains a very powerful conveyer of our Canadian culture and cultural sovereignty. CBC's radio services remain second to none and, in survey after survey, are cited by Canadians as being of great importance to their sense of nationhood.
Today, we are going to make 10 specific and bold recommendations; perhaps subject to controversy, but necessary, responsible and doable. The time has come to act and you, the members of this committee, have the power and the responsibility to bring about the renewal of the Société Radio-Canada and the CBC.
Mr. Chairman, I will now give the floor to my collaborator, Mr. Bill Neville.