The issues where the private sector has fallen down on the job--and I think the public broadcaster has as well--are areas that need to be reinvigorated: primarily local reflection, regional reflection. Canadians need to see themselves more. Not only do they need to see themselves more, but they need to see such quality that when a show is done out of St. John's or Gander or Grand Falls, somebody in Lethbridge is interested in seeing it. I mean, that's the important part. It's not just, here's something for the folks in Grand Falls, but here's something for the folks in Lethbridge to be able to understand the breadth of this country and what these communities are about. We believe local programming is very important.
I've touched on news. With local programming is news. I think a reliable, broad, and very deep news service is the key to a public broadcaster. That's where Canadians look when they need news that is credible and reliable. By the way, that is the history of the CBC. When there is a crisis, people turn on the CBC.
I would also like to touch on drama, because the private sector is relinquishing its commitments and obligations on the drama side. Once again, it becomes the public broadcaster's duty to step up to the plate. I know this is not your role here, but part of the problem, of course, is that the CRTC is not fulfilling its mandate to demand of the private sector that it step up to the plate on some of these issues.
Let me touch a bit on the money. I don't really know how much money is needed, and I don't think many people in this room or a lot of the experts know. What we do know is that it's significantly more. I notice that the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting has suggested $100 million a year, over five years, to reach a $500 million increment that would be sustained over the life of the CBC. That makes sense to me. But I'm not a manager; I'm a union representative, so I can't tell you precisely how much is required. That makes sense to me only because I understand how much may be lost in terms of advertising revenue.
We're talking about a significant amount of money. But it's not significant if you look at the importance, as I say, of the public broadcaster in terms of relaying the message to Canadians. I might get to some other funding mechanisms for the CBC as well.
On the issue of the new media, right now new media is unregulated. It is a neutral platform, in some ways. I don't think anybody has sorted out how to make money from it yet. I can assure you that The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star get lots of hits on their site, but nobody's making a great deal of money out of it. Not only that, but most of the time it's an adjunct to the service that is provided by the conventional newsrooms.
A lot of cbc.ca, for instance, would be news that is coming out of their conventional newsrooms and is then reworked by their Internet folks. Well, if we don't have funding for that conventional newsroom, the Internet stuff becomes very sloppy and unreliable.
Do people turn to the Internet? Yes. Do they use it? Yes, they do. What makes it tick? It's conventional newsroom operations, and that's true for newspapers and broadcasters across this country. Nobody is pumping an awful lot of money into the Internet right now. They are relying on their employees from other platforms to fill that void.