Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I fully recognize the issues being brought up here, and I am more than willing to put on the record that I believe it is a slippery slope when politicians intervene in decisions.
I believe there's an issue here that's unique. Perhaps it's a question of language, then, and how we phrase it. The decision to shut the design team down means the end of in-house production at the major centre, in Toronto. It means that if the review is done and it comes back with a very different sense of where the mandate of CBC should go, we can't suddenly bring it back. It's lost.
My concern would be to try to find a way to ask the minister, perhaps, to seek assurances on this, because there is a major issue here. We are seeing the end of the ability of the CBC English network to do in-house production. It's gone because of this. It's gone because of the funding limits on CBC and the problems they've faced.
I would not normally have a position on other issues in terms of the management structure, but when CBC cut regional broadcasts across this country, Parliament felt it was an issue. Parliament asked for an intervention. Parliament agreed around this table that we wanted a strategy to address the fact that they had taken the decision to make those cuts, because we felt it wasn't in the national interest.
At this point, perhaps my colleague from the Bloc or someone would like to talk about some alternative language. I've thought about it a lot, and if we can find the language, I think we need to ask the minister to seek assurances just to wait and to let this review go through. Then CBC is more than able, and will have a clear mandate given by the government, to make that radical change.