Mr. Chairman, I think there are a couple of very serious principles that we have to be taking a look at here, and I'm going to offer a suggestion as to how members of this committee could fruitfully engage themselves in this issue if they wanted to.
First, I know that Mr. Bélanger and I, from time to time—perhaps more on my part than his—end up crossing swords. But the fact still is that I can't agree—and I'm not saying this in a barbed way at all—that the minister is the go-between between this committee and the CBC. I would suggest that this committee has every right in the world, if the committee should decide to do so, to write directly to the CBC. There's no reason to engage and potentially compromise the position of the minister, as she may or may not see it. That's suggestion number one.
Suggestion number two is that I think there is a more constructive way to do it. There are many of us—myself very much included—who would agree that anybody has to have a tremendous amount of respect for the position that the workers are in individually and collectively, and for the concerns of the union; we wouldn't be human if we didn't have that concern. Nonetheless, there is again the principle that it becomes interference from parliamentarians if a formal committee is interfering with what is supposed to be an arm's-length organization. The whole purpose of the CBC being an arm's-length organization is so that the government can determine what the corporation's mandate is, can provide the funds for them to do the job, and then it's up to the management on a day-to-day basis to do that job. If the management, at the end of the day, is doing an inadequate job, or whatever the case may be, then at that point the minister or the committee has every right to call them on the fact that they clearly are not carrying out their mandate.
I have a suggestion, and this is based on my own experience when the CBC was planning on shutting down The House. Some of you may recall that The House is on CBC radio from 9 to 10 o'clock every Saturday morning. I thought that closing it down was the stupidest idea in the world, because for the people in Canada who are concerned about politics, it is one heck of a vehicle. As a member of Parliament, I happen to have a title, but I chose to speak up individually; it had nothing to do with the committee. Well, I got a little bit of heck from one or two people in my party, but that's an aside. I just thought it was a crazy idea.
If the members of this committee want to be effective, if they were to campaign on it or to do whatever they wanted, this is a free democracy and we can do whatever we want—and it may well be effective. But again, if I may circle back to the question of passing a motion on the part of the committee, I would really quite insist, within whatever the motion is, or within this motion being portrayed to the CBC—should this be the decision of the committee—that I be counted and identified as not supporting the motion, because I think the committee is getting far outside of where it should be going.