I'll start with this.
When you have your tour at CBC this afternoon, I do hope you ask to see the design area. That is the area where there are costumes and props and where these massive sets are located. It's all shutting down May 31, but until you actually see it with your own eyes, you don't realize what the CBC is about to lose. So please ask for that on your tour.
Why is the design department shutting down? There are three main reasons. One is because of Canadian Television Fund rules. The CBC has made a decision that it is not going to produce its own programming, other than in news and current affairs. It could do it, but it's financially onerous to do it under the current Canadian Television Fund rules. This particular management team really wants to focus on buying outside programming, and they believe it's to deal with the funding crisis. They believe that because of the lack of money, they need to go into very commercial television to attract ads.
Because of the lack of money, Toronto real estate looks pretty good; those areas take a lot of real estate, so they're going to--and they would say it if they were here before you--“monetize” their real estate assets and use the area where design is now located to potentially lease to stores, banks, or whatever. Our broadcast centre, our one-stop shopping broadcast centre, will be a broadcast centre as we know it no longer. It's very, very sad.
We've been trying to get the City of Toronto interested in preserving some of this cultural heritage, but ultimately I don't think it's up to the City of Toronto. I applaud Mayor Miller for being interested, but ultimately this is a Canadian decision.
In Montreal, Radio-Canada's design area is thriving, and management there has decided that it needs to keep it thriving, that it's the centre of the Montreal production industry. The same could be true of our design centre, but they're in a money crunch and they see a way out; they believe it's time to sell off assets, and this is a key asset. It's very, very sad.
That's the design story in five minutes or less. There's a lot more to it. I urge you to try to look at it; it's very sad that we're about to lose it.