Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Gary Maavara, and I am vice-president and general counsel of Corus Entertainment Inc. Joining me today is Sylvie Courtemanche, who is our vice-president of government relations.
We thank the committee for the opportunity to appear and provide our thoughts on your investigation of the role of the CBC in the 21st century. Corus filed a written submission on February 26. In it, we described how we see the broadcasting sector evolving over the coming years, and how the CBC should be part of our collective future.
Corus has three operating divisions: television, radio, and content. It is Canada's largest TV broadcaster to children. We operate the YTV and Treehouse specialty networks, and we have an ownership interest in Teletoon. We also own Nelvana, which is one of the world's largest producers of children's animation programming. In the last five years, Nelvana alone has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the production of top-quality Canadian animation programming.
The Corus books subsidiary, Kids Can Press, is Canada's largest publisher of books for children. Our movie networks, such Movie Central, and services such as the W Network and CMT, establish us as an important provider of programming targeted to adults as well.
Corus is Canada's leading radio operator, as measured by audience tuning. We operate 50 stations in both English- and French-language markets. Many of our heritage news-talk stations serve the ridings represented by the members of this committee, therefore you understand how connected we are with the issues that Canadians are thinking about.
The major reason why we are here today is because we own and operate three over-the-air CBC affiliate television stations that serve Peterborough, Oshawa, and Kingston. They are the only local TV stations in those markets, and as such they play a crucial role in those communities.
The committee's present investigation of the CBC's overall current and future mandate is a very ambitious one.