That is not an easy question. At the moment, several things work to enhance CBC/Radio-Canada's independence from a political standpoint: the fact that the president is appointed for a given term, that the corporation is accountable to Parliament, and CBC/Radio-Canada has its own board of directors, the fact that there is a journalistic policy, that the company has chosen impartiality, imposed it on its journalists and attempts to impose it on the information programming services. There is a desire for independence, but I think it is very difficult to set that out in legislation. There are mechanisms in place to ensure a fair amount of independence from political powers. That is what I saw on the inside.
Economic independence is a very complex issue. I was the director of the Réseau de l'information. Our revenue was limited in that we only had eight minutes of advertising at the time. When I left, it had increased to 12 minutes. I had established an eight-minute limit for advertising, but the ever-growing thirst for revenue caused that jump.
Obviously, if there were less advertising... There are some universal needs. When I prepared my first brief, I dealt with the issue of advertising because it is very annoying to viewers and Internet users. I received complaints in my office regarding advertising on the Radio-Canada website. Increasingly, people are offended by this advertising which they find aggressive. Some people say there should not be any advertising on a public broadcaster's Internet site. I was told that the largest growth in advertising revenue is on the Internet.
There is no easy answer to your question on economic independence. There is no model available. I am one of those who believe that, in a way, advertising is information which cannot be excluded. Totally excluding advertising on television may not necessarily be the right approach. I think that there is a place for advertising because people want to have information. I do not know if you recall the La Presse incident. La Presse is a Montreal daily which published a regional edition devoid of advertising for Montreal department stores and other companies. People wanted the Montreal edition because they wanted to see that advertising. So, it depends.
I commented on what Florian said as an ombudsman. Obviously advertising affects content. The less there is, the better. For my part, I made a specific recommendation to exclude advertising in news stories. If you watch the Fifth Estate, which you all know, Enjeux or Zone libre and you see advertising in the middle of the program, there will necessarily be an affect on content and the small ads for the program itself. Say what you will, something needs to be done in those cases.