Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for appearing before us.
I'd like to follow up on what Mr. Angus talked about at the beginning, the issue of governance. In section 38 of your report your statement is, “Overall, we found the core elements of a good governance framework in place”. As Mr. Angus and also Mr. Kotto have stated, the testimony before this committee doesn't necessarily reflect that. Quite a number of the stakeholders have had differing opinions. I'll refer to three of them.
First of all, the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting suggested that “...the CBC board of directors should be chosen at arm's length from patronage, drawn from the best and the brightest Canadians...”.
We had the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union stating, “At present, appointments are political and reflect poorly on government and the CBC/Radio-Canada. The current governance system, in fact, ensures failure.”
Then we had Mr. Manera and Mr. Neville, who I'm sure you're familiar with, who stated:
We propose that while the chair, vice-chair and all other directors would be appointed by the Governor-in-Council, such appointments should be subject to parliamentary confirmation.
They go on to say:
Furthermore, we recommend that the board of directors should be responsible for the appointment of the president.
These are different governance structures from what we currently have at the CBC.
You had a general comment on the appointment of the president, but I didn't hear you say whether you prefer the president to be appointed by the board and accountable to the board, as opposed to being appointed by the Governor in Council.