You have three questions for me. Concerning CBC internationally, I think it is simply a matter of the CBC, as a public institution, having to take the leadership in this country for private and public broadcasters to gather together and be able to go after the international market. It's fairly easy.
Today, when the Korean or the Japanese are able to be on the different menus of networks across the world, it is simply because they export their programs, because they've freed the rights in order to do so.
I would remind you that CBC made an attempt to do this in the U.S. about five years ago, and then they sold that network and never came back on it. In my opinion, the CBC doesn't think globally; they think about selling their product, but they don't think about selling their signal.
If you take, for example, Tout le monde en parle, which is a most important success in French Radio-Canada, it is in a format that has been brought from the French. So we've moved away from the usual trade business of my selling you a product and your paying for it, to selling full signals.
And there are demands around the world for the quality that the CBC could give if they federated public and private players. You could imagine the Bells of the world talking to the CBCs of the world in order to have a Canadian signal, a Canadian TV5, if you want, which would go worldwide. That is conceivable. We could get into the details of it.
The second question had to do with the independent producers. It's fairly simple. It's being done across the world, and that's my point in asking whether the CBC needs the infrastructure that they have across Canada. Do they need all the staff that they have across Canada?
You simply have to go to the example of Alliance Atlantis, or you have to go to any new network. When Channel 4 was created in the U.K., there was no infrastructure. You don't need infrastructure, because as has been said, it gets old fairly fast.
So bring that down to its bare minimum, and then operate from there. The money that you will be freeing should go into the independent producers' world, because that's where the products are coming from anyway.
At this point in time, what you're seeing is that CBC is protecting its old universe. It is double-dipping into the Canadian Television Fund. It is dipping into its own product. It is dipping into revenues from publicity. But in order to maintain what? A huge infrastructure.
The way you would get to independent producers is by freeing yourself from the old universe as you're getting into the new-platform universe, and you'll be able to invest that in the independent milieu and enrich what needs to be done in this country in terms of the independent producers.
Your third question, which dealt with full-length features, is fairly simple. In France you have an organization called the CNC. In England you have an organization called the UK Film Council. It is the law that broadcasters and public broadcasters have to invest in the development of the feature film industry. They each have created a subsidiary that invests in the development of feature films.
Can you imagine the $240 million that is presently in Telefilm Canada easily being doubled? I don't think I'm speaking through my hat by saying you could fetch money from those sources, from our broadcasters, who will eventually end up putting those products on their network. But they are waiting for the product to be finished so they can buy it for 2ยข rather than investing and taking the risk of investing in the development of our film industry.
That, in my view, is the answer to your three questions.