To my part of the question, that's been my message to you, as the standing committee. Publicly we invest close to $5 billion in audio-visual and communication as a country. In my view today--and that includes the National Film Board, in all due success with what it has to do. I've been saying that for the last five years. Resist the concept of reviewing the CBC mandate without reviewing all the agencies in this country, because you will do a disservice to the country if you isolate the evaluation of CBC without thinking of the consequences on all the players that are there. That includes Telefilm. That includes CBC. That includes the arts council. That includes all the players. If you don't do that, I really think you're going to miss the chance of reviewing.
The NFB wins the Academy Award, but at the same time, they invest in a concept called Hothouse in which kids are able to develop their own products, with today's tools, that are accessible--the same kind of thing as you have here--and they're able to show it to you almost immediately.
But I'm not preaching for one. I think that you need an overall review.
To go back to content, the beauty about content today is that at the same time as we've shied away from the idea of having to see the program at 8 p.m., programs today have blown away the concept of the half-hour, the hour, and the hour and a half, which were made for publicity consumption and for broadcasters' discipline that you could get into.
Today, products and content have burst out. They are three minutes in length; they are an hour in length; they could be two hours in length. The beauty of all of that is that it is being produced by all kinds of people. You have top pros who are doing high-definition programming that costs more than $1.5 million to produce a three-minute program to something that is done for $5,000 or even less. I think one has to look at the idea of content based more on the fact that, yes, you will continue to have a professional industry to which you belong in the world of music, but you will have also what citizens are able to create at that level. So it is a multi-pronged universe where content is not defined by only one thing.
Regarding the LaPierre report, I'm glad you've raised it, because I agree with you. It is accumulating dust, and it's too bad, because there were a lot of great ideas in that concept. But it's happening. I gave you the example of Homeless Nation, where basically kids in the streets of this country are connecting with each other through whatever way they can. If they can have access through their own computer or through a computer in a store, whatever, they are creating, communicating with each other, and finding solutions to their own personal faith amongst themselves, not requiring any intervention from outside in order to do it.
In my view, it also links to what the LaPierre report has been saying, which is that citizens should be put forth as being part of the creative process. We used to have professionals of this and that, and we thought that we had created--a generation to which I belong--professionals of the audio-visual. Today we are all professionals of the audio-visual. We have a language where we are able to decode images; therefore, we are now in a position to produce images.