Let me give you information about your kids. Today, in comparison to the generation of your children, kids are spending more time in front of their media than they are in school. One has to be extremely careful of that. As they are taught to become citizens, they are spending more time in the airwaves of the world than in front of the school process.
As to your point on whether the CBC is capable of doing the job of being the gatherer and federator, to a certain extent, I have to go by the track record. So far, the CBC has been acting as a doorkeeper and not a federator.
Technology is telling us that we need to have a totally different attitude and open ourselves, so the 35 million people of this country--and I'm not seeing a flow of everybody becoming filmmakers--are participating in the dialogue through images, as we've been doing through the printing press and the local newspaper, in comparison to The Globe and Mail, La Presse, or any other newspaper.
So can the CBC act more as a federator? What I mean by “federator” is to bring together the best minds in this country on the creative process, but also on the technological side of things. I don't have the answer, but so far, by track record, I don't see that.
This is really a global war that is taking place. When you see Fox buying MySpace and what is taking place, you have to ask yourself where Canada is in all that. Are we going to inhabit the spaces of others in order to exist? Are we really transforming this country of consumers, who will from time to time have their products appear somewhere along the line in other media?
The question that was asked about the CRTC links up with your point: is there something this country can do? I think it'll be difficult to regulate the airwaves, but you could at least put your minds together to help develop search tools that will identify what is Canadian in that global environment. Amongst YouTube, MySpace, and the other forms we've spoken about, what is Canadian in all of that? If we had those tools, we would have a way to find out.
I'm back from an event that took place two weeks ago in France called the MipTV market, in which all the world gathered and discussed new products. The BBC initiated a concept called Content 360 into that mix, where the young generation of players come and pitch their products.
At least the BBC is listening globally, because they're being pitched by people from all over the world, including Canadians. They have their finger on the pulse of what is being developed in content in the world, rather than not being part of it. They accomplish this by doing it on the world stage.
I'm back again to the fact that you need to link all those things together in order to have an answer, if there is a simple answer to one thing.