Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for coming in this morning. We appreciate your being here.
There are a couple of questions I want to ask, but I should confess to begin with that I believe the CBC has an important role to play in preserving our national unity. That's just a personal belief of mine, and I think you'd find some consensus on that throughout the country in certain areas--but maybe not all areas. So I come to this from maybe a little different perspective from others.
You say in your testimony that the CBC should not be offering programs intended to attract mass audience, in competition with private broadcasters. I have to ask, if Canadians or all taxpayers are paying for this program, why are we not attempting to attract them? What target audience are you specifically going after? I think there was some comment that we're preaching to the converted; we're trying to attract a certain audience that already has a strong sense of national unity. I'm wondering who exactly you and your organization believe the CBC should be attracting, and why not the rest.