This is interesting, and I'm glad we had the second round, because it's picked up some stuff.
I think a country as creative as ours on a whole bunch of fronts should be creative enough to seize this complicated, but necessary configuration. We're compelled to do so because of proximity, population, and the size of the country.
I think the government's heritage department, or the government generally, needs to step up. I think to some extent it been too easy for the government—and I say this about governments, as against any particular one—to push off responsibility to the CRTC or to the CBC and say, solve these things. So maybe the government has to step up and then, with that, the CBC will become stronger by association, by being part of something that is more coherent than is the case right now.
The other part of it—and I go back to what I said in my first intervention—is the problem of finding the right balance between having certain expectations for the investment, but not having any capacity to act on those expectations in some ways that are helpful. I know that when the $60 million came up and it wasn't A-based but an annual thing.... And for the record, when I chaired the CBC caucus for my caucus when we were governing, it was in reaction to the announcement of.... I remember quite clearly Mr. Rabinovitch, as a guest at the heritage committee, speaking of the severed limb of the Atlantic Canada. And it was out of that. The reason it wasn't A-based, in my mind—I don't know this, as I wasn't in the room—is that there wasn't any confidence that if it did happen or it was A-based, we would get any difference. To some extent, it's been there now for three or four years, and it hasn't found its way into regional supper hour programming, or supper half-hour programming, or whatever it is now.
I think that's the struggle. Maybe we make a mistake in trying to place responsibility for solving that piece on the CBC itself. Maybe that is for the Government of Canada, of which the CBC is one of the most important instruments, but not the only one. That may be the answer.
The other part is that if we do mandate more investment in the CBC—and I think one of the recommendations is going to go some way in that direction—we may have to look at the mandate in terms of its clarity. Most of the people who have appeared before us seem satisfied that what the CBC needs to do is there. From listening to people talk about how they define the word “regional”, I can tell you that the word “regional” in Atlantic Canada has an entirely different meaning compared to the word “regional” in Toronto.