I would echo what Chris has said and endorse your points. I think you're describing well the fragmented nature of our whole telecommunications system—and that's just a quick scan of it, as you've outlined.
Clearly, what's missing is coherence or some cohesiveness. There are many disconnects having to do with accountability, going back, of course, to the mandate and the various interests running counterintuitively or counterproductively. It behooves us to look at the big picture and to see where CBC fits into all of that and what its role is in relation, again, as I said before, to a thriving industry. We have the potential to do that. We have the language. And we seem to have the will, the citizenship who want to do that, but we have not been able to bring that coherence into play and to realize it. It's slipping away from us in this increasingly fragmented world, and I think we all sense that.
There is a sense in which, I think, the average viewer feels helpless about it. That is a big fear we have about the CBC, of course, that its steady erosion and indications of lack of support are undermining it and its mandate, feeding resignation in citizens who say, well, let's just put it out of its misery, or who say the things that are commonly kicked around and circulated in public discourse. I think that would be tragic for all of us and—finally—also against our will.
It is integration at every level that we're really missing in this country. There's opportunity to pull all these threads together—not to mandate a state system, necessarily, that doesn't allow people to breathe or compete, but clearly a more balanced system that allows the public broadcaster to be competitive with the privates, and vice versa.