My line of questioning has changed, probably with every answer, so this is going to be very hard to pull together. But I do think you start at the core.
Whatever inspired Canada to invent a public broadcaster and then to deal with television, and reinvent the public broadcaster, whatever the conditions were that made that imperative then, is there any less an imperative now? I'd have to think not--perhaps more, as the world shrinks and all of those things.
So it's underfunded, and we're having a bit of an artificial debate around what it is that CBC is; that is, why would we publicly fund it if it's providing stuff that isn't distinct enough to warrant it? But we're also saying at the same time that the reason they're doing that is because they're chasing a commercial model and they're being underfunded and they're having to get ad revenues. I think we're saying the two things.
If we all agree that it's underfunded, there may be different models of getting revenues to a public broadcaster that are in addition to or complementary to a parliamentary appropriation. If we agree on a more stable, predictable, long-term, and more generous parliamentary appropriation, will we have to clarify the mandate? Because most people who say that have in their mind what that money would go for, and they'll be surprised in two years when they find out that it didn't, and then we're stuck to some extent. So we may have to bring some clarity.
I know on the regional side you don't have the same sense of the purpose of the CBC in St. John's this morning as you have in Montreal today. Coming from Fredericton, it is a different thing. We feel the need not only to be sovereign as a country, but we feel very vulnerable in the context of our own identity within the country.
But I think it can all come together. We all agree on the need. We agree that it's under-resourced. We even have a sense of what its purpose should be, and it's more important now than it has ever been, probably. That seems to be a pretty good place to start.
The opportunity that is presented by the description of our job--and that is the role of the public broadcaster in the 21st century--strikes me as an opportunity to perhaps think about it without getting caught up in....
Oh, and by the way, it was the 1995 budget. It seems strikingly ironic that I would be the one to have to point it out, but it was the 1995 budget that was so brutal. The 1993 budget wasn't ours. But what can I say....