Indeed, what my predecessors said is entirely true. It is important that Radio-Canada be compelled, to a certain degree, to provide services to the regions, as regards both information and general production. In any case, that is part of its present mandate. However, that is not always what it does, and that is for two reasons. First of all, budget cuts and difficulties often encourage large organizations to centralize in order to save money, which is a natural and normal tendency during such periods, and then sometimes there is an intrinsic will to centralize.
I was in Quebec City yesterday, and the RDI team learned that its staff was being cut by half. The Quebec City information production team will be reduced from nine to five persons. Quebec City is the capital of the Province of Quebec, not some little village. And yet there are no budget cuts. There's no explanation for this reduction, the only explanation that Radio-Canada is giving us is that it needs a team in Toronto and doesn't have any additional funding available. So it is making cuts in Quebec City and sending the money to Toronto to build an RDI team.
Funding is one of the causes of the problem, but the lack of any genuine will to serve the regions adequately is another.