Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your presentation this morning. We've been told that Canada should follow the BBC model. My riding has 80,000 inhabitants and covers a larger area than that of Great Britain. Thirteen percent of the population listens to Cree radio, 50% the CBC or the English-language radio station, and 40% Radio-Canada programming intended for the Franco-Ontario community or the English-language radio station.
It's very difficult to take a model like Great Britain and say that we can apply this across Canada.
I've found on our study that about the only thing people from across the country agree on is how much they detest the voice of Toronto and Montreal. What we've heard in community after community is about the disappearance of resources, the disappearance of staffing, and the disappearance of capacity to maintain regional voices. The question has to be asked, is it possible to maintain the notion of a national broadcaster if all we're hearing is Montreal and Toronto?