Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome.
Mr. Côté, you said something very interesting in your presentation, that sport was a form of expression that was part of the culture of a country, in other words, an element that was used to forge the collective identity. It is interesting that you recall that here, but we can see that Canadians know it already, since the CBC covers a lot of sport. In fact, it covers a lot more than Radio-Canada. You said that, in the past few years, the proportion of programs on sport, federated sport among others, appearing on Radio-Canada had declined quite significantly. Today there are virtually none.
In your first recommendation, you suggest that Radio-Canada be given an additional mandate including a responsibility to contribute to the proportion of federated sport and healthy living habits. When we talk about instilling healthy living habits, we know that federated sport is indeed an important tool. Given that Radio-Canada's present mandate enables it to find ways of not covering sport, you've decided to include a much more restrictive criterion that would require it to do so. I find that recommendation very interesting and I congratulate you for it.
As regards my question, I'd like to know whether someone at Radio-Canada told you at some point that sport was no longer really important and that the corporation intended to quietly withdraw from all that. How did things happen?