Why don't I try to answer the second question first and then go back to the first one?
I've spent the better part of my life working in public companies. The governance level, as you know, in public companies continues to get refined and refined more and more. We've seen the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States spill over into Canada. Governance is a big part of a public company, and I've had a lot of experience with public companies.
Whether it's for a public company or a public broadcaster, the role of the board is very similar. You have a whole mandate for a chairman and a mandate for the directors. Their role is to interface with the senior management, and ultimately, in our case at CBC, to also interface with the government and the Department of Canadian Heritage. Our role is not, as chairman and the board, to manage the company. It is to respond to the business plan, the budgets, and the strategic direction senior management has tabled and to get the approval of the board. If there's a problem, we have to challenge the senior management and ask them to go back and revisit their presentation.
I don't expect it to get to a point where a presentation would come to a board level and be turned down by the board, because the way the chairman and the president of the senior management team interface is that there's constant dialogue going back and forth.
As it relates to the budget, I had the occasion to sit with Madame Charbonneau, our CFO, yesterday. All I would tell you is that the accounting is a little different for the Government of Canada compared to private sector accounting. But ultimately, we have to give the citizens of Canada value for money for every dollar that's spent. I believe the work that's been done....
I was listening to the Auditor General's presentation here last week. A lot of progress has been made in the last five years in this organization, and with the work on internal controls and the like, I'm very confident that you can be assured that no money is being wasted.