Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to both of you for attending today.
When we got here this morning we were given a copy of the handbook of journalistic standards and practices for CBC and Radio-Canada. I've had a quick chance to review some of the points in there. What jumped out at me was, first of all, on page 99, under personnel standards, where it states, “The CBC must not only be impartial, it must also project an image of impartiality.” So the whole issue of how the public perceives CBC...it's going beyond actual objectivity. It goes right to the root of what do Canadians think of CBC Radio-Canada.
As you know, there are many Canadians who are very supportive of CBC, but there are also many Canadians for whom CBC either has become irrelevant or it no longer reflects their particular values. Quite frankly, I've never bought into the myth that reporters can be completely unbiased. We're all human. We bring a package of values to the table and a package of perspectives that inevitably colour anything we do. I think the best we can hope for is to achieve a standard of objectivity that CBC, for example, would have credibility with the people it's supposed to be serving, which is the Canadian public.
I'd like to ask a couple of questions about hiring and firing policies. You have a pretty comprehensive set of journalistic standards that your staff has to comply with. I hearken back to an unfortunate incident where one of your employees was alleged to have doctored a photograph and enhanced it to make an environmental site look worse than it really was. Do you recall that particular incident?