Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to everybody for being with us this afternoon.
It is clear that for somebody who wants to promote arts and culture, it is interesting to listen to people who tell you they'd like to see an orchestra be more active and to hear on the radio waves more classical music. At the same time, other people tell us that the commercial radio does not broadcast certain other types of music that they would also like to hear on the public air waves. It is very interesting to see all that activity around promoting culture, arts and music.
Yet, we must clarify something. A few statutes govern Radio-Canada, and one of them is very clear. Radio-Canada enjoys total freedom from Parliament. The committee is not allowed to interfere with the daily management of the corporation. I'm trying to find a way to, on one side, fulfil your expectations and on the other, respect the law. I will make a suggestion and you tell me if it makes sense.
After a study made by the committee, we prepared a report which was dealing with the mandate of Radio-Canada in the 21st century. In this report, we asked the government to prepare a memorandum of understanding with the corporation in which the budgetary items of the corporation would be clearly identified and which would specify the type of services that we wish to offer to the public. This kind of memorandum could mention your concerns. Would it be important for those to be clearly identified and that funding be provided for that?
According to what we heard last Tuesday, some people would like to create a third radio station that would broadcast all the music genres but classical music. All this cost money. Giving more funding to the CBC orchestra, as suggested M. Bruneau, might cost more money.
Could this type of memorandum be something like a safety rail which would help us know clearly where is Radio-Canada/CBC going, so that we don't find ourselves in the situation we have now, where it seems you learned at the last minute that because of a lack of funds, some services must be cut?