First of all, I want to take the opportunity to thank you for coming to our committee today to give us a bit of insight and perspective on your viewpoints, particularly on fee for carriage. I am the member of Parliament for Brampton—Springdale, and I know that Rogers is located in my riding and employs thousands of individuals. The future of television, broadcasts, and Rogers is of great concern to not only those individuals who are working there, but to the families they support.
You passed around a fact sheet on CTV and CanWest, and on the last page was a graph with information on the expenditures on eligible Canadian programming and non-Canadian programming. It shows two very distinct perspectives: the amount that was spent on non-Canadian programming from 2000 to 2008, and the amount that was spent on Canadian programming from 2000 to 2008. There was a huge increase in the money spent on non-Canadian programming versus Canadian programming in 2008.
Can you please expand and provide this committee with some insight on why the expenditure has risen on non-Canadian programming versus Canadian programming, and the impact of the local programming improvement fund?