Thank you very much.
I want to thank the minister for coming to meet with us today.
The minister made a speech, and there are a couple of things I wanted to pick up on. Here in this session we're talking about the future of television in Canada, and he made comments with regard to digitalization and what it is going to do for the future of television, not only in Canada but around the world. Well, this is true; however, currently CBC cannot reach Kamloops, never mind a world reach. It is unable to reach Kamloops because it doesn't have the infrastructure that it needs, for instance, to convert its current.... The last time the CBC had any infrastructure was in the sixties. This is old. CBC needs that infrastructure.
The reason I'm speaking to CBC is not that I want to pick a fight with CBC. CBC is the public broadcaster. There is a responsibility on behalf of the Government of Canada to be able to fund CBC appropriately.
I want to talk about digitalization. The CBC has not had any ability to do the kind of digital reach that it could do and that the private broadcasters have had the ability to do. When the private broadcasters were given the ability to increase their fees to their clients or their customers, they were able to get into the digital world quickly. CBC does not have that ability. It is a public broadcaster. It is dependent on the government to help it to do the reach, and it cannot reach Kamloops. That's the first question.
The second question is this. The BBC, which is a public broadcaster, has now been digital for so long that it only talks about digital. We have let our public broadcaster down. We are actually ranking 16th out of 18 in all of the countries that have a public broadcaster--our funding is 16th. If you're going to be committed to the public broadcaster, then one cannot lump it in with the other broadcasting industry. You have to talk about the public broadcaster's ability to be digital.
Secondly, you also talked about the new media fund that will allow everyone to make a large number of new films. The problem with films in Canada, if we are to be able to get our films around the world, is that we absolutely need to have a distribution model, and we don't. The BBC has used its digital model for distribution; the CBC could do that. It could be great at getting Canadian films to the rest of the world. It cannot do it because it does not have a digital infrastructure.
I'm speaking with regard to commitment to the public broadcaster under two headings. The first one is digitalization, for its ability to reach all areas of Canada and the world. Secondly, with regard to digitalization and your new media fund, how will you see the distribution model given to the CBC to allow it to function in the way that one of the great public broadcasters of the world functions, and that is the BBC?