I have been very busy, as you know. I've gone from one end to the country to the other and had round tables on official languages, in my responsibility as Minister of Official Languages; and as Minister of Canadian Heritage I've talked to arts and culture communities. I have frankly learned a great deal from them and have a great deal of respect for the diversity that exists in Canada's cultural communities from one end of this country to the other. It's really quite remarkable.
This committee came together on the question of the CBC--that was the genesis of this conversation. I'm a strong supporter of the CBC and believe in the CBC. It's a great public broadcaster. It has incredible standards of journalism. It is a true pan-Canadian platform for showing Canadian content in both official languages and in multimedia environments, and giving Canadians access to Canadian stories.
We have made commitments in the campaigns to support the CBC, and we have kept those commitments. We're providing over $1 billion to the CBC, and $60 million per year for specific Canadian programming. Like all Canadians, I'm incredibly proud of our public broadcaster. It's going through difficult times, but we will go through those difficult times with it. We will work with it and make sure that in the long term, Canadians will have a broadcaster that will be a platform for Canadian content from coast to coast in both official languages. It will be a broadcaster we'll all be proud of.