I'll try to be specific and very clear. Please don't think of me as rude if I interrupt you at any point to go on to someone else.
I'll leave you with a question on how you summed up your presentation. I'm not trying to put you in a corner here, but here's my situation with what you just described.
You provide a community event--the community aspect that is the third pillar of the Broadcast Act--but do you emphasize more of the community aspect by way of telethons, raising money, and community coverage, or are you filling a void left over from the regional broadcaster that has vacated town? You put a lot of emphasis on election coverage, news, and that sort of thing, but is that truly where your emphasis will be over the next little while, as we try to piece our way through policy and talk about revenue?
On the community aspect, they gave us some really good and intelligent examples of what they do as a community broadcaster. Can you provide me with an example of what you're doing right now in community television? I think both groups have incredibly valid points. It's a pillar that's overlooked as part of the Broadcast Act.
You seem to have a huge problem with revenue, but in addition to that you have a mandate from the province. Now we're getting into a digital transition, and it seems to me you're going to face an incredibly difficult time, as an educational network, getting that message out. There are a lot of people out there receiving that analog signal, and it's going to be lost in this. Your programming to the nation--not just your specific example--is going to be lost.
To the CAB, you're in a bit of a pickle because it's nasty on fee-for-carriage. We've seen it here time and time again, and the CRTC is dealing with it. It's kind of like passing over the Rubicon to the next business model of television. Essentially we're looking at a new revenue model here as one of the most important things. With the proliferation of technology, the old regimes are slowly dying, and the old regimes were set up for revenue.
Now you're talking about all your stakeholders in the LPIF and the types of models where funding is given by the government, with certain stipulations in certain markets. There are all kinds of regulations tied to this. You like it and you have a percentage in it, but is what's being talked about enough? Do you think it should go further, as opposed to issues of regulation? In other words, especially to the guys who were up earlier, should it be a free-for-all? Should there be no such thing as basic cable, and should we let them do as they wish? Should the fee-for-carriage proponents make their own deals with the BDUs? You say here you want mandatory carriage. Is that correct?
Before you answer that, I apologize because I have to get this all out in five minutes.
I want you to also comment on the digital transition. It's a huge issue right now in the United States. President Obama has made it one of the five issues that has to be done now, and we have to be done by 2013. Are we ready? To be ready, what do you require of government?