Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
To our witnesses, thank you for appearing before us today.
For the benefit of my colleagues here, there were a couple of good things that came out in the releases today. Of course, one thing is that 5% of the CBC's budget is now $56 million, which demonstrates evidence, frankly, Mr. Chair, that the total budget is over $1.1 billion, and I'm glad it's officially out on the record. That's of course what we've been saying for some time.
Secondly, with respect to strategic review, Mr. Chair, I just point out to the entire committee that strategic review is a process undertaken by all departments in all parts of the government. Of course, the strategic review purpose is to indicate those processes, those operations of the department that are the 5% least efficient. It is not about cuts, and any reference to that is completely false. It's about value for taxpayers and it's about being effective in spending taxpayers' money.
Now, perhaps people on that side of the table aren't concerned with that, Mr. Chair. I can assure you people on the government side, people on this side of the table, are very concerned in being effective and efficient with taxpayers' dollars. That's what strategic review is about.
There is no inconsistency in what the minister said. He has promised more than $1.1 billion in funding for the CBC, and that's what they will get.
Now, with that clear, Mr. Chair, I'd like to move on to Mr. Lithgow.
I thought you made a couple of very good suggestions, Mr. Lithgow. First of all, you said our broadcasting system is one of the least diverse in the world. You talked about revenue streams at local television stations depending on national advertisements. I'm not sure if you saw them, but we had the Jim Pattison Group giving a presentation here. We had Corus giving a presentation on local television stations that are truly local, that are actually running advertising campaigns in their local areas. They're not being fed very expensive national programming and so forth, and they're actually doing pretty well. We have also seen a couple of stations that apparently can't work being picked up by a company that, frankly, would have no interest in picking up losing affiliates.
I'm interested in asking you this. You said the affiliated system is failing, not local television, and we've had a couple of witnesses from Corus and Pattison Group come in and indicate just that. They actually feel that local television does work. Can you clarify that for us a little bit? What do you mean by affiliated television and local television, and what is the difference between them?