The study we had done by Nordicity, which we published last week and which we would be happy to share with the full committee, shows that there is indeed profitability in Canadian programming. There is a long tail. The first runs of any television program do not make a profit, but they actually do when they play again on specialty, and on the main networks, and then again in new media. The profit is there and can be there.
Second, I'd like to argue that, whether it's distributed digitally or by conventional means, the argument that no one is interested in local stories is one that we just don't buy. Local news is important, but local stories are stories that mean something to all of us. There are films such as Passchendaele. It not a television program but it is a local story, and while it was set in Belgium and France it was still about local people and the local Canadian history of our forefathers. That kind of film work is a local story; it's a Canadian story.
Simply put, there is a future in digital, and we also believe that the rights we have as performers--and the writers, directors, and the producers would reinforce this--to get a return on the profit that's made from long-term digital distribution have to be protected by intellectual property rights. That's something else that this committee may be considering in the future, but there's very important work on intellectual property being done at WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and we hope this government enforces that.