Thank you, Mr. Chair.
On behalf of the New Democratic Party, congratulations. I think you have a great reputation in the House for your work as committee chair. This is one of the great committees, I do believe, because we tend to actually make a plan and we tend to stick to it generally, and we tend to actually come out with some usable reports. So your hand will certainly help us.
There are definitely a number of outstanding issues. I'm wary about getting into our motions today without Madame Lavallée here, because I don't think it's fair to entertain one and not the other. They both pertain to where we're going.
In terms of the emerging digital media study, I would make perhaps two recommendations. The first is that I think we need an overview of what committee business has been done for the new members and for us, who probably have been swamped with a million other things in the intervening months.
Then I think we need to have perhaps a planning session around that, because we are going to be dealing with copyright. Much of the digital media study was getting very much sidetracked on the issue of copyright, as opposed to issues of broadcast, on where we're going in terms of a digital media strategy for culture. Perhaps we're going to need to reassess that study and whether or not we have to pare it down to address or to focus in on the digital distribution of works, as opposed to the larger issues of digital culture; whether we are even close to getting to that point and we're going to just decide to continue with meeting after meeting; or whether we hear some more witnesses, maybe suspend final judgment on that report until after the copyright bill has come in, and then we can see if we're missing something. I think we need to spend a bit of time strategically thinking about that digital media study, because those recommendations are important. With us being caught between that study and copyright, we might not do ourselves justice.