Thank you.
I certainly understand where Mr. Rodriguez is coming from in his motion. Here's what concerns me. I was looking at some similar issues at the same time, and I did feel that if we just announced that we were going to talk to the small independent television broadcasters, within the context of the study we have been doing it would be lost. The other study has been very large and very broad and not all that clearly focused, and not all that clearly focused for a number of reasons. Because when you mention digital, suddenly everybody is part of the digital culture, and where are we going with the committee?
There are specific issues in terms of the new viewing platforms, with television, with the funding for television, and with the fact that we now have a few very large vertically integrated players. How do they play? How does independent production play? Where is independent television? What's the role of the Canada Media Fund?
These are all decisions that I think have to be made in the context of a landscape that is dramatically different from what it was when we met two years ago on the television study and we were talking about fee for carriage and local television. Some of those issues have already been pretty much addressed, I think, just by corporate takeovers. There are real, clear issues facing the diversity of voice and diversity of ownership, and how we are going to make recommendations to government for new production and how it's going to play, whether you're watching it on your Bell phone on Bell CTV or viewing it on the Internet.
I think this is a specific study separate from the overall, very large digital study, which we may continue or we may decide to hold until copyright is dealt with. I don't know. But I think we need probably five meetings anyway to address some very clear implications for the television landscape right now.