Thank you. This has been an excellent session.
I want to begin by talking about getting access to data. I've been incredibly inspired by my colleagues Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Del Mastro, the Sun Media Conservative party, and their openness for government and their commitment.
You know, I just got an access to information request back from the Conservative government that I waited two years for. It's 150 blank pages--that they made me pay for. Now that I have colleagues who are going to get accountability for the taxpayer, I'm feeling inspired.
I ask this because they certainly have a dog on for the CBC and its accountability. But this past April Mr. von Finckenstein appeared at the industry committee. He stated a number of positions and speculated about raising or changing the foreign ownership requirement.
So I put in a freedom of information request to find out if he had any data. A man of such august stature, stating such an important opinion, would certainly have lots of data to back it up.
It turned out there was nada. There wasn't anything. And I was thinking, “How could this be that he makes policy pronouncements without holding data?”
Now I see, Mr. Murdoch and Madame Auer, in your presentation today....
The last time Mr. von Finckenstein came here, he said, hey, it's way too early to make any pronouncements about vertical integration, the jury's out. So I thought, well, then they must doing lots of data. They must be still crunching the numbers.
Yet you're telling us that they haven't done any integration impact on programming investment, they don't know how many broadcast news bureaux exist or how many reporters are working in broadcasting, they haven't measured diversity in news or the impact of diversity in voices.
Now, I distinctly remember Mr. von Finckenstein saying there's lots of diversity out there, and it's called the Internet.
What should we expect from a public regulator in terms of keeping data and being willing to share that data through access to information with the public?