Mr. Chair, Mr. Pomerleau said to me, informally before the meeting, where do you come from? And I said,
I'm a little guy from Toronto.
My role is that of spokesperson.
Your question is really a question about the governance of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. There is a board of directors that is known as the steering committee, and that steering committee contains people you probably wouldn't know because of the language divide.
The chair of my steering committee is the dean of graduate studies at Memorial University, for example. The famous actor, R. H. Thompson, is a member of my steering committee. If you were from Alberta, you would know the name Aritha van Herk, who is the historian of Alberta, and on and on.
Those people are the governance body. I am the spokesperson.
And Friends is a virtual organization in the sense that it has no office, it has no employees.
Someone once sent me a note, Mr. Pomerleau. It said, “We're not going to send you $3 a month”--or something like that--“unless you promise us that you're not wasting money on an expensive address on Bloor Street in Toronto.” I'd have to borrow, again, the letter to give you the address because I never go there--it's a post box. I wrote back and I said, “I can't promise you that. It's 6 inches tall, it's 12 inches wide, and it's 18 inches deep.” So we are a virtual organization. We have a series of people with expertise in a variety of subjects: broadcasting, research, communications, fundraising, etc.
My role is the coordination and the expression of the Friends positions.