I would say they can, and more than that, they have to; they must. Entertainment programming and news programming are not like other industries. They shape our sense of what's possible. They teach us who to empathize with. They help inform our ideal of what the normal society looks like. I don't want my children to be informed about what a normal society looks like by a country where it's okay to take a gun to a preschool. I don't think that's a good idea.
If we want to maintain our independence and our independence of values, we need to have a strong Canadian voice that expresses our culture and our society. That's what independence looks like.
However, that's not free. With such a small per capita budget as Ms. Tait said, the CBC broadcasts in six time zones, with one sixth of the budget of the BBC, which is only in one time zone and one language.
That stuff is not free. If we want to have it, we need to find ways to pay for it. The independent methods of financing that I'm referring to are really important for the committee to consider not only because of pressures on public finances that currently exist, but also because of the need to ensure that the corporation is fundamentally independent of government. That will allow them to be distinct, because they're not depending on advertising.