If I might just quickly begin, one thing to bear in mind about the consumption of news is that it changes with age. When you're young, you like snack food. Who doesn't like a good McNugget? Then, as you get older and you have kids, you say that you need to have a proper meal. You need to have salad and you need to have vegetables and the whole thing, so you move from snack food to actual meals. Then, when your kids are in their teens, your mother comes over, and you have to make a really nice meal.
My point is that as the population ages, each generation has a slightly different need and will access the information it wants in a different way. Should we be saying that the sky is falling because millennials, for instance, aren't watching in the way that older generations watch? No. The issue is whether or not the professional content that is needed will be there when they need it.
You don't need a fire station or a hospital every single day—most of us don't—but when your house is burning, you'd really like to have that fire station nearby. It's the same with your local radio station and local TV station. When the floods are coming down the plain, you would like to know that they're coming. It's a little bit disconcerting when you realize that most radio stations have become automated and there may not actually be a person in the building. It's disconcerting when the Toronto anchors don't know the names of your local communities.
For print, we've always said that anybody can start a newspaper, and we don't need to regulate that, except for the Criminal Code. For broadcasting, we've said that we'll have limited frequencies and that we want the best use of the service, so we have standards. Also, Parliament has said that it wants to ensure that Canadians have access to news.
I know that some people believe that.... It's often expressed as “Who cares who owns the press?” Well, there's a difference between having a hundred press owners and having two. That's why. It's because you worry about journalistic chill. You worry about the decreasing diversity of voices. When we say that ownership may not matter in local media, it matters when—