Thank you, Madam Chair.
Here's some disclosure up front: I spent 39 years as a Unifor member. I was a media guy in the private sector, meaning CTV as opposed to public. When I hear you guests come on and say it's a level playing field and all this.... It has never been a level playing field. CBC has never had to undergo, as a public broadcaster, the threats that I see with the private, because when you lose a rating point in the news hour, you lose news directors and you lose production people, whereas the CBC is unaccounted for.
It doesn't have one of its networks as number one in the country. It never has. Its ratings are brutal throughout this whole country, and it's unaccounted for, yet it gets the $1.3 million or $1.4 million. Now it can get $400 million in advertising and from the government, Google and so on.
It's never been a level playing field.
Mr. Menzies, I'll start with you, because you have three decades in journalism.
I'm right. It has never been and never will be a level playing field, so we should understand that in this country.