There is a bunch there, but I'll start with the fund.
In the paper I mentioned that Konrad and I authored, we did suggest that there could be a Canadian journalism fund. We also suggested that the CBC should be excluded from that, because it would be double dipping, and also that only companies whose primary business is the creation of news would be eligible. That would allow the funds to focus directly on those companies that are most exposed on news and not necessarily on companies that do 80% to 90% entertainment programming and then do news on the side. The funds would go directly to that group.
In terms of the CBC, it strikes me as odd that nobody seems to think that when you put your thumb on the scales of an industrial framework to the extent that the CBC public funding does in terms of the commercial competition, that wouldn't distort the marketplace. I can't imagine the auto industry being able to function properly if the government said that there was a level playing field for everybody, but that it was going to give a subsidy to Chrysler, and that Chrysler could compete with the others for car sales in the same way as the others. I can't imagine that in the restaurant industry or the food industry or anything like that.
I'm not opposed to there being a public broadcaster, but we have a two-headed monster. We need to bring that to an end. Nothing good can happen for the news industry until we fix that.