I think you touched on a point that hit a nerve with a lot of Canadians. Everyone was very frustrated by the job cuts we heard back this fall. We were particularly angry because we felt that these were avoidable. This is part of—and I mentioned this in our opening remarks—the fact that the CBC has been chronically underfunded. That chronic underfunding has been compounded by the 3.3% budget freeze.
If you look at where Canada ranks among similar OECD countries, you see that we rank 17th out of 20 when it comes to funding for the national public broadcaster. That breaks down to about $33 per person per year. That's not a lot of money. Along with the Bell job cuts, when it comes to journalism, we're really at risk of seeing the kind of news deserts in broadcast journalism that we're already seeing in print. That really will impact smaller communities, because private broadcasters are increasingly abandoning them. In many cases, the CBC is the only broadcaster when it comes to local or regional news. I think, for example, of Prince Edward Island, and the CBC is all they have.
We really need to start talking about long-term, sustainable and predictable funding for the CBC so that it can live up to its public service mandate to Canadians. That conversation has to happen in tandem with the mandate review to ensure that the CBC does live up to the local news requirement.
As you may be aware, Friends of Canadian Media filed for a review of the CBC's broadcast licence conditions, because the CBC had requested to lower its requirements when it comes to local news. We've challenged it on those grounds. We're waiting for the hearing from the CRTC. We're hoping that it's going to happen in the next little while. We really want to push the CBC to provide Canadians in all the communities with the local news that it's supposed to.