Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.
Obviously, the goal of Bill C-18 is to try to protect these smaller, local media outlets that have been under such attack and diminished, and I support that. I just don't think this bill is actually going to achieve it, especially when I hear that Bell, CBC and Rogers are going to end up with three quarters of the money.
I sort of liked Mr. Kitt's initial idea. He said he thought at the beginning that the government should levy a fee on the large ones and put it into a news fund. You could have the journalists across the country figure out who gets what.
Mr. Kitt, expanding on that, do you think that would be better than what we have today? If you don't agree, then how do we address making sure that all the small and local folks are included? Do you have to have two journalists, minimum? Do we drop the general news focus so that ethnic and diverse media can be included? What would you suggest?