I will not be supporting this amendment. I want, just for the record, to say why.
On all of the Canadian tax dollars that contribute to CBC, it's content development. It is intellectual property. It's content. It can be monetized, and to just give it away to the big platforms doesn't make any sense to me.
Five billion dollars have been taken from the advertising sector supporting Canadian businesses over the last decade, and that happens each year. If we have an organization like the CBC that supports Canadian content and reports good-quality news, I can't imagine just giving it away to Facebook and Google without any type of compensation. They are taxpayer dollars.
The spirit of the establishment of the CBC many years ago was to support Canadian content, so I will not be supporting this amendment.
Thank you, Chair.