That's really kind of you. We were only invited last night, so we didn't have much time to prepare our comments.
When the Rogers-Shaw proceeding was before the CRTC and open for public comment, we did participate and we simultaneously filed an application for a certified independent production fund, a CRTC-certified fund called the “community access media fund”. The idea, as with NewWest.tv, which Mr. Julian volunteers with, is for small not-for-profits get access to funding. They have been trying to step in and fill the gaps left by the retreat of cable community channels, but it's really difficult to do because we have no access to the ILNF, for example, which was ironically created out of former community TV funding. Not-for-profit community TV stations have never had access to any of the funding that [Inaudible—Editor] except in Quebec. That's what that fund is for.
We suggested that because Shaw in particular has been violation of CRTC policy with respect to community TV stations—not meeting their access in local requirements over the years—that rather than Rogers just taking over those stations and continuing to have them underperform, if instead, money from former Shaw areas, at the least, and perhaps also Rogers areas, were put instead into the community access media fund, we could start to resource not-for-profits to bring back service in areas of the country that cable companies have pulled out of. Like Alex and I both said, we do it for a tenth of the cost of the public and private sector and it's really the only cost-effective option.