Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I, like Mr. Julian, find it regrettable that we are wasting Mr. Bélisle's time, but here we are.
I think it's important to remember that Ms. Tait is, indeed, coming on Thursday. It's nice that everybody in the room has now acknowledged that indeed she is coming on Thursday. The clerk has indicated that she has certainly reached out to see what her availability is, but we have no idea what Ms. Tait's answers to the questions that she's going to be asked will be. I'm assuming that members will treat her with a respectful approach and that, at the end of that meeting, if people are not satisfied, we will have the option to bring forth a motion to bring her back if that is what we need to do.
I must confess that I am troubled by the ongoing claims or assertions—whatever we want to call them—and that people are trying to get Canadians to believe that somehow the CBC is on the side of terrorism and that there are those who have decided that it is okay for the government to dictate to journalists and the CBC what they should be saying, etc. I think we should be very careful and mindful of the fact that we live in a country where the independence of the media and the freedom of the press are critical. I shudder to think about what a Conservative government might do in dictating the terms of what journalists should and should not be allowed to cover, of what is news and what isn't. I'm not really interested in living in an Orwellian world like that. I think it's really important for us to ensure that we do everything we can in this committee to recognize, preserve, protect and indeed defend the independence of the CBC and Radio-Canada and to stop this ongoing demeaning of the work they do and of the journalists who put themselves in harm's way to provide Canadians with news. We don't have to agree with what they say or how they say it, but I think we have to agree that their independence is paramount.
It is important for Canadians from coast to coast to coast to see this committee as much as possible standing up for the independence of journalism and standing up for the rights and the protections of journalists to do the important work that we need them to do in this country from coast to coast to coast and indeed around the world.
I look forward to having discussions about this. Indeed I think it is important for us to have conversations about misinformation and conversations about the way in which it can mislead Canadians and the implications about that for the independent, fantastic journalism that the CBC and other independent journalists provide, and about what that misinformation can do in terms of trust and the ease with which things can be misconstrued. I know there are bot farms across the world, whether they're in Egypt or Russia, that amplify misinformation.
I look forward to bringing forward a motion to this committee in not too distant a future, whereby we will actually have the opportunity to discuss openly the notion of misinformation and disinformation and the impact of that disinformation on public broadcasting, on journalism, on the lives of journalists, and indeed, on the way in which people see and understand one another, and the consequences of that misinformation.
The idea that we would bring someone or call someone onto the carpet—which is what I think my colleagues would really like to do with the head of the CBC—and demand that she carry the government's message is, I think, remarkable. I think it is remarkable, coming from a party that talks about gatekeepers, that somehow they would now like government to dictate the terms under which Canadians should understand what news and journalists are doing—