I think the committee needed to hear from your mouth what it was. One of the things that you said in your statement was that it's a trust in institutions, and that Canadians should be able to place their trust in the media. In particular, you mentioned the public broadcaster, the CBC.
Interestingly enough, just a couple of weeks ago, there was a media summit that was hosted in Vancouver. At that summit, from the stage just before the Prime Minister took it, the president of the Canadian Media Producers Association said, “Prime Minister, know that every person in this room and the 180,000 people who work in this industry have your back, just as we know that you have ours”.
Minister, this is from a media organization in a room full of media folks, saying directly to the Prime Minister, “[we] have your back, just as we know that you have ours”. Minister, that's not the role of the media. The role of the media is not to have the back of the Prime Minister and to be able to tell the story that the government wants told. The role of the media is to be truthful in storytelling, to report the news as Canadians deserve to have it told. When a statement like this is made, it chips away at the credibility of media, and it actually distorts the trust of Canadians, which you just spoke about as being important.
What do you make of that?