Thank you very much. I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Dreeshen.
Mr. Lacroix, I made the case in Parliament as recently as Friday that the average family of four in my riding gives the CBC the equivalent of a week's groceries. That's what they contribute to the CBC. I'm kind of astonished with something, and this is where I think Mr. Caulkins was going. Ultimately, you're defining programming, you're defining creative activities, you're defining journalism so broadly that if you went for lunch with somebody in your marketing department or in your programming department, and it went on their credit card, there'd be no transparency for that. Zero. It would depend on whose credit card it goes on, and who gets reimbursed.
That's the truth. And when you say before the committee that how much you're spending on advertising George Stroumboulopoulos on billboards or for a special launch of a season at TIFF will never be made public, well, the public wasn't invited to the special party at TIFF, but the public paid for it, and I think the public deserves to know what the relationship.... I don't understand what the relationship is between George Stroumboulopoulos's show and TIFF, but what I can say is that if there was a significant amount of money spent, I don't understand why that shouldn't be made available to the public to understand how much you've spent on it.
But even more importantly, when you say that you're subject to Auditor General's reviews and audited statements, I did four years of university business education, and I can tell you that an aggregated financial statement does not provide any kind of transparency in the regard I've just spoken to. It simply puts all the numbers together in a big heap that can account for everything. It doesn't provide the kind of transparency somebody in my riding might ask for, someone who is providing you with the equivalent of a week's groceries for their family and is seeking that kind of transparency. It does absolutely nothing to provide that for them.