This is a problem, as I say, that's taken 75 years to get here.
No, I do not believe anyone has a complete handle on how every dollar is spent at the CBC. I do believe that in much better times fiscally the CBC got in the habit of spending a lot of money.
When I first came to the CBC, I was shocked to find.... I was with CTV before that, and in charge of a budget. If I was 10ยข over the budget, I would be in big trouble. But when I came to CBC, I was told that if you're not 15% overbudget, you're not going to get an increase the next year. That was a bit shocking for me, coming from private broadcasting.
I think a lot of the people who are now in charge of some of those empires I talk about came through that system and were informed by that system. They've learned how to work within that system. They've learned how to hide money. They've learned how to hide funding for their own future enterprises.
I don't know how you break that up. I once asked my boss at the CBC how we could fix this. My boss at that time was one of the best empire builders within the CBC. He said the only way to fix the CBC is to blow it up and start all over again. But he also said we can't do that, because if we blow it up, no one will allow us to start it up all over again.
So you have to weigh both sides--the value of the CBC and the problems internally. I believe, and this is what I'm hoping to get across here, that if CBC did open their books, it would actually help them. They might be able to get at some of the problems that exist within the CBC. Possibly it would give them both the impetus and the knowledge to fix those problems.