—there was lots to criticize in the production of several of those debates.
However, the bottom line comes down to, I'm not going to flip the switch and put on to our network a product that we're not familiar with. If someone hands you a sandwich on the street, you might be hungry but you're probably not going to take a bite if it's a strange sandwich suddenly coming to you.
That was the choice we were being offered, to basically open the switch and take a product from the Munk centre or from Rogers—“Hey, put this on your airwaves”—for which you have accountability for that broadcast.
We answer to the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council, to the CRTC. We're not prepared to do that. We weren't prepared to do it then. I wouldn't necessarily be prepared to do it if it was the CBC that was putting on its own product as well.
We want to have a voice and we want to have an understanding of what that product is going to be.