Let's talk about your riding, one that I know well having lived there myself. The signal from Ottawa covers most of the riding, and the signal from Montreal covers the rest. Radio waves don't always respect riding boundaries. The criteria for determining how they travel are not the same. Sometimes there can be a conflict between two signals.
In this particular case, one of the ways of resolving that conflict has been to considerably increase the signal from Ottawa, as we also have done for Montreal. There must not be many areas of your riding that no longer receive the Ottawa signal. Even in Cornwall, there is a transmitter that casts quite a large net towards the Ottawa River. By increasing our frequencies, we have created areas of overlapping coverage which mean that people in Quebec can now receive a signal from Montreal. The worst problem for some people is that they receive both signals.
And there are regions that are more problematic than the Ottawa region in that respect. Because of their size, some ridings do not always receive the signals they would like to receive.
To cover la Première Chaîne and Espace Musique, and all of Radio-Canada's radio services in English and French, we have more than 300 transmitters located across the country. We are able to calibrate these transmitters so that people receive the signal that they should receive.
The rest of the country obviously poses problems in terms of coverage. Moncton doesn't talk about Caraquet, Montreal doesn't talk about the regions, Ottawa doesn't talk much about Prescott-Russell, and we don't talk much about la Petite-Nation. We need to seek a balance, and that's not easy, although we're aware of the issues.
Our reporters on the ground in Ottawa have set for themselves the goal of casting a much wider net all across the region. Between Quebec and Ontario, there is, once again, a question of balance. The Ottawa region is fairly complex: the francophone-anglophone mix, the regional balance, the Quebec-Ontario balance, and the federal government, which plays a very prominent role.
I was manager of the Ottawa station for a number of years, and I can tell you that things are not easy in that region, although our ratings suggest that we are able to satisfy quite a few people.