Earlier, you referred to francophone communities in Quebec and Acadie. Were you aware of the fact that due to the oil industry job boom in Alberta, there were now many francophones in the province? There are a great number of them, possibly in areas where francophone television is inaccessible. They may be listening to the CBC. You have to consider what is currently happening in our country. This committee is discussing our country's two official languages. Don't take this the wrong way, I am not trying to say that CBC should become a francophone television network. That is not our purpose here. We have a francophone television network, Radio-Canada.
We have some difficulty with the idea that a song could make viewers change channels. We're talking about singers and songs here. If Claude Dubois is unknown, then why was he invited to the hall of fame gala. That is not the type of event you would invite unknown artists to. Someone chose to invite him and asked whether it would be possible for him to be on the air.
You then used the passing of Oscar Peterson as an argument, stating that you needed to set aside a lot of time for him. But this has been ongoing for four years now. There has not been one death a year during that period, has there? Let's put our cards on the table. The CBC's attitude is the same as that of Radio-Canada. Radio-Canada believes that if things don't come from Montreal they are worthless even though there are 7 million people living in Quebec. Acadian artists do not have their rightful place on Radio-Canada television. We have the same problem: ratings.
But we cannot lose sight of the fact that CBC and Radio-Canada are publicly funded. Public television is able to broadcast culture throughout a country. That is what we want. I am not talking about a half-hour report in French that viewers would not understand a word of. I can understand CBC's position. But in this case the straw that broke the camel's back was the fact that we were talking about a song.