Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Blais, Mr. Hutton, thank you for joining us.
If I may, I would like to talk about community radio. Naturally, I greatly appreciate CRTC's decision with respect to CJFO. I read the transcript of all the evidence and all the questions that the CRTC had for the CJFO promoter when they made the first request. I felt that the CRTC was particularly hostile toward the promoter. That is why I took the rather unusual step of insisting that the government ask the CRTC to go back to the drawing board.
Actually, the government has set a precedent by asking the CRTC to go back to the drawing board. No other government had done it before. Fortunately, the CRTC did its homework the second time around. However, when francophones in Toronto needed the service, the CRTC had the same attitude it had toward francophones in Ottawa.
There are over 100,000 francophones in Toronto who are living in an even more pronounced minority situation than the francophones in the national capital region. I am wondering how we could make it our national objective to increase our efforts and to help official language minority communities better assert themselves, be it in Chicoutimi, Toronto, Red Deer or Trois-Pistoles. I do not have a lot of evidence showing me that the CRTC is open to that. The only evidence I have is the transcript of the testimony and CRTC's questions to the promoter of the Ottawa francophone community radio, CJFO, which I have carefully read.