Mr. Speaker, of course this issue deserves some serious debate. We must agree on the principle that television in particular should be public and provided with sufficient funding to enable the medium to fulfill all of its functions, educational, informational, and so on.
Over the past few years, funds allocated to television have been slashed. We must increase funding for both the CBC and Radio-Canada. I will leave it to my colleague from Saint-Lambert to discuss dollar figures elsewhere.
I really think it is essential that we provide adequate funding for our public television providers. This applies to Quebec, as I was saying, but it also applies to Canadian identity. It is in the best interest of Quebeckers, even after achieving sovereignty, that Canada as a nation be culturally strong so that we can stand up to our American neighbours. As we know, the U.S. exerts a very strong influence on culture worldwide, regardless of the fact that there is not one single American culture as the big business of the American cultural industry would have us believe.