Mr. Speaker, with respect to television as opposed to radio, the public broadcaster has two roles. One is entertainment and one is to create a sense of cultural identity. What we see with private broadcasters is the role to entertain, period.
The problem we are facing is that CBC does not have the resources to adequately provide the entertainment value. Let us be very honest that without the entertainment value it will not have the market sufficient to carry out its educational and cultural roles. That connection between entertainment and maintaining a strong audience base so that it can carry out those other functions is essential. Unfortunately the situation now, for example in Toronto, is that the design production abilities of CBC English Canada have been erased. No longer will English Canada television be able to do in-house production. They have gotten rid of that, I believe because of the lack of funding over the years, to the point where now they are simply having to buy outside programming.
That undermines the notion of a cohesive identity that can be created through a cultural space. It also undermines what we had always had before on CBC, which is the building of a talent pool that is committed as national broadcasters for entertainment, for sports, for news and for cultural and political development.