Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely correct. We had talked about a long-term plan of $40 per capita as a way to deal with the future needs of the CBC. The immediate problem is the need for bridge financing. It would have been a perfectly reasonable solution to get the CBC through this. Instead, the loss of 270 jobs at Radio-Canada in Montreal, for example, will be felt in our francophone communities right across Canada. The disappearance of voice, of stories, of conversation makes it more difficult to maintain a cultural cohesiveness across such a vast territory if we do not have those in place.
Regardless of the Conservatives' gibberish about how the private sector will do it, nobody has filled these gaps. The ability of the francophone regions to speak to one another can only happen in the context of a public broadcaster. I believe this is the direct result of a government hiding behind an economic crisis to carry out an ideological vendetta.