Madam Speaker, I do not disagree with the member for Peterborough at all when he talks about the unmitigated gall of Liberals to introduce this motion after they, in the mid-1990s, cut 4,000 jobs from the CBC and in fact did cut things like the suppertime news hour in centres like Winnipeg, something that we are still missing today.
However, if we are going to go back in history, let us go back to the Conservatives in the election of 2004, when John Reynolds said that CBC Television would be completely cut loose to compete and would have to depend entirely on its own advertising revenue; or Stephen Rogers, the Conservative candidate in Vancouver Quadra, who allegedly called the CBC the “communist broadcasting corporation”.
Does the member and his colleagues in the Conservative Party care about the CBC at all? Does he believe in the need for a public broadcaster? Why not embark on bridge financing, which is a cost-effective way to ensure that this national institution, so important to Canadians, is able to survive?