Madam Speaker, I thank my dear colleague from the Bloc. This is interesting. I have represented a very small community in northwestern British Columbia. The CBC/Radio-Canada has played a very important role there in bringing the community together and encouraging dialogue in the nation, not just the region.
With respect to the way both the Liberals and Conservatives have handled the CBC over time, the possibility of privatization, while never talked about directly, is implicated by the way the budgets are handled. In the mid-1990s, when the Liberals drastically cut the budget, the head of the CBC and friends of the CBC talk about the need for greater use of commercials and American broadcasting. The revenues became the only criteria by which to judge the national broadcaster, and that conversation continues. Over time the trajectory is towards this inevitable conclusion, as proposed by the Conservatives and Liberals, to privatize the network.
For the smaller regions in our country, the possibility of having that national conversation under the guise of exclusively a private broadcaster is no longer possible. One thing that unifies such a large and broad country as ours is the role of public broadcasting, with “public” being emphasized. We collect our taxes together and put them towards a national broadcaster, a public broadcaster, to fulfill this role of connecting the regions and playing into this national dialogue, this national story that is Canada.
It is so important for small villages and communities such as ours that there be cooperation with this in mind. I wonder if she could comment on this.