Mr. Speaker, earlier today there was quite a good discussion about the unique role of the CBC and Radio-Canada with respect to the services for Canadians and particularly for French Canadians. This unique role to provide these important unifying services to Canadians means that the services have to be across Canada because there are many francophones who live outside of Quebec.
The hypothesis is that in order to provide these services across all of Canada, CBC Radio-Canada has to operate at a disadvantage to other private broadcasters who can thrive on purchasing high profile U.S. programming and therefore attract the advertising revenues. CBC Radio-Canada is at a disadvantage simply because it is meeting its mandate.
The question is whether or not there is a real justification for assisting the CBC, so that programming presently offered does not suffer and may be lost, and to mitigate the chance that the programming, if cut, will never be able to return. I wonder if the member has a comment.