Madam Speaker, obviously everyone is concerned when the cultural heritage of the country is threatened, as it has been for the past 10 years. Restoring funding to the CBC is important for it to carry out its core mandate, in which it has been hampered in providing local news coverage for places from coast to coast to coast. It has been unable to do it and has seen a loss of employment and loss of functioning facilities over the course of the last 10 years.
We would love to see a growth in the private sector newspaper and news media as well. It is important for them to make their own personal decisions regarding how best to staff their enterprises.
However, in terms of the government's support for the CBC and for arts funding, it is very important to encourage the type of non-partisan high-quality public broadcasting from coast to coast, and the support I talked about was also for primary arts funding. These are the creators, producers, directors, and actors who go on to help staff and provide support to the commercial enterprises that we all hope to protect as well.