Official Languages committee  I must say that it is based on our judgment and our experience.

Official Languages committee  There's something that is important here. There was Seducing Dr. Louis, The Barbarian Invasions, and a number of others. What I was struck by is that we had great success. We accessed 25% of the francophone market with these films when I was at Telefilm Canada and—

Official Languages committee  When we put out films with English subtitles, including the great Denys Arcand film which won the foreign language film Oscar, anglophones did not go see it. That is a problem—

Official Languages committee  You asked me on what basis we made our decision, whether it was on marketing studies—

Official Languages committee  —or our judgment.

Official Languages committee  It is not a—

Official Languages committee  I totally reject Mr. Coderre's comments. I am obviously not anti-francophone or against French culture in Canada. That is not true. As I've said, I have made major efforts to bridge these two cultures. For my part, I've stated it and I'll repeat it, this is a major goal for the corporation, including CBC English.

Official Languages committee  Thank you for your comments. You may be surprised to hear about one aspect of CBC funding. As I told Mr. Lebel earlier, we did not take this decision for financial reasons, but at the end of the day we have very difficult financial challenges to deal with. It is true that English-language television is a public broadcaster, but over the course of this fiscal year, 55% of our budget will be coming from the private sector.

Official Languages committee  We are under-funded. If you compare CBC and Radio-Canada to other public broadcasters throughout the world, aside from PBS, we receive the least funding. We know that Americans do not have the same cultural problems we have. The issue of francophones and anglophones is moot. If you compare CBC funding to that of the BBC, in proportion to the population, the BBC receives three times more money than we do, and that is to broadcast in English only.

Official Languages committee  I understand, but increased funding would certainly make decisions easier. That is obvious.

Official Languages committee  We did.

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  No.

Official Languages committee  My experience. As you know, I financed many French-language films when I was at Telefilm Canada and we had huge blockbusters. I mentioned some of these films to you this morning.

Official Languages committee  Time was short and we had to make a decision. We decided to focus on Paul Anka and Oscar Peterson. I am well aware that you believe that we made a mistake.