Industry committee  Merci, Monsieur Vincent. I will not attempt to speak for the distributors of feature films in Canada. I believe they have a very efficient lobby organization that will be talking to you. We do not have statistics that show there was a drop in viewership. That's not something my union tracks.

Industry committee  I certainly could comment. Thank you for the question. As a preamble, you mentioned that a lot of the crisis in our industry was caused by the run-up in the Canadian dollar, and that's true; however, it would not be such a crisis if we had a Canadian industry, so let me put that as the foundation: the reason I come to Ottawa, for every single committee and every single appearance in front of the CRTC, is to build the Canadian industry.

Industry committee  That's correct.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, members of the committee. I'm very pleased to be with you today. My name is Richard Hardacre. As your chair said, I'm an actor--that's what I do professionally--so it's my job to make sure you hear me. I'm a Canadian. I'm the elected president of ACTRA, which is the union representing the interests of performers in film, television, sound recordings, radio, and new media.

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee members. My name, as you've heard, is Richard Hardacre. I'm a Canadian actor; I'm a professionally trained working actor. I'm also the elected president of ACTRA, the union representing the interests of performers in film, television, sound recordings, radio, and new media.

Canadian Heritage committee  Those are very useful questions. Ken Thompson is going to respond.

Canadian Heritage committee  I have one final comment, if I may. We recognize, ACTRA sincerely recognizes, the weight of responsibility on this committee on heritage. It's a very important committee, not only for us but for the country. We know that, and we indeed appreciate your efforts with this very difficult challenge, and we sincerely appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today on this, and we look forward to future opportunities as well.

Canadian Heritage committee  New media, or other media, or whatever you would like to call it—sometimes we call it digital media and sometimes we call it Internet—is very complex. We appreciate the question because there is no simple answer to it. It's a very complex situation. We supported the independent producers when they were speaking with the CBC about their right to share in revenues from broadcasts over new media.

Canadian Heritage committee  I appreciate that comment very much. We understand there's a struggle going on. This committee has a very difficult task to make funding recommendations and how the CBC's mandate should be preserved. It's clearly a big challenge. I don't believe we think advertising should be cut instantly.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a very fair question, and we have a very good model of it in radio in this country; we had content requirements for radio broadcasting of musicians. We would not have Shania Twain, perhaps; we would not have Bryan Adams--

Canadian Heritage committee  I wouldn't venture to say where we're not willing to get funding from. I have to return to what has happened historically in successive governments in this country. The cuts have been slowly bleeding...not to death, but bleeding the CBC. If the levels that had existed prior to those were restored...goodness, I mean, our studies show that just $100 million of government spending takes up about 45 minutes of the national budget across the country.

Canadian Heritage committee  For example.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, I do not. I believe that if one expects CBC English language to be the only broadcaster of Canadian stories and Canadian programming, sure there would be a lot of production. There would perhaps be a couple of new hours of programming. We don't believe the CBC should be the lone voice in this country.

Canadian Heritage committee  If I may follow up on that, do you specifically mean funding models for the CBC?