Canadian Heritage committee  Let me talk about the actual reality of what our customers are receiving and the rates they're paying for them. We offer telephone, we offer Internet, and we offer digital television services. In the last five years, through the bundling of those three services, our customers are actually paying less for that basket of products than they were five years ago.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, that's a great question. If we could be all things to all people and carry every service and have the capacity to do that, it would be in the best interests of our customers, but it really comes down to having to balance interests. In our channel lineup on Star Choice, we've tried to balance our customers and original programming.

Canadian Heritage committee  I understand that. If capacity were not an issue, we could be carrying 400 news services of duplicate programming from every community across the country. We've tried to balance that. Ken, do you have any thoughts on that?

Canadian Heritage committee  I lost the translation there. I'm sorry.

Canadian Heritage committee  That is correct.

Canadian Heritage committee  Our satellite service does provide services in Quebec. What was Star Choice, which is now called Shaw Direct, provides services to all of Quebec.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  No.

Canadian Heritage committee  My gosh, I can visualize CTV and Canwest.... There are various owners of specialty services. Would they be prepared to share what they derive in their fees for specialty services amongst themselves?

Canadian Heritage committee  They can do it right now. In fact, what we're suggesting with CTV is if you take CTV as a whole, they have conventional broadcasting, over-the-air broadcasting. They have specialty services. As a company, just as we may not have all of our divisions operating at the same level, they are still one and the same.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, we lost $350 million. We didn't have a tag day special. We said we need to make this a profitable business and let's get creative about doing that. We looked at adding new services and making the service a much more attractive service to our customers. Ultimately we were able to move from that position, of losing $350 million, through investment—investing in more transponders and the new satellite.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. We're delighted to be here today. With me is Ken Stein, our senior vice-president of corporate and regulatory affairs; Jean Brazeau, our senior vice-president of regulatory affairs; and Alex Park, vice-president of programming and educational services. We look forward to an open and constructive dialogue about the state of the Canadian broadcasting system, the importance of serving local communities, Shaw's contributions to the system, and our focus on the 3.4 million customers, your constituents, whom we serve.