Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. My name is Daniel Bernhard. I am the executive director of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and, as Ms. Dabrusin said, I'm joined by my colleague Jim Thompson today. Friends is the citizens' voice for Canadian journalism and storytelling, in which publi

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure. I'll turn it over to Jim Thompson. If you'd like to see the full results of the poll, you can see them there on friends.ca, but Jim will have some more specific information for you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think it's important for us to be precise when we use terms like “liberalize” and “deliberalize”. We're not talking about becoming more like the Liberal Party or less. I know that's not your sense.

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. I just wanted to be clear about what we're referring to. I think that when you look at some of the leaders around the world with more authoritarian tendencies, you will notice a consistent distain for facts and for the journalists who work tirelessly to produce and d

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. As Mr. Thompson said, support for CBC is very strong across the country, and that support extends to people of all political persuasions, and the numbers really support that. Our job is to put that support on prominent display. Right now, whether it is leaving open

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that's a great question. Thank you for that question. I think the new process is definitely a step in the right direction. What we would like to see is for that process to be enshrined in the law so that it's not just a choice of the current government on how they will c

Canadian Heritage committee  Do you have a Gmail account?

Canadian Heritage committee  Did you ever sign on a dotted line to say, Google can read all of my email in order to sell me stuff more efficiently?

Canadian Heritage committee  Okay. I would challenge you to read the terms of agreement of all of these services and see whether you're still alive by the end. It's an incredibly long process that I think people are not.... We cannot reasonably expect people to agree to those things. The other thing is that

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  When representatives of countries containing 400 million people ask a very important company to explain itself and its impact on democracy and that company decides not to appear, I think that speaks volumes for their respect for the people's will.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would say they can, and more than that, they have to; they must. Entertainment programming and news programming are not like other industries. They shape our sense of what's possible. They teach us who to empathize with. They help inform our ideal of what the normal society loo

Canadian Heritage committee  Sorry. I apologize.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, that's correct.