Canadian Heritage committee  May I add one thing with respect to the monopoly you just mentioned? Currently, TVA has approximately 28% of the Quebec market share. I didn't do the calculations, but if you add all specialty channels to the mix, representing perhaps 5%, it amounts to 33%. So this is far from a monopoly.

Canadian Heritage committee  If I may add, sir, you mentioned Minister Oda. She took a lot of beating for something that she did not deserve, because she obviously was open-minded about what was going on. She was obviously willing to listen. For once, someone was listening. The new chairman of the CRTC, when he issued a statement last week, also made it clear that it was time those issues were listened to.

Canadian Heritage committee  If I may add something, sir, there is a coexistence of private and public interests, and that's between the public broadcaster and the private broadcasters. Why is it that the private broadcasters, or the private entities like ours, should put their money into a pot so that it becomes part of some kind of a socialist approach to the way we fund programming?

Canadian Heritage committee  I am totally sorry. With all due respect, sir, I totally disagree with your narrative. First, we're not moving into this new business. We're right in the middle of it. Last year alone, with less than 700,000 subscribers to our digital service, we had 20 million orders on our video-on-demand service.

Canadian Heritage committee  We will to continue to grow in that market. The problem is not the way you describe it; the problem is that the Canadian Television Fund tells me, for instance, that video on demand is not a legitimate broadcaster, which should in itself trigger the funding for a program. I'm saying—

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm sorry, but if I may finish my point, the reality is that if the public broadcaster is to be strong, and we've expressed the wish quite openly and quite often that it remain strong.... We tell the Government of Canada, why don't you take the $100 million, put it where it belongs, and leave us to decide where we're going with our money?

Canadian Heritage committee  May 2005.

Canadian Heritage committee  Mr. Angus, may I please add something that Pierre Karl may have forgotten when he presented our proposal a moment ago? I would like to underline and insist on the fact—because I don't think you hear corporations saying this very often in front of elected officials—that we are renouncing the $100 million that comes from the government.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's actually much bigger.

Canadian Heritage committee  To be more specific, at the moment, the latest numbers show that TVA's market share is 29, while the specialty channels put together are 39. So the real competition is not Radio-Canada; it's the specialty channels and all of the other means of communication.

Canadian Heritage committee  In your preamble you spoke about protecting Canadian culture, something that is quite noble and beyond reproach. The problem is that it no longer works. How are you going to prevent YouTube and its ilk from entering Canada? I don't see how you can prevent these new and very powerful universal communication tools from entering Canada.

Canadian Heritage committee  No. We do have recommendations.