Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much for the time. I appreciate that.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think it's a first step. I'm not going to say it's the best, but it's--

Canadian Heritage committee  Today it's the best it's doing, but it's not reflected when you turn on the radio. It's not reflected when you watch the news, which it should be. It's not there yet, but it is a beginning, and I am thankful that's where it's at. I know Wab Kinew, who has recently been hired with CBC.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, that needs to happen, and I optimistically wait for those times.

Canadian Heritage committee  We all play a part in visiting schools. I visit schools. The last one I visited was a grade two. Ray St. Germain, a Métis person who works with NCI, visits the schools to explain who Métis people are. Gerry Barrett, a first nations person, visits schools in the north to talk about opportunities in broadcasting.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, with 57 transmitters from Winnipeg to Churchill. We have two 100,000-watt transmitters in southern Manitoba. You can literally drive across Manitoba on the Trans-Canada and hear NCI the whole way across. We're neck-and-neck with the CBC. If you talk about CBC radio reach, you're talking NCI radio reach.

Canadian Heritage committee  All across Canada. SOCAN as well is one of them, and there's a French group in Quebec as well. So yes, all across Canada, across every region in every province, particularly in northern Canada as well.

Canadian Heritage committee  I was referring to NCI. The community has so many needs that there needs to be an urban version of NCI and a rural version of NCI. That's because of the population growth. Right now, the aboriginal population is growing and succeeding. An example is at the University of Manitoba, where 10% of first-year students right now are aboriginal; in 1962 it was something like 0.5%.

Canadian Heritage committee  You need both. I go back to the talk show. My dad was a big fan of Our Native Land. I remember he used to like that show. He wouldn't say much, but when he heard it he knew that was the reality, that was what was going on, and people were hearing it. That needs to come back.

Canadian Heritage committee  And politicians. That's the reality of Canada. That's not the aboriginal community; that's Canada. That's where Canada is at, and that's where the aboriginal people are at right now. It's an exciting time. We're all living through history right now, living history. Twenty years from now, people are going to look back at this time as when things started growing, when things started happening.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I certainly do. We have really diverse programming, but I have to say this as well: when you have diverse programming like native languages and community information, it's difficult to make money from that. What we've done is we're basically running two radio stations at the same time.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the CBC needs to pull up its socks in terms of serving the aboriginal audience. I think we need both. I think we need partnerships and we also need the CBC to say we are going to make a real commitment to aboriginal programming. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996 commented on ad hoc programming, that it's just done ad hoc, and I believe that's where it still is today, in 2007.

Canadian Heritage committee  Excuse me. I wasn't aware I was to wear a headset.

Canadian Heritage committee  In terms of our partnership with the CBC, I went to the CBC office on Portage Avenue and we had a meeting just to talk about what possibilities there were. There was no initial intention that we were going to do something; it was an exploration. The CBC doesn't have an idea of what is really going on in the aboriginal community.

Canadian Heritage committee  My high school French picked up some of that, but can somebody...? I didn't have my headset on.