Canadian Heritage committee  This is the first I hear of this particular suggestion. In the first instance, yes, the CBC does require more funding to do what it does and to be able to do it more effectively. There's no question in our minds about that. However, we have not reflected on how that might be accomplished--except, I think, as we believe the federal government has a role in providing public funding for the arts, we would believe that is the case for the national public broadcaster as well.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, we have no specific comments to make on the subject of governance. I think that as a Crown corporation, the CBC faces huge challenges in terms of long-term planning. As its management often says, they would like to have a long-term plan with guaranteed long-term funding to plan their activities and their strategic plan.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't believe so. I would leave that to more technical expertise, but I don't believe it requires a change in the mandate.

Canadian Heritage committee  To get back a bit to your question of mandate, I think the mandate, like the Canada Council's, is very enabling; it's a permissive mandate, in the sense that it allows them a fairly broad range of activity within the spirit of that mandate. I think it's for that reason that we think it is a good mandate and one they can operate within.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think, Mr. Chair, what the CBC has achieved is pretty remarkable in terms of the way they've managed to populate much of their programming with Canadian artists and Canadian content. There are numerous examples that come to mind. You've cited a few. But I think they've been able to present new artists in their regular-stream programming, as well as on programs that are destined to cover the arts only.

Canadian Heritage committee  Not exactly. We help manage the CBC Literary Awards, which would be one of the partnerships we have with the corporation, by providing them with the criteria. We also help them with promotion, but it is not a transfer of funds. In some other cases, like the advertising for the Governor General's Literary Awards, it is simply a transfer of information.