Canadian Heritage committee  It has to be done.

Canadian Heritage committee  Let me just address one small part of what Madam Bourgeois brings up. That's in terms of the CBC's involvement as a partner with arts organizations, so in other words, people doing theatre, symphony orchestras, publishers, all those people. There's a win-win possibility here, because recent statistics show that Canadians—in fact, North Americans generally—are increasing their participation in the arts.

Canadian Heritage committee  For sure. After all, I'm speaking as a writer, so I'm self-interested here. But there's no question that unless the writing is there, the show will never be there. They can take a good script and make a bad movie out of it, but you're unlikely to make a good movie out of a bad script.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's always a tough battle in Canada for anything to get done. A television series, a feature film is a huge climb up a hill. When you see something that's good, you think how all the stars had to line up for that thing to happen. So it does take people like Paul Pope, who was a producer of that series.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, absolutely. As I touched on briefly, the opportunity for artists in this area to be exposed to a national audience is tremendously important, whether you're in film or visual arts or are a writer, and the CBC has been able to provide that. But it has been doing it less and less in recent times because of the programming not originating in the area.

Canadian Heritage committee  Such as what, for example?

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I'm sure you're right. Obviously with the mandate as it exists, we're not getting the results that we're looking for. Do we simply say, enforce the mandate, require it to be fulfilled. Or as you're suggesting, do we need to make it crystal clear in the mandate that...? When I read the mandate, I say yes, it says it all there.

Canadian Heritage committee  In terms of the first question you posed, Mr. Scott, about the dependence on CBC—of course we're always uneasy with saying that we're dependent on anything in this region, since we're always being accused of over-dependence—there's no question, with the current distribution techniques, whether it's satellite or digital cable or Internet television, that the dependence on the over-the-air CBC signal is not the same as it once was.

Canadian Heritage committee  We will. Thank you. First of all, welcome to St. John's. Thank you for coming here, and thank you for inviting us to appear and speak to you. I'll briefly describe the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council. It's a non-profit provincial crown agency, with the main mandate of fostering and promoting the arts in Newfoundland and Labrador.