Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for inviting me to speak to you about the government's reinvestment in public broadcasting. Heather Conway, Louis Lalande and I have met with you before, so I'm very happy to see you and the committee members again. Before I begin, let me offer

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman—

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to go through—because we have 40 seconds—the different pieces of what we do and name people because I don't frankly know which colour, which political party, our journalists actually vote for when they are in their box. Their job, and this is what di

Official Languages committee  Monsieur Williamson, diversity of opinion, diversity of voices, is something that Jennifer McGuire, who is the editor in chief of CBC, and Michel Cormier, who does that in French, are focused on. They report on it on a regular basis at the board level and in the context of the in

Official Languages committee  As you know, Mr. Williamson, we're the only organization in the country that has an ombudsman on the English side and on the French side. If you look at the rulings of the ombudsman, the ombudsman takes a very important role, and has a very important role in being completely inde

Official Languages committee  As I explained a few minutes ago, the programs on our schedule are selected based on a large number of criteria. The programs' ability to generate revenue for CBC is important. When we announced we would no longer pursue the rights for professional sports, we also said that we c

Official Languages committee  That's a difficult question, because the other broadcasters don't have to put up any numbers. It's so integrated that I don't know what the costs of the workforce at, for example, CTV or Global are. So I can't answer that question except by guessing, and I'm not going to guess.

Official Languages committee  The 150th anniversary is a key part of the mandate and what we think we should be doing for Canadians. As you know, we started that conversation with a number of meetings across the country. We put that into a book. We have offered our minister access to all of the information th

Official Languages committee  This is a complicated question, and I'm not simply saying it's a complicated question to make the answer more difficult. We are literally trying to drive a car on the highway in the third lane as fast as we can to keep up with what's going on in the world and changing the tires a

Official Languages committee  The answer is, absolutely. In the context of the next strategy, we've spoken to 11 or 12 broadcasters at length. I have a special relationship with Mark Scott, who is the head of ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Of all the countries in the world, Australia is closest

Official Languages committee  Mr. Nicholls, first off, I thank you for putting a face on this, because when I look at this, I look at numbers, but every morning when I wake up, I realize that we've just affected the lives of 647 people, and the administrative assistant who just lost her job is as important as

Official Languages committee  CFTM.

Official Languages committee  I'm pleased to see that you watch our programming. I invite you to continue to do so.

Official Languages committee  I will start with that. Mr. Godin, the table does indicate that seven positions will be cut in New Brunswick. However, I don't want to start saying that five positions are being cut in Toronto or elsewhere. In fact, they are many more than that. An important point about the env

Official Languages committee  Okay. We will use another question to give you that information.