Canadian Heritage committee  We also use our local reporters on the national platform.

Canadian Heritage committee  You would therefore see our local reporters very present on the news channel.

Canadian Heritage committee  [Inaudible--Editor] So, you said we use freelancers.

Canadian Heritage committee  In our local services we use freelancers primarily as radio contributors, and certainly on the news channel, on national television, but not a lot on local TV. It allows us to bring other voices in. Sometimes freelancers are in places that we're not, and we need access to their

Canadian Heritage committee  The financial pressures of CBC absolutely contributed to the decisions we made locally. As you can appreciate, full service in every market, in multiple markets, costs a lot of money. Every community would say the same thing, that they want a full roster of local services from C

Canadian Heritage committee  The way you're framing the question assumes that the definition of “local” is television. We don't look at the market that way. We know there are different demographics consuming news in different ways across platforms. We know that our services do different things, but we look

Canadian Heritage committee  If we are going to provide public service journalism and public service service to millennial Canadians and younger Canadians, we have to reach them where they're consuming content, and that is on digital platforms. It's not a well-known fact and it might surprise you to know tha

Canadian Heritage committee  That has not been our experience.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a different service. Our news channel is a paid service. The fee for that gets negotiated by BDU.

Canadian Heritage committee  They're currently renegotiating that in the context of pick and pay.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think there are two things going on. CBC did have cost reductions connected to the overall budgets, but we're also re-engineering our newsrooms to be multi-platform newsrooms. In the past, you would have had separate newsrooms for local, for radio, for television, and separate

Canadian Heritage committee  Right.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, we do.

Canadian Heritage committee  You will get a different kind of programming if it's commercial-free. Certainly if you look at CBC Radio, it's very different from any of its private competitors. The key to the argument is “fully funded”. At this point, a significant portion of the money for programming comes

Canadian Heritage committee  That's right. There are commercials around radio properties digitally, but on broadcast it is commercial-free.