Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Ms. Fry. The first thing, working backwards, is that the CRTC just yesterday announced that they are going to hold hearings to review new media. ACTRA has been asking them to do that since about 1999. Previous presidents, and Richard Hardacre, have all been before the CRTC and have repeatedly asked for a review of new media.

Canadian Heritage committee  I can only say that advertising from hockey, from what I understand from the CBC financials, as basic as they are on their website, is about $400 million a year, so it would require at least an infusion of that much to restore the CBC to its present levels, which in our opinion are not adequate to carry out its mandate.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Richard. I'd just like to draw your attention to paragraph 32, in which we reference that “in spite of the $60 million in extra funding that the CBC received each year over the past four years, the funding levels are $415 million less than in 1990 (in 2004 dollars).”

Canadian Heritage committee  As Mr. Hardacre said, it's very difficult for us to say whether it's appropriately managed or not. There have been some programming decisions that have not been very well made, in our union's opinion.