Senator Manning: Thank you, senator, for your question. First of all, my faith in the online world and social media is very limited. I am not on any social media myself because maybe I’m too opinionated or whatever the case may be, but I decide to keep my views to myself most of the time.

With regard to government-appointed officials — and I’ve served in different positions — I don’t necessarily agree with all appointments, as I’m sure you don’t either. My concern with this here is that the variety of opinion that we received on Bill C-11 — we received many people who came before us who had concerns with the opportunity that we will be giving to the CRTC to regulate, to organize, to decide who will be the winner and the loser here. That concerns me and concerned the witnesses we’ve heard on Bill C-11.

We have to try to make it — again, I talked about the word “fairness” being used — as open and transparent as possible. We hear a lot of that too. I think we have to try at least to be as open and transparent as we can with the legislation to make sure that the people out there who are most affected at least believe they have been treated fairly. There’s that word “fair” again. Those words are important, but it’s very important to the people who are involved in the industry out there.

That’s why I’m very interested in beginning the process at committee. I believe in my time here in the chamber — and I’m sure you’ll learn the same thing as you go — it is the committee where the work is done. It’s the committee where we educate ourselves, where we find out from across the country how people think about a piece of legislation and how they offer improvements and amendments to it. Then it is up to us to either take their advice or just sit back and not do so. But at least we have the opportunity to do so.