Canadian Heritage Committee on Sept. 27th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.

Is there any discussion?

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I'm just wondering if you can elaborate on the contest itself so we can get a sense of what it's about.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I'm just going to refer to some of the things I've circulated in both official languages. The New7Wonders Foundation is the organization behind this contest. The campaign for the first contest concluded in 2007. This one will conclude on November 11, 2011. It is a Swiss-based, non-profit organization and was established by a Swiss-born Canadian filmmaker, Bernard Weber.

Again, it's the second contest. They expect more than one billion votes leading up to the official declaration of the seven wonders of nature. You're talking a billion votes. You can vote more than once, obviously, and you can vote by text and by Internet.

It's a big deal on the Atlantic coast. There's been a lot of promotion and a lot of publicity about it. Canada AM has been boosting us quite regularly across the country, but if we're going to be successful in getting ourselves to be one of the new seven wonders of nature in an international competition, we really need to get the whole country behind us, and I think this would be a worthwhile thing for our committee to look into.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Before we go to Mr. Simms, who is next, on our agenda it shows us going in camera, but apparently we have to pause a bit to do that, for 20 seconds or so.

Is it the will of the committee that when discussing committee business we go in camera, as per the agenda?

[An hon. member]

Do you want to do that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Well, that's what we normally do for committee business in committees, but....

[Some hon. members]

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Okay. So that just takes a second.

[Proceedings continue in camera]