Mr. Speaker, I am also pleased to have an opportunity to participate in this important debate on Bill C-55.
To follow the words of many of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, I remain firmly committed to our objective of preserving and enhancing Canadian culture and see the bill as exactly opposite, an anathema to that objective.
As my colleagues have done, I would also like to acknowledge the work of the hon. member for Dartmouth who has been so vigilant on the issue from the beginning. She brought her personal involvement in the cultural artistic fabric of the nation to the process and the bill, which gives them real meaning and definition. I congratulate her for leading our caucus in preserving a sense of meaning around the debate and doing everything possible to persuade the Liberal government that what it is doing is wrong when it comes to preserving Canadian culture.
I bring us back to what it means when we talk about culture. What does Canadian culture mean? Many others have done the same in this debate. They have tried to talk about how culture is the spirit of a nation. Many others have talked about culture being the mirror which reflects the lives, the history and identities of Canadians.
It is a celebration of everything that is unique, special and important about a nation. It gives expression to our struggles, our history, our values, our beliefs, our troubles and our moments of ecstasy and joy in the development of a nation.
Many have written on this subject. Many have tried to find the words that will impress upon governments everywhere the importance of acknowledging what culture is and how important cultural policy is in the pursuit of adhering to the true definition of culture.
I refer to a couple of writers who have tried to express what we are talking about. I am drawing on a document produced about a year ago by the Canadian Conference of the Arts called the “Final Report of the Working Group on Cultural Policy for the 21st Century”. I will refer to this document on several occasions throughout my speech because it encompasses much of what we are all about today, why the bill is so important, and why we are so concerned about the direction the government is taking us.
That report uses quotes from a well known author, essayist and novelist, Hugh MacLennan, who said in 1978:
We know intuitively that we will become great only when we translate our force and knowledge into spiritual and artistic terms. Then, and only then, will it matter to mankind whether Canada has existed or not.
That is the essence of what we are talking about today. We are talking about the means by which we can translate our past, our present, our hopes and our aspirations into spiritual and artistic terms. Others from all walks of life have tried to express these thoughts as well.
I also want to put on record the quote of a Vancouver businessman, David Lemon, who said in 1993:
The arts are intrinsic to a sense of nation. They are intrinsic to the cultivation of a shared identity. They are intrinsic to a prosperous economy.
This is something that has been overlooked in the debate. We talk about the importance of culture as an expression of our inner most feelings and of our history as a nation. We talk about how it is a mirror and how it gives us some identity, but we sometimes overlook the value of arts and cultural activities in terms of the economy. Certainly it is a message I would hope Reform members are listening to and trying to understand in order to rethink their policies when it comes to culture. We are not short of studies which show that this whole area of the arts and cultural industries is probably one of the most labour intensive aspects of our economy and one of the greatest contributors to our prosperity as a nation.