Mr. Speaker, I should first of all correct my hon. colleague in that I was never minister of defence. I had the honour of being associate minister of defence and my colleague, Mr. Graham, who is no longer in Parliament, had asked me to look into the official languages application in defence.
The answer to the question is to be found in what others have said. When we look at the concerns expressed by ACTRA, by the Canadian Conference of the Arts and by la Fédération culturelle canadienne française following the Speech from the Throne, we see they have some grave concerns as to the absence of anything to deal with culture writ large, our cultural industries in the Speech from the Throne.
Yes, they acknowledge there is mention of copyright legislation which we have been waiting now for 18 months, either in industry or in heritage, as my colleague over there from Edmonton knows. The absence of where the government wishes to take or not to take Canada's cultural concerns is very much something that frightens people. There are a number of signals that have emanated in the past, as I mentioned one, from the Reform Party in its dissenting opinion on the Clifford Lincoln report about the role of a public broadcaster, wishing for the privatization of CBC. That has never been denied by the current government.
There are a number of concerns out there which the government had an opportunity to address in the Speech from the Throne and it chose not to. The question is still very valid: Is there something that the Conservatives do not wish to tell us? Perhaps in questions in the House or perhaps even better in committee, we can get some answers to these questions. They are fundamental to the well-being of Canadian identity in a continent where we are dominated by our neighbours from the south.