Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will try to cover as much as I can and will make the commitment to respond in writing to the questions.
Are there plans for further cuts to arts funding? There are no plans currently to cut further arts funding. Many of these programs have served the artists community, the cultural community, very well for many years, and we want to ensure when we start reviewing them that they are still many aspects of them and that every aspect of them is the most effective way in today's world.
We see now greater opportunities of moving across the country for greater tours. We've seen where the hardship is, that many organizations aren't able to do as much touring as they'd like to do. I've heard reports of necessary cutbacks because of unstable funding and never knowing from one year to the next if the previous government was going to commit its funding to the arts.
These are things that we want to talk to the artistic community about and to ensure that they can now operate on a realistic basis on a year-by-year basis so that they can plan their growth, so that they can plan their futures. We know that for major exhibitions, major touring, major long-term planning by any organization, it does not help if it's purely on a 12-month basis, and we believe fundamentally it was unfair for every arts organization in this country to have to worry about whether on April 1 they were going to get the funding and what amount of funding they were going to get the following year.
That is one thing we are committed to do, but we're committed to doing it responsibly and accountably and in cooperation with the organizations involved.