Thank you.
I appreciate my colleague bringing this forward, because certainly in Quebec and the rest of the country there's a lot of concern about this festivals program.
But I am concerned about this motion. I have spoken with festival coalitions from across the country, and they still believe it's possible to get an agreement in place. If we support this, festivals in every other part of the country will be basically sold down the river. I think that would be improper for us, because there's a question of the inequity of this motion.
There might be smaller festivals in, say, Prince Edward Island that aren't as..... I don't know whether they have criteria or not, but if we simply turn this into a transfer to one region and leave out every other festival in the country, we would be remiss in what we need to do, which is get the coalitions meeting with the minister, get this criteria in place, and get this money out.