Thank you.
I have a couple of quick questions about distribution.
I think it's safe to say that all of us here on this committee follow cultural issues and we're interested in cultural product. Yet I find that as a Canadian, as a member of the Canadian heritage committee of the House of Commons, I see so little of your fabulous production. You know, quite frankly, I see very little of it on television.
I know there's a movie channel that now is playing some Norman McLaren shorts, and it's great, but we're going back 40 years. And we used to see NFB shorts before feature films in cinemas, and that created a lot of pride on behalf of moviegoers.
I'm just wondering whether you are doing enough to get your product in mainstream venues, whether it be television or cinema halls. Should it not be a priority to try to strengthen the bonds between the CBC and the NFB and any other outlets? I think that's a big issue.
I'm hard pressed to find an NFB production. Maybe it's on the Internet somewhere. But the average person who wants to sit down and watch some cultural product.... You're already in a relaxed state; you don't say to yourself, “I'm going to run downtown to an NFB outlet.” As a matter of fact, you still have one downtown. You used to have one in Ottawa. It was closed, and now there's a café there.
So it really concerns me that this great work is happening and Canadians aren't seeing it unless they really look for it. So I'd like you to address that.
Secondly, I know there are great filmmakers across the country, and I think your initiative in Nunavut is fabulous. My riding is in western Montreal, and I represent a good portion of the anglophone community in Montreal. What is the state of the English-speaking cinematographic community? I have producers who live in my riding, and they can't get funding for great films. These are very talented people. Is enough being done for, say, filmmakers in minority language communities, and more specifically in this case, in the English part of Quebec?