Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is a first for me, as I've never had the privilege of sitting on this committee. It's also the first for the security committee, which I was privileged to sit on yesterday.
I thank Mr. Del Mastro for his excellent presentation and for pointing out that this is nothing new. As a matter of fact, we've seen this in the past and we've actually seen cuts. This is not a cut; this is more redistribution.
When I received my briefs and looked at the material, the huge pile of paper, I couldn't agree more with Mr. Del Mastro and disagree more with Mr. Coderre. This government has spent an enormous amount of money and has, in a sense, reallocated some of these funds. I think what we're looking at today is more reaction by this government to invest in priorities, and not necessarily priorities that we feel are priorities, but priorities that come as a result of agencies that are more successful, that have reached their objectives, or that have high administration costs and poor performance. That's part of the function of any government. As I said, Mr. Del Mastro did an excellent job of pointing those things out.
I'm looking at some of the announcements that we've made in the past. In March 2008 there was money spent on Quebec's 400th anniversary. The government supported first peoples' heritage, language and culture. Much was done with our first nations, with almost $700,000--the Inuit heritage fund, $190,000; the Inuit culture of Nunavut, $350,000, and I'm rounding off as it's actually more than that. The government announced funding for the Corporation de Développement Patrimonial Culturel et Touristique de Natashquan, $182,000; the New France Festival, $250,000. I can go on and on. These are just some of the funding announcements that we've made. There are 12 pages that prove a commitment by this government to continue in the important work of arts and culture.
We've done what we've said we would do as a government, and that is to be responsible in our mandate, to be sure that we continue to move forward to improve the works of the arts, and to make sure the money that is being spent is being spent in a wise and prudent way. It leads me to think, as I started to say in my opening remarks, that this is the second committee I've served on where our Prime Minister has laid out an olive branch basically to the opposition in saying that we absolutely must make Parliament work.
I've been very fortunate to serve on the industry committee, and that's actually the reason I'm here. It's going to gather on Wednesday. It's doing constructive work, work that parliamentarians are called upon and elected to do. This, to me, looks like just another example of the opposition's attempt to undermine what we're supposed to do as a government. I see a lot of useless time being spent. I would think that this particular committee would have much greater and important matters to study--things that the Canadian public would deem more necessary.
Again, I can go on and on about where we spend our money. The result is the same. As Mr. Del Mastro said, we have not decreased our spending; we've increased our spending. It appears to me that we're continuing on a path that we don't want to see happen.
So I'm a little disturbed about the direction and what the opposition is doing again. I would hope that in the discourse, the examples we bring forward, they could retract that and agree that the government has in actuality been very responsible with their spending practices, and we're going to continue to do so.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.