Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Minister, for having come to meet with us and to share your comments regarding the new year, the investments that you will be making and their impact on the budget.
This is the first time that I am really sitting in the committee. There was another sitting, but it was spent on operational issues. This is the first time that we are receiving a witness, and this first witness is also the most important one. I am astonished to hear you say that in the entire history of Canada, your department is the one that invested more in culture than any other department did. I am thinking of the actions of the artists in Quebec during the last elections. There was a hue and cry that was unprecedented in Quebec history. I do not want to belabour the point, but let me say that this probably costs the Conservatives quite a few ridings in Quebec. People spontaneously stood up and spoke out against everything that was being done. Nevertheless, here we are told that they have never received such generous funding in their lifetime. These two points of view have quite a bizarre relationship.
Before tabling your budget, you travelled to various places in Canada and in Quebec to meet these people. We've heard and we also read in the newspapers that you were listening to them and that you were in favour of their cause. On the other hand, after the budget was tabled, the comments were even worse than the last time. I have some of these comments here. Raymond Legault, from the Union des artistes, said that he was worried about the future of the programs intended for creative artists. The Mouvement pour les arts et les lettres is disappointed because so few measures have been taken to help the cultural community. The Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois says that as far as the Canada Council is concerned, nothing was announced about the programs that were cut and that the federal government had promised. Mr. Paré, from the Conférence internationale des arts de la scène, explained why he was deeply disappointed. Roger Frappier, the film producer, finds that the Harper government is like an impenetrable wall, and so forth. These people are practically unanimous about this. However, you still go on repeating that you have never committed so much money to culture.
As far as I am concerned, I see a great divergence between these points of view. This is why Ms. Lavallée suggested that we should invite some of these people so that they can explain to us what is going on. What can we say to them? You said that studies were done before cutting certain programs that you and your team considered to be insufficiently productive and replacing them with other programs. Can you table these studies? Could we have a copy of the said reports?