Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, Mr. Klassen, I am particularly pleased to see you here today. We often tell witnesses who appear that we're happy to see them, but I must say that when officials are defending an $8 million grant, such as the one you received, they should at least appear in person to do so. So, thank you very much, both of you, for being here.
I would like to discuss eligibility criteria. In fact, what I really want to address to say is that I don't want to address this with you because it is clear to me that you are not eligible. In the program information, it clearly states that Crown corporations are not eligible. And yet you are a Crown corporation. Also, as you said yourself, you did not send in a written application to the program. Furthermore, you do not have 250,000 participants, nor do you have a program that lasts three days. So, it seems to me we can pretty well ignore the eligibility criteria and move directly to your budget.
When I look at your budget, I see that you actually received quite a lot of money. In 2009-2010, for example, you received $77.4 million for operating expenses; $7.7 million of additional funding for the 2010 Olympic Games; $20 million through the Economic Action Plan in Budget 2009, and then you requested an additional grant from the Minister of Industry for I don't know what amount of money, in response to which you received $8 million. Furthermore, in your 2009 annual report, you say, on page 12, and I quote: “This annual report tells the story of an innovative marketing organization working in partnership with Canada's tourism industry [...]”.
When you found out that the Minister would be giving you $8 million under the Marquee Tourism Events Program, even though you knew full well that you that you had no right to participate in that program, that you were not eligible, and that cultural organizations like the FrancoFolies or the Festival Montreal en lumière would be losing a lot of money, and that the FrancoFolies might not even be in a position to balance their budget, did you not have the sense that, rather than working in partnership with Canada's tourism industry, you were in fact competing with Canada's tourism industry? Did you not have the impression that you were actually competing with that industry and that some of your partners might abandon you at some point?