You mentioned the need to focus, and I agree. I think we can get sidetracked. We really do need to settle on a legacy, to settle on an idea of what this means and to whom it speaks. Well, it speaks to us. Who are we? Know thyself, right?
Getting back to this wonderful little program that exploded in Venezuela, a country much smaller than our own and with fewer resources, we're looking for a place to hang this, a structure to hang this Canada 150 on. Children, mixing ethnicities, regions, classes, music.... One of the problems with classical music, as we know, is that it's often the place for privileged people. That's just what it is. That's just how things have gone.
I was able to travel the country and mix and mash up because I played music. I was able to go right across this country, say 25 times. It was an amazing opportunity. I think we need to strive for that kind of a mixing. We have the programs. The federal government has programs; provincial governments have those kinds of mixing....
Music is such a fantastic way of bridging these gaps, and I would just encourage this committee, with the input from all of you here, to really drill down on this issue of a model like El Sistema.