Cultural exports have fared very well. I gave a speech on this just the other day. The numbers escape me now, but cultural exports I know have gone up, in part because of our investments in the Canada Council for the Arts. As you know, we have increased funding to the Canada Council for the Arts by 20%. It is up to $181 million per year.
It's not a small thing to say that our government is the only government in the G-8 that decided not to cut, not to maintain, but to increase funding for arts and culture. In my judgment, the best mechanism by which the government can and should continue to fund culture is through the Canada Council for the Arts, a crown corporation set up by Prime Minister St. Laurent, that is independent and at arm's length from the government.
As Sheila Fraser said when she examined the Canada Council, if every government department, agency, and crown had the same kind of exhaustive peer-review process and thorough evaluation of the way they spend money, she wouldn't have a job. Not only do they have integrity in the way they handle taxpayers' money, but they're seen by the cultural communities in this country as an organization that does a fantastic job of reaching out and ensuring that funds get to diverse programs and projects. That includes supporting artists in their efforts abroad.
As you know, going back to the 2008 campaign, our government ended, for example, the trade routes program. The trade routes program was a $7-million program. The problem was that it cost $5 million to deliver $2 million worth of benefits. It's not quite an exchange we look for or that I think taxpayers look for in a government program, so we ended that program. We didn't kill the money. We transferred the money to the Canada Council. The Canada Council has, if memory serves, 11 or 12 programs directly related to aiding artists in their endeavours to engage markets abroad.
We continue to support artists. The best way to do it is through the Canada Council. The Government of Canada tried it and our exchange rate was $5 million to $2 million, and that was not quite the exchange rate we were looking for.