Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here today.
I want to quote from the remarks we have in front of us that you read today. You said that supporting arts and culture is absolutely essential to keeping our economy on track.
I spent a couple of years of my life in the music business, booking and managing bands, etc. I am thinking of how when someone writes a song it leads to economic activity. To give you a brief summary, one person with a guitar or a piano writes a song and records it, which employs engineers and technicians in the studio and graphic artists if they're going to release an album, and production workers and distributors, and retail sales and radio station staff, and all their advertisers and all their employees. Then they may decide to perform that song.
Earlier today I was thinking of a song. Tom Cochrane is from Oakville. He wrote Life Is a Highway in 1991. He sold six million copies of his album Mad Mad World. Then he went out and performed it. That employed sound and lighting technicians, people in ticket sales, ushers, security, souvenir sales, and beer sales, of course. That's repeated year after year across Canada.
I wonder if you can comment on how funding for the arts consistently—and I'm thinking of the Canada Council for the Arts—directly benefits the Canadian economy.