I want to thank the minister for joining us.
I will talk about heritage, as a general concept, and about history, more specifically.
You've talked about the importance of history and of making Canadians in general more aware of their history. You talked about the fact that there are several provinces in which history is not a required course; it's squeezed into their social studies.
I come from pretty conservative country where everyone wants to know the practical reasons for doing things when it comes to time and resources and money. You've talked in this committee before about how investing in the arts and in culture in general will actually have an economic spinoff. But not even focusing on that, can you address how we're going to help Canadians increase their awareness of history and why that is so important?
Canadians, a lot of us, think our history started in 1867. We have a really rich and fascinating history since then, and also before then, but who cares? Why would we want to spend time and energy on that?