I would agree that the National Music Centre certainly supports that report, particularly two key elements of the recommendations, music education being the first. Everything we do is about music education, but it's very broad. It's not in the traditional sense. We're not a music school but we provide baseline music education for everybody else who doesn't necessarily go to music school. In other words we infuse the provincial curriculum, at least in Alberta and ultimately across Canada over time, with musical anecdotes in every core curriculum subject so that music becomes part of the base language.That's how we have approached it.
That's not to say we don't support traditional music education; we amplify it. In other words, if someone goes to Mount Royal University or the Glenn Gould School or U of T or McGill—pick another school—and they are touring or if they are an independent artist who's on the road touring, we have a venue that presents them. That's across the musical spectrum: hip hop, classical, country; we present all music.
So we definitely support the music education component of that report.
The second key element would be music tourism. We think that's an important incubator for any jurisdiction in Canada to develop clusters, for tourism purposes, around music. There's no question that the consumption of music is not depleting, it's increasing. There's great evidence in that report that suggests that greater clusters of music activity can enhance tourism in any given jurisdiction.
One that's on the fringes and is kind of recommended in that report but is not is one that I focused on a lot, which is celebration. Again, it's an adjunct to education but telling the stories of the great artists who have come from this country and why they are great is part of the inspirational element of the educational framework.