Thank you very much.
First of all, it's important for one very essential reason, and that is that the Government of Canada is actually playing in the market. It takes money and it distributes money. It conducts programs, whatever the government program, and it informs its citizenry about their efficacy. What happens is that they nurture community and involvement by redistributing some of those taxes in that environment.
Many of us, including us in particular, are excluded from that story. We can't participate in the developing of the story except through an electoral process, but then we can't participate in having any elements of our community represented in the way some of the decisions are made and how they're affected.
For example, you mentioned your husband and the family, which are great elements not just of an Italian community but of a community that's integrated into the Canadian environment and is infusing it with a different character, a diversity—a common term that people use today—that's making up the Canadian home. I just happened to meet one of my former students—I used to be a teacher at one time—and he survived my process and he's now the president of OMERS. That is one of the biggest, most significant investors in Canadian infrastructure anywhere, but the biggest impacts on his life are like those dinners that you talked about and the experiences that are brought into those dinners.
I don't want to make it schmaltzy and diminished, but the man's a genius. He's absorbed all that is Canada and he has his own imprint. That's a story that very few people are telling. We'd like to tell it. He's just one of many, whether he's Italian or from anywhere else. If you come from the GTHA, chances are 53% that you weren't born here, but these are all Canadians whose stories have to be put into the telling of the story of what Canada is, what it represents, and where it's going.
From an economic point of view and a trade point of view, the governments of Canada, irrespective of their stripe, are reaching out all over the world trying to make the Canadian presence felt and to get revenue from a trade that sells the “Made in Canada” product. Well, we're a made-in-Canada product. We tell the stories, the single elements, of that jigsaw puzzle that is Canada. We just want the Government of Canada to recognize that we're there. It's a small contribution.
You've heard the other, bigger players. They say that you're not spending money, and what little you are spending is giving off a message. The message is “Don't advertise in the Canadian market. Advertise with somebody else.”
I notice that Monsieur Nantel mentioned l'affichage. You know, you get the big signs. Where do they put their signs? They go and put them on an American network. They go and do it with an American or a multinational company. They don't do it with a Canadian company. Sooner or later, that Canadian community, small or large, is going to be diminished in its ability to be able to tell the Canadian story.
We're an example. I could give you a litany of achievements of Canadians of Italian background here in all aspects of research, whether it's medical science or technology or whatever, but that's why we exist. It's because people want to hear that story.