When we look at a product or a show like that, Canada Council is somewhere, because we supported the writers, we supported the actors.... Those things don't happen overnight; they happen because we have an ecosystem that is strong enough, mature enough, and diverse enough to be able to create them.
The purpose of the Canada Council is not first and foremost to make sure that we export viable products. Our role is to make sure that there's an ecosystem that is qualitatively and quantitatively strong enough to be able to produce such shows, because when we invest in something, we never know what will happen with them.
When we started to fund Robert Lepage, I was at that time a member of the juries, because I was in the theatre world, and there were endless discussions on whether it was theatre, because there's no text—it's not text-driven—and all that. He's one of the best-known Canadians around the world. Everybody thinks now that he's a genius, but the first time I was on a jury and we supported his first project, it was not obvious.
Our role is to make sure that we invest and have the infrastructure to produce those incredible successes. Some of them will have an international life, and some of them will never have an international life, but when it happens, it needs to be celebrated and to be supported. Usually when it happens at that scale, you also need to have the right partnerships in terms of public-private funding, and they can happen.
Yes, it's a great success, and there will be more to come, I'm sure.