Thank you for the question, Mr. Louis. If anyone knows the sector, it's you.
Thank you for raising the importance of culture and how it helped us to get through this. I said in my speech that we got through this with the help of culture. How many of you were in front of a television, playing the guitar, playing the piano or reading a book? We made it through this because of those things.
As I said, culture makes us laugh, think and rethink a lot, but at the same time a lot of people and a lot of sectors are very vulnerable. They don't have a safety net. This was a disaster for a lot of elements in the culture sector.
We started by putting in place that first $500 million, which was an immediate support for the arts and culture sector industry. As I said, we did a poll. I think 85% of the people said this was what got them through this. We added more money—$281 million—a couple of months later. The $500 million was in November, and then in April, we added $281 million. Remember, guys, that included the insurance for the film sector.
What happened with the film sector was nobody wanted to insure them, because if one of the main actors got COVID, everything was shut down. They had reserved the studios, the actors, the technicians and everything, so it would have cost a fortune. They had the problem with insurance companies not wanting to support them, so we came in with this $150 million to back them, which allowed filming to go on and on.
We came back with more problems in the end for festivals, this and that. I could read this, Mr. Louis, but there was help for our music sector, for our museums and for books. We tried to be there for everyone, because they are there for us as Canadians.