Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak with you about priorities included in my mandate letter and the Main Estimates for the Department of Canadian Heritage.
As you said, Mr. Chair, with me today are Ms. Isabelle Mondou, Deputy Minister; Mr. Thomas Owen Ripley, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, whom you know very well; and Mr. Éric Doiron, Chief Financial Officer of my department, who will also be able to answer some of your questions.
I often say how proud I am to be the Minister of Canadian Heritage. In fact, I had asked to come back, but you know how it works. The Prime Minister could have said no. In the end, I came back because I think it's an extremely important department for Canada's social fabric. To be honest, it's not the easiest job in Ottawa. We have a very ambitious program, but I think we're all proud to contribute to promoting and defending our culture and who we are as Canadians. Our culture and all those who work in the sector deserve our support. I'm thinking of our artists, our creators, our independent producers, our museums, all those who work in the arts and culture sector.
All parliamentarians, my team, my department's officials and I all work extremely hard to implement all these priorities. Many have already been achieved and others are underway. Among other things, I'm talking about supporting our cultural industries, protecting the rights of our artists, encouraging The production of books and music, museums, theatres, homegrown programs and films. We must also support Indigenous people's efforts to revitalize their languages, promote their cultures and tell their stories in their own way. All Canadians need to see themselves in what they watch and listen to. We must protect our news media industry and make sure our laws reflect our digital world which, as you know, is undergoing profound changes.
My mandate letter, as you can see, contains many ambitious commitments, probably more than ever. There are definitely more than there were the first time I was Minister of Canadian Heritage. One of the most important, at least to me, but probably to a lot of you too, is to modernize our broadcasting system to make sure it reflects the reality of how the industry works today, because things have changed in the past quite a lot. We're doing this to make sure our industry succeeds. We want our people to succeed and we want to make sure that our artists and creators and producers have all the opportunities they deserve.
Over a year ago, I introduced our Online Streaming Act. Recently it received royal assent, and I think we should feel proud of that. We may not agree on everything, but I think it's a huge step.
It's been a long process. We all know that. We examined the bill; we debated it; we improved it. Even if it was tough, parliamentarians worked hard to make this bill into law. It's the law of the land. It's the first time it has changed since 1991, so I want to acknowledge the collaboration of parliamentarians, witnesses and all those who participated, including all of you.
The Online Streaming Act was the first success in a long series of actions we're going to take to level the playing field for everyone. When I say everyone, I'm talking as much about digital platforms as our broadcasters, newspapers and media outlets.
There's another step which I think is absolutely fundamental and unavoidable in this series of actions, and that's Bill C-18, the Online News Act. Access to reliable, quality news is the foundation of our democracy. It's one of the pillars of our democracy. The work of our journalists and newsrooms has value, and platforms must recognize and contribute to it. It's essential for democracy in our country.
Currently, a Senate committee is studying Bill C‑18. I hope things will keep moving along smoothly. There were some good conversations and I think things are moving along well. Our news community needs it. As soon as the bill passes, it will help ensure the viability of our local and independent media.
Collectively, regardless of our party banner or where we come from, our job is to stand up for them, for a free, independent, nonpartisan and professional press. Every single one of us must make the effort, because Canadians expect us to protect local journalism and have independent, free, reliable and nonpartisan press. We must make this effort together.
Coming back to the rest of the mandate, we've accomplished a great deal. I'm thinking specifically of support we provided to artists and the cultural sector during the pandemic. It was at the top of my mandate letter. It all happened while we were in the middle of the pandemic. There were tremendous concerns in the sector. It was at the heart of our actions.
We supported the entire sector throughout the pandemic, but the sector was there for us too. I'm sure you'll agree with what I'm about to say. It was hard to be isolated, not to talk to each other, to be on our own. Imagine if we hadn't had books, music and television. Itwould have been a thousand times harder. While we were there for the cultural sector, it was there for all of us too.
I say it all the time. I just can't imagine a world without culture, languages, stories, TV shows, books, our museums and our music. I'm happy to see that because of the initiatives we put together through the pandemic, nine out of 10 recipients told us that our recovery fund helped them stay in business.
That's not all. Over a year ago—and you probably remember this—in May of last year, we held a national summit with cultural leaders from across the country, with people coming from everywhere. Hundreds of people came to talk here in Ottawa about the future of the sector. That was another very important moment. We met and reflected on the needs of the sector. Since then, we've seen our artists return to the stage, our venues fill up and our museums welcome visitors again. All of this is absolutely great to see.
Do you know what? The reality is that the credit goes to the cultural community, because they're the ones who did the job. We provided the funds and we had programs here and there, but they're the ones who worked hard to get back to prepandemic levels of activity.
We were there for them and we were committed to supporting the recovery all the way. A lot has been done, but you will definitely agree that a lot remains to be done also. There's so much work to do.
That brings me to the next topic that I'm here to talk about today, which is my department and portfolio budgets.
For the coming year, Main Estimates for the Department of Canadian Heritage will be $1.9 billion. That includes $202.9 million in operating expenditures and $1.7 billion in grants and contributions. That's an adjustment of $244.3 million compared to the previous year, simply because we’re coming back to our pre-pandemic priorities.
A good example of that is our creative export strategy, which supports the competitiveness of our creative industries at the international level, and we just renewed it for three years.
There is also an increase of $74.2 million in 2023-24 to support the efforts of indigenous communities to reclaim, revitalize, maintain and strengthen their languages. In the 2022 budget, money was also provided to foster a more inclusive arts training sector and to continue to support the postpandemic recovery of the arts sector.
It's important because it shows that we were there during the crisis, during the pandemic, that we're still there today, that we've been there for all Canadians and that we kept our promise to leave no one behind.
We will continue to be there.
Once again, thank you for your work, your dedication, your analyses and your reports. I'm here to work with you to see what we can do together to help the people we represent.
I'm now ready to take your questions.
Thank you very much.
