Thank you, Ms. Gagnon.
Later on, Ms. Samson will do a better job than I could of telling you about problems facing the film industry and distribution in Canada and abroad.
As to the arts we are talking about, the Mouvement pour les arts et les lettres is an association of Quebec artists. These artists are operating in a relatively small market and they have to disseminate their work abroad as well as in Canada. It is not easy for them to get their work out to the rest of Canada. Canada is huge, and the population is spread out and so on. So we need help from the federal government to do a better job of promoting the professional work being done in various sectors, including visual arts, which is my field, contemporary dance, classical music, multimedia, arts and crafts and more. Quebec arts and crafts have an excellent reputation in Canada and abroad. We need help from the federal government to promote our work, to help our performers, our organizations and our artists get the funding they need to survive, grow and develop.
The cultural infrastructure mentioned in our submission also refers to physical spaces. People need professional spaces to get their work out there. We mentioned the Canadian Conference of the Arts, which stated that much of the physical and cultural infrastructure—theatres, dance halls and exhibit halls—was created as part of the buildings paid for by funding to mark the centennial of Confederation in 1967. Many of these buildings need renovation, restoration and so on, and that will cost a lot of money. That is why the Canadian Conference of the Arts, the foremost Canadian organization representing the arts and culture sector, recommended significant increases to funding for Canadian Heritage's cultural spaces program because that is the department that provides funding for the infrastructure that is so important to cultural and artistic expression in Canada.
I do not know whether my answer will help you defend or express our position in the House of Commons, but I hope that I have answered your question.