Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses for their excellent presentations today. I will only have time to ask a couple of people some questions, and I'm going to start with Ms. Benjamin.
Ms. Benjamin, as you may know, I feel very blessed and proud that I have so many artists and musicians in my downtown west Toronto riding of Davenport. I believe that every community is made better by local artists and live performances.
The federal government has a Canada music fund, and I think that over the last nine years, we've probably announced around $400 million through that fund. We also have great programs like the Canada arts presentation fund.
Hold on a second. Mr. Chair, I'm sorry, but I can barely hear myself talk over some of the side talk here. Could we just keep that under wraps?
I'll start from top with my questions.
I know we have a Canada music fund. We've funded that to the tune of about $400 million since 2015 to support Canadian musicians. Then we also have a Canada arts presentation fund and the Building Communities through Arts and Heritage program, which I believe also support both live music and arts festivals across Canada.
My first question to you is this: What have programs like these meant for your members? What's the importance of having these types of programs, and why is it important for us to continue to fund them?