Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will touch briefly on what I think are two primary benefits from this bill. One is legacies, quite simply the legacies that are left behind for the COC and its member organizations, the 51 national sport federations that are members of the Canadian Olympic Committee and their athletes and coaches, and the legacies that result from games. We saw it in 1988 with Calgary; we'll see it again for 2010 in Vancouver and Whistler, and we hope to see it again in the future when Canada hosts winter or summer games. Those legacies are critical to support high-performance sport in this country, and we believe this bill helps to support those legacies.
We believe that sport is an important part of Canada's culture. To protect an important part of that culture, we need bills like Bill C-47 to assist in that protection. So we're very much in favour of that.
The second thing I wanted to mention as far as benefits of this bill is the fact that we've established public-private partnerships with the federal government, the Canadian Olympic Committee, VANOC, our member organizations, and the funding programs we've developed with the federal government that need to be sustained well beyond 2010. This bill helps to foster those partnerships leading up to 2010 and hopefully well beyond 2010.
I'll leave you with those thoughts. Thank you very much.