Yes, I'm going to finish.
Like the vast majority of organizations operating in the cultural sector, the Centre culturel francophone de Vancouver has faced major challenges in the past 10 years. Inadequate and unstable operating funding causes high turnover among human resources and a decline in the number of volunteers, which makes it increasingly difficult to achieve objectives.
The Fédération culturelle canadienne-française, with more than 300 participants in the cultural sector from all regions of Canada, has adopted a common vision for minority cultural development. These joint efforts have made it possible to identify concrete solutions for supporting the arts and culture sector: adding an arts and culture axis providing for the necessary financial resources to support the actions of provincial and local cultural organizations in their communities; taking arts and culture into consideration in the other axes identified in the plan, such as education and community development; including federal cultural agencies in the accountability framework proposed by the action plan; the professionalization and training of human resources and volunteers; supported networking to compensate for scattered population and a sense of isolation; and consolidating operating funding to ensure recruitment and retention of qualified human resources.
In conclusion, the Centre culturel francophone de Vancouver, as the “lungs of the Francophone community”, is located in the Canadian city with the highest concentration of artists. In our view, we now have a consensus on recognition of the positive aspects of investment in the arts and culture. It is high time the federal government provided adequate support for our initiatives. The future of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games will provide a platform for the artists and crafts people from this area, enabling them to express the very essence of Canada's identity, not only to the country as a whole, but also to the entire world.