Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank our guests for being here.
I am happy to see you again. We see each other so often now that we could be on a first-name basis.
Welcome to those who are here for the first time. I will still address you formally.
As my colleague, Mr. Gourde, said we are here to listen to you. We have four years to plan this major celebration. We do not want to redo the work that has been done by the Department of Canadian Heritage, but we want to discuss the planning to ensure that the celebration promotes linguistic duality as a cornerstone of Canadianism and our country.
We want a lot of people to participate in the preparations for the celebration, as you mentioned in your comments. I think that this is a very important objective.
We also want to focus on creativity. How can we create a structure that promotes creativity? We do not want the celebration to be something that is imposed by government. How can we get Canadians to share their creative ideas with us? I would like to hear your comments on this.
In 1967, I was two years old, but I know that the celebration was creative. I remember the song by Bobby Gimby, Ca-na-da. It was striking.
Given the new technologies we have and Canada's new strengths, what can we do in 2017? What can we do to promote creativity so that people remember 2017 for a long time?
Perhaps we will begin with Mr. Couture because, when we think about creativity and new ideas, we often think about young people.