My thanks to you, Madam Minister, and to the officials who are here with you, for coming to answer our questions.
I am hoping to focus on the practical side of the wonderful announcements that we have heard from your lips. I come from a minority community, I am Acadian and I feel that culture must begin at school. I will leave that topic to my colleague Darrell Samson, who is an expert in education. Outside school, however, we must also hear our language spoken, we must read our poets and our novelists and hear our musicians and singers. So this involves community media, such as community radio.
Last spring, before the session adjourned for the summer, we heard an alarm sounded by community media who told us that it was only a matter of weeks or months before anglophone community radio stations in Quebec or francophone ones outside Quebec would be closing their doors. It really was a distress call and we are only just responding to it. Can you tell us what the reaction has been to the announcement of $14.5 million and what that money means for the interns and the other front-line people?