Mr. Speaker, I would like to add to what some of my colleagues have had to say here today on culture and heritage.
I have a deep appreciation for Canada's culture and our heritage. I have many generations of ancestors in Canada. They started out in the maritimes and came to British Columbia over a period of 150 years. Contrary to what some might say or think, I believe that Reformers and Canadians in general have a deep
appreciation of our heritage. I believe that Canadians for the most part like art, films, and books. They like many of the things our minister of cultural heritage is promoting.
Most of us express our desire and enjoyment of our culture and art through our personal decisions. We make decisions as to what we are going to buy, which art for our homes and which books to read. We visit art galleries when we choose. In general through the marketplace we express our appreciation with our money in the forums where we feel that it is appropriate to do so.
The operative word here is marketplace. The marketplace is the proper place to determine whether art is saleable, whether it is desirable and whether the people who are creating it should be supported.
What we have in Canada is government directed heritage and cultural policy that ignores the market altogether. The government funded cultural community needs taxpayers' money to survive because it cannot convince people to buy its products on their own. It is not successful in the marketplace.
If writers want my money and the Canadian taxpayers' money they can write books that Canadian taxpayers will buy. If artists want my money they can create art that I and Canadian taxpayers will buy. If film makers want my money they can create films that I will pay money to see and they will therefore be successful.
These people do not need to convince me to buy their art or their books or pay to see their films. They can go to Ottawa and convince the government to fund their projects and their initiatives and I as a taxpayer along with millions of others from coast to coast who do not agree with the kind of products these people are producing are forced through a coercive taxation system to support it in any event.
This is why we have a National Art Gallery that is full of goofy paraphernalia that common sense Canadians would never ever buy. We have so-called treasures in our National Art Gallery. I come from the construction industry. People in the construction industry tell me that the notorious painting "Voice of Fire" could be created in about one-half day by a couple of good painters.