"At least they were in a line" the hon. member says. This was also art work.
If these people want to do this for their own pleasure, fine. If they want to put some underlay in the middle of their living room floor and marvel at it, that is great. We support that. On the other hand, if they expect Canadian taxpayers to shell out money so this can be displayed in the National Gallery it is crazy. The people are fed up with the waste in government. If it wants some areas where it can cut it can start with Canadian heritage. There is no end of waste in that department.
I remember reading about Charles Dickens. In England in those days there was no support from the government for artists. One fall that great writer was pressed to come up with a new book because he had a large family to support. Christmas was coming and he needed some revenue. Therefore, this prolific writer, who was prolific probably because he knew that if he wanted to survive he had to produce these works of art, was facing this Christmas deadline and knew he had to get something out so he could have an income. Faced with those pressures and faced with the fact that he had to be excellent in what he produced if he wished to sell his book to have some money, he produced one of the great classics of all time "A Christmas Carol".
I do not see why the principles of that time cannot apply today. Why do we have to have the Canada Council involved at every step of the way? People who have no business publishing a book because their work is not worthy are getting grants from the Canadian taxpayer to do it. That is crazy. I again urge the government to look at all these areas where it intervenes into the artistic community, to get out of there and allow real artists to blossom and do their thing.
We have great artists in the country from every area of the artistic community. They will prosper irrespective of whether or not they get grants from the Canada Council or protection from the Ministry of Canadian Heritage. We do not need to worry about them. We do not need to feel that we are somehow inferior. We have shown time and again that we have people who can compete in the international community with respect to the whole Department of Canadian Heritage and artistic accomplishments.
We have a deficit of $40 billion a year, a debt of $535 billion a year and the high taxes that go with that. Canadians used to have some disposable income to spend on art. By running up the deficit because of this ridiculous boondoggle of handing out grants, now they have less disposable income to go out and buy the art that we would all like to see produced. The government across the way is therefore cutting off access that Canadian people have to art.
I urge the government not only to reorganize the department but to cut spending dramatically and reorganize it right at the top starting today with the minister.