Mr. Speaker, I will try in the short time left to respond to some of the hon. member's comments.
I would be curious to know if the member voted for or against budgets where the deductibility of some of the expenses he referred to, be they boxes or tickets and so forth, was reduced by this government. I am saddened to hear him say that he voted against that. If he were consistent then he would have supported these measures in the budgets we have introduced. On that basis alone, his question and his reaction to that are rather inconsistent.
On the matter of the Kanata Senators, I did mention that it was a quote from the mayor of Ottawa over which I am presumably getting into deep doo-doo right now. In defence of the mayor of Ottawa who said that, it was in jest in front of a crowd of about 1,000 people and was presented that way. Incidentally I thought it was a rather good way of instituting a debate.
Indeed, some comments have been made as to how far we go down that road and we are not going to go alone. The local municipalities, the players, the teams and so forth would have to be part of the package, if ever there were a package, but that is neither nor there. I wanted to make sure my friend, the mayor of the city of Ottawa would still be speaking with me.
On the matter of amateur sports, I have to remark on recent years. I am not from western Canada but the member is. I hope he appreciates the money the taxpayers of the country put into the Commonwealth Games in Victoria and the Olympic Games in Calgary and the money they are putting into the Pan Am Games in Manitoba coming up this summer and the myriad other events, international competitions and so forth. That is part and parcel of the contribution of Sports Canada to amateur athletes.
Yes, we do concrete things. I have highlighted three of them in the member's part of the country and we are happy that they were all successful. We wish the best of luck to the Pan Am Games in Manitoba.