Mr. Chair, being asked to participate in an exercise with the Liberal government seems to me to be that the money is taken from them and is not given back. I am looking at estimates for the coming years and I am not seeing any money coming back. It concerns me because again the word alarmist was used earlier against one of our colleagues.
I sense great alarm in the arts community. Members of the arts community phone me every day. In fact they contact every member of the House because all my members are asking what they should tell them. What do we tell them when they do not have the ability to judge whether they can hire for the coming year? They cannot plan tours because they are participating in an exercise for which they do not know if it will have stable funding. I just cannot see that we can drag our artists out like this.
Does the minister know whether Tomorrow Starts Today funding will be fully reinstated? Would the minister go back to the government and say that Tomorrow Starts Today funding has to be fully reinstated now with stable funding for a number of years so that our arts community can get on with the work of creating Canadian culture?