Mr. Speaker, my colleague has raised an important question. When I said things have changed since the inception of the fund in 1996, it is because the demand for Canadian programming by international markets has actually shrunk. More and more countries are insisting on buying only indigenous work. Canadian productions are now being left out in the cold.
While other countries are trying to reinforce and require their producers to make more indigenous programming, we, in a sense, with a reduction in the fund in the 2003 budget by $25 million, have actually done a tremendous disservice to our own industry. Where Canada has been a leader in so many things, we actually fell behind here because we let other countries increase their production while we have sort of ended up going backward.
The important thing to remember is that the CTF only provides 30% of the funding, when in fact it leverages this huge amount of money. For every dollar we get, another $2 is put in by the private sector which, as the members opposite know, encourages and creates investment and creates jobs in all communities across Canada, not just big cities, because there are films everywhere.
In Saskatchewan there is great production in Canadian productions. As we become more successful we will continue to export it. However we must compete with the United States, which has a huge industry that comes across via satellite. Our productions are just as good. We just need to continue to make them even better.