Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's math. We have the government telling us that it has to stand up for the taxpayers on this 35¢, as the member said. We had the other member from the heritage committee saying that we should be arguing about terrorism rather than culture when, again, he is on the culture committee and these are fundamental cultural issues.
I do believe that this is round one of a series of major cuts, because we have yet to hear from the government serious commitments in terms of a cultural vision. In terms of Radio-Canada and CBC, Canada is already pretty much near the bottom, except for the United States, in terms of how much money we put into our public television and public radio. We are almost at the bottom.
We are almost at the bottom on key sectors in terms of arts development. There is no other country in the civilized western world that does not feel that having a strong domestic cultural voice in terms of its television, its magazines, its development and its outreach is a laudable and fundamental goal. Other western countries know, as the government does not, that it is not just the creation of an identity that holds people together, but these are also very important industrial sectors.
They are industrial sectors. It is not charity we are talking about. We are not robbing the poor taxpayer to give to these indolent, wasteful museums that are sitting on their rear ends when they should be working. These are industrial sectors that draw tourists, just like our other industrial cultural sectors, and we need a government that is willing to stand up and work with them instead of feed off them.