Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your appointment as Acting Speaker of the House.
At the outset, I would like to say that I will be splitting my time with the member for Egmont.
In accordance with tradition—and a laudable tradition it is—I will begin by thanking the constituents of Ottawa—Vanier for giving me a fifth term as the representative for this lovely riding. I believe most of you go through my riding every morning and evening, and many of you visit it regularly, perhaps without even knowing you do.
This riding is located just east of the Rideau Canal. Located within it are the residences of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Governor General, and institutions such as the National Gallery of Canada and the National Research Council Canada. With all due respect to 24 Sussex, the NRC is probably the most important institution or address in the riding.
I am therefore very proud and very grateful to the constituents of Ottawa—Vanier for renewing my mandate. I will try to continue representing them well. I will concentrate on certain priorities, including the redevelopment of the Rockcliffe military base, which is probably the most important key issue for the riding and the eastern part of the region.
Like my Liberal colleagues, I must get used to sitting on this side of the House and intend to be here regularly. I have also been given new responsibilities as official opposition critic for heritage, which I gladly accepted.
I have gladly accepted these new responsibilities as heritage critic. I will focus most of my remarks on that, but not exclusively, however.
In the weeks leading up the opening of this 39th Parliament I had the opportunity to engage in consultations to establish certain priorities, what we would encourage the government to focus on in terms of heritage. I did not finish this consultation, but I did have the chance to meet with a number of groups and I must say, there was not much in the Speech from the Throne. That is what we are talking about.
In the Speech from the Throne, except for what our Governor General said about linguistic duality and this country's artists, there is nothing in what the government itself prepared. This is very disconcerting especially since last Thursday the minister, in response to a question I asked in the House, said that neither she nor her government intends to respect any commitment of the previous government. This is quite worrisome to the cultural community of this country.
Does that mean, for example, it will not honour the commitment we made to double the funding to the Canada Council for the Arts by 2008, for an annual increase of $50 million in order to bring this funding from some $151 million to $301 million? This would essentially double from $5 to $10 the contribution, direct or indirect, of every Canadian through their taxes for arts and culture in the country. This commitment was the result of a two-year or more consultation with the entire cultural community in the country, whose support was unanimous.
Now we are being told that the government has no intention of respecting the commitments of the previous government. This commitment, by the way, was not limited to doubling the budget for the Council for the Arts; it included other highly interesting aspects that were highly appreciated by the artistic and cultural community in terms of training and promoting our cultural products and artistic achievements abroad.
We do not know where we stand on this. We hope that in the assessments and in the upcoming budget we will get other indications than those we have received so far.
Another priority that we have identified, which touches on some of what the government has said, particularly the Minister of Canadian Heritage, is the CBC. The government has said that it intends to review the mandate of CBC Radio-Canada. The government has that prerogative and we do not question that. If it wishes to have a review of the mandate of the CBC it will proceed. However in so doing we advise caution. As some people will recall, we had the Clifford Lincoln report of the heritage committee where there was a dissenting opinion signed by the gentleman who is now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, where, by and large, what was recommended or contemplated was the privatization of the CBC English television. That was very disquieting.
One would hope that if the government proceeds with the review of the mandate of the CBC, it would also include in that review a request to look at the funding formulas because if the mandate is reviewed then the funding to execute that mandate should also be considered and implemented. Finally, on that front, we would hope that any review of CBC Radio-Canada's mandate would be an open and a vast consultation with Canadians who want to see the country continue supporting a public broadcaster of the quality of CBC Radio-Canada in all of its manifestations.
We therefore advise caution on this issue.
Lastly, during this first session of the 39th Parliament, in the spring or the fall, we invite the government to introduce a bill to update the Copyright Act. Copyright is a very complex and controversial issue. I know something about it because I took part in the deliberations on Bill C-32. We succeeded in modernizing the Copyright Act somewhat, but much remained to be done.
Technology is evolving so rapidly that the act is falling further and further behind the times. In addition, the act must reflect our international commitments under the international conventions our country has ratified.
We encourage the government to take action on this, and we will work with the government, because we think it is important that the Copyright Act be brought up to date again.
The heritage portfolio, which is a vast, complex and quite fascinating portfolio, contains other important files and dossiers. I will mention the renaissance initiative in Toronto where the Art Gallery of Ontario, the ROM, the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, the National Ballet School, the Royal Conservatory and the Canadian Opera Company are looking to the government to match the Government of Ontario's top up of $49 million to their expansion project. I would encourage the federal government in its budget to match the Government of Ontario's contribution which was announced just a couple of weeks ago.
In Montreal there will certainly be files of interest, including the upcoming cultural summit, the theatre district and the film festival. We will invite the governments of Canada and Quebec to work together to resolve the film festival problem so that Montreal can proudly take its place again on the film festival circuit.
More locally, we certainly will encourage the government to maintain its support of national institutions and to focus on two local important initiatives which are the Great Canadian Theatre Company and the chamber music concert hall project.
I have just one minute left, so I will simply add that arts and culture, for which the Department of Canadian Heritage is responsible, are vital to Canadians' quality of life. Often, we ignore the commercial aspect, which is also important. On behalf of the official opposition, I would like to encourage the government not to ignore the cultural and artistic side of our lives: drama, performing arts, visual arts and literature. The Government of Canada has a role to play, and we invite it to play that role.
I would like to close by congratulating the creators of the film C.R.A.Z.Y. and Robert Lepage for his Projet Andersen.
I want to congratulate that gentleman, who is a native of London, Ontario, for being the first to win back to back Oscars for writing the script for the best film of the year.