Mr. Speaker, we agree that passing the Olympic torch across Canada is not the same thing as taking our artists and sending them abroad, in order to make our culture known throughout the world. These are two completely different things.
If the government wants to have the flame passed around and shown to its friends all over its beloved country, that is fine, but the government should not cut funding for people who do not have much money to start off with, and stop them from promoting their and our culture abroad.
The culture of a nation like the Quebec nation must be promoted abroad. We had excellent tools for doing so, and this government, which only says that it recognizes the Quebec nation, wants to completely muzzle us and stop us from expressing who we are throughout the world. The government has shown this once again with this drastic cut, which we feel has no basis, but is completely understandable coming from a government that has decided to muzzle the Quebec nation.