Mr. Speaker, in March, I asked a question in this House, and I have to say that I did not get a very satisfactory answer.
I asked the Minister of Canadian Heritage to justify the cuts to arts and culture programs. The Minister of Canadian Heritage did not make these documents public, claiming that they were secret cabinet deliberations.
Either these documents and the analysis do not exist and the cuts were made for ideological reasons, or the government is not happy with the findings and does not want to show them to us. Either way, is its refusal to make these documents public not proof that these cuts were unjustified?
The Minister of Canadian Heritage has repeatedly said that these programs were not cost-effective, but he has never been able to prove it. He has never been able to show us even one sentence in a study to prove it. But when we go to the website of the Department of Canadian Heritage, we can find studies, analyses and even surveys about the Trade Routes program. There are even 200 pages of survey results from December 2007, 14 or 15 months ago, that speak glowingly of the results of the Trade Routes program, which was cut.
The minister inevitably says that the Conservatives are good, that they have given a lot of money to artists and that the Bloc Québécois has voted against it. But the Bloc Québécois has not always voted against the government. On May 10, 2006, the Bloc voted in favour of the Conservative budget, because it included a lot of money for Quebec. On March 27, 2007, the Bloc Québécois also voted for the Conservative budget, because it gave more money to artists through the Canada Council. It was not enough for this government to brag about, but there was more money for the Canada Council and it was a step in the right direction. We asked for $150 million more and the government gave $30 million.
But that is not enough. I know that the parliamentary secretary will rise soon to say that they have never given so much money. However, this “so much” only represents a few thousand dollars more.
It is true. We twice voted for this Conservative government's budgets because they put more money in the right places. This time the cuts are vicious and unwarranted. The minister appeared before our committee and repeated the same old story that he had given more money but he never explained the reason for the cuts or why the programs are ineffective.
The deputy minister also appeared before the committee. She, too, was asked to produce her studies but was unable to do so. She said the studies were secret because they came from cabinet. However, the very week that I asked my question, on February 10, the government unveiled, piece by piece, like a stripper, the pieces of the budget it was going to present.
The reason he gave is a vile and false excuse and I would like the minister to produce the studies that prove these programs to be supposedly ineffective.