Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to the member from the New Democrat Party. I know that the member for Eglinton—Lawrence was on a roll about chihuahua governments, but I will bring him back to the issue at hand.
The member from the NDP asked what the government was doing about e-commerce. What 1995 language. It demonstrates a gap between what is actually happening in the digital field versus what was happening in the 1990s. I will speak on my own portfolio, as Minister of Canadian Heritage. We are proud of digitizing government content and ensuring that Canadian content is being supported as never before in the new media.
First, we put forward Bill C-32, a good-faith, comprehensive effort to modernize copyright legislation. We are prepared to work with all opposition parties to ensure that this legislation is effective. We have a stand-alone legislative committee, and this bill is going to go forward and help to advance in the digital economy. The first thing that the government has to do is protect people from those who want to harm Canada's creators by stealing from them, ripping them off and legitimizing piracy. We are going to do that.
There are other things that we have done in my department. We have created the Canada media fund. Previously, we had the Canada television fund and the Canada new media fund. To support digital products by Canada's creators, we merged the two to create the Canada media fund. We wanted to ensure that these products are available on the platforms that our media creators choose, not only to support television content but also to support new media, video games, stuff that is streaming online, and stuff that is available for download. We wanted to ensure that Canada's creators have access to more money than ever before to support the creation of content in the digital platform that they choose.
Although we were in a recession, we made a commitment in the last election campaign to maintain or increase funding for the CBC. We have kept our word. The reason is that the CBC has modernized itself. It has become a true pan-Canadian multimedia platform for Canadian content. We have worked with the CBC to ensure that this is the role that it performs. The National Film Board has iPad and iPhone apps that for the first time make it possible to stream Canadian digital content online. Tens of thousands of Canadian films and shorts, children's shows, and documentaries are available online, free, through the web, through iPad apps. We have gone across the board. There is a publications fund to support the digitization of magazines.
No other government in Canadian history has made a more comprehensive and aggressive effort to ensure the digitization of Canadian content and government information.