Aboriginal Affairs  Mr. Speaker, I am very disturbed by what I have seen of the government sales pitch to the people of Kashechewan. They are being advised to leave their territory because climate change will ravage their hunting grounds. They are being encouraged to move to the francophone lumber town of Smooth Rock Falls.

Canadian Heritage  Mr. Speaker, the minister does not even blush. Everybody knows that the television, broadcast and telecom review is up for grabs. That is the minister charged with the review. We have a lobbyist trying to influence that review and they all come together around a big fancy fundraiser.

Canadian Heritage  Mr. Speaker, next week, the heritage minister is holding a major fundraiser and, for the price of a ticket, one gets access not just to the heritage minister but to the industry minister. The woman who is flogging the tickets for the minister just happens to be Charlotte Bell who is head of regulatory affairs for CanWest.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation  Mr. Speaker, 70 years ago today CBC went on the air. For seven decades it has been a public commons for the social and political discourse of our country from coast to coast to coast. Yes, CBC is about hockey, sure it is about comedy and it is definitely about top-notch journalism, but fundamentally it is about creating a dialogue and that dialogue is what we need to create a nation.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, while I was visiting my local legion in Timmins, Legion Branch 88, the other day and talking with some of the people there, it occurred to me that the legion was not an old folks' home, a golden age club, but the repository in every community across the country that protects our future veterans.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic to hear the numbers being floated. On the record I would have to say that I think they are absurd in terms of what it is costing us. I would like to give members an example. A senior in my community who grew up in the Depression asked me if I knew what it was like in the Depression when the kids were hungry and the government said there was not a cent for them.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for bringing this motion before the House today. Since I became a member of Parliament we have discussed all manner of issues from the profound to the tawdry in this House, but this is the first time I can remember that we will spend a day dealing with issues concerning veterans.

Questions on the Order Paper  With regard to the Canadian Heritage program announced in December 2002 that allocated $172.5 million in funding to establish and operate a new Aboriginal Languages and Cultures Centre: (a) what were the year-by-year funding totals to this program; (b) what was the status of this program when the current government came to power; (c) what funding changes have taken place since January 2006; (d) what, if any, future plans are there for this program; and (e) what initiatives is the governement currently undertaking to help preserve Aboriginal languages?

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to bring forward to the House today two petitions. The first is signed by people from right across this country in regard to developing new copyright legislation that recognizes the careful balance between the rights of the creator and fair public use.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, the second petition I would like to bring forward today concerns the need for an auto policy in Canada, particularly the rise in concern over current free trade negotiations with Korea and what that will do to our domestic auto market, because we are very dependent in this country on our auto industry.

Committees of the House  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.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I find it highly enlightening that the parliamentary secretary for heritage is, first of all, accusing me of saying that I will never form government so how dare I speak about policy. But his party did form government, and what did it do? It turned around and took a campaign commitment that it made to museums to deal with the chronic underfunding and ripped up that agreement.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I was also astounded that the government's position would be to challenge us to point out a museum that had suffered or that had complained. I thought it was fairly clear from the consensus across the country that the museums associations were led to believe that the government was finally willing to address the years of chronic underfunding.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has raised something that really needs to be pointed out and hammered home in this discussion. We are not talking about organizations that were receiving adequate funds for years and are now having to make due with less. Year after year the problems facing museums were identified.

Committees of the House  Yes, swipe it, take the money away and then slap them on the head and call them inefficient for not having known how to get to the money that the government got to first.