Canadian Heritage committee  Did he? I honestly didn't know. But that is the distinction. It's really easy to see on a spreadsheet that artists received FACTOR, Canada Council, or this or that, and then to say that they're double-dipping. But the reality is that these are the same people who are also experim

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm not sure what Jesse may or may not have received. It's hard for me to speak on this, because we are the affiliated office for FACTOR, but we are not FACTOR. So I can tell you what I know, but I can't speak on FACTOR's behalf. What I can say is that FACTOR does fund all genr

Canadian Heritage committee  It's interesting. I agree that a number of these artists receive money from FACTOR, MUSICACTION, and what not. A good example is Jesse Zubot, who came in last week. He's a good friend of mine. He's a prolific artist in Canada. He has won multiple awards. He is an interesting fell

Canadian Heritage committee  Sorry. I didn't mean to be on the defensive. It just seems the music industry or the commercial industry is somehow being pitted against the non-commercial in this. We were consulted on what would help the music industry. We were not consulted on cuts to the Canada Council. If

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm not sure if I'm on that list. I can only tell you that I did speak to the minister and we did speak about these issues. Was it a public forum? No. But I feel we were consulted because what I said was implemented and it was echoed by many of the organizations I'm affiliated wi

Canadian Heritage committee  If you read the newspaper, you're probably aware that the entire recording side of the music industry has been in a tailspin for the last five or six years because of the digital downloads and the whole phenomenon of the Internet. In traditional retail, we're seeing bankruptcies

Canadian Heritage committee  Obviously, if we could increase the funding this problem goes away. We get our new programs, which we are desperately needing, and the specialized music gets funded. If you were able to give the Canada Council some extra money to replace the funding that was cut, then the problem

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I was consulted by the minister, but not about cutting this program.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, unfortunately, I'm brought into a lot of these things, so I can't remember whether or not I was actually brought in formally to talk on this topic, but we've had many top discussions nationally on this. I think where I was able to address it most directly was with the ministe

Canadian Heritage committee  Oh no, I recall my conversation with the minister very well. I am just saying that while I know there were some consultations that happened generally, I just can't recall—

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure. At the the time, we were trying to get funding for the Juno Awards, and the federal government at that point was not willing to contribute to the provincial part of it. That was the reason for the meeting. At the same time, we were able to talk about general issues, includi

Canadian Heritage committee  There was never any discussion of that, of course. This was as much a surprise to us as anyone else. As I said in my presentation, we don't advocate a derogation of the funding to the Canada Council and we would never advocate that.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, never.

Canadian Heritage committee  No. What I said was that we were consulted about the Canada Music Fund, but we were never asked whether that would be at the expense of any Canada Council funding. We were consulted on what our needs were.

Canadian Heritage committee  I met with the minister. I'm not sure if it was part of the formal consultations, but I actually met personally with the minister at my office around the time of the Junos, which was last March.