Finance committee  I'll speak from the perspective of the Canadian National Exhibition. We are a right of passage as we welcome new Canadians into our community and they will spend time in the community. We sponsor and support emerging artists, both the performing artists as well as visual artists.

Finance committee  If I could speak to the Canadian National Exhibition's perspective again, although we have a $38-million annual budget, we rarely generate a surplus. It's only in a very successful year that there may be a modest surplus. Therefore, to suggest that these fairs and exhibitions are

Finance committee  Occasionally we will have a modest surplus, but we typically operate at a break-even. We just break even and there's no—

Finance committee  We have a very modest membership fee structure that members, participating fairs, pay us to represent them on issues of national importance. There are provincially organized associations that work closely with provincial governments, and we're organized nationally to represent me

Finance committee  Each member organization is fully self-sufficient in their own right. They contribute a modest amount, in the neighbourhood of $100 for a small fair, to join the association. A larger fair may contribute something in the order of several thousand dollars. There's a varied scale a

Finance committee  Thank you for inviting us here today to be with you. I am John Peco. By day I'm the chief officer of this development at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. Previous to that I was the general manager of the Markham Fair in the northern suburb of the GTA in the Toronto