Bloc Québécois Dissenting Report,
Tabled to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in the Framework of the Committee's Consideration of the Federal Government's Role in Culture in the 21st Century

Summary

The Bloc Québécois is tabling this dissenting report to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage essentially for the following reasons:

• The Committee's Report is a disappointment to the cultural sector workers who expected that this document would set out clearly the problems confronting them in the contemporary context of technological development and trade globalization, and that it would propose concrete solutions to these problems.
• The Report repeatedly praises the Liberal government, but fails to mention the cuts imposed by that government on the cultural sector. The Bloc Québécois would describe as timid the Committee's recommendations that call for expenditures by the government in the cultural sector, even though the need for more money was the core idea put forward during the Committee's hearings and the federal government currently has at its disposal a considerable financial margin of manoeuvre.
• The Committee's Report misapprehends Quebec culture and the role that must be assumed by the Quebec government, and is in fact now assumed by it, in the cultural sector. Like every Quebec government of the past 30 years, the Bloc Québécois wants the federal government to recognize that the Quebec government has jurisdiction over culture and to respect this fact by withdrawing from the area. There are legal precedents requiring the federal government to recognize Quebec's right to maintain jurisdiction over its culture at the international level. The Bloc Québécois also wants to see a Canada-Quebec agreement on communications and telecommunications, so that Quebec can assume responsibility for these sectors, which are essential to the development of any consistent cultural policy. Lastly, the Bloc Québécois calls on the federal government to comply with the Charter of the French Language on Quebec territory.

It is the Bloc Québécois's conviction that sovereignty for Quebec is the best way of protecting Quebec culture and ensuring its development in the current context of technological change and trade globalization. We are confident that Quebec talent, with the support of the Quebec government, will be able to adapt successfully to the challenges of the 21st century. However, in this dissenting report we have limited ourselves to recommendations that are as concrete as possible for the well-being of Quebec's culture and its cultural community within the existing federal framework.

Creation: The Heart of any Cultural Policy

Creation is the cornerstone of any cultural policy. This is all the more true now that recent technological developments make everyone a potential creator and allow the fruits of creativity to be accessible to all. These technological developments are democratic tools, as long as each culture retains the capacity to express its uniqueness.

An integrated and consistent cultural policy is vital if the artistic and cultural skills and sensitivities of the people of Quebec and of Canada are to be developed to their maximum, and if career development and ongoing training are to be encouraged in this sector. Incidentally, the agreement signed in April 1997 by the Quebec ministers responsible for Culture and Communications and for Education, the goal of which is to strengthen the link between culture and education, fits perfectly into this strategy for a consistent cultural policy.

At the present time, the financial situation of creators, despite their high-education levels, is precarious. According to Statistics Canada, 58% of artists need back-up income to survive.1

On April 13, 1999, Quebec's Minister of Culture and Communications, Ms. Agnès Maltais, made a formal commitment to tackle the problem of poverty among young artists. In his opening address to the National Assembly, the Premier of Quebec announced for his part that he intends to make culture an important component of the next youth summit.

Self-employment is another characteristic of workers in the cultural sector. According to Statistics Canada, workers in the cultural sector are twice as likely as other workers in Canada to be self-employed. In 1993, 29% of workers in the cultural sector were self-employed, compared to 15% of the active population as a whole.2

This means that workers in the cultural sector experience even more acutely than others the absence of specific provisions for the self-employed in the legislation on income tax, labour, income security and professional training.

In its Report, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage fails to note that the governments of Quebec and Canada have signed an agreement on manpower, and suggests that the federal government should move back into this area of jurisdiction. In response to the agreement, however, Quebec's cultural sector has already set up the Conseil québécois des ressources humaines en culture, which has a mandate to advise Emploi Québec on manpower strategies for the cultural sector. In addition, the Quebec government has created an inter-ministerial task force3 to draft a consistent policy for strengthening enterprises in the cultural sector while ensuring manpower development.

The federal Department of Human Resources Development retained two sectors of intervention as regards manpower: the Youth Strategy and the Canada Jobs Fund. To achieve maximum efficiency, it would be better if the Quebec government had control of all manpower-related measures. It should be noted as well that the Department of Canadian Heritage youth programs do not set aside any funding specifically for young creators.

Recommendations

1. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the federal government respect the spirit and the letter of its agreement on manpower and restore to the Quebec government all new funding earmarked for professional training, without imposing national guidelines. Ottawa should also transfer all manpower programs to Quebec, again without imposing national guidelines.

2. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the federal government harmonize its tax system with that of the Quebec government, which provides that copyright revenue is not taxable under $15,000.

3. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the federal government follow up on the recommendation of its Finance Committee and give cultural workers access to income averaging, as it did in the 1970s.4

4. The Bloc Québécois endorses the Committee's recommendation on the importance of reviewing the legislation and regulations on income tax, income security, labour and professional training, in order to adapt them to the realities of self-employed workers in the cultural sector.

Content

The federal government wants to make Canada the most "connected" country in the world. To do so, it has ended the monopoly situation in telecommunications, it has made the legislative and regulatory framework more flexible, it has overturned the CRTC decisions that gave discounts to the consumer on long-distance telephone service and allocated these hundreds of millions of dollars to the shareholders of telecommunications companies in order to finance the information highway, etc.

But federal initiatives aimed at developing the content that should circulate on the information highway as well as via our traditional media have remained timid. While investment was becoming more necessary than ever to sustain content development in all cultural sectors, the federal government was going ahead with unprecedented budget cuts. The CBC, the National Film Board and Telefilm Canada were the biggest victims of those cuts, but all federal cultural programs were seriously affected. The table on spending by department in the Budget Plan of March 6, 1996, clearly demonstrates the federal government's indifference to culture. The table shows that between 1994 and 1999, the cultural sector would have to absorb budget cuts of 30%, while other sectors would be cut as follows: Justice - 7%, Foreign Affairs and International Trade - 10%, Canada Mortgage and Housing - 10%, Veterans Affairs - 7%, Parliament and the Public Service generally - 14%.5 Moreover, during those years of austerity the Department of Canadian Heritage did not hesitate to lavish tens of millions of dollars on a long list of propaganda initiatives. Lastly, despite the restoration of certain funding announced by the federal government over the past two years, the cultural sector has not regained the amounts that were taken from it.

In Quebec during this time, the government maintained and even increased its contribution to culture and the arts. It started work on the building of the Grande Bibliothèque, a $85 million project. It was the first to offer a tax credit for multimedia production; it set up the Fonds de la culture et des communications. In the new media sector, the Quebec government implemented a major initiative: the creation of the Cité du multimédia in Montreal.

It is essential to inject new funds into cultural production. Each dollar invested in culture and the arts produces significant cultural, social and financial spin-offs. The Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation estimates that for every public dollar invested in movie making, the private sector injects $10 into the local economy. Another study has shown that Montreal's four main festivals generate spin-offs of $166 million every year. According to the Association des producteurs de films et de télévision du Québec, every dollar invested in audiovisual production generates private-sector investment in the order of $6 to $7. The Canadian Conference of the Arts has determined that the cost of creating a job in the cultural sector is lower than in other sectors of the economy: while it costs $100,000 to create a job in light industry and between $200,000 and $300,000 in heavy industry, the cost in the cultural sector is $26,000.6 Arts and culture is a sector that promises future growth and generates jobs. It is common knowledge that the federal government is currently accumulating an unprecedented margin of manoeuvre. And the most recent information suggests that Ottawa's budget surplus should reach $10 billion in this fiscal year. It would seem natural for the federal government to reinvest significantly in culture.

Public cultural institutions have played an indispensable role in the development of the Canadian and Quebec cultures. Radio-Canada, because of the resources at its disposal, the talent available in Quebec and the popularity of broadcasting, has been an especially important tool in the development of Quebec culture. The National Film Board has trained generations of filmmakers, and allowed the Quebec film industry to make a name for itself. Telefilm Canada and the Canada Council have supported creation, and many artists owe what they are today to one of those agencies. Because of repeated budget cuts since 1993, on the one hand, and the stated intention of the federal government to use the cultural institutions for political purposes, on the other hand,7 their future is now hanging in the balance. The Department of Canadian Heritage has bluntly announced, notably in its strategic plan and other documents, that the job of the organizations within its portfolio is to foster a greater sense of what it means to be part of the Canadian community.8 In its strategic plan, Canadian Heritage affirms that it works to promote national unity. For the time being, public cultural institutions have an important role to play in cultural development. However, they will have to be guaranteed adequate financing and manoeuvring room, along with complete independence from political pressure.

Cable companies contribute 5% of their gross annual revenue to an audiovisual production fund and to community television. Telecommunications enterprises are not subject to a similar levy, although they now carry more data than they do voice communication. Their operating revenues for 1997 were $22.8 billion.9 There is no reason why they should not help to fund cultural content.

Bell Canada implicitly recognized the role of telecommunications enterprises in the financing of content by the creation of its broadcasting and new media fund, established on September 10, 1997, and given a $12 million budget for a period of 30 months.

It is regrettable that the cultural sector does not have access to data comparable to those available for tourism, for example, which enjoys a consolidated fund of some two million dollars at Statistics Canada. This absence of detailed data has consequences for the formulation of policies likely to sustain the cultural sector.

Lastly, the Committee's comments suggest that it wants the Department of Canadian Heritage to influence the content of cultural production. We find this portion of the Report, found in Chapter 4, extremely disturbing. We are energetically opposed to any interference by the Department in cultural content as such. Artists and cultural institutions must remain independent, and be free to express themselves on any subject without government interference.

Recommendations

5. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the federal government reinvest in culture and restore to the Quebec government, in accordance with the recommendations below, the amounts owed to it.

6. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the federal government assure public cultural institutions stable, adequate, multi-year financing, to enable them to meet the challenge of their mandates at the dawn of a new millennium.

7. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the federal government guarantee the independence of public cultural corporations, in particular by giving Parliament the power to appoint the heads of cultural institutions (CBC, NFB, Telefilm Canada, Canada Council) and giving the boards of directors of other institutions the power to appoint their general management.

8. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the strategic plan of the Department of Canadian Heritage be amended by removing all references to the political role of the Department; and that documents produced by the cultural institutions under federal jurisdiction be amended by removing all references to their political role.

9. The Bloc Québécois recommends that telecommunications enterprises contribute to the creation of a support and development fund for the content of the new technologies, at a rate of 1% of their gross revenue, and that this contribution be increased as artistic and cultural communication increases on the Internet.

10. The Bloc Québécois recommends that Statistics Canada be given sufficient resources to enable it to compile and publish data on culture, and that this federal body work with the cultural sector to formulate the required research formula.

11. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the Department of Canadian Heritage that it reject the Committee's recommendation to formulate policies and programs that would lead it to exercise control over the content of cultural production.

Copyright

Copyright is the daily bread of a number of creators. It may be thought that the new technologies will severely test the right of copyright holders to dispose of their works and collect royalties. But as the representative of ADISQ [Quebec's recording and live performance industry association] in Montreal pointed out, guaranteeing respect for copyright is essential to the development of the new media. The sound recording sector, for example, is worried about the use of MP3 software, which makes it possible to download a sound recording without paying. However, certain enterprises that use this system are in fact complying with copyright legislation.

Agreements have been reached via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) that guarantee respect for copyright on the international scene in the context of the new technological developments. One of these agreements deals with copyright, the other with neighbouring rights. Canada has signed these international agreements, but has not yet integrated them into federal legislation.

The Committee's Report proposes that the Department of Canadian Heritage play a proactive role in establishing a single window whose mandate would be to clear copyright in order to permit the use of existing works by the multimedia sector and thus facilitate multimedia development. It is true that this problem is a major obstacle in the development of this sector, but it is not appropriate to ask the Department of Canadian Heritage to intervene and substitute itself for rights holders in the defence of their own interests. However, the Department could provide copyright holders with the funding needed to do a feasibility study on the idea of a single window, which could be beneficial both to copyright holders and for the development of the multimedia sector.

During the study of Phase II of the copyright legislation, which was completed in 1997, copyright holders called for a revision of the Act to make it technologically neutral, i.e., applicable whatever the support used. For example, at the present time holders of copyright and neighbouring rights can collect royalties on blank audio cassettes, but not on blank video cassettes. What is the justification for this? And what will happen when reproduction technologies change? Will we always be 20 years behind technological developments?

A number of witnesses argued that copyright legislation will only be useful if it is applied by a body with the necessary expertise and resources. In Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage is responsible for copyright policy, while the Department of Industry is responsible for the Copyright Board, a quasi-judicial tribunal responsible for applying the Act. Many groups in the cultural sectors have criticized, and rightly, the Minister of Industry's lack of interest in the Board, in particular its failure to give the Board the financial resources it needs to operate properly. Since the Liberals came to power, the Board's operating budget has fallen from $310,000 to $119,000, although its work more than doubled with the 1997 copyright revision. It is clear that the reputation for competence and credibility built up by the Board since its establishment is at risk.

Recommendations

11. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the federal government proceed with Phase III of the revision of the copyright legislation, with a view on the one hand to incorporating the international obligations signed by Canada at the WIPO and on the other hand to making the legislation technologically neutral.

12. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it provide the funding for interested copyright holders to carry out a feasibility study on the idea of creating a single window to govern copyright for the multimedia sector.

13. During Phase III of the copyright revision, the Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it recognize the "droits de suite" of visual artists.

14. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it give full responsibility for the Copyright Board to the Department of Canadian Heritage.

International Trade

The cultural sector is aware of - and deplores - the weakness of the cultural clauses in international trade agreements.

It should be recalled that, for all practical purposes, there is no cultural exemption clause in the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements on goods and services. The cultural exemption clause negotiated under the Free Trade Agreement (Canada-United States) and carried over into the North American Free Trade Agreement10 (Canada-United States-Mexico) authorizes governments to adopt cultural protection measures, but also authorizes other governments to take retaliatory measures equal in value to the losses suffered as a result of the protection measures.

The recent dispute over magazines11 is a good illustration of Canada's difficulty in adopting cultural protection measures without running into reprisals from the Americans. In this case the Canadian government has yielded to American pressure and opened the domestic advertising market to foreign enterprises. Now, in Canada and abroad, a number of observers are asserting that Canada is in no position to defend its cultural sovereignty and that the Americans have just created the precedent they were looking for to knock down cultural protection measures they deem unacceptable to the trade interests of American corporations and entertainment multinationals.

The federal government's position on the place it intends to give culture in international trade agreements is no longer clear. During the next WTO negotiations, due to begin this fall in Seattle, does the federal government intend to promote a general cultural exemption? Or will it work for the establishment of another agreement, totally independent of the trade agreements and dealing solely with culture, as proposed by the Department of International Trade's Cultural Industries Sectoral Advisory Group on International Trade in February? Nobody knows.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage is currently attempting to set up a network of culture ministers, with the aim of promoting cultural diversity. Among the countries participating in this network are Armenia, Barbados, Brazil, Côte d'Ivoire, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Senegal, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, the Republic of Croatia, the Republic of South Africa, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Canada has just given the Quebec government the right to speak at the next meeting of this network, which is being held in Mexico. It is essential that Quebec speak for itself at international forums on language, culture and communications. The work of the ministers' group is still in the very early stages, and it is important to bear in mind that the members do not all agree on the importance of promoting negotiation of a cultural exemption clause. The United Kingdom and Sweden, for example, are totally opposed.

It should also be borne in mind that a cultural exemption measure can be inserted in an international trade agreement only if it receives majority support not just from governments but also from their respective populations. When France put a stop to talks during the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) negotiations at the OECD, it was because civil society in France mobilized to oppose the MAI and because of the public pressure exerted on the European Parliament, which also rejected the MAI.

Canada puts very little in the way of financial resources at the disposal of its international diplomacy to promote the Canadian position - whatever it may be - and gives very little financial support to the Canadian Conference of the Arts or the Coalition québécoise pour la diversité culturelle, which are both working to rally civil society around the idea of protecting the cultural sector.

Without pre-judging the results of future international trade agreements, it would be prudent to start thinking of setting up mechanisms that would make it possible to finance cultural content to a much greater extent than is being done at present, whether cultural protection measures emerge successfully from multisectoral and multilateral negotiations or not. In the new competitive environment, as traditional policy mechanisms are increasingly being criticized by Canada's trading partners as protectionist, direct subsidies for promotion and production are likely to be one of the few cultural policy mechanisms that may withstand international trade pressures."12 This prediction has proved to be entirely correct in the case of magazines.

Recommendations

15. The Bloc Québécois recommends that the federal government sign a framework agreement with the Quebec government that will enable Quebec to defend cultural diversity on the international scene and to speak for itself internationally in the areas of culture, communications and language.

16. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it invest the financial resources needed to promote cultural diversity on the international scene.

17. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it provide financial support to organizations working on behalf of cultural diversity, to enable them to create an international cultural sector coalition in preparation for the next round of World Trade Organization negotiations.

18. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it work to implement measures that will make possible increased financing for the cultural sector, and that it give the Quebec government all new moneys earmarked for this purpose in Quebec.

Quebec's Culture

There is a "Quebec culture", and it is recognized both in Quebec and abroad for its dynamism and originality. It is highly valued by its home audience. In all areas of cultural expression, Quebeckers are partial - even greedy for - Quebec cultural productions, particularly in broadcasting, while remaining very open to cultural production from outside. This ability on the part of Quebecers to appreciate their own culture while still being very open to other cultures bodes well for the future.

Support for Quebec culture has been a common denominator of every Quebec government since 1961, when Premier Jean Lesage asked Georges-Émile Lapalme to create the first Ministry of Culture in North America, for Quebec. New terminology and new concepts were needed to create a Ministry of Culture out of whole cloth, and the Liberals of the Quiet Revolution succeeded. So it is not surprising that when other governments - federal and provincial - were reducing their contribution to the arts, the Quebec government was maintaining its financial commitment and even initiating new projects. It is important to note that Quebec has traditionally invested twice as much per capita in the cultural sector as Ontario does.

The vigour of Quebec's culture is also reflected in the organizations that have been created by workers in the cultural sector. It has its own unions and professional groups, which operate independently but collaborate when necessary with their Canadian and international counterparts, as issues arise.

Quebec is not only a source of inspiration for all francophone artists in Canada and North America, but also their main market - the one they have to crack.

The Heritage Committee denies these realities by ignoring them, and thus reduces Quebec culture to the rank of just another regional element, in the name of Canadian unity.

No Quebec government can accept this reductive vision promoted by the federal government. In continuity with Quebec's historic claims, Mr Benoît Pelletier13 wrote in La Presse of April 19, "[translation] The time has come for Quebec to assume the full potential of its own identity and to seek to obtain, with the other partners in the federation, total respect for its uniqueness."

The Bloc Québécois regularly witnesses the federal government trying to diminish Quebec's place in Canada. The most recent of these attempts can be found in the strategic plan of the Department of Canadian Heritage entitled Strengthening and Celebrating Canada. In this document, not a single reference is made to the culture of Quebec. This is not surprising, because the legislation creating the Department contains no references to it either. But the strategic plan goes further. A real "speech for the defence" of a standardized and standardizing Canadian cultural identity, the plan calls for providing Canadians with a sense of renewal, hope and a strengthened and shared commitment to our future as a nation . . . [in order] to build a strong, cohesive and stable country. The CBC and all the agencies that report to Canadian Heritage are being conscripted for this purpose.

The Canadian government also works against Quebec on the international scene. The sorriest episode in this regard was certainly the attempt by the Department of Foreign Affairs to make grants for international tours subject to the criterion of promoting national unity. More recently, the Minister of Canadian Heritage attacked France's Minister of Culture, Ms. Catherine Trautman, who had invited Quebec's Minister of Culture and Communications, Ms. Agnès Maltais, to an informal meeting of culture ministers. Moreover, the Canadian government did everything it could to reduce the impact of the Printemps du Québec in Paris by organizing at the same time, also in Paris, visits by francophones from outside Quebec. Lastly, Canada forbade a meeting between the Premier of Quebec, the Honourable Lucien Bouchard, and the President of Mexico, Mr. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Léon.

And yet, rulings by the Privy Council in London in 1883 and 1937, and more recently the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, established in 1965, make it clear that the provincial governments retain their exclusive jurisdictions on the international scene. There are examples of subnational States exercising their constitutional responsibilities internationally. On March 24, 1999, the Quebec government adopted a Declaration on Quebec's participation in international forums dealing with education, language and culture, asserting loud and clear its intention of taking its rightful place on the international scene in those areas that come under its jurisdiction. The Bloc Québécois supports this declaration unreservedly, and urges the federal government to display a little open-mindedness.

As far as language is concerned, the demographic data show that Quebec must continue its efforts to make French the common language of all Quebecers. The situation of French in the region of Montreal, and demographic forecasts suggesting that the number of francophones (of all origins) will start to diminish in 15 years' time, mean that a stop must be put to contradictory language policies on Quebec territory. The federal government must comply with the Charter of the French Language inside Quebec's borders, and it must convey the message to other countries that Quebec is a territory where French is the official language.

In this era of trade globalization and technological development, and in order to develop a consistent cultural policy, it is more crucial than ever that Quebec should have sole authority in an area of jurisdiction that in any case belongs to it, that of arts and culture - an area that the federal government has invaded with its spending power.

Quebec also plays an important role in promoting the use of French on the Internet. At a time when there are about the same number of Internet users in Quebec as in France, Quebec is inspiring France by its attempt to francize the cybernet vocabulary, and its multimedia production is expanding. The Quebec multimedia industry has already racked up a number of successes.

Recommendations

19. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it recognize Quebec as the sole authority in Quebec in the area of arts and culture, and that it sign a framework agreement with the Quebec government recognizing Quebec's jurisdiction and giving it the appropriate budget envelopes.

20. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it sign an agreement with the Quebec government enabling the latter to take control of the communications and telecommunications sectors on Quebec territory.

21. The Bloc Québécois recommends to the federal government that it comply with the Charter of the French Language inside Quebec's borders and in its relations with foreign countries.

2 Idem.

3 The Quebec ministries of Social Solidarity, Culture and Communications, and Employment are participating in the task force.

4 Under the heading Income Averaging for Artists, the Standing Committee on Finance wrote in its pre-budget report of December 1998, entitled Facing the Future: Challenges and Choices, "The Committee therefore continues to recommend that the government consider the introduction of income averaging for those forms of income that fluctuate substantially from year to year."

5 Budget Plan tabled in the House of Commons, March 6, 1996.

6 Canadian Conference of the Arts, A Brief to the Standing Committee on Finance, Pre-Budget Hearings, 1998-99, October 1997.

7 Regarding the use of cultural institutions for political ends, it should be noted that the government has tabled Bill C-44, which would have made the tenure of the President of the CBC dependent on the government's pleasure. Faced with public outrage and pressure from the Bloc Québécois, the government was obliged to retreat. However, the Bill would still leave the NFB Commissioner and the Executive Director of Telefilm Canada appointed at pleasure, and it proposes a major encroachment by the federal government into the appointment of the boards of other cultural institutions, such as museums.

8 1999-2000 Estimates, National Film Board.

9 Statistics Canada - catalogue 56-203 - unpublished data.

10 FTA Article 2005: Cultural industries are exempt from the provisions of this Agreement, except as specifically provided in Article 401 (Tariff Elimination), paragraph 4 of Article 1607 (divestiture of a direct acquisition) and Articles 2006 and 2007 of this Chapter. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Agreement, a Party may take measures of equivalent commercial effect in response to actions that would have been inconsistent with this Agreement but for paragraph 1.

11 The American government opposed the decision of the Canadian government to reserve the advertising market in Canada for Canadian publications.

12 Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, Interim Report, Wired to Win: Canada's International Competitive Position in Communications, April 1997. p.46.

13 MNA for Chapleau, constitutional expert and the LPQ's Canadian intergovernmental affairs critic.