Canadian Heritage Committee on June 5th, 2013

[Mark O'Neill]

Again, thank you for the question.

First, we have aboriginal historians actively involved in the project now. As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, aboriginal history will be a part of the national narrative in the museum, fully and completely within the new national narrative that we've developed to tell the complete history of Canada.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

As a matter of curiosity, what will you do with the number of displays you've had in place for a while? They're going to be replaced. As you've said, David, nothing lasts forever.

What will become of those artifacts?

[David Morrison]

One of the things we're doing now is deciding which parts of Canada Hall we want to keep, that we can reprogram and fit into the new mandate, the new vision, for the space. I can tell you right now that we have more or less decided—it's not cast in stone yet—on the St. Onuphrius church, the Ukrainian church. It is the largest artifact we own, a real consecrated church. We've decided it's going to stay in the hall, for instance. We have also decided that the “Nishga Girl”, a west coast fishing trawler, is not going to make its way through the new iteration. It left the building last week for a new home with a national historic site in British Columbia. So we found a good home for it.

But that's very much the issue. What do we want to keep? And what can we reprogram? There are wonderful architectural spaces in there that we'd like to keep, like the Ontario streetscape or the New France square. But can we tell a different and more coherent story by keeping that architecture in place?

[Mark O'Neill]

I’ll just quickly add to that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Mr. O'Neill, we're out of time for that round. We might be able to pick it up before the end.

Madam Turmel, welcome to our committee. The rest of the time is yours.

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I will be sharing my time with my colleague Mr. Nantel.

Mr. O'Neill, you talked about refocusing and rebranding the museum. Could you tell me how the temporary exhibits on other world civilizations will be affected. I am talking about the space intended for those exhibits and the funding invested to attract major exhibitions.

[Mark O'Neill]

Thank you for the question, Madame Turmel.

By rotating, do you mean the international exhibitions?

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Yes.

[Mark O'Neill]

As I mentioned in my remarks earlier, we intend to continue to have international exhibitions. Those partnerships are extremely important to us.

We're planning several years out now. We have the Greek exhibition coming next year. In two years', time we’ll have a Vikings exhibition coming from the Swedish History Museum, for example.

We will continue to have those international exhibitions.

I'm sorry, the second part of your question was...?

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Will there be an impact on the amount invested in either of those areas?

[Mark O'Neill]

No. We do not perceive any sort of detrimental impact on the funds we set aside for hosting international exhibitions.

Each international exhibition has a wide variety of cost factors attached to it. Some are based on the complexity of the artifacts for travel. Some are even based on, frankly speaking, the value of the rental of the exhibition. There are many factors. It can be very difficult to predict, but we have no intention, in any way, of diminishing our budget for hosting international exhibitions.

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you.

I will ask my colleague to continue.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Turmel.

Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Morrison, thank you for being here today.

As you can see, here with us we have some eminent individuals. These people are very interested in the issue. As a result, I feel that receiving five witnesses after your presentation and that of the minister, is not enough. I would therefore like to introduce the following motion:

That the current study be extended by two meetings to allow the Committee to hear from more witnesses.

This basically means adding two meetings to the study of Bill C-49 in order to hear from more witnesses. I would like us to make a decision as soon as possible.

I have a question for you about what you said with respect to the museum's ability to expand...

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Monsieur Nantel has moved a motion. Do you want to repeat what you said?

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Of course. Basically, I wanted the committee to extend the study of Bill C-49 by two meetings in order to hear from more witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Monsieur Nantel has moved a motion that we extend our study of Bill C-49 by holding two more, two-hour meetings.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Any discussion on the motion?

Mr. Calandra.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Just to confirm, is the motion actually in order? This is a difficult one because the discussions were obviously held in camera.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Yes, it's in order.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Without betraying any confidences discussed in camera, Mr. Chair, if it is in order, we gave the opposition a great deal of opportunity to present witnesses and to discuss the length of time of these presentations in these hearings. Based on those conversations, both in public and in private, we will obviously not be supporting this motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

If there are more speakers on this motion, I am going to dismiss our current panel because it was scheduled to wrap up at 5:30. Once we finish this bit of committee business, we will start with the next panel.

Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Morrison, thank you to both of you.

Mr. Cash.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Well, Mr. Chair, I'm not sure what my colleague is talking about in terms of the opportunity to discuss this in public. This is the first opportunity we've had to discuss this in public. As for the other discussions, we're not party to talk about them.

That said, clearly, there are a lot of questions to be answered here. We have been given one day to question witnesses. That's not enough. Canadians deserve a more thorough going over of this bill, especially considering the fact that it was never discussed in our committee study. We were relegated to one day of witnesses.

Surely, we owe the Canadian people a more thorough discussion and witness testimony on this issue. It's been an issue that Canadians right across the country have been engaged in. We're stuffing it all in one session, which doesn't seem to be the way we should be proceeding on this bill, in fact, on any bill really. On a bill concerning the key Canadian Museum of Civilization, the most popular museum in the capital region and the jewel in the crown of our museum system, we are giving one session to witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Well, we're chewing into that witness time now, so unless there's further discussion, we'll move to a vote on the motion.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I don't know if this is in order, but I'm sure you'll tell me if it's not.

With unanimous consent, I would be more than pleased to make public the discussions that happened in camera with respect to the time given for this testimony. If the opposition would agree with that, and if that's even allowed, I think that would help explain to the Canadian people why we are having this set of meetings today. I would have no problem with that.