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. Some museums have mould on the walls, some have leaks and some have no proper storage facilities in certain areas.
I want to refer back to the issue of the lack of research dollars. Museum curators do not have the funds to get out into the field and to create new exhibits. Museums have identified this problem year after year.
What we now have is a major cultural deficit in the country. We are at the point where we need investment. We needed the federal government to say that it was impossible for little municipalities to handle it and that it was too much for a single province. The federal government needed to make a national commitment to look at a cultural framework. When I hear members of the Conservative Party say that they want to see other forms of government step up to the plate, I say, what an insult.
I have to watch myself before I get ruled out of order but who does the government think is putting the money into our small museums across the country? It is the municipalities. I have seen small municipalities with hardly any budget at all and they are the ones who keep these museums open. They are the ones who do what they can with volunteers.
What we have asked for is a federal government that is at the table but it is not at the table on this because not only did it decide to cut the funds but the funds that were sitting there that it knew could have been utilized better it thought it could just--