Canadian Heritage committee  —A, B, C is federal, and D, E, F.... I think the important thing is that there is an agreement and that there is complementarity in how it's done. What we're also—

Canadian Heritage committee  Excuse me, just one last point I wanted to make is that an investment by the federal government shows leadership, and the provinces are starting to respond. They've looked at the museum policy. The Province of Nova Scotia has, as a result, started a new museum policy. The Yukon has started one.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, Saint-Constant.

Canadian Heritage committee  I've been in my job for 25 years, so I'm long in the tooth on some of the history here. Once upon a time, that was considered a national institution. We had a program, which is now dead, and it was called national specialized museums--

Canadian Heritage committee  --and Delson was recognized as the national collection for railways in Canada. It received some operating support--I'm going to say it was roughly $100,000, or something like that, per year. Gone. History. Toast. The program was cancelled and the funding was cut. The same thing happened with the Maritime Museum.

Canadian Heritage committee  If I may, I have one last point on the federal-provincial role. Our perspective is that all the museums and all the collections across Canada--whether it's the Mary March Museum in Newfoundland, or Delson, or the one in Duncan, British Columbia--are our national fabric. Our point of view is that our stories start at the grassroots and go up; it's not from the top going down.

Canadian Heritage committee  The first criterion in terms of eligibility is basically that the museum has to be open year-round and have a minimum of one professional staff. That's at the beginning. That takes the universe of 2,500 museums down to roughly 1,000. Of the people who then put in applications for projects—this is a rough figure, and Ms.

Canadian Heritage committee  I wanted to add as well that this is a good question you've asked. Also, because of the decline in public support over the last 20 years from federal-provincial sources, museums have had to cut back. Their attention has been on what we call the front-door activities, which are the gift shop, marketing, and special glamourous activities to attract people.

Canadian Heritage committee  Ms. Sherwood referred to the Virtual Museum of Canada, for example. This is an agency that has helped fund very innovative museum Internet applications. So it is possible, it is widely used in school systems, and it is a very good step. Of course, museums already have their own websites and other virtual things.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, we had extensive consultations with the community and developed proposals. We worked very closely with the previous government, and during the election we went out to all of the parties, and all of your parties have supported this. Museums are phenomenally popular. Fifty-nine million visitors attend them, and public opinion polls such as we have done verify their popularity.

Canadian Heritage committee  In our brief we refer to our consultations and our study with our members. That's where we received a great deal of evidence that is both anecdotal and statistical about what their needs are. We've quoted to you some of the real-life examples of collections that are in barns that are not heated, where mould and insects are damaging the artifacts, and the museums that are in unsafe facilities, with leaking roofs.

Canadian Heritage committee  Quite honestly, I hear you. There are these silos for very specific projects. By pulling together a multi-year approach, they should be able to design a program that meets the needs of the local museum so they can put together a business plan that shows, over three to five years, the types of activities they need to do to preserve their collections and make them accessible to people.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll introduce the crowd here. But just a comment. When we heard about that $224 billion, we were quite excited as well. We thought we'd see if we could be listed on the Toronto stock market. My name is John McAvity. I'm the Executive Director of the Canadian Museums Association.