This arises from the suggestion last June from Mr. Scarpaleggia about having the railway museums come here. Generally, most of the committee members, I believe, were in agreement that railway museums had some particularly unique needs among museums. For the record, I have done a little work on this and have received information.
There are fundamentally, in the area of railway historical museums, two organizations, and there are different manifestations of those two organizations. I think we have to listen to both of them.
Before I carry on with that, let me make a quick aside. I would suggest respectfully to Mr. Kotto that if we have time in this committee to do this work, the information we gather will be of very high value for our government or any successor government for making policy, particularly with respect to railway museums.
I'll just finish my summary.
Number one, concerning organization, the Canadian Railroad Historical Association or CRHA, my notes say, is a world-class, pan-Canadian institution that owns, preserves, and disseminates information on Canadian railway heritage throughout Canada. The museum Mr. Scarpaleggia is recommending we hear from is actually the most significant manifestation of the Canadian Railroad Historical Association.
In addition to that, however, there is a second organization that is not in competition with but actually adds to this picture. That is the Canadian Council for Railway Heritage. In summary, the CCRH is an organized railway interest group that lobbies for improvement and sustainability on behalf of railway museums, tourist railroads, and railway heritage organizations in Canada. They are actually involved sometimes in rail tours and so on.
It's all part of this very unique thing that Canada has. Canada would not be a nation—we would not exist—without the railways. That's how key railways are to us. If we have time and if it's the wisdom of this committee to go ahead with these hearings, my recommendation would be to hear from spokespersons from both of those organizations.