Yes. I want, for the record, to change the tone of the discussion a little bit.
You gentlemen are in the business of preserving big artifacts. I was in the business of preserving even bigger artifacts--mining headframes in the pioneer community of Cobalt--and we had a hell of a job. We had two levels of government that would say to us again and again, “Prove the value.” They saw these pieces as massive structures of junk. In fact, we had to fight with the government to stop them from bulldozing what we saw as artifacts.
Then lo and behold, a provincial television show voted Cobalt the most historic town in Ontario, and suddenly we had bureaucrats running in saying, “Oh my God, how do we save your heritage?” Well, we had lost most of it by that point. But we still had some worth saving. Finally, the federal government came to the table saying that this is a nationally historic site--after, of course, we had lost a lot of our artifacts.
I'm telling this story because the argument we always had to use was not so much that these were nationally significant sites that were being bulldozed, but that this was an economic engine. I don't think that in the discussion on museums we hear very often about the pivotal role museums play, especially in the regions.
So I'd like to ask you, in your experience, when economic development plans are being discussed, when economic development strategies are being discussed, when tourism strategies are being put forward, are the museums somewhere out there doing their own thing, or are you a pivotal part of what a lot of agencies and businesses are looking for in order to attract people and economic dollars to your region?