Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 8th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

This is meeting number 22 of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. I'd like to call this meeting to order, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2). This is our study related to Canadian museums.

Welcome today to everyone. I'm very pleased that you could make this meeting today.

I understand that Mr. Vadeboncoeur, president of the board, will be making a presentation. Afterwards, each person will have his or her own presentation.

We'll start from the top. I'll introduce everyone. We have Mr. Gerry Osmond, from the Alberta Museums Association; from the Canadian Museums Association, we have Mr. John McAvity; from the Heritage Canada Foundation, Ms. Nathalie Bull; I have already mentioned Mr. Vadeboncoeur, and with him we also have Mr. Michel Perron.

Who will go first? We can start at the top.

Mr. Osmond, if you'd like, sir, go ahead.

[Gerry Osmond, Executive Director, Alberta Museums Association]

Thank you for the invitation to speak today to this committee. It is greatly appreciated.

I also want to start by thanking the MP for Peace River for introducing, a few meetings ago, the motion to study museums. We thank you for that.

Canada is blessed with a rich and colourful cultural and natural heritage. To preserve and interpret this heritage for present and future generations, dedicated and passionate Canadians created museums to tell the stories of our nation from the perspectives of our diverse communities and regions. Today there are museums in every region of the country. With the help of thousands of volunteers and staff, these institutions provide programs and services for the benefit of the communities they serve. As community centres and educational resources, they assist Canadians to understand their heritage, to have a sense of place and to feel a sense of pride, thereby playing an essential role in improving the quality of life and in building strong and progressive communities.

Canada's museums want to continue our contribution in helping to build a strong and vibrant Canadian cultural identity. We want to ensure that heritage remains a vital part of communities across Canada and that Canadians learn more about themselves and each other. We want to ensure that our institutions are reflective of and responsive to the communities we serve, providing all Canadians with a sense of place and community pride.

However, recent factors have created significant challenges for Canada's museums. These include succession leadership issues; greater expectation of professional museum standards; greater expectation of community engagement; increased operational costs; pressures to incorporate new technologies; and increased accountability and expectations of the public for up-to-date exhibits, programs and services. These factors have been compounded by a lack of predictable multi-year funding.

Despite diligent efforts to generate revenues, museums are still unable to secure enough stable funding to sustain their operations in the long term. As much as they attempt to operate using business models, museums will never generate enough revenue to fully offset operational costs. For this reason, governments worldwide directly support museums. In Canada, all three levels of government have a role to play in supporting the essential function that Canada's museums provide to our communities. The federal government's role has three fundamental components: to ensure stewardship of the national museums; to preserve and protect Canada's rich heritage for present and future generations; and to assist with the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of collections of national significance, quality, and specialization that exist throughout Canada's regional museums.

To support this role, a pan-Canadian approach is required. Over the past two years, the Canadian Museums Association, in consultation with the national museum community, has been working intensively to develop a new national museum policy. The consultations with the museum community were comprehensive and inclusive. The findings provided a realistic and honest assessment of the challenges and needs of the sector. Not surprisingly, the issues have not changed over the past ten years. What has changed, however, is their severity. Based on the consultations, the Canadian Museums Association created a framework proposal to guide the development of a new policy. A cornerstone of this proposal is predictable multi-year funding for museums. As a sector, Canada's museums have done their part in this process; we have clearly articulated our needs to the Canadian Museums Association's consultation process in 2005. Consequently, we feel that now, more than ever, the time has come for the federal government to develop and implement a new national museum policy that includes improved and predictable multi-year funding.

For any federal museum funding to be fully effective and responsive to the needs of Canada's museums, it must include more flexible and accessible eligibility guidelines and a competitive application process; peer juries from across the museum community to adjudicate applications based on consistent and clear criteria, which will ensure transparency and effectiveness by putting the decisions in the hands of individuals who understand the needs of the museum community; more efficient turnaround timeframes; and a mechanism to allow the community to provide ongoing feedback.

On September 25, $4.6 million was cut from the museum assistance program, the only museum specific federal funding program. To say the museum community was surprised is an understatement. We were even more surprised to hear recently, through this committee, that not all of the funds allocated to the museum assistance program were distributed over the past few years. If this is indeed the case, it is unquestionably not the result of a lack of need for funding in the museum community; on the contrary, it is a sign of a program and a bureaucratic process that require a redevelopment to better align with the realities of the 21st century. While we agree that a review of current museum funding programs is required to ensure they effectively meet the needs of Canada's museums, cutting the modest amount that was available is not a constructive or logical starting point.

It is especially disturbing and dissapointing that the September 25 announcement gives the impression that museum funding is wasteful and unnecessary. Headlines referring to the government's trimming of the fat are detrimental to a sector that has consistently striven for years to have responsible, accountable, and valued community centres. While we commend the federal government for providing $245.3 million per year to Canada's museums, the reality is the majority of this funding stays in Ottawa and does not find its way to community museums across the country.

Despite being critical to Canada’s museums, federal museum funding levels have been appallingly insufficient for many years. In light of the recent museums assistance program cuts, the need for a new national museum policy with increased predictable multi-year funding is even more acute and critical.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. McAvity.

[John McAvity, Executive Director, Canadian Museums Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Je voudrais dire un gros merci à vous, monsieur le président, and to all of the members of the committee.

I'm not going to read our brief to you. You have a copy of it. Instead I'd rather just focus on a couple of points and some of the recommendations. The brief that we've submitted I think is quite comprehensive. It includes a number of very clear recommendations.

I want to first say a little bit about the association I represent. It was founded in 1947, so it's been around a long time. We undertake a high level of consultation with our members, as you've heard from my colleague from Alberta. I think it's safe to say we're experienced and well recognized. I, for example, have been the executive director for over 25 years. I've worked in the sector for about 35 years. My colleague, Guy Vadenboncoeur, used to be the president of the association in the early 1980s. So there's a strong network within the museum community across Canada.

The recommendations that we have before you are built upon what was looked at last year by the Government of Canada. We have updated those and made some revisions to them. We've done that based on consultations. In fact in the middle of October of this year, we held a meeting with about 20 to 25 representatives from across Canada. They came to Ottawa. We took the policy apart. We came at it with some new ideas to face the realities that are there. For the most part, the situation has not changed, but we think there are some new opportunities we could build upon. In addition, my board has met. All of this has just been in the last couple of weeks, since the cuts have put museums much more in the public eye.

The other thing I want to touch upon before I get into the recommendations is that there is unanimity within the museum community on this. I think there is a very high level of unanimity within the general public that museums are in fact important. We have heard from cities, from councils, from towns. We've heard from the tourism industry and the municipalities. We know the provinces are all onside in official consultations, and we've heard from all political parties that do believe in the importance of our museums. So I think we've got a win-win situation here.

We met last week with the Minister of Canadian Heritage. At that time, we presented her with these recommendations in a slightly different-looking document, using, as we say in Ottawa, a “deck”. We've asked her to consider bringing in a new museum policy as soon as possible. She has in turn asked us to work with her department immediately, which we've agreed to, and deliver recommendations to her before Christmas. We've asked if she would actually see about delivering a new museum policy as early as early 2007, and we've offered her the opportunity to announce it at the Canadian Museums Association conference, which will be in Ottawa.

The recommendations we've made I think are quite clear:

We've asked to have the policy as soon as possible.

Secondly, we have presented them in short-, mid-, and long-term approaches. The first one, being the most immediate one, would be to revise or replace the museums assistance program with a new mechanism that will meet the needs of museums today. We have laid out a number of criteria for your consideration: multi-year funding; a competitive basis; a program that's more responsive, more flexible, and more efficient. We've suggested in fact that grants be turned around in a four-month period, noting that the Honourable Perrin Beatty, when he was minister, had guaranteed a three-month time, which he did deliver on. We currently have museums waiting many months for approvals.

Thirdly, we recommend that you consider how such a new program should be delivered. There are a number of criteria that we present to you about qualitative decisions, efficiency, effectiveness, low cost in administering the program, and the principles of having peer review.

That takes us to basically two scenarios. One is that it stays within the Department of Canadian Heritage. The other, which is our more preferred option, is that the programs be moved out to an independent arm's-length agency--and we can discuss that in further detail.

In terms of a mid-career approach, which was the short-term approach, we recognize that there are a lot of other programs that the department--and elsewhere in the government--provides to museums. We think many of these programs need to be evaluated just as the museum assistance program was evaluated, with external appraisers. That's going to take a little bit of time. There are other client groups that would be affected, but we think that would be in the overall best interest to ensure those programs are meeting needs today.

A longer-term recommendation we're making--not one that we have to wait for long term, but one that will take a number of years to get set up--is to create a public-private partnership to help fund preservation of important collections across Canada. You've heard from a number of the railway museums and so on. This is coming from the conviction we have that museums are best when they are funded by many different sources. We don't expect the federal government to come in and solve all the problems overnight. We want to have a realistic approach.

We've seen models that exist in other countries where endowments are created with the new tax incentives that have been recently brought in. We think there's an opportunity there to build up a fund that would complement the federal granting programs. We believe that this could be developed--it will require a bit of seed money--but it will take us a couple of years to really get something like that going and have a board of very prominent Canadians and the usual campaigns that would be associated with it.

In addition, we recommend a further tax incentive that would help in the building of such an endowment, and that would be to exempt capital gains on donations of land, property, and other elements that could go in as assets to such a foundation.

Finally, one of the other issues that face the government is the growth of new museums. There are new museums that keep popping up, and the federal government does help many of them out with capital funds. We think we need to get a better handle on this whole area. Further, we need to see better coordination between the left hand and the right hand of government. At the very least, we suggest a study be done with a five- to ten-year horizon that identifies upcoming major capital projects. This will help in the planning for those so that they're not so much of a surprise to us.

Secondly, we also believe there needs to be coordination with those programs that fund capital, which are often out of regional development agencies or in other areas--they're not out of the museum assistance program. It's something I think we've all heard for a number of years, and I think that would be very useful.

Those, in a nutshell, are the key recommendations we're making.

I'll turn it over to my colleagues. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay. Next is Ms. Bull.

[Nathalie Bull, Executive Director, Heritage Canada Foundation]

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you very much for this opportunity to appear.

I'm Nathalie Bull and I'm the executive director of the Heritage Canada Foundation, not to be confused with the Department of Canadian Heritage, although many make that mistake every day.

We are a national charity dedicated to promoting and protecting historic places across Canada.

When I say historic places, you should be thinking of the places all around us, of beloved community landmarks such as St. Marys Junction Station--in your riding, Mr. Chair--the commercial and residential districts like Edmonton's Old Strathcona, and industrial complexes like the McIntyre Gold Mine in Timmins. These are all historic places.

Like you, we believe that historic places shape and reflect our identity. They tell the stories of who we are and they contribute to a vibrant economy for this country.

I just want to tell you a little about what Heritage Canada Foundation does. We've given you all a copy of the issue of our magazine featuring the endangered places list. We use this attention-getting endangered places list to bring national attention to places in this country that are at risk. You may have seen just last week a story on the national news that talked about two of these places, and a full-page story in The Globe and Mail last week, also, that looked at the plight of one of these buildings. The endangered places list, in addition to bringing attention to individual places, lets us bring attention to the root causes and the issues underlying the problems for these places, such as inadequate funding or inadequate legislation.

We also promote the benefit of conservation in communities. Many places across Canada are still showing the benefits of our ground-breaking Main Street program. In Quebec we continue that program. Our subsidiary Rues principales is continuing that tradition. They actually have a project in Verchères currently where they're involved in helping revitalize an historic community.

But that's enough about us.

I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to address the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. I wanted to assure you that our members fully support the call for a new museums policy and for stable funding, so eloquently expressed by our museum colleagues here today. We also applaud the careful attention this committee has brought to this very important matter. I bring an additional perspective to the impact of the proposed cuts.

The majority of Canada's 2,500 museums are in historic buildings. Think of the Stephen Leacock Museum in Orillia or the Old Carleton County Court House near Woodstock, in New Brunswick. These are museums, but they're also using historic places.

A building without a use or without funds to support its purpose is a building at risk. Quite simply, the cuts to MAP, and potentially the cuts to the young Canada works program, ultimately may put historic buildings at risk because they put the museum function itself at risk.

I'm also here to tell you today that this is really only part of a larger related problem. Among G-8 nations, Canada is the only one without a coherent and effective system of funding programs and policies for its built heritage. Because of this, desertion, decay, and demolition are taking their toll. Over the past 30 years, we've lost 20% of our heritage buildings in this country.

Why is that happening? It's happening because there are a lot of sticks out there that make it difficult to reuse historic buildings, but there are very few carrots or incentives to encourage private investors to take these buildings and rehabilitate them.

What support is out there at the federal level? Frankly, not much. You may remember the cost-share program, which was created as a bricks-and-mortar project funding program to give some assistance to some of the 700 national historic sites that are in the hands of private owners or voluntary organizations. That program did benefit museums like Ruthven in Cayuga, Ontario, but the program is now dormant and without funding.

The Auditor General in 2003 noted that there have been 118 requests for funding under that program, and they've all gone unfulfilled. Places that many of you, I'm sure, know in your communities, like Craig Heritage Park in Nanaimo and Sharon Temple in East Gwillimbury, Ontario, are national historic sites operated by groups of volunteers as museums. They are trying to keep body and soul and bricks and mortar together with no federal assistance and no federal leadership. This is really a serious problem.

There has been a recent new program for built heritage, the commercial heritage properties incentive fund, known as CHPIF, a $30-million pilot contribution program announced in 2003. However, CHPIF was wound up early as part of that same round of recent cuts that affected museums. That was a serious blow.

CHPIF was designed more as a tax incentive for rehabilitation, something the built heritage sector has been requesting decades. CHPIF was successful in attracting developers and investors to historic buildings on the edge, buildings on death row all over this country. The first 17 projects announced will leverage more than eight times the federal investment. That federal investment will also kick-start these buildings into revenue-generating independence, increase local taxes, and spark adjacent revitalization. A great example is the distillery district in Toronto; a CHPIF-funded rehab project contributed to the exciting transformation of that once derelict area.

Many buildings out there need a program like CHPIF. I'm sure you all know examples in your own communities. I urge you to ensure that a comparable incentive for rehabilitation of commercial heritage properties is included in the next federal budget. A tax credit would be ideal.

At the same time, let's not forget the museums. Let's not forget that approximately 70% of heritage buildings in Canada, including museums, would not benefit from a tax-based measure. In that case, a renewed cost-sharing program or some sort of public-private partnership is also needed, with a source of federal funds to leverage greater private investment and again to show leadership. The Heritage Canada Foundation made the case for both of these financial measures in our recent appearance before the Standing Committee on Finance.

In conclusion, the federal government must do its part to help Canadians keep landmarks from becoming landfill, so we ask this committee to endorse the museum community's request for a new Canadian museums policy and stable new funding. We also ask you to support the call for financial incentives to encourage private investment in the rehabilitation of historic places.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Vadeboncoeur is next.

[Guy Vadeboncoeur, President of the Board, Société des musées québécois]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

With me today is the Executive Director of the Société des musées québécois, Mr. Michel Perron, who will also be able to answer your questions.

My presentation will be quite brief and to the point. Since I'm speaking last, I think I am repeating what has already been said.

Like the other provincial associations, the Société des musées québécois is in full agreement with the position taken by the Canadian Museums Association. This network of national and provincial associations has been working cooperatively and effectively for some 40 years now. In fact, a number of our associations are offspring of the national association, and this allows each of us to have our own interests.

The actions of the Société des musées québécois and of the Canadian Museums Association, as well as those of all the other provincial associations are designed to promote their best interests. However, our chief concern is the best interests of museums generally.

The Société des musées québécois has been in place since 1958 and represents over 300 institutions, museums, exhibition and interpretation centres, as well as the individuals and professionals who work in museums or in connection with museums.

We have over 2,000 institutions throughout Canada and they receive quite a number of visitors. In Quebec, the 420 museums have a total number of visitors of some 12 million. I would point out that although some of these institutions are not members of the Société des musées québécois, they do the same work and share our objectives.

I've been working in this field for 36 years, for the same museum, and I have seen the network develop. Museums are a symbol of stability, a reliable place that people can come back to at difficult times. Despite the dedication, work and competence of the managers and volunteers who work in this field and despite the magic we try to produce, the current situation facing the museums is precarious and is affecting everybody.

We are aware that we have a public mission and mandate to achieve in the context of a society that is constantly evolving. One of the challenges we will have to meet in the next few years will be to meet the requirements of an increasingly demanding and informed public—one that grew up with us. They are therefore accountable to our public.

This new reality is expressed in different ways. First of all, there are the baby-boomers, who have taken early retirement or who have simply retired. These people are well educated and want high-quality products. And then there is the role museums are required to play in integrating newcomers into our multicultural society. This role will become increasingly important.

Of course, museums must play to their strengths. One of their strengths which should not be forgotten is their hallmark: the collections they house and the conservation of these collections.

I totally agree with my colleague that the buildings and spaces that house museums are also part of our collection and deserve to be protected and preserved.

In order to carry out our mandate, over the years we have developed a talent for unifying people. We work with universities, schools and communities, bearing in mind that we have a research and conservation vocation and that we must offer high-quality products. People no longer buy just anything.

We try to balance our various responsibilities, and in order to do that, we have to make some compromises. We have become experts at compromise, because we have to make compromises every day. We have also developed a talent for getting financial and human resources and in using them efficiently.

We have achieved many things. We have used the expression "With a little help from my friend" in our paper. Museums need their friends, including the municipal, community, provincial and federal levels of government. We cannot disregard of these levels, nor of the private sector. We have become masters at seeking assistance from the private sector and from volunteers.

Museums face a problem of perception. I am speaking to you as a practitioner and on behalf of the Société des musées québécois. We provide people with an essential service, and a number of our institutions are private, not-for-profit organizations. This role is dear to us, and the public supports us by visiting museums.

I can only say that I strongly support what my colleagues John McAvity and Gerry Osmond, from Alberta, or the other representatives of provincial associations have told you about the role the federal government should play with respect to museum culture. It must play a stewardship role with respect to the national museums so as to conserve and protect Canadian heritage and to promote the conservation, interpretation and dissemination of this rich heritage.

In the last two years, the Canadian Museums Association invited us to take part in developing guidelines for a new federal museum policy. We contributed as an association. We arrived at a general consensus that is understood by everyone, and this gave us a certain momentum.

Multi-year funding is one of the cornerstones of the new museum policy. The principle is that to manage our institutions properly, we need multi-year funding in order to do long-term planning. Nothing happens instantly, nothing is decided overnight. When a program is slow in getting back to us, we have difficulty managing our institutions properly.

So we support John and the Canadian Museums Association. There is an urgent need for a museum policy complete with funding.

The cutbacks announced on September 25^th of this year are unfortunate and absolutely unjustifiable, particularly the arguments put forward to explain them.

During the 2004-2005 fiscal year, 58 projects were subsidized by the Museums Assistance Program. The 58 projects never received the funding requested. Each project received some money, but not necessarily the amount requested—that is part of the rules.

If we apply the 25% cutback over two years, the $2.3 million that Quebec received for the 2004-2005 fiscal year will be reduced to $1.7 million. That would mean a reduction in the number of projects from 58 to 33. It's quite a simple mathematical calculation. However, I have been on peer review boards for these programs and applications, and I can tell you that that is not how things work. The peers themselves give preference to certain projects over others and make recommendations to the minister.

These budget cutbacks will create instability for the institutions that take the trouble to prepare these projects, which are designed, we should remember, for Canada-wide dissemination. Travelling exhibits go around the country and promote dialogue with others. Setting up an exhibit of this type is a long process and that requires a great deal of planning. And now all our efforts count for very little.

I see that I have gone over the time I was given, but it is important to make these arguments. These cutbacks will result in the disappearance of these projects and will reduce job opportunities for graduates of museology. These students find jobs and get contracts as a result of these projects.

People who justify these cuts by saying that museum management is ineffective are extremely unfamiliar with the situation. The response and reaction of the museum community are clear evidence of the real situation.

I will not go over in detail the two requests and resolutions passed unanimously at the annual general meeting of the Société des musées québécois. I would just say that in order to restore confidence, we need first and foremost a federal museum policy complete with funding, as well as a stay on the government's decision to cut back the Museums Assistance Program by $4.2 million.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

We'll go to questions. When we ask our questions, to get as many in as possible, we'll try to stick close to the five minutes for questions and answers. So try to keep the answers--

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Five minutes?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I'm usually lenient.

Mr. Bélanger.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your presentation. I am wondering what the reason for today's meeting is, if only to criticize the government. That is good in itself, but I am not sure how that can help museums.

Following your appearance earlier this year, before the summer recess, all the committee passed a resolution that was put forward by my colleague Mr. Kotto, I believe. It urged the government to come forward with the new museum policy quickly. This resolution was tabled in the House and passed unanimously.

However, with the cutbacks that were announced in September, things turned for the worst. I agree with you, Mr. Vadeboncoeur, that funding must be increased and it must be multi-year funding. Funding was in fact discussed during the consultations held during the two years we were in government.

These consultations resulted in a consensus, and we were about to adopt a new museum policy or at least come forward with it. We find it surprising when people tell us now that this could take another year or two. That is why we tabled a motion to urge the government to come forward with a new policy, because it has all the tools it needs to do that.

I know that some of you felt betrayed when the budget cutbacks were announced in September. Furthermore, the committee was given some figures that did not correspond with the actual situation. I tried to get the figures. I want to make sure that my figures and yours are the same.

These are the figures I got from the departmental officials, and a representative from the minister's office was present as well.

During the current fiscal year, the government must get $600,000 from the funds that have not yet been allocated and $1.7 million from already-allocated funds, in the hope that the $9.4 million will not all have been spent. The other amount—and this is where there is some confusion, is for Young Canada Works, and has already been spent.

Are your figures the same as mine?

[John McAvity]

If I may, first of all, we don't really have those figures. When we heard evidence presented at this committee that the museum assistance program was underspent, we were surprised and shocked. We can assure you that many more museums are applying for funding than is available. We can assure you that those museums are very sophisticated in how they make applications.

Part of the complexity there has been that the program has grown up, and a lot of demands have been placed on it. Museums have to match each one of those dollars. Sometimes, if you don't get an approval within a reasonable period of time, if you have to wait eight to ten to twelve months to get an approval, the train has already left the railway station. The project is now dead, or is no longer viable. The money is returned to Ottawa. A credit therefore develops.

That's what we believe is happening. We don't run that program, and don't have immediate access to it, but I can assure you, right off the top, that the needs of the museum community are far in excess of $9.4 million.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I have to go quickly here. Five minutes is just too constraining.

The estimates have been changed from 2005-06 to 2006-07. Where it was $9.4 million for the museum assistance program, and the rest, $2.3 million or $3 million, was for Young Canada Works, the $9.4 million is now split into two. One is for grants and one is for contributions in 2006-07.

The public servant in charge of that, when I asked her that very question in terms of the comments we had about underspending, did not know where those numbers came from either. We're thus in a bit of a vortex of numbers here. At some point, before we go forward as a committee or as a Parliament, we'll need to get some precision in those numbers.

Another thing that's going on and that's concerning me greatly is this advocacy chill that is being created across the country on a number of fronts. Whether it's women's groups or the court challenges program, we've seen this government basically cut funding for what could be seen as advocacy.

I'm aware that some of your associations receive funding from the museum assistance program. Has there been any indication of that funding being cut? Have you received any such indication?

I hope the answer is no.

[John McAvity]

In the case of the Canadian Museums Association, the answer is yes, we do receive funding from the department, both sustaining and project money, and we raise a fair amount of money independently.

We've had no indication of cuts. In fact, on how the $2.4 million cuts are going to be applied, we really are as much in the dark as you are.

I also want to point out that the funding we receive is for very specific activities. They're professional development activities, communications activities, and so on. Not a cent of any of our money would go into lobbying. We're not a lobbying organization anyway.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Are there any others?

Then I have a final question, quickly.

[Guy Vadeboncoeur]

I can comment on the current situation facing the Stewart Museum. We received $90,000 to organize a traveling exhibit called “Normandy and the Americas, Five Hundred Years of Shared History”. The application was submitted in October 2005, and we received an answer in September 2006.

We had to submit an application by November 1 at the latest for the traveling part of the exhibit. Meanwhile we had not yet invested a penny, because we had not received any funding from the federal government. And I cannot spend this money or my institution's money on this project, because it will not be eligible.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

That was not my question.

[Guy Vadeboncoeur]

I know that. I am simply describing one situation. When we asked departmental officials whether we should reapply given what had—

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

They are in the dark too.

[Guy Vadeboncoeur]

They are completely in the dark.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

There is a flip side. I was hoping that you would not have received any indications of cuts to any funding that the associations receive. I'd like to know about the flip side. Have you received any assurances that there will not be cuts? That is as important. Have you received any such indications? Have either the heritage or the museums associations had any indication that your funding would not be cut?

[John McAvity]

We have no indication either way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Mr. Kotto.

[Maka Kotto, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to welcome our witnesses. Personally, I do not have much to ask, because your presentation was very clear even to the persons who are not familiar with this issue. Nevertheless, I will play devil's advocate and ask you a few questions.

How many years have you been waiting for a museum policy with proper funding?