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.