Well, in goodwill, I suggest to Mr. Angus that the reason why I was talking about that is if our committee wanted to have some relevance and input to the minister, we would want to be able to take a look at a suggestion I'm about to make, but we don't have time to do that.
One of the things that we have never discussed, and which certainly in my judgment is key to this, is the whole issue of national significance. The policy has to establish parameters within which to recognize nationally significant collections, to determine the level and nature of support. We have never had that under either a Conservative government or a Liberal government.
What we need to find out, for example, is the mandate of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board. Perhaps I may read:
Among its various responsibilities, the Board certifies cultural property for income tax purposes. In this role, it makes determinations with respect to the “outstanding significance and national importance” and the fair market value of objects or collections donated or sold to designated Canadian museums, art galleries, archives and libraries.
For example, I think it would be of value for this committee to call the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board before it and ask the board and other appropriate people like that: If we want to establish the criteria of which museums and which artifacts should be receiving national support, as opposed to regional or as opposed to local support, would you be able to do that? We could do that kind of a hearing and offer this counsel to the minister.
The minister can call those people in. I happen to have a copy of the submission the Canadian Museums Association made on the Canadian museums policy, “New Approach”, which all of us can have from the Canadian Museums Association. This was made to the minister on October 30. They're happy to share that with us.
We have all of this documentation, but there still are missing links. All I'm trying to say is that there are questions we don't need to spend a lot of time on, but if we are going to be relevant in the process, we have to gather the information.