I'd like to compliment our witnesses. You have a very tight organization that is doing a heck of a job for yourselves.
I say that because I was aware we were going to be having you as witnesses yesterday, and the very same day I received a letter from Roberto Rodriguez, who is the executive director of the Revelstoke Railway Museum in my constituency. He says, “Mr. Abbott, during the June 20 Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage meeting, we....” So he obviously was fully apprised of the fact that you were going to be here. I don't know how he got that information, I'm sure.
He makes an interesting point, though. He says:
Please appreciate that the housing, preservation and interpretation of a collection such as ours is difficult and expensive. We rely on admissions and gift shop sales to sustain our annual $600,000 operating budget and receive no federal funding at present. Although this allows us to keep the doors open, the ability to expand our facilities, hire professional staff, properly house and preserve our collections and develop new programs are all major challenges, made even more difficult by the apparent disinterest on the part of the government to adequately fund regional and technologically-based museums.
The reason that comment is very interesting is that the minister, you may know, also has on her desk a proposal from the Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa to spend almost three-quarters of a billion dollars.
He is faced with a $600,000 budget; he classifies himself as being a museum of science and technology; and we have this other demand. You can see the challenge the minister is faced with—all totally legitimate challenges.
My friend Garry Anderson at the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel in Cranbrook pointed out to me a couple of years ago that anytime you restore one rail car—we have about a mile and a half of passenger cars in Cranbrook all set to be restored, and a few of them have been—you accrue a cost of at least $1,500 a year, and that was a couple of years ago, just because you've restored it. Otherwise it just goes right into....
Oh, by the way, I have discovered in the intervening time that the minister signed the Young Canada Works program yesterday. So it is in the system.
My question is this. I was wondering if I could act like a matchmaker between yourselves and Ms. Sherwood, the executive director of our heritage group.
I don't know if presently, as the great group you are in terms of working this thing through, you have been making all your members aware of the current program the government has announced is available respecting the capital gains program.
Are you making them aware of it?