I would just like to add something to that. The Société des musées québécois also consulted with its members with a view to developing a strategic plan for the next three years. What became clear over the course of five consultation sessions in various regions was that our members were overwhelmingly concerned about achieving some financial stability in terms of their operations.
I've been working in the museums field for 25 years. I can honestly say that I've never witnessed this kind of financial instability before. I believe two factors are to blame for the situation: the lack of resources and, more serious still, the lack of a minimum degree of stability and level of support. To put it simply, because museums, both large and small, lack financial stability, considerable energy is expended on trying to keep these institutions open. As a result of this overriding concern, museums have lost their direction in some respects. Much of the work done consists of keeping the facility open and paying heating costs. This has become of problem of major proportions.
Quite frequently, a museum may be forced to apply for 20 or 25 separate grants each year to maintain its activities. That's an average of one grant application every two weeks. This gives us some idea of the prevailing climate of financial instability. In short, funding is proving to be a very costly and somewhat inefficient process, because multi-year funding is not available.
That's why it is important that we broach the question of multi-year support at this time.