Sure. I appreciate the opportunity.
The Canadian Museum of Civilization, which will become the Canadian museum of history, is actually moving forward very well. Mark O’Neill, the president of the museum, and the board are now undertaking the hard work that it takes to build and to stand up this new museum that will be national in scope—not just as a great institution here in Ottawa, but one that has roots all across the country.
They've been going to cities across the country—I'm not sure if they have completed their entire tour yet—inviting Canadians to come in and participate in a dialogue about how Canadians.... Again, it's not my museum, it's not yours, it's not ours; it's the museum of Canadians. They've been going to Canadians and asking Canadians how they think Canadian history should best be told.
There are different ways, of course, to do that. If you look at different history museums around the country and around the world, you can take a chronological, thematic.... You can do thematics based on regions of the country, thematics based on different Canadian experiences, and so on. So they're having that discussion and dialogue with Canadians. They've been going around the country. The feedback has been great.
I know civilization.ca, which is the current website, has an online opportunity there for Canadians to engage. As part of this project, the Canadian museum of history is going to be.... They're signing MOUs with other history museums all around the country. I had the privilege, I believe it was just two weeks ago, to be in Victoria at the Royal BC Museum, where we signed the first MOU with another institution.
There were folks there. They had school kids there. The whole staff of the museum was there. They were enthusiastic about it, signing an MOU, which will open up to this museum the entire vault of the Canadian museum of history—over three million items, 90% of which are in storage right now—so that local museums across the country will have access to it and tell stories of Canada's history locally, not just here in Ottawa.
That's how we're going to bind this country together. There are three more museums that I can tell you we've signed MOUs with. We're going to be announcing them in the next couple of weeks in other regions of the country.
We're moving forward and it's going to be a great success. I hope that all parties will see this for what it is, which is an opportunity to build a pan-Canadian institution to talk about Canada's history.