I certainly think there are better ways of going about it. One is just recognition of the fact that this is a three-tiered funding structure. It's federal, provincial and municipal. They all depend on one other, yet they don't seem to communicate very effectively between one another. Each program has different deadlines and different reporting requirements. It just makes it way too much work for small museums to participate in all of this when the possibility of return is so low.
The federal funding specifically is really limited to very few museums. Most small museums in the country are not eligible for it and would never be able to get any funding from the federal government, except for Young Canada Works. That seems to me to be unfair towards the heritage sector when in the arts sector, through the Canada Council, organizations large and small, collaboratives and individuals and everybody, can apply. They don't necessarily have to be arts events that are of national historic significance. It's a different criterion for the two.
When the last national museums policy was introduced 30 years ago, it wasn't resourced effectively at the time. Now we're that much further back. I mean, 30 years ago was pre-Internet. Just think about how much the museum world has changed as a result of that. Yes, there is funding available for digital technology things, but again, that's also very difficult to access. I think greater flexibility is absolutely critical to all of this, as is less reporting. For Young Canada Works, the amount of reporting you have to do is just ridiculous. So much of it is repetitive. It's a huge amount of work.
The other issue is that a lot of these small community museums are as much senior centres and drop-in centres as they are museums. They play a really strong and important role within the community as a place for people to acknowledge their heritage, to have a sense of identity, to have a sense of belonging and all of that. They don't necessarily meet the international standards of museum professionals, so they're being judged for something that they're not even trying to be. Again, that's also an unfairness issue.
The other thing I'm very concerned about is the whole nature of volunteerism, which I know is much bigger than this committee. I think our current board structure is failing. It's failing in the arts, it's failing in heritage and it's failing all over the place. Too much is expected of board members and volunteers. Again, society has changed so much in the last 30 or 40 years that we no longer have that kind of time to dedicate to these organizations. The expectation is that volunteers will just pick it up. I'm afraid that after the pandemic, volunteers won't be there to pick it up. That's one of my biggest concerns, really. It's not a money issue but a governance issue.