Thank you very much.
Thank you to the committee. We appreciate the timeliness of your being here, since we're here to talk about museum issues.
I'm the executive director of a local museum. We are the territory's first and largest museum. We have the largest collection in the territory. I have outlined in my briefing some of the history of the institution, which I'm not going to address.
What I am going to say is that we were federally funded in 2003 to do an audience evaluation of Yukoners and Whitehorse citizens. In that audience evaluation we heard that museums have a strong role in our community to protect and promote our heritage and that they have a role in delivering education on Canadian heritage.
What we heard specifically about MacBride Museum from people in Whitehorse was that they want more local programs, lectures, and history about us, about the city of Whitehorse and about the Yukon, and not just a tourism attraction, which is in part what we are for our community. We also heard that they expect to see that the artifacts they donate to the institution make it into our exhibits.
Since that time we have developed nine curriculum-linked programs for education. We deliver approximately 200 programs each year into the local audience. In 2005, in Whitehorse, there were 4,500 local citizens--from a population of approximately 24,000--who attended events at MacBride Museum. Our attendance is up 20% since 2003.
I am here in part to say that we are very disappointed to hear our national government say that the funding for the programs that support us is both wasteful and not a priority for Canadians. Overall we are seeing increased attendance at museums across Canada. There are 2,000 small community or regional museums like the one I run, and the only way we are able to put funding together is like a jigsaw puzzle of funding from our municipalities, from the federal government program, and from our earned revenue. At MacBride Museum our revenue is 35% earned, 35% funded by the territorial government, approximately 10% to 15% municipal, and then depending upon whether or not we've been successful in applying for federal programs, we've received between 9% and 20% of our funding from the federal government over the last four years. We appreciate that funding, and we are extremely concerned to see a national cut to MAP. MAP does not fund museums in Ottawa; it funds regional, community museums. If you're going to cut that program by 25%, I would like you to tell me where I am going to get the $70,000 that I got from the federal government in the last two years to deliver our online content for rural schools in the Yukon and do back-of-house work on our collections.
Governments love to fund exhibits and they love to fund presentations. Without the funding for the back-of-house, we are unable to do that work. The MAP program is the only program in the federal government that is dedicated exclusively to museums, and it allows us to do back-of-house work.
I would encourage you not only to continue to fund MAP, but also to increase the funding for MAP to expand the criteria under which MAP travelling exhibits are funded. Right now travelling exhibits are funded only if I want to do an exhibit and send it to Ontario. The Yukon has a huge geography. I would like to do an exhibit and send it to the rest of the territory so we can share in our own history and culture. That does not qualify for funding at any level of government.
We would also like you to give consideration to summer student funding. In the past three years at the museum I operate, our funding for summer students has been halved, and that is typical of what's happened across the territory. We're in a competitive environment. We are trying to introduce kids to careers and culture, and we can't get funding for their positions.
In addition to that, we would also like you to look at continuing funding for the Canadian Council of Archives. It is the only place where I, as a museum director, have any ability to access direct funding for our archives....
I've been given the hook and I've no idea where I was.