First, with regard to our Library and Archives Canada, the consequences of what's happening there, exacerbated by the most recent budget, are very serious indeed. Every industrialized country has a national library and a public archives. Ours is in great danger. The public archives side of it is sustained by skilled archivists who specialize in certain areas. Their positions are being eliminated. The collections are not being maintained. Canadian Pacific, for example—we've been told—has been trying to give its archives to the LAC for several years, and they have not been accepted. Whatever one's views of Canadian Pacific, certainly they have had a major impact on the history of our country.
Our ability to know our own history is at risk. There was a response saying not to worry because this is all being digitized. Currently, after years of work on it, the best estimate of the percentage of the LAC collection that is digitized is 2%. That's 2%. It's not going to be in my lifetime or the lifetime of anyone in this room that the entire collection will be digitized, or a major portion of it. There are approximately one billion records in the LAC. At 25 cents a page, which is a cheap estimate, it would cost a quarter of a billion dollars to digitize.