Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would actually like to welcome all of you to this place, because you are in what was a museum. Perhaps someday it will be returned again, when we have better days, to the Museum of Contemporary Photography.
My name is John McAvity, and I am the executive director of the Canadian Museums Association. I am joined by a member of the board of directors, Karen Bachmann, who is also the director of the Timmins Museum, and Audrey Vermette, who is the director of programs and public affairs at the CMA.
The Canadian Museums Association has approximately 2,000 members all across Canada. Our members come from large metropolitan galleries to small volunteer-run museums. I'm pretty sure in each one of your ridings you can count a number of museums, because they are all across Canada. The museums are extremely popular; we receive about 60 million visitors per year to Canadian museums. They are major economic attractions, but they are also very important as educational institutions in our communities across Canada. They are places that teach our history, our art, and our environment. They promote tolerance and understanding among people. Approximately 48% of the Canadian population regularly go to museums, and a lot of schoolchildren go as well.
The Government of Canada has clearly underlined the value and importance of museums to society. We saw that in the federal budget. We have seen that in the recent announcement of the Canadian Museum of History, which we totally support. We have also seen that in the recent report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on 2017, and we are very pleased with all three of those reports.
If I might take a minute with respect to the federal budget, the good news there was that our sector, in a period of major restraint and cutbacks, was not cut. We were very pleased about that. We were very pleased that the government doubled the so-called insurance program for travelling exhibitions, the indemnification program. That was doubled.
We are also very pleased to see, initially, a major increase in youth unemployment funding of $50 million over two years, since we run such a program for museums, but unfortunately it has come to our attention that the program is not open to not-for-profit organizations, so there is still room for improvement of federal support of museums.
That is one of the reasons we have made the recommendation for what we call the “Canadians Supporting Their Museums Fund”, a program that we're proposing to encourage philanthropy, to encourage museums to become more self-reliant, and to help engage Canadians more in the heritage and arts field.
It should be noted that museums and galleries in Canada strive to provide services to various audiences. Most of the major museums—certainly the national and many of the provincial museums—offer services in each official language.
In addition, many of the smaller museums also offer second language service, such as Le Village Historique Acadien in Caraquet. It's an institution I know very well, which promotes the Acadian tradition. As well, the Revelstoke museum in Revelstoke offers information guides in English, French, German, and Dutch.
These are just two examples of the attempts of museums to be more accessible.
I would now like to turn to my colleague, Karen Bachmann, for part two.