Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Marc Chalifoux and I am the Executive Director of the Dominion Institute. With me are my associate Jeremy Diamond, our Managing Director, and George MacDonell,
who is one of our best and longest-serving and most devoted Memory Project volunteers.
Together, the three of us would like to walk you a bit through the work of the Dominion Institute, focusing particularly on our flagship program, the Memory Project, which connects veterans with young Canadians across the country. Then I'll talk to you a bit about some of the public opinion research we've done, as it relates to the topic of veterans. I think it might be of use to the committee beyond this meeting. It might help inform your future research and future work. Then we'll talk about the future of the Memory Project. After that, Mr. MacDonell will present his own experience of having served for upwards of seven years as a Memory Project veteran.
A few of you will remember and will have met us at our Memory Project breakfast at the Crowne Plaza on February 26, so thank you very much for agreeing to see us again. We appreciate it greatly.
I have a few words about the Dominion Institute. We're a national charitable foundation. We were founded back in 1997. Our aim, our goal, our mission is to build more active and engaged citizens, and we do that through better knowledge and appreciation of Canadian history. We see Canadian history as being history, but also as identity and democracy. So we build education programs that develop on those themes.
Since its founding 12 years ago, the Dominion Institute has been mentioned in approximately 4,000 print and television reports. For an organization with six full-time employees, this means the Dominion Institute has been mentioned on average twice a day in the newspapers. Our projects enjoy a certain visibility, part of which comes from our public opinion research initiatives.
The Dominion Institute was founded in 1997 on the heels of a public opinion poll conducted in conjunction with Canada Day. This poll revealed that half of all Canadians could not name Canada's first prime minister, a story that made the headlines just about everywhere. This lead to the development of a number of executive projects.
The institute has produced about 18 hours of television programming, mainly documentaries, and we've published 14 different books, including three best sellers.
Apart from the Memory Project, we are very interested in keeping history alive and making history relevant. We have a program called Passages to Canada, which brings about 600 immigrant leaders into classrooms to talk about the immigrant story as part of the Canadian story. We run an aboriginal writing challenge, for young aboriginals to talk about aboriginal history as part of the Canadian story.
So you can see a theme evolve in the way we approach history--to tell an inclusive story of Canadian history. That involves military history and Canada's role overseas, it involves the immigrant story, and it involves the aboriginal story.
One of our better-known campaigns includes our 2006 online petition for a state funeral for the last living World War I veteran, which collected about 100,000 signatures and led to a motion being passed in the House of Commons. We also worked on the Passchendaele film, which we saw as a very important educational tool to talk about Canada's role in World War I. It provided a multimedia approach to telling the Canadian story.
We like to think we're high-tech as well. Back in 2004 we developed the first text messaging campaign for young Canadians so that young people could become active citizens and active future voters.
Jeremy will talk a bit about the Memory Project, which is probably the program we're best known for.