Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Schellenberger, for bringing forward this piece of legislation.
You probably read or heard the speech I made in the House of Commons, so I won't repeat it, but in that, I did thank you for doing this piece of work and for what I think is quite a good balancing act between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community around these medals.
I've said that the medals tell two stories. They tell the story of an individual's particular actions of heroism and activity in defence of our country, but they also tell the story of our country. They are quasi-public material and quasi-private property. They are both, and I think the bill seems, at least to me, to represent a good balancing of private and public property rights. I thank you for wrestling with that.
I want to ask you a couple of questions about your work. You may not know the answer to this question, but do you have any idea of the number of medals we are talking about? Have you been in touch with any of the museums or organizations about the military having a number of medals in circulation, as it were, that may be of interest?
I believe this is only for medals that are less than 50 years old and that any medal over 50 years old is already protected under a heritage act, so these are new medals from the last 50 years that we're talking about. How many are there? How many do the museums actually think they may or may not want? Is there any idea of what is happening in terms of the sale of these medals? Is there a market? Or is that not a concern?