This is for Mr. Griffis.
You said that medals have a historical and personal value. Some of those medals are passed down to grandchildren. The medals are from conflicts that happened 50 years ago or even the First World War, which took place nearly 100 years ago. The medals have been passed down from generation to generation. A number of them have disappeared from the radar.
You mentioned a tax benefit. You can give someone a tax credit for a Victoria Cross medal that sells for $240,000, but if the great-grandson does not pay taxes, it has absolutely no effect. If he can get $150,000 for it on the parallel market, we will never see that medal again: it will fall off the radar.
So there is no incentive for the owners of these medals to protect them and give them to a museum. An equivalent measure is necessary in order to get these medals in the hands of the museums. I do not think a tax credit is a way to do that. I see that as a real problem. I am not sure how we can fix that or what steps should be taken. That is my first question.
My second question is this. You talked about artifacts. That includes not only medals, but also badges and other things. I would like to have that list. It would help me demonstrate and promote this measure to people in my riding, to the Canadian legion or the owners of the artifacts, to try to recover them somehow to give them to a museum.
It would be helpful to be able to tell people which objects are worth the most. Sometimes people keep these things stored in their basement or elsewhere, thinking they are not worth anything. But those objects could be worth something to a museum. It would be helpful to be able to tell people that all those objects have a probative value to a museum, and it would be appreciated if they would give them to the museum. Every member could get the word out in their riding.