Mr. Speaker, one would think we were debating today whether to establish or not establish a tax benefit for the donation of cultural property to the institutions of this country that have the mission of securing for future generations examples of art and literature in its many forms. We are not. What we are doing is debating a fairly minor amendment to the process by which that is done. That is in fact a situation that has been in place for some time.
The Reform Party has been critical of this. I guess I have to ask why. I have also heard the Reform Party say that there are things the government should get out of, that the government should be spending less money, that in any way possible government should be allowing the private sector to do what the private sector can do.
This policy, which has been in effect for many years now, of allowing the private sector to contribute to the preservation of Canadian heritage and culture and to receive a tax credit for their contribution is one way of ensuring that government does not have to do everything in this country-unless one believes of course that a nation should not seek to collect the best heritage examples of art,
of literature, of sculpture. I do not believe the Reform Party is of that opinion, but one would almost think so.
There is a bit of a contradiction here between saying allow the private sector to do more and let government do less and then speaking against a provision that encourages that very kind of private sector contribution to building the nation.
For many years I have had the privilege of living in the nation's capital. Part of that privilege is to share as part of my community the very fine national institutions our country has built over the decades: the National Gallery, the Museum of Nature, the Museum of Civilization, the Museum of Science and Technology. Over the years I have applauded the efforts of those institutions to take their collections and their knowledge to different parts of Canada and share with all Canadians the wealth of the collections and exhibits we have built in this country.
I do not think we can over-emphasize how important it is to the heart and soul of a nation to have a sense of its past. We cannot over-emphasize how important it is for young people to have an opportunity to be exposed to those things that express different points of view, through art of one kind or another, about the world, about ourselves, and about our nation.
My colleague from Rosedale just spoke about the attitude towards the impressionists when they first began painting. Our own Group of Seven, who are virtually universally revered, suffered the same lack of acceptance among their fellow citizens when they tried to express in a new way what the country meant and how it appeared.
I said it was important for children to have the opportunity to to experience many different expressions, visually and verbally, in music, views of their country and of the world. I go back to my own experience when our own National Gallery was housed in half of what is now the Museum of Nature. It was a very small collection. As a 10-year-old I had the wonderful opportunity of going there on a Saturday morning with dozens of other children, spreading a newspaper on the floor and using bottles of bright-coloured paint and being able to express myself. Then we would spend time looking at the masterpieces. We would have a world-renowned painter like Henri Masson spend his Saturday mornings with young children like me, commenting on our paintings and encouraging and discussing with us the other wonderful works that were in that very tiny gallery. These are the experiences that influence one's perception of the world and of oneself and that change one's future in many ways.
I hope nobody in this Parliament needs to be convinced of the value of a nation building up a reservoir for the generations to come of those things which have been an important expression of our culture and our history and our way of viewing the world.
We are not talking about whether we should or should not have provisions in the Income Tax Act to allow people to gain some credit, and it is only a partial credit, through the income tax system when they choose to donate something which is their own to their country and to their fellow citizens. That has been well established.
All we are talking about is making sure that the interests of the donor, the interests of the institution receiving the gift and the public interest are protected. We are here today to establish a process where the review board that determines the value of such a gift is subject to appeal, so that if a donor is not satisfied that the value that has been put on his or her gift by the review board is adequate, there is an opportunity to appeal.
Why is that important? It is important because a donor may choose to give or not give a gift to the nation, depending on whether it is valued as it should be. If I were to offer a gift to the National Gallery, which the gallery would first have to determine is of national and historical importance, and a review board were to say to me it is worth this much, when I know very well it is worth two or three times that much, I would choose not to give that gift under those circumstances.
If I have an impartial appeal process to go to, to say what is the real value of this and to have it established, then those gifts are far more likely to be made to the institutions of our country.
On the other hand, a donor may have an over-inflated view of the value of an artefact or a painting or a book which the donor wants to give to an institution, in which case the institution has an impartial process to go through to demonstrate to the donor that this is the value of that property and whether he or she still wishes to donate it or not, that is the value which the museum or art gallery is prepared to accept as its value.
I said it also protects the taxpayers and it does. While we want to give tax credits that encourage people to donate in that way, we also want to be sure that those tax credits are based on fair value. We want to make sure there is a process with an appeal built into it in case there is disagreement about those values.
We encourage charitable giving in many ways. We encourage charitable giving toward various causes: health research, programs for children, programs for young mothers, preservation of the environment. In all those cases we give exactly the kind of tax benefit that is being slightly modified in this bill. I cannot help but feel that giving something of great value to the mind and soul of a nation is equally important as contributing to research in a variety of ways. I am surprised that there are those in the House today who would question it.
In fact, I would take this opportunity to encourage the government to look further at how in times of tight financial situations we might achieve other national objectives through the same means.
For instance, there is no reason why someone should not be able to contribute an environmentally sensitive area to the nation for preservation and receive the same encouragement through the tax system to do that as they would do with the donation of an extremely valuable and historically important book.
Perhaps we should be considering a tax treatment that encourages people to preserve and to donate to the nation important historical buildings. Now the tax system seems more designed, according to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, to encourage the demolition of heritage buildings and the construction of new buildings than to preserve existing ones.
I consider this legislation a safeguard of the public interest, the donor's interest and the receiving institution's interest. When a Canadian chooses generously to give something which he or she owns of great cultural value to all of us, I consider this act introduces a safeguard to ensure it is done based only on the proper value of that property.