Mr. Speaker, the amount that was cut, as the member put it, as my colleague from Peace River has pointed out, traditionally had not been distributed in any event.
The amount that the federal Liberals had been producing for the museums assistance program was in the range of under $8 million. We are now talking about a federal budget under the Conservative government of $9.6 million.
In addition to that, let us take a look at where this government is coming from in terms of values, in terms of a cultural paradigm shift. I agree with him completely. Our cultural paradigm shift is that we are prepared to spend $245.3 million on museums of all descriptions, a quarter of a billion dollars on museums of all descriptions, but when it comes to spending of every single solitary thin dime, this government is going to make sure that we are receiving absolute value. At $9.6 million for the museums assistance program, we believe we are going to be able to responsibly distribute that under the rules of the museums assistance program.
In addition, we should be aware that the Victoria Memorial Museum building, the Canadian Museum of Nature, has had an improvement of $48.3 million. Funding for one year of operating expenses at the new storage hangar at the Canadian Aviation Museum was $1.5 million. Interim storage facilities for Library and Archives Canada was $7.6 million.
We are going to continue to spend money wisely. We are going to continue to spend money well. We are going to continue to spend money responsibly, but only when we have a thorough program, rather than the kind of willy-nilly throwing around of the taxpayers' dollars that Canadians had been used to over the last 13 years.