Mr. Speaker, I will comment on those points because they are important. I did explain it briefly before but I will elaborate.
The member is quite correct. Many small communities right across Canada with populations of 1,000 or 1,200 do have small museums. They are often small museums that perhaps talk about the history and the artifacts of the given communities. These communities do not need big budgets to operate the museums. They are operated on a shoe string budget, basically by a volunteer board and volunteer members, but they were able, fortunately, to leverage some federal financing.
I am aware of seven museums in Prince Edward Island that received around $20,000 in total, which is not big dollars. Many of them accessed the youth employment strategy where they could hire a student for the summer months. In some cases the museum was only open during the summer months. The student was paid $7.50 an hour and everything worked. It was not a lucrative job but it was a good job. The students met visitors and the community had pride in the museum.
The limited funding was accessed but, as the member pointed out, the assistance program has been slashed and the youth employment strategy has been slashed by 60%. It will be very difficult for the small museums to operate in the future, which is very unfortunate.