It is to cut them dramatically. No wonder the executive director of the CMA was shocked, puzzled and felt betrayed by these cuts.
There are three projects in Yukon, and I have a list of hundreds of projects. Three projects were approved in my riding last year, two of them are for aboriginal museum cultural sites, another cut for aboriginal people.
A letter from Yukon's largest museum states:
MAP is [the] only federal program dedicated exclusively to museums. [It is] one of the few places we can go to get money to do collection work. Collection work is the backbone of museum work--without we cannot do the exhibition, programming, education roles...
Ed in the Yukon writes:
--it is hard to see how the Federal Museums' Assistance program is a “wasteful” program. This is an insult to all hard working museum workers who have worked for years for very little money in the preservation of our heritage....
--cuts to the Youth Employment programs is the very back bone of summer operations for small and large museums, especially during the summer season...GST rebates for tourists to Canada will help dampen visitations (especially conventions) at a time when other pressure on tourism, a strong Canadian dollar, the passport issue and terrorism...[have] already made this the worst tourism year...
Brent writes:
As you can appreciate, the museums folk here are very unhappy...that MAP is being cut....
I think the cuts to adult literacy, youth international programs, museums and other social programs indicate a government that will alienate Canadians sooner rather than later. To call these initiatives wasteful and not priorities of Canadians is particularly offensive.
It is not just all these groups that are writing. There are individuals.
Alejandro writes:
According to Treasury Board president...the $50-million program will not receive its last $10.8 million under the excuse that it is not effective enough and that you are saving Canadians money.
This is the--