Mr. Speaker, I would go back to what I said at the end of my intervention, which is that I do not believe we should look at this motion as pitting one community against another or one part of Canada against another.
This motion represents a new direction in museums policy whereby we would no longer only have national museums in Ottawa. There would be a national railway museum on the south shore of Montreal but we would not be funding that museum per se. We would be funding its collection, which is spread across the country.
The idea would be that the museum would work with other museums, such as those in B.C., two of which, by the way, appeared before the heritage committee when it studied this issue. I was not aware of the Squamish museum and I appreciate the hon. member mentioning it, but there are museums across Canada that currently hold artifacts from the Exporail Museum for display. This community is quite well integrated. The players know each other and work together.
The importance of Exporail in all of this process is that it has the body of knowledge, so to speak. As I mentioned, the founding of the Canadian Railroad Historical Association, out of which Exporail was born, goes back 75 years, so it has the critical mass and expertise. I would encourage the member to visit it some day as it is a really remarkable experience. It has rooms of engineering designs, et cetera, so it has the expertise to evaluate.
The Lord report underscores that, of all the railway museums in Canada, Exporail is the one best suited to the task of evaluating what should be funded, what should not be funded and so on.