Mr. Speaker, I will be quick. I will share my time with a colleague if this debate comes up again in the coming weeks or months.
I am honoured to rise and speak to Bill C-7, especially since I recently had the pleasure of being appointed to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. It will be my pleasure to contribute to the excellent work already done by my colleague from Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, who is the official opposition's heritage critic.
Bill C-7 amends the Museums Act in order to establish the Canadian museum of history and makes consequential amendments to other acts. We will oppose this bill at third reading for several reasons. I will have time to speak about a few of those reasons today.
The Canadian Museum of Civilization, as it stands now with its current mandate, is the most popular museum in Canada based on number of visitors. Its temporary exhibits on world cultures make it a huge tourist draw in the Ottawa-Gatineau region.
I will quickly go over the change in the museum's mandate because I have very little time. The current mandate dates back to 1990. The mandate of the British Museum in England must be 140 years old. It is completely ridiculous to claim that the museum needs a new mandate because museum mandates apparently expire.
In 1990, the museum was given the mandate to increase, throughout Canada and internationally, interest in, knowledge and critical understanding of and appreciation and respect for human cultural achievements and human behaviour.
The new mandate is an impoverished one. It does not include the idea of critical understanding. No longer is there the idea of increasing knowledge throughout Canada and internationally. This idea has been replaced by enhancing Canadians' understanding and appreciation of events, experiences, people and objects.
The whole notion of knowledge and critical understanding, based on better knowledge of events, is gone. The government has gotten rid of the notions of knowledge and the context of global knowledge. That is it. We are moving on to something else, Canadians only. The government is caught up in the Conservative vision of Canadian history, all heroes and major events. The social aspect is completely gone.
What do the Conservatives have against scientific facts and knowledge?
For example, we saw that the Conservatives laid off 80% of Parks Canada's archaeologists. They are shutting down the Maurice Lamontagne Institute, a marine science research centre located in Mont-Joli, in my riding. The purpose of the centre was to provide the government with scientific information in order to help preserve marine life.
It is important to remind the House that this decision goes against the recommendations made by the Commissioner of Official Languages, but that the government will go forward with it all the same.
The Conservatives did away with the national archival development program, which slowed down the work of the archives in communities such as Rivière-du-Loup. These community archives take care of collecting, classifying and conserving the records of all sorts of organizations, businesses, families and associations, thereby building a collective memory and an identity in the regions.
I cannot help but question whether the government's decision to change the Canadian Museum of Civilization into a national history museum is sound. The government's decisions have been very hard on the entire network that works to preserve a national memory.
I do not have much time left, so I will get right to the reasons why we oppose this bill.
The proposed mandate puts an end to the museum's social approach to history. The decision was made without consulting the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage when it was examining Canada's 150th anniversary celebrations and without consulting stakeholders in the Outaouais region, historians or the first nations. No one was consulted.
The few consultations that were held were very tightly controlled and did not allow Canadians to question the decision to change the museum's mandate.
The $25 million for renovations was taken directly from the Canadian Heritage budget. The minister refused to explain where the money in question was coming from. It is very worrisome.
Canadians have reason to fear that the history museum will present a monolithic view of Canadian history that is not representative of Canada's diversity and the diversity of societies throughout the world, which we have had the chance to see at the museum for 20 years now.
For all of these reasons and a number of others that I do not have time to list today, we will oppose Bill C-7 and, until the end of this unfortunate process, we will continue to ask that the Museum of Civilization's current mandate be maintained.