Mr. Speaker, I was a teacher for many years. My background was in history and social studies as a teacher, an educational administrator and someone involved in curriculum development.
One of the things that concerns me greatly in Canada is that currently, only three of 10 provinces require Canadian students to take a history course to graduate high school. The delivery of education is a provincial jurisdiction, but that concerns me as a former history teacher. That means that a lot of Canadians are graduating, and have been graduating, and have not had to take a history course. All the provinces offer history as a course, but students are not required to take those courses to graduate. I think that is a shame.
As a federal government, we can encourage the provinces to deliver some history in their curricula by developing, as was said, virtual online courses for teachers so that they have the resources they need to include this in the curriculum.
If our small museums, as I mentioned, had these artifacts and displays, they could really celebrate what is great about this nation. Those artifacts could be moved around the country. Teachers from coast to coast to coast would be able to take their classes to a local museum.
It is awfully hard for a teacher in the Yukon to take a class all the way to Ottawa to see the Museum of Civilization the way it is now. This would enable that museum to send its artifacts and displays all the way to the Yukon through some of the funding we would allocate for this project. This would free up those artifacts and displays, and that is great for education in Canada.