Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to address this House on a question as important as our identity as Canadians.
I would first like to congratulate the member for Saint-Lambert for introducing this motion at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, for getting it passed and then for ensuring that its report was tabled in this House.
We have different views when it comes to Quebec’s position in Canada, and its future. My dear colleague cannot be right about everything. But he is right when he talks about the importance of culture for society as we define it, and for individuals, for the hearts and minds of man.
As my colleague said, the government seems, at worst, to have completely abandoned culture, and at best to have forgotten how important it is. For example, we are talking today about budget cuts to the museums assistance program, but also about cuts in other areas and in other components of culture that affect the arts and culture in Canada.
The government does not seem to be achieving specific objectives for assisting cultural industries, for example the film industry. The Quebec film industry is not particularly happy with what the government has done. The magazine industry in Canada is teetering on the brink and is not far from a crisis of its own. The government does not seem to want to do anything about this.
I can understand how the government might not be keen on supporting cultural endeavours of a more vibrant and dynamic nature, like film or music, the types of cultural expression that challenge orthodoxies, like neo-conservative orthodoxies or even separatist orthodoxies, but we are talking about museums. We are not always talking about the most current or cutting edge forms of cultural expression. I have trouble understanding why the government is pulling back its support for museums.
We hear often from educators and historians how we do not put enough effort on the teaching of history, that our young people are not as aware of the history of our country and of the country's regions as we would like them to be. Museums are an excellent vehicle for sensitizing not only young Canadians but all Canadians to our past.
There is a lot of talk these days about the Internet and how there are new ways to deliver information. In fact, the federal heritage information network makes pictures of artifacts in museums across Canada available through the Internet, and that is wonderful. That is keeping up with the evolution of technology, but there is nothing like actually seeing an artifact in a museum, to come into contact with a physical object, a material object. There is something evocative about that.
If I am not mistaken, Marcel Proust, the great French writer, alluded to the power of material objects when he coined the term madeleine object. For him a madeleine object was an artifact or material object that could allow one to live in the past and in the present simultaneously. That is what museums do. They give us the perspective that other forms of transmission of culture do not.
A lot has been said by some of my colleagues on the other side, and in fact by the minister herself, when she came to committee last week. They have said that no small or regional museums has been hard done by in Canada as a result of the cuts to the MAP. The minister, and again the parliamentary secretary today and other members of the Conservative caucus, challenged others in the opposition to come up with clear cut examples of museums that would be hurt by these cuts.
There were a couple of examples In the Globe and Mail of a few weeks ago. One was the Duck Lake Regional Interpretive Centre in Batoche, Saskatchewan. Its director was interviewed by a journalist from the Globe and Mail. She said that the centre's building needed $80 million worth of repairs, that it relied on MAP for research and conservation and so on. She then went on to say that the cuts would indeed hurt her museum.
If small town museums like hers cannot preserve their collections through assistance from the federal government, they will have to sell their collections. This is happening in other areas. We have heard of museums having to sell their collections in the past. My hon. colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor mentioned the Exporail Museum in Saint-Constant, Quebec, with which I am familiar. It is crying out for money. It is a small museum, but I think it should be considered a national museum and that it should receive funding from other sources than the MAP.
However, museum officials have told me directly that some of their artifacts, their railway cars that they keep or other railway cars that they would like to get their hands on, are snapped up by wealthy individuals south of the border who think it would be nice to have an old-fashioned railway car to ride around in the continent. If we do not act decisively and we put off decisions in terms of supporting our museums, their artifacts will be snapped up and we as Canadians will be the poorer as a result.
There are some concrete examples of museums that are going to be hurt by the cuts to the MAP. As a matter of fact, a Globe and Mail article was recently published on this subject. It referred to the cut that was announced by the Conservative government a few weeks ago. It stated:
Yesterday's cut has put a big question mark beside a plan by the Diefenbaker Canada Centre in Saskatoon to mount an exhibition marking the 50th anniversary next year of John Diefenbaker's election as a Progressive Conservative prime minister. Acting director Teresa Carlson said the cut “is definitely going to curtail our abilities”.
Imagine that. I do not know if the new Conservative government was aware that its cuts would impact on the ability to showcase the contribution of a former Progressive Conservative prime minister to our country's history.
It is very important that we restore the funding cuts to the MAP, but my colleague's motion also alludes to the necessity of establishing a new museums policy in Canada. We can do things in parallel. We can restore MAP funding and we can pursue a new museums policy.
In terms of a new museums policy, I would like to take this opportunity to go back to my earlier reference to a museum in Saint-Constant called Exporail, which is really Canada's premier national railway museum. I had the opportunity to visit Exporail this summer. I was just overwhelmed and extremely impressed by what is in that museum.
As a matter of fact, I had the opportunity to visit the inside of the railcar which belonged to Sir William Van Horne and the railcar that is showcased in the photos we see of the workers knocking in the last spike. I have seen this photo on the Internet and of course I find it interesting, but to actually see the car, and even better to be allowed inside the car, was something that has fired my imagination and made me think about the origins of this country.
A museum like that, as part of a new museums policy, should be considered a national museum and treated in the same way that we treat the National Art Gallery or the Museum of Civilization or the National Museum of Science & Technology. Even though it is not physically located in Ottawa, it should be part of that network of national museums.
I hope the new museums policy that the government is working on will take account of the fact that the Exporail museum is one of the top five rail museums in the world, which is really quite extraordinary to have here in our own backyard. This museum needs some funding. It needs to be considered as a national museum and given the support that other national museums receive.
We have great museums in the Ottawa region. We have the National Art Gallery and the Museum of Civilization. These, in many cases, were Liberal government initiatives, the initiatives of a government that thought big about Canada, that did not try to make Canada smaller than it really is, and that had a vision for Canada. Where would we be today if Liberal governments had not put forward the ideas and proposals for building these majestic temples of art and civilization in our great capital?
On that note, I would like to ask that the government start to think big, put the politics and the government of gimmicks and clever political tactics aside and think big about this country. Let us begin by funding the repositories of our past which will fire our future dreams, namely the museums.
