Pierre Nantel

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would remind my colleague opposite that I hold him and his contributions, even those he made tonight, in high regard. Nevertheless I would just ask him this.

Given what we see today in the news about this government, would he really trust it? I do not think so.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

My colleagues should ask me the question properly without any heckling. Still, I agree with them. It is unfortunate, because good initiatives are often viewed with some skepticism.

Now we are facing this head-on. The bill could have brought us all together, but it was introduced by people who care more about propaganda and editorializing, and that is not okay.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question and his compliment.

The member opposite says that we do not like Laura Secord and that we do not think she is important. That is pathetic, and it is not true. As I said, the vast majority of Canadians believe that the Conservatives have gone too far in their attempts to erase all traces of the blue berets and replace them with pictures of Laura Secord running through the woods. I am sorry, but the Conservatives are putting more emphasis on one event in particular than clients want them to. That was important to everyone, even to us.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for his question anyway.

As I said when I answered our colleague, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the plan to create a cross-Canada network of museums may actually be a good one. The committee organizing Canada's 150th anniversary celebrations talked about that.

The problem is not the trailer; it is the car.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, this evening, a number of members have noted the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages's profound conviction when it comes to this bill. Unfortunately, it is strictly because we do not trust the Conservatives that the bill cannot be passed.

Today, I would like to bring the House's attention to some basic contradictions, which are typical of a government that wants to create a Canadian museum of history. It says it is interested in the country's history and wants to celebrate it and make the public more aware of it.

I want to mention something worrisome. This government has done more to hinder people's knowledge and understanding of Canadian history and to undermine research into our history than any other government. It should listen to the historians, archeologists, archivists, anthropologists and ethnologists, all the experts on our history.

This evening, I am not pulling this observation out of a hat, nor am I making it up just for fun. I made this observation after listening to experts on our history, in other words, people who help us learn more about our past. These experts dig into our past in order to better understand it so that we can, too.

These professionals, researchers and experts have told my colleagues and me that their field is in worse shape than ever before. They say that highway robbery masquerading as budget cuts, combined with the federal government's constant, dubious meddling in their affairs, their profession and their field of research, will have lingering negative effects on the work and research that help us understand our history better.

Everything this government does is rife with contradiction. On the one hand, it is so proud of creating a history museum to supposedly improve knowledge of history, but on the other, it is attacking all of the federal institutions that have been preserving, protecting and raising awareness of our history for over a century.

For example, Parks Canada is responsible for maintaining 167 national historic sites, places worthy of preservation because they are historically significant. Parks Canada looks after Canada's world heritage sites. Expert archeologists have helped the agency unearth artifacts from the past, identify them and explain why they are historically relevant. I am delighted to say that there is an archeologist among us today, the member for Hochelaga.

Curators—not Conservatives, mind you, but people who actually care about history—have also helped Parks Canada through their curatorial work. I apologize to the translators for my play on words, which is not translatable.

The Conservatives decided to lay off over 80% of the archeologists and curators who take care of our historic sites and preserve our precious artifacts. There are now only about 10 archeologists working for Parks Canada across the country in all of our national parks, national historic sites and world heritage sites. I should point out that world heritage site status is not a given; UNESCO can revoke that status at any time.

Tonight, the government has the gall to tell us that it wants to promote history even though it is abandoning fragile historic sites across the country. The same government is planning to remove carefully preserved artifacts from Parks Canada's regional facilities. For example, a large collection of artifacts dating back to the days of New France is currently housed in Quebec City. The government is planning to uproot the collection from its home and put it in storage in Ottawa.

That is what the government, which supposedly wants to make history more accessible and more widely known, is really doing.

Conservatives say they are interested in history, but Canadians are not interested in what they say. They want to know what the government is doing. Conservatives like to say they are interested in history but, in reality, they continue to destroy every single federal public institution that is responsible for protecting our history. They have not only destroyed Parks Canada, which is responsible for protecting our 167 national historic sites, as well as Canada's world heritage sites, they have destroyed Library and Archives Canada--we know that, we heard a lot last week--an institution that has been the guardian of Canada's archives for 140 years, both as the national archives and as a national library.

Library and Archives experts, archivists, professional librarians and others are recognized and admired around the world for their work. A few years ago, Library and Archives Canada was an exciting place for those researchers of our history to be. Some people here will remember that there were always exhibitions about Canadian history open to the public on the ground floor of Library and Archives Canada just a few years ago.

Who closed those exhibition halls? The Conservatives did.

Who cut millions of dollars from research and preservation of Canadian history? The Conservatives did.

Who laid off hundreds of archivists, librarians, digitization experts, historians and professionals at Library and Archives Canada? These guys again.

Who destroyed programs such as the national archival development program that supported small communities all over Canada to create their own local community archives, a program that allowed Library and Archives Canada to accomplish an essential part of its mandate? These guys.

Who almost put a complete stop to the acquisition of historic documents and artifacts by cutting Library and Archives Canada's $1 million budget to $12,000 a year? They allowed irreplaceable manuscripts, relics of our history, to slip through our fingers and be purchased by auction houses and unscrupulous speculators and exported to shady warehouses in the United States. Who is responsible for this loss, this drain on our priceless cultural heritage? Who else but these guys, the Conservatives.

After the serious damage they have caused, no one would dare say that the Conservatives care about history. That is hogwash. On the contrary, the contradiction is obvious. The Conservatives are not at all interested in the history of Canada or all of the work that goes into the difficult research required to explain our history. The Conservatives are only interested in spectacular and superficial things, such as seeing a wax replica of John Diefenbaker, cutting a ribbon or walking down a sparkling, somewhat cheap red carpet that a person could trip on. They think that, by supporting anything glitzy and glamourous, they are supporting and preserving history. That is very unfortunate for those who know something about history.

I would like to spend a few minutes talking about the specific changes set out in Bill C-49. The Canadian Museum of Civilization is an institution that has existed in one form or another for almost 150 years. Its collections existed even before Confederation. The museum has a mandate that, for 30 years, has allowed it to be independent and to truly become a world-renowned institution, as well as an important economic driver for the Outaouais region, where it provides many jobs and attracts a large number of visitors.

I would like to read the Museum of Civilization's current mandate. It is important to remember this mission, which has been key to the museum's success for years.

The purpose of the Canadian Museum of Civilization is to increase, throughout Canada and internationally, interest in, knowledge and critical understanding of and appreciation and respect for human cultural achievements [I would like to place special emphasis on cultural achievements] and human behavior by establishing, maintaining and developing for research and posterity a collection of objects of historical or cultural interest, with special but not exclusive reference to Canada, and by demonstrating those achievements and behaviour, the knowledge derived from them and the understanding they represent.

The Conservative government, which never wants to jump in when it is needed, but is always prepared to interfere when its help is not wanted, wants to scrap that and replace it with the following:

...enhance Canadians’ knowledge, understanding and appreciation of events, experiences, people and objects that reflect and have shaped Canada’s history and identity, and also to enhance their awareness of world history and cultures.

What is the main difference between these two mandates? The words “critical understanding” were eliminated. The government seems to have an aversion to the word “critical”. What a scary word. The museum will no longer have the mandate to share its wealth of knowledge with the rest of the world. It will no longer be mandated to carry out its work “throughout Canada and internationally”. The museum will now be interested only in local issues.

I imagine that the Outaouais tourism industry will have something to say about that. Gone are the human cultural achievements and human behaviour. That was part of the museum's mandate, but we are apparently no longer interested in humanity. The government wants the museum to deal specifically with Canadian history and identity, a rather simplistic formula.

Here is what is most alarming: the museum's mandate no longer includes the obligation to maintain collections and conduct research. The Canadian Museum of Civilization was, above all, a museum of collections and researchers. This public institution dates back to 1856. It was initially a place where the Geological Survey of Canada could present its collections. It became a place for anthropologists, ethnologists, geographers and linguists. The museum's entire history is made up of research and collections.

In deciding to change the mandate of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the government is casting aside more than 150 years of collections and research tradition. The government is contradicting itself when it claims to care about history but then quashes the work of experts, which is a necessary part of our history.

At this time, over half of the resources at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau have already been assigned to Canadian history. That is why we wonder about the government's real intentions. We are not going to be impressed by a $25 million cheque. The government is sending one single cheque to the museum, usable only once, while tasking it with dismantling and rebuilding such exhibits as the wonderful Canada Hall, which took 20 years to build. This is a renovation project of epic proportions.

Even worse, $1 million has already been committed. A total of $500,000 will be required just for the administrative costs of the change, but $400,000 has already been spent on round tables and Post-it notes, not to mention the promotional materials for the new museum that are already being distributed, even though Parliament has barely started studying the bill.

The reality is that the museum's heavy load and limited resources have forced it to lay off some of its staff. Two weeks ago, the museum cut 14 positions for budgetary reasons. This may well turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg, now that the government is trying to shift the museum's mandate away from its obligations to conduct research and maintain its collections.

In reality, the government is interfering and reshaping the museum because it fancies itself a museum expert. The government, perhaps despite itself, is taking part in the history debates that are raging in academia. The government—a bit naively, I might add—is wading into an academic debate because it wants to abandon the social and material approach to history that the Canadian Museum of Civilization is known for, in particular because of its stunning and spectacular depiction of Canada's history. Those are the very exhibits that the government is proposing to dismantle.

The government is proposing a generic narrative for our history. It wants something linear, something based on the tales of heroes and prominent figures, on biographies, monarchs, colonizers, missionaries, dates and monuments. That approach marginalizes the stories and life experiences of the individuals and groups who anonymously built our country's history from the ground up.

That approach marginalizes the events that make up and underpin our history. Those events cannot be summed up in a date or a famous face or in a museum devoted only to heroes and battlefields. It gives the impression that the government is not looking to create a history museum, but a wax museum.

As New Democrats, we respectfully ask the government to stop acting like a museum expert at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Archivists have repeatedly suggested that the toxic and disastrous head of Library and Archives Canada, Daniel Caron, stop pretending to be an expert in digitizing archives—as he has done at several international conferences—when he is neither an archivist nor a librarian. Similarly, we are asking the government to stop doing the work that experts know how to do and can do better.

Governments should not be deciding what is in our museums. This seems like a pretty obvious principle. Apparently, there are a few libertarians on the government benches; despite the government spending like there is no tomorrow, they have been pretty discreet. However, they might agree with what I am suggesting, that the content of museums should be left up to the experts and professionals; to historians, archivists, ethnologists and curators; to conservators, anthropologists and the people who do the research and the hard work to help us understand our history. The government and we as legislators have no place in determining the content or the orientation of a national publicly funded museum.

I am relying on the words of the Minister of Canadian Heritage when he announced at the heritage committee that in fact he had been planning this new museum himself since at least May 2011. We know that the minister has been a regular visitor at the Museum of Civilization and he was a regular visitor at the Canadian War Museum. Clearly, this does not come from the Museum of Civilization's ethnologists. Clearly, none of the curators at the museum suddenly decided that they were missing Maurice Richard's hockey jersey. Clearly, what happened was that people high up decided to toy with our most important national museum.

This is a completely backwards plan. Instead of listening to the many experts, museum specialists, historians and professionals at the Canadian Museum of Civilization and elsewhere in Canada, instead of consulting first and then moving forward, the government chose to do things its own way and then see what happens.

According to the minister himself, he has been planning this Canadian museum of history since at least May 2011. To hear him talk, it is as though he were building miniature models of the museum in his basement, unbeknownst to everyone or even to the museum.

First the museum consulted with people in the field and then it took the consultations public across Canada. These were held in half-empty rooms or shopping malls, between the Walmart and the hardware store, where shoppers were invited to put colour coded Post-it notes on images of Pierre Elliott Trudeau or Roberta Bondar.

This is no joke. It is true. We asked the minister who he consulted. What interest group, what professional association and, most of all, which first nation and what delegation of Métis and Inuit did he and the museum consult? The minister's answer was a non-response. He said that they proceeded with consultations, but he failed to tell us who they consulted. We did not get an answer.

This lack of transparency occurred on this side of the river, here in Parliament.

We spent months in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage listening to talk of Canada's 150th anniversary. How is it that there was never any mention of this museum plan, when it was in the cards and being prepared all along, and now we are told that it is being planned to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation?

The official opposition is calling on the government to leave it to the experts to decide the content and direction of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, to listen to and consult with the public, and to invite and listen to the representatives of countless professions whose job it is to survey and enhance our knowledge of history.

We also note the predominance of this government's troubling, detrimental and dubious desire to intervene and obliquely meddle in Canadian history and to rewrite our history.

The Conservatives may find it effective and advantageous, for election purposes, to eliminate all traces of peacekeepers and replace them with Laura Secords who run through the forest, but they have no mandate to revise history. No party is mandated to reinterpret and revise history.

We are asking that our history be more than just instances of official commemoration chosen by the government. It must be a window into the past that belongs to all of us, and it should reflect our many complex and multi-faceted journeys, including the history of the black Loyalists, the Winnipeg unionists in the early 20th century, the creators and pioneers of the National Film Board, the War Measures Act and the deportation of the Acadians.

We reject this government's troubling, detrimental and dubious desire to intervene and to meddle once again. We reject the government's tampering with history. That is exactly what hundreds of thousands of Canadians have told us in recent weeks. Having seen the carnage at Parks Canada, Library and Archives Canada and now the Canadian Museum of Civilization, thousands of citizens have signed and are continuing to sign an on-line petition stating that they are fed up with the interference in and rewriting of history.

We are calling on the government to restore funding and stop interfering in federal organizations responsible for preserving and protecting our history. That was their responsibility long before the Conservatives took an interest in the matter.

This evening, we are asking the Conservatives to show that they care about history. They should prove that they are passionate about the past by not interfering with the work of historians and various experts who contribute to our understanding of history. Above all, they must stop gutting the public institutions that promote and preserve our history.

I would like to conclude by moving the following motion:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Museums Act in order to establish the Canadian Museum of History and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, because it:

(a) represents the government’s interference in Canadian history and its attacks on research and the federal institutions that preserve and promote history such as Library and Archives Canada and Parks Canada;

(b) transforms the mission of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the most popular museum in Canada, to give a secondary role to temporary exhibits on world cultures, when it is precisely these exhibits that make it a major tourist attraction, an economic driver and a job creator for the national capital region;

(c) removes research and collection development from the mission of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, although the Museum is an internationally renowned centre of research;

(d) puts forward a monolithic approach to history that could potentially exclude the experiences of women, francophones, First Nations, Inuit and Métis, and marginalized groups;

(e) was developed in absolute secrecy and without substantial consultations with experts, First Nations, Inuit and Métis, Canadians and key regional players;

(f) attacks a winning formula at the expense of Canadian taxpayers; and

(g) does not propose any measure to enhance the Museum’s independence and thereby opens the door to potential interference by the minister and the government in determining the content of Museum exhibits, although this should be left to experts.”

I would like to take this opportunity to say that this motion is seconded by the hon. member for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

You are right, Mr. Speaker.

I am asking the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages to explain to us how we can trust him when he is telling us not to talk about partisanship, although we see that he has favoured a certain part of our history so far, in terms of promotion.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have to congratulate the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages for expressing his deeply held convictions on this plan to dismantle the current Canadian Museum of Civilization. I also have to recognize that the system for promoting the museum's mandate is, in fact, well-stated.

However, when I hear our Minister of Canadian Heritage tell us that he believes Canadians deserve this, I say they do not deserve what you designed, they deserve history. The problem—

[Committees of the House, May 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I listened to the speech given by my colleague opposite.

I would like to ask him a question. How can he ask us to support this kind of initiative when the government is making political hay by broadcasting ads about a program that the provinces have not yet been able to weigh in on?

[Committees of the House, May 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, my Conservative colleague across the way behaved very rudely. He blabbered on while my colleague was responding. This kind of behaviour and lack of respect is typical of the Conservatives.

I would like to know whether she thinks this government's biggest challenge is basically to agree, to come to a consensus and to talk with other levels of government, particularly when we know there are horror stories in her region. In fact, some owners are exaggerating about the living conditions of temporary workers employed by fast food chains.

[Library and Archives Canada, May 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, anyone appointed by the Conservatives clearly enjoys playing with taxpayers' money. After what happened with Senator Duffy, Senator Wallin and Senator Brazeau, now we learn that el señor Daniel Caron also treated himself, spending $170,000 of taxpayers' money at the Rideau Club and on trips to Puerto Rico and Australia in 2011 and 2012. Meanwhile, at Library and Archives Canada, he was gutting important programs and muzzling archivists with a code of conduct that was controversial, to say the least.

Will the Conservatives finally do the right thing and appoint a serious and dedicated chief librarian at Library and Archives Canada?