Canadian Heritage committee  There's not such a beast, but we would probably be the organization to lead that process. We would be delighted to lead it. That's close to our mandate. Stories that are in museums need to be unlocked. You're absolutely right that they can be done in quick little vignettes. W

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. We'll look at policy issues at one end, but we also want to be very pragmatic as well. Why are aboriginal people not more engaged in museums? Are they coming to our museums to not just see themselves but to see other cultures? Are we charging admission fees to them? I

Canadian Heritage committee  It comes from people who want to do it. We can't control the number of museums. Anyone can open a museum.

Canadian Heritage committee  Oh, are you? Do tell.

Canadian Heritage committee  If we had our way, I think there would have been controls on the number of museums. We don't need any more, to be quite honest with you. What we need to do is focus on what we already have. Let's get the proper environmental conditions in there. Let's get the inventories done. Le

Canadian Heritage committee  All museums are eligible to apply, but so are all kinds of other cultural entities, and don't forget that much of this has matching funding requirements as well.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. We're looking at a short-term program of matching donations. In fact, we put it to all parties during the election campaign, and one of the parties, the Conservative Party, adopted it, but slightly differently. We would like to see that. We think it's a practical program

Canadian Heritage committee  We would urge you to do a review of the existing federal strategy and the programs in place. You will find programs that are very well intentioned, and there are great staff behind these programs. They're working with very limited resources and the needs of the museum community a

Canadian Heritage committee  I'd be delighted to. That task force really turned the page, as it were. It led to a lot of repatriation by museums of human remains and sacred materials. It led to a lot of co-management agreements. It led to a training program being set up for aboriginal people in museum stud

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, there is Pointe-à-Callière, the archaeological site. The Six Nations museum at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario, is excellent. There is a brand new Cree museum in northern Quebec, which is a spectacular building and operation. We gave it an award, in fact.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm sorry; I didn't get the first part of the question.

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely.

Canadian Heritage committee  We work very closely with all the other associations or provincial museum associations across the country. There are even some municipal ones. We work very closely with them and coordinate as best we can with very limited resources. I think it's important to say that with all th

Canadian Heritage committee  You're hitting the nail right on the head. The public understanding of what museums are and what they do needs to change. We don't have the ability to do that kind of marketing. We would like to do it. We'd like to improve the public's understanding, and we know that by doing so

Canadian Heritage committee  If I could bring this up, there's another complication with digitization, and that is copyright. For contemporary art, when the rights are still owned by the artist, which is usually the case, the simple costs of paying royalty fees and getting permission to put things online rea