Public Accounts committee  It's absolutely a fact. One thing that's interesting is that the Canadian Museum of Nature visitorship, say in 2010, on average was about 250,000 visitors a year. It is now up to 500,000 visitors a year. The visitorship has increased substantially, but the awareness of the Canadi

Public Accounts committee  For four years.

Public Accounts committee  That's a great question. Digitizing the collection takes different components. First is having the IT infrastructure that will support the volume of data we're creating and so we recently made some investments in our IT infrastructure to have the storage room to house all the da

Public Accounts committee  I often introduce myself as the individual who has the best job in Canada, because when you're responsible for leading an institution that holds the record of nature over time and has the responsibility to inspire understanding and respect for nature, for a better natural future,

Public Accounts committee  We're not just willy-nilly taking risks wildly, but we do need to take more risks and to experiment in how we do things. To brag, part of that includes how we share the species that we have in our collection, so that people can get excited about the evidence of nature over time

Public Accounts committee  Our website is an absolutely critical communication tool, as you say, not only for disseminating knowledge, but also for holding the data on our collection, sharing it not only with young people and the general public, but also with researchers and government public policy-makers

Public Accounts committee  Sure. Is this with regard to the management of the collections system?

Public Accounts committee  Yes. That's a great question. Thank you. We have been using a system for managing the data and housing the data with regard to our 14.6 million specimens collection.

Public Accounts committee  For the system itself, the total budget was $300,000. It's a very modest budget for a system conversion. It was converting an existing database management system into a new database management system. We're converting it over a number of years, so the cost is less than $100,000

Public Accounts committee  In terms of the first comment with regard to the board oversight, our finance and audit committee is chaired by Ron Colderoni, who I think Etienne would agree is very diligent about the role of the board of trustees in overseeing all financial matters of the institution. That was

Public Accounts committee  Yes. What was absolutely fair is we were working on an inventory of regulations and acts that the Museum of Nature as a crown corporation needs to be compliant with, and so we did come up with an inventory from the Museums Act, to the Financial Administration Act, to the Species

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Stephen. Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members. The Canadian Museum of Nature is a $36-million business. As a not-for-profit crown corporation, the museum relies on government funding, commercial revenues, and donor and sponsorship support to cover operating

Canadian Heritage committee  You're going to see a different kind of briefcase at a conversation about biodiversity. I think that's the species change you're really going to see.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, and it's something we worked on with all the national museums and some of the smaller museums. It is an initiative that originally started in collaboration with the National Capital Commission, and it's something that has been evolving. Now you can provide the facts.

Canadian Heritage committee  We welcome 30,000 students per year. These come from the national capital region, but they also come from across Canada for those who can afford a field trip to the city, but that is a small number. We also work with a network of natural history museums and do all we can to prom