National Museums Saved

In the her­itage sec­tor, muse­ums were cer­tainly priv­i­leged by Min­is­ter Flaherty’s budget. Not only did we see the bud­get for national muse­ums renewed with­out any cuts, but the gov­ern­ment has reserved a beau­ti­ful trib­ute to all Cana­dian museums.

The gov­ern­ment responded to the major­ity of the expec­ta­tions of the national museums.

1. Main­tained the bud­gets of the national museums;

The national muse­ums, includ­ing the Cana­dian Museum for Human Rights, the Cana­dian Museum of Civ­i­liza­tion, The Cana­dian Museum of Nature, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Canada Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy Museum will share more than $200 mil­lion that remains untouched.

At the time of pub­li­ca­tion, the Cana­dian Her­itage Min­is­ter still hadn’t announced the fate of spe­cific pro­grams that the Depart­ment funds through the Muse­ums Assis­tance Pro­gram (MAP). It should be remem­bered that, “Through a series of spend­ing cuts, the fund­ing level of the Pro­gram was reduced from a tar­get of $18 mil­lion per year to today’s allo­ca­tion of $6 mil­lion.” [1]

2.  Increased sup­port for the Canada Trav­el­ling Exhi­bi­tions Indem­ni­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram that will increase the limit from $1.5 bil­lion to $3 billion.

In the case of this pro­gram, the gov­ern­ment assumes finan­cial lia­bil­ity and pays com­pen­sa­tions when nec­es­sary in case of loss or dam­age to trav­el­ling exhi­bi­tions. This improve­ment also includes a change to the cal­cu­la­tion period and an increase in the max­i­mum level of sup­port per exhi­bi­tion, from $450 mil­lion to $600 mil­lion. The Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Cana­dian Museum Asso­ci­a­tion, John McAv­ity, said, “This is a remark­able increase in sup­port that will allow Cana­di­ans to see valu­able col­lec­tions that they would nor­mally not be able to view.”

3.  Increased sup­port for the Youth Employ­ment Strat­egy by $50 mil­lion over 2 years.

The CMA has been admin­is­ter­ing part of the Young Canada Works program’s Careers in Her­itage, which is part of the youth employ­ment strat­egy, since 1996. So the wishes of the museum sec­tor are being met.

What else could we hope for?

For years the museum sec­tor has been demand­ing a national museum pol­icy. In 2007, a year after announc­ing that Canada needed a new museum policy, Minister Bev Oda was clos­ing the door com­pletely on this pro­posal. The sec­tor con­tin­ues to hope for the estab­lish­ment of some form of vision for museums. Indeed, it seems essen­tial that an action plan for the man­age­ment and preser­va­tion of Cana­dian her­itage be in place. Would this not be a great project to cel­e­brate the 150th anniver­sary of Canada?