Thank you very much for coming here today. It's unfortunate that this very important part of the report got kind of swept off the table in the public consciousness in the last several months, because it is incredibly important.
Just thinking about the archives receiving every one of the newspapers every single day and chronicling them is astounding. You kind of have a sense that we're a ship floating along, and we're just getting heavier and heavier. Unless we make some decisions, things are just going to get thrown out here and there because there's just no more room and people don't have the system set up to figure out what to keep.
You know that this committee has done three reports over the last seven years, and I've been part of them all, I'm happy to say. We've been nudging the Department of Canadian Heritage to really work on the issues of deterioration of items at the archives and the library.
In 2000, we talked about the need to do a planning process to examine long-term space and preservation needs. In our most recent report on broadcasting, we talked about the importance of ensuring that the archival footage of Canada's broadcasters doesn't get lost, because we know that even now much of that old stuff is disappearing.
In your report, you ask what is required. What you told us we should do is eloquent, and I want to suggest at the end that we frame a letter with all of your suggestions. But you say there will be no success in this endeavour until there is a shift to a culture of heritage protection within the federal government, and cooperation among entities involved.
I would like your opinion on whether you've actually seen a shift away from heritage protection. It seems to me that at some point we were doing this a lot better than we're doing it now. Can this shift be traced to money, cutbacks, or some kind of changes in mandates? I don't believe there have been changes in mandates. If we could see where the weakening on this file started, maybe we could start thinking about how to deal with it.
I would like to suggest that this committee use some of the very specific action items that the Auditor General has suggested and craft a letter to the heritage minister asking for answers. Mr. Bonwick suggested we have the committee come before us, but it seems to me that the first step is to get them to do some work and have some answers before they come before us. Then we will be able to hear about what steps they've taken on these issues that you've raised on that last section.
Could I table that, please?