Mr. Speaker, the member from Charlottetown hails from a very historic and important part of this world. Charlottetown has the great distinction of being only about four hours drive away from western Nova Scotia. It is, like all of Atlantic Canada, very proud of its history. We have thousands of volunteers working to ensure we preserve our culture and history.
Atlantic Canada has many small museums, places around which people are able to exercise that function and they volunteer countless hours, but they need assistance and that assistance often comes in multiple ways. One is that students get great experience by working in those facilities when they are in university, right after high school. They are able to work in the summer to assist the communities, assist the volunteers and get the work experience needed to ensure they have a successful future and a good career in the work life after university.
These museums need assistance from senior levels of government in their operating and capital funding. They were pleased when they received a letter from the Leader of the Opposition then and Prime Minister now that there would be additional federal investments. Instead, they see themselves being hit twice and hit very hard. First is that the federal government, rather than increase the funding levels to museums, it reduced it. That was in the first round of cuts. Where will the second go? We do not know.
Second, we saw this past summer that there were a lot fewer student employment jobs and we have seen the budgets cut further. They know they can look forward to a lot less assistance in the future, both from the students and the volunteer organizations.
Would the member from Charlottetown like to comment on those points?