National museums underfunded about $78M a year, heritage officials admit
Don Butler, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: February 15, 2016 | Last Updated: February 15, 2016 7:00 PM EST
Canada’s six national museums are underfunded by as much as $78.7 million a year, according to briefing notes prepared by the department for Canadian Heritage minister, Mélanie Joly.
The 16-page document, dated November 2015, outlines the increasingly dire financial position of the national museums.
Four are in the National Capital Region – the Canadian Museum of History, which includes the Canadian War Museum; the Canadian Museum of Nature; the National Gallery of Canada and the Canada Museum of Science and Technology, which includes the aviation and space and agriculture and food museums.
The underfunding, departmental officials say, “puts the proper care of their assets at risk and leads to less effective and efficient program delivery, accelerated deteriorating of artifacts and assets, and, in some cases, health and safety risks.”
They point out that national museums face rising costs of operating, maintaining and repairing their 29 buildings. “These costs far exceed funding, eroding their program budgets and jeopardizing their financial sustainability.”
The museums currently receive $20 million less than they need each year to operate their buildings, the officials say.
Nor do the museums receive enough capital funding to renew exhibits and keep their buildings in optimal condition. The capital funding gap is at least $9.6 million a year and could be as high as $23.7 million. It has resulted in an unfunded accumulated capital backlog of about $120 million, the department says.
If anything, the problem is even more acute when it comes to program funding.
In actual dollars, the museums receive the same amount in program funding today as they did a decade ago, the document says. Thanks to inflation, program budgets have lost 45 per cent of their purchasing power since 1995, representing a further funding gap of $35 million a year.
Altogether, it adds up to an annual shortfall of at least $64.6 million and as much as $78.7 million.
The six museums, whose collections contain more than 12 million artifacts, artistic treasures and scientific materials tracing Canada’s cultural, social and natural history, rely heavily on taxpayers.
In the fiscal year ending March 31, they will collectively receive more than $212 million in parliamentary appropriations.
They earned about $42 million in revenues in 2014-15, but, department officials acknowledge, “these are insufficient to offset the continuously rising costs.”
The museums have “little or no discretion” over the cost of operating their buildings, which consumes 40 per cent of their budgets.
For example, they face rising payments for grants in lieu of taxes to municipalities but receive no extra funding for that, unlike Public Services and Procurement Canada, which receives annual adjustments for the rising costs of the buildings it manages for other departments.
Deferring needed maintenance and repairs for extended periods increases the risk to buildings and collections, the briefing document says, and increases repair and replacement costs.
It cites the grim example of the Canada Science and Technology Museum, which was closed in September 2014 when mould was found after roof repairs were delayed too long. It is now undergoing an $80.5-million refit.
To help offset expenses for building operations and capital needs, the museums have had to cut program spending, heritage officials say, which reduces their ability to renew exhibits and programs.
While national museums have adopted various strategies to cope with the funding shortfall, “results are modest and insufficient to address financial challenges,” the briefing notes state.
That has forced them to turn to “more drastic measures,” including reductions in staff, programs and services to the public, reducing or eliminating subsidies for travelling exhibits and using assets beyond their life cycle “even when replacement is better value for money.”
The department withheld its recommendations to Joly when it made the minister’s briefing books public.
But a spokesman for the minister said she understands that national museums “serve an essential purpose as they keep our collective memory alive.
“Minister Joly has been meeting with senior management of our national museums and she is aware that Canada’s national museums are under financial pressure,” Pierre-Olivier Herbert, Joly’s press attaché, said in an email Monday.
“We plan on pursuing the discussion about the challenges encountered by these institutions as well as evaluating the solutions available to them,” he said, adding that the Liberal government is “working very hard” to ensure that it meets the museums’ infrastructure needs.
Herbert said it was too early to say whether Finance Minister Bill Morneau will address the museums’ needs when he tables his first budget, expected in March.
The six national museums aren’t alone in their struggles. According to another briefing note presented to Joly, 77 per cent of Canada’s 1,500 museums are housed in buildings 35 or more years old, many in need of major repairs and upgrades.
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