Solving the Problem of Canada's National Museums
They serve an important function, but fewer Canadians notice.
Broadly speaking, museums come in two flavors. Some have a mandate to preserve, display, and provide context for a nation’s historical artifacts and treasures. And others exist to educate on a more abstract level.
When it comes to our physical historical collections, I don’t think anyone would question our natural instinct to preserve. Would you prefer that we just throw coats worn by Sir Isaac Brock and Louis Riel or Nuvumiutaq's Bow Drill into landfill? And as long as we’re keeping those objects, why shouldn’t Canadians be able to view them in person?
The function of the abstract concept museum in a world dominated by the internet is more complicated. To justify their existence, they’ll not only need sufficient consumer demand, but they’ll also have to provide an affordable service that can’t be easily delivered through other means.
There are nine federally-funded national museums in Canada. Three of those exist as part of a legal entity called Ingenium:
Canadian Agriculture and Food Museum
Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
Canada Science and Technology Museum
Another three are incorporated as part of a Crown corporation called the Canadian Museum of History:
Canadian Museum of History
Canadian War Museum
Virtual Museum of New France
And these three seem to be more or less independent:
Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21
Canadian Museum of Nature
I would categorize just the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and the Canadian War Museum as collections of historical heritage objects. The rest are abstract concept museums.
The Virtual Museum of New France is really just a website. It looks interesting enough, although perhaps not as complete or compelling as Professor Greg Koabel’s Nations of Canada articles on Quillette.
Between them, those nine institutions received more than $190 million from the Heritage Ministry for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. Since 2014 - when the total payout was $160 million - appropriations have actually not kept up with inflation (but then, which of us has?).
The problem is that, with the exception of the War Museum, visits having been uniformly declining. The declines ranged between 12 and 55 percent. Here’s how it looks (note that there is no pre-2022 data available for the Human Rights and Immigration museums):
The people in charge are clearly well aware of the problems they face. Their annual reports each contain multiple strategies for addressing dropping public interest that, for the most part, make perfect sense.
But none of them will work. As a society, we’re looking to different places for our entertainment, education, and inspiration than we once did. And it’ll take a lot to successfully compete with the coming waves of digital knowledge platforms. This is especially true for those collections that don’t provide a physical connection with our past.
Which means we really need to find new and better ways to present our collections. It’s getting harder to justify spending this kind of public money on services fewer and fewer people actually want.
Time for a full mandate review.
Why would anyone be surprised that the funding for awful "settler" museums is dropping. There appear to be unlimited funds, however, for the inappropriately named National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (which is based on a false premise). I never voted for Trudeau. I thought he was not smart and was cruising on his surname. When he said Canada has no national identity and he saw Canada as a post-nationalist state, I figured we were going to be in trouble, and my prediction has come true. If this isn't rectified soon and we can't recover some sense of national pride in Canada the country is in big trouble. When 5 percent of the population is the recipient of more money than the national defence budget line item shit is skewed. I haven't heard Poilievre talk about this issue much. I suspect it's too much of a political hot potato and he's counting votes where he can.
Sadly, your analysis of visits seems to make the case for the argument some years ago by the Prime Face Painter that Canada is a post nation state with no real identity. Of course, the way in which the federal government has crapped on our history and our forebears makes such drop in interest pretty much self-fulfilling.
I hate to recommend government spend money! I am a retired accountant and my instinct is for the government to shrink and to do less. Nonetheless, I think that this is one area where government spending does make sense but, really, some of these museums (would the plural be musea?] seem pretty esoteric to me. Probably the same amount of money should be spent but over fewer institutions. That means that some others should be cut loose and told to raise their own funds or perish.
And, oh yeah, I almost forgot: Good analysis, Sir.