Hon. Céline Hervieux-Payette:

Honourable senators, my question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate. Although the Minister of Labour, Rona Ambrose, under the pretext of economy recovery, appointed an arbitrator to resolve the CN labour dispute within three days, the same minister stubbornly refuses to press management at the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum to resolve the labour dispute that has been going on there for nearly three months.

Would the minister not agree that our public funds are being wasted when employees who are mandated by the government to preserve Canada's history and heritage cannot carry out their duties and provide the services that the public is entitled to receive? I am thinking of all the young Canadians from various educational institutions who have not been able to take advantage of the school programs normally offered by the two museums, because those programs were all cancelled when the strike began.

Would the minister not agree that educating our young people is just as important, economically speaking, as CN's transportation activities? Or, as we have seen in the past, is the Conservative Party's policy to slash everything dealing with arts and culture simply part of its economic action plan?

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