Province funds Inuit Art Centre, heritage centres

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This article was published 19/12/2017 (489 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Inuit Art Centre will be a world-class attraction, predicts Sport, Culture and Heritage Minister Cathy Cox.

However, the province’s value-for-money evaluation says the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) project should only get $10 million in provincial money, not the $15 million the previous NDP government had promised, Cox announced Tuesday.

The Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada will get what it had previously been promised — $8.75 million — plus another $1.25 million to match privately raised funds. And the province’s small museums were delighted to be promised their first-ever matching funds, up to $5 million over three years to establish heritage trusts: one dollar from the province for every two dollars museums raise to create endowment funds.

WAG director and chief executive officer Stephen Borys welcomed the long-awaited funding for the Inuit Arts Centre project, which Cox said would be spread out and paid in various amounts in four of the next five years.

"We’re grateful to the province, (our) steadfast and invested partner," Borys said. "We now have the three levels of government on board."

The WAG has now secured $50 million of its $65-million goal.

Cox said her department based the decision not to fund the entire amount previously committed by the NDP on the project’s value to the economy. Only accountants could explain how "merit-based formula" evaluation worked, she quipped.

"We had an evidence-based, value-for-money evaluation. We took a look at the value to the economy," the minister said at a news conference.

Meanwhile, construction will start next spring on the Winnipeg-based aviation museum’s new $45-million building and hangar opposite the Greyhound bus depot, museum CEO and president Helen Halliday said.

The museum has been operating in an old hangar on the fringes of James Armstrong Richardson International Airport.

"We don’t have incidental tourism coming into the museum," she said, but noted the new aviation museum will be on the main road running in and out of the Winnipeg airport, visible to everyone who comes through, while having more technology to offer visitors. It will continue to have an observation lounge overlooking the main runways.

Manitoba’s small museums have never had such financial support before, and only Quebec has ever provided what Association of Manitoba Museum council president Thomas McLeod called a "groundbreaking" incentive.

"This is the first time in Western Canada. It’s been promised very often, but never brought forward," he said.

The province’s small museums can access up to $5 million over three years as a way of leveraging private donations, Municipal Relations Minister Jeff Wharton said.

The pot of money for local heritage trusts is a significant amount for the buildings, which face high heating costs along with repairs and maintenance, McLeod said. Money stays with the museum raising it.

"It’s money that’s meant to act as a lever," he said, adding many of the small museums in Manitoba have largely been left behind.

Some are relatively large and better-known, such as the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach and the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, but most struggle to keep their doors open, McLeod said.

An aide to Cox said not all museums will be able to access the money. "The point of this program is to create those partnerships where community foundations will work with one or several heritage organizations/museums/archives in their areas to create endowment funds. Manitoba’s small- to medium-sized museums can fundraise and participate."

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca