Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly

Let's join the throng offering sincere best wishes to Canada's new Liberal Minister of Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly.

Although the official title is Canadian Heritage her roster of responsibilities is heavily weighted to the arts including agencies such as the Canada Council for the Arts, Telefilm Canada, the National Film Board of Canada and the CBC. Joly has experience serving on boards for various cultural bodies, including the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Governor General's Performing Arts Award and Business for the Arts. It's not clear she has any background regarding libraries and archives.

The previous government boasted of having protected funding for arts, except the CBC, while the damage caused to Canada's documentary heritage under the previous government is well known. The genealogy and history communities should be watching to ensure the new government moves to repair the situation with bold new initiatives, especially for born digital materials and digitization of heritage materials.