The federal government has announced that a Guy Berthiaume will take over as head of the Canada’s history gathering institution in June.
Bertiaume will take over after former president Daniel Caron suddenly resigned last year following severe criticism on a number of issues,
Caron who was a career public servant, was unpopular with staff who said he was muzzling them as well as neglecting key areas of the mandate.
He resigned following revelations about expense account irregularities after it was learned he billed taxpayers for $4,500 for personal Spanish lessons.
Bertiaume comes from experience, as the former head of the provincial archives for Quebec.
However, it will be a difficult time for him as the archives is facing on-going budget restrictions. Since 2009, the archives has dealt with a $10 million dollar budget cut, laid off staff, ended grant programmes and stopped an inter-library loan programme that made historical documents available nation-wide.
It is nonetheless now tasked with digitizing historical records.
According to documents obtained by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) through the access to information act, she said, only 0.5 per cent of the archive’s publications have been made electronically available. A spokesperson for the CAUT, says at the current pace it would take 70 years to upload the historical records.
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