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The museums currently receive $20 million less than they need each year to operate their buildings, the officials say.

Nor do the museums receive enough capital funding to renew exhibits and keep their buildings in optimal condition. The capital funding gap is at least $9.6 million a year and could be as high as $23.7 million. It has resulted in an unfunded accumulated capital backlog of about $120 million, the department says.

If anything, the problem is even more acute when it comes to program funding.

In actual dollars, the museums receive the same amount in program funding today as they did a decade ago, the document says. Thanks to inflation, program budgets have lost 45 per cent of their purchasing power since 1995, representing a further funding gap of $35 million a year.

Altogether, it adds up to an annual shortfall of at least $64.6 million and as much as $78.7 million.

The six museums, whose collections contain more than 12 million artifacts, artistic treasures and scientific materials tracing Canada’s cultural, social and natural history, rely heavily on taxpayers.

In the fiscal year ending March 31, they will collectively receive more than $212 million in parliamentary appropriations.

They earned about $42 million in revenues in 2014-15, but, department officials acknowledge, “these are insufficient to offset the continuously rising costs.”

The museums have “little or no discretion” over the cost of operating their buildings, which consumes 40 per cent of their budgets.