:
Welcome to the 33rd meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, on this Tuesday, November 30, 2010.
Pursuant to Standing Order 81(5), we are here to study the supplementary estimates (B), 2010-2011.
[English]
The chair will be calling the votes on 5b, 15b, 40b, 45b, 50b, 55b, 65b, 80b, and 90b under Canadian Heritage.
To allow us to consider these votes and to study the estimates, we have in front of us three representatives from the Department of Canadian Heritage. We have Mr. Wallace, Monsieur Blais, and Monsieur Scrimger.
Welcome to all three of you.
We'll begin with an opening statement from Mr. Wallace.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to members of the committee for inviting us here today.
As you mentioned, Mr. Chair, I have with me Monsieur Jean-Pierre Blais, assistant deputy minister of cultural affairs—no stranger to the committee—and I'm flanked on my right by Tom Scrimger, assistant deputy minister of citizenship and heritage. He has also served as our chief financial officer, which is relevant to our discussions today.
Mr. Chair, as you mentioned, we are here to respond to questions on supplementary estimates (B). In this regard, I wanted to briefly run through the elements of our mandate and recent activities that touch upon our expenditures.
[Translation]
As you know, our mandate affects key aspects of Canadians' cultural and civic lives. Canadian Heritage works with Canada's major national cultural institutions to promote arts and culture, heritage, official languages, citizenship and participation, as well as aboriginal, youth and sport initiatives. Our programs are delivered in communities throughout Canada.
[English]
We've had a busy year, Mr. Chair.
[Translation]
It has been a busy year for us with the renewal of many programs, work on a digital strategy, Expo 2010 in Shanghai, the royal tour, the Commonwealth Games in India and, of course, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, where we were the lead department.
[English]
I think a high-water mark in the life of the Department of Canadian Heritage over the last several years.
[Translation]
We continue to provide in the range of 7,500 grants and contributions every year, and have for the first time published service standards for their delivery.
[English]
Let me turn quickly to Canada's economic action plan. We've been busy delivering on this over the course of the last year, and we do remain on target.
In 2009-10 we funded projects and programs worth more than $150 million on action plan initiatives.
This year, as of October 31, we've funded more than $106 million of initiatives developed through five programs: the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund, the Canada Arts Training Fund, the Canada Periodical Fund, the Canada Media Fund, and Special Olympics Canada.
As we are here, Mr. Chair, to respond to questions on supplementary estimates (B), I'd like to go through, if I may, some highlights with the committee.
Let me start with the bottom line. The net impact of the supplementary estimates will be an increase of $30.1 million to the spending authority of the department. This funding is being used for the following initiatives.
[Translation]
I will start with sport.
Budget 2010 renews funding of $5 million annually that was originally announced in Budget 2003. This supports the La Relève initiative for the identification and development of the next generation of high-performance athletes.
Additionally, $17 million annually has been added to continue to develop high-performance athletes participating in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. These funds will continue to 2014-2015.
Canadian Heritage currently provides $47 million annually towards enhanced excellence funding for targeted summer and winter sports as part of the own the podium (OTP) initiative. The new funds are expected to increase OTP-winter funding to $22 million and OTP-summer funding to $42 million per year.
To support persons with a disability, the Government of Canada is providing an additional $5 million to the Canadian Paralympic Committee and another $1 million to Special Olympics Canada annually for the next 5 years. These funds will enable these organizations to build on their participation activities and athlete-development initiatives, encouraging participation in sport.
In 2007, the Government of Canada announced the renewal of ParticipACTION. An additional investment of $3 million per year for 2 years, announced in Budget 2010, will help the organization promote healthy lifestyles through physical activity and sport participation, and generate more resources through the private sector.
[English]
I'll move now to the arts, Mr. Chair. Through the supplementary estimates (B) the Government of Canada is also supporting Prairie Scene 2011, which will be held in Ottawa from April 26 to May 7, and will showcase artists from the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. This is the fifth scene event produced by the NAC. Previous events showcased the Atlantic, Alberta, Quebec, and British Columbia. The department has made an investment in all four previous festivals, and we will contribute over the course of this year $250,000 to the NAC for costs associated with Prairie Scene 2011.
Turning now to cost containment measures, in the 2010 federal budget the government's plan was to bring the budget back to balance by putting in place targeted measures to reduce the rate of growth of spending that will build over the medium term. In order to achieve this plan, a number of cost-containment measures on our administrative budget have been implemented. For example, in 2010-11, Canadian Heritage budgets were not increased to fund the 1.5% increase in annual wages for the federal public administration. The department was also required to reallocate from the remainder of its operating budgets to fund this increase.
Two reductions of note are included in the estimates before you. Since funds were received in 2009-2010 for salary increases in 2010-11 and future years, these funds are to be removed from the department's budget, which amounts to $1.67 million. There's also a reduction of $490,000 to the budget of the offices of the minister and the minister of state.
Mr. Chair, I hope this information will be useful to the committee.
We would now be pleased to respond to any questions you may have.
[Translation]
I hope this information will be useful to the committee. We would now be pleased to respond to any questions you may have.
Just as a matter of correcting the record--I guess this is what happens when the NDP loses a byelection--what I was indicating to the witnesses at the time, just for the benefit of the witnesses who are here today, was that.... I indicated to them that this was in no way government policy, but was asking them for their opinion.
I too have met with and heard from people who come into my office regularly, and from artists, that if we had more funding for strictly content, if we had more money behind content, then Canada could in fact compete with any industry in the world, including Hollywood. We've seen those types of productions in Canada.
Perhaps, as a matter of fact, while you're here, maybe you could talk a little bit about the Canada Media Fund--anything you might be hearing about the revamp of the Canada Media Fund, how it's received--and maybe the various film tax credits and so forth that we're extending and how those are received by the sector. Maybe you could just talk about how content is creating jobs and driving an economy in Canada.
:
Certainly the funding model we use has a number of tools in the toolkit. Sometimes they're institutions, whether it's Telefilm or Canada Council. Sometimes it's tax credits, as we do for the audiovisual, television and film sector, as well as direct subsidy programs.
The CMF--the old Canadian television fund, which got merged with the Canada New Media Fund--has been quite a success. Even just last week I was meeting with some folks from the Canada Media Fund, and they were telling me that it has become such a success that organizations from across the world are now coming to see how we've done this, not dissimilar to the period in the seventies and eighties when our broadcasting model ended up being a model across the world on how you support indigenous productions.
So for the CMF, the first priority was getting governance right. There had been some concerns raised by the Auditor General that perhaps there were perceptions of conflict of interest, and so we changed that. But more importantly from a policy perspective, the new CMF--as its name change suggests, away from television fund--tries to support the creation of content on all platforms, because that's where Canadians are. They want their content when they want it, where they want it, on the platform they want it.
So we are nudging the industry along through the subsidy program, and it has become a hallmark around the world.
I'm going to pursue Mr. Angus' line of questioning, Mr. Wallace. I'm new to this, and if you wouldn't mind I'd like to go back to the CBC.
Let me open by saying that I think arts and culture are great economic generators, so I'm never in favour when arts and culture are cut back. Let me put that on the table up front.
An hon. member: Hear, hear.
Mrs. Bonnie Crombie: Yes, hear hear.
On the votes that are appropriated, $60 million will go toward program enhancement offered on TV, radio, and other platforms. Can you discuss where this $60 million will go? Will it go toward the operating budget, or not specifically? It will go toward strengthening and enhancing programming, so what kind? Do we know how that will be allocated?
Good afternoon, and thank you all for being here.
In the supplementary estimates, on pages 118, 119 and 120, four little things caught my eye.
The Canadian Museum of Civilization is asking for $5.8 million to address operating pressures at the museum.
A bit further on, the Canadian Museum of Nature asks for $2.8 million to address operating pressures at the museum.
And the same goes for the National Museum of Science and Technology, which asks for a few million, and the National Gallery of Canada, again to address operating pressures at the museum.
What does that mean exactly? Is it the same for every museum?
:
If you don't mind, I'm going to try to answer that first. I apologize if I don't go all the way, but Mr. Blais will backfill on this one.
The $13 million is across government, similar treatment of the fact that the government is not going to be providing for salary increases that have already been negotiated across the board, including the CBC. So every single government department will have to find that money from reallocating internally.
In the case of a $1.1 billion operation, the CBC, they'll have to find $13 million internally to be able to do so. It will makes its own decisions about how it reallocates internally to be able to meet that particular financial pressure. It can do so through a series of things, particularly since it earns revenue, it gets appropriations, it has different funding programs that apply to it. It makes its own decisions about how it does so.
For example, in the case of Canadian Heritage, we went to our operational budget, our program budget, to look for savings in that respect. CBC will make its own decisions in that regard.
:
Well, we'd been talking about this for 15 minutes.
We have to end here, because I'm going to quickly call the votes for members.
We have in front of us the following votes under Canadian Heritage: votes 5b, 15b, 40b, 45b, 50b, 55b, 65b, 80b, and 90b.
Seeing no more further debate on these votes, I'm going to call them.
Vote 5b--The grants listed in the Estimates and contributions..........$31,757,713
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Vote 15b--Payments to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for operating expenditures..........$46,238,911
Canadian Museum of Civilization
Vote 40b--Payments to the Canadian Museum of Civilization for operating and capital expenditures..........$5,812,400
Canadian Museum of Nature
Vote 45b--Payments to the Canadian Museum of Nature for operating and capital expenditures..........$2,794,147
Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission
Vote 50b--Program expenditures..........$2,553,902
Library and Archives of Canada
Vote 55b--Operating expenditures, the grants listed in the Estimates and contributions..........$1
National Arts Centre Corporation
Vote 65b--Payments to the National Arts Centre Corporation for operating expenditures..........$1
National Gallery of Canada
Vote 80b--Payments to the National Gallery of Canada for operating and capital expenditures..........$1,685,898
National Museum of Science and Technology
Vote 90b--Payments to the National Museum of Science and Technology for operating and capital expenditures..........$3,696,472
(Votes 5b, 15b, 40b, 45b, 50b, 55b, 65b, 80b, and 90b agreed to)
The Chair: Shall the chair report these nine votes under Canadian Heritage to the House?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: The chair shall do so at the next opportunity.
Thank you very much to our three witnesses for your appearance. We'll suspend here for five minutes to allow us to go to committee business.
:
I'm not debating, I'm clarifying, because I just want to go back a bit.
My colleague Madame Lavallée is a tigress when it comes to defending her interests, but I am uncomfortable with the continual statement “my thing goes first because my motion comes in first”. We've always had a tradition at this committee that we sit down and plan out a schedule.
So if we're going to look at this, we might do this over a couple of months, because leaving the House might be difficult. I'm not averse to saying let's come back in February, let's have a plan, we'll have other issues, and we'll set up times to do it--as opposed to locking ourselves down and then we're all going to be out in the fields of Kingston in the first week of February in the snow, cursing Mr. Del Mastro.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Charlie Angus: So I'm open, but I'd like to work it within our schedule.