:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Thank you for inviting the Association of Cultural Industries to speak on behalf of the cultural community of Newfoundland and Labrador.
I am Amy House, the president of ACI. I am a member of the advocacy committee for PACT and artistic animateur for the Resource Centre for the Arts theatre company in St. John's.
The cancellation of the Trade Routes and PromArt programs announced last year left a significant gap in how Canadian cultural producers are able to export to foreign markets and tour their work to foreign audiences. Further, cultural agencies striving to bring foreign buyers and financial gatekeepers to Canada to view our products are also impacted.
These cuts create significant challenges for a broad range of artists and arts organizations, and they dampen the entire sector's ability to not only create and sustain financial opportunities in the new creative economy, but also to act as Canada's cultural ambassadors abroad.
In Canada, recognition of the cultural sector as an economic generator is new, yet it has made incredible contributions to the social and economic fabric of the nation for quite some time. In a report published in 2008, the Conference Board of Canada estimated that the real value-added output by culture sector industries totalled $46 billion in 2007, approximately 3.8% of total GDP.
The economic footprint of the culture sector is much larger when accounting for combined direct, indirect, and induced effects. The Conference Board calculates that this full contribution was valued at $84.6 billion, about 8% of the total GDP in 2007.
The culture sector in Newfoundland and Labrador contributes an estimated $400 million annually to the provincial economy. Being an island culture, Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans experience even more intensified challenges in export and touring. For every challenge an artist in the rest of Canada faces getting their work to the world, we experience the same to even reach the rest of the country. Transporting art, mounting interprovincial tours of bands and performance companies, shipping books or recordings, and shooting film on location all have costs that significantly increase as soon as airfare, freight, and lodging are taken into consideration.
Many of these costs are hidden or non-intuitive to non-creators. Take, for example, the cost to a visual artist of crating and shipping their work to either foreign or even domestic galleries. Support for these kinds of ever-increasing costs used to be applied for under the Trade Routes and PromArt programs. With this money gone and other avenues of funding not increased in the new budget, the burden is downloaded to artists and will result in less work reaching a national audience, or, in our case, even a domestic one.
Instead of investing in development of the arts and culture sector as part of the creative economy, the cuts mean a loss of economic activity, to single out the monetary aspect of the results only. Our provincial government has been forced to provide $250,000 in support to Newfoundland and Labrador artists and groups to account for these cuts to export programming.
You probably heard about the East Coast Music Awards this past weekend. In the past, the ECMA has tapped the PromArt and Trade Routes funding to bring foreign buyers to the east coast, where a networking and buying conference is set up annually to allow Canadian musicians, large and small, to sell their work to a hungry international market. With an investment of approximately $60,000 between the two export programs, the ECMA is able to bring in dozens of foreign buyers and generate many more thousands of dollars of investment and working hours for Newfoundland musicians, technical staff, promoters, retailers, etc.
The St. John's International Women's Film Festival has similarly brought in buyers under this plan. Both of these programs will end with the end of PromArt.
Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador has also used PromArt several times. A couple of years ago, TNL took an original production to Tasmania, where they not only developed important international contacts that have led to further business and sustainability through co-productions and cost-sharing with Tasmanian groups, but they have also directly impacted tourism in the province. The number of Tasmanians visiting Newfoundland and Labrador has doubled each year since.
Foreign ticket sales, provincial funding, and foreign investment constituted the bulk of the cost of this exchange, but the production would not have been able to go ahead without PromArt money to help offset costs.
The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador now has an exchange agreement with Tasmania. Without PromArt funding we will not be able to honour that agreement in the years to come.
Economic downturns in the arts and culture sector work much the same way as in other sectors, though the majority of primary businesses are individual cultural producers or small companies. Without funding to sustain and grow their practices, cultural producers and artists cannot feed the constellations of others--businesses, individuals, and organizations--that rely on their product to exist.
Musicians feed everything from management companies to recording studios, CD manufacturers, graphic artists, sound technicians, distribution companies, retail outlets, and performance venue owners. Authors have a stream of reliant others, including editors, publishers, designers, printers, distributors, and retail outlets. Furthermore, the interaction between the sectors cannot be underestimated. Film relies on the literary sector for stories, the music sector for sound, and the visual sector for design, etc.
A failure to recognize export as a basic need of doing business in a global culture is a failure to support the sector as a whole. If government believes the programs that were cut were inefficient, it has an obligation to either fix those programs or replace them with new options that are efficient. The money that made up these programs was essential to the process of doing business, and business cannot go on without it.
To wrap up, I'd just like to say, restore support for export, touring, and foreign networking for Canadian artists to levels at least commensurate with past budgets. Ensure that this money is administered through successful and transparent agencies, such as the Canada Council for the Arts, as suggested by so many other stakeholders.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, and good afternoon.
PACT represents over 140 professional not-for-profit and for-profit theatre companies in English Canada. We are a member of the Performing Arts Alliance and a founder of the Canadian Arts Coalition.
I'm very pleased to be able to speak to you today about the contributions made by our members and the arts community as a whole to the high quality of life enjoyed by Canadian citizens, and about the critical role government policy and support play in ensuring access and opportunity for all Canadians. The current global crisis places Canadian arts organizations in a precarious position not of their making. Current federal government programs and recently announced funding increases go only part way to stabilizing the arts and culture sector. Cancellation of some programs threatens to topple other activities in this sector.
We thank the federal government for the recent increase of $30 million to the base budget of the Canada Council for the Arts and for an additional one-time funding increase to Cultural Spaces Canada. Equally important is the continuation of a national arts training contribution program. These economic measures are invaluable to the sector and send an important message to Canadians that there is federal government confidence in the arts and culture sector.
In contrast, the cancellation of PromArt at Foreign Affairs and Trade Routes at Canadian Heritage threaten to destabilize the performing arts in Canada and to close down, first, the development of international markets and, second, the existing market in international touring by artists and arts organizations. At present, the overall trade deficit in cultural services for Canada was $919 million in 2004. We cannot expect this deficit to become a surplus until Canadian artists have their creations exposed to the world stage.
A healthy and thriving performing arts sector requires ongoing complementary government support in five key interrelated areas: arts training, production, domestic access, and touring; international market development and touring; financial stability and organizational help; and cultural infrastructure. These five key areas represent the spectrum of a vast amount of arts activity currently taking place in Canada, and there is real and immediate potential for the destabilizing of a large number of performing arts companies when any one program area is significantly reduced or eliminated. Of course, the reverse is true as well. Increased activity and viability result from investments by the government in strategic departments and programs that support the arts. An increased investment in arts and culture will secure current and future prosperity for Canada. It will secure the sector's contribution of $25 billion in taxes for all levels of government and $46 billion input into the GDP--economic returns that cannot be generated for Canada by an arts and culture sector in recession. A thriving arts sector will contribute to Canada's success as a leader in a global society.
Today we are making five specific recommendations to this committee. First, increase the base budget of the Canada Council by $100 million per year. Second, re-invest a minimum of $12 million in international market development and touring for the arts and culture sector. Such funding is to be allocated to the Canada Council and other established agencies to ensure the maximum efficiency and impact of the investment. Third, continue the endowment incentives program past 2010. Fourth, the announcement needs to be made at the earliest opportunity to create a program of investments that will provide bridge funding to arts organizations over the short term in order to ensure that they remain viable in this period of economic recession. Fifth, renew the Cultural Spaces Canada program to provide a knowable level of base funding to encourage the capital campaigns on which arts and cultural facilities projects rely and to contribute to the local economies in which these capital projects will occur.
Previously, this committee has made bold and visionary recommendations such as doubling the budget of the Canada Council for the Arts. Today we call on the standing committee to recommend that the Government of Canada invest in the arts and culture in all economic stimulus measures in order to increase Canada's competitive advantage.
I thank the committee for your thoughtful consideration in the past and urge you to continue to show your support for the arts and culture sector.
Thank you for your time today.
I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for inviting Les Deux Mondes theatre company to be heard, a company I have led since 1991. Les Deux Mondes is both a research company and creative centre founded in 1973 and incorporated in 1975 as a non-profit organization. In its 36 years of existence, the company has presented 3,400 performances and created 25 shows. It has eight permanent employees and, each year, hires some 50 freelancers, including actors, technicians, and so on.
The bulk of our independent income is generated by the sale of touring shows. Our sales amount to approximately $1 million a year. Our tours have taken us to over 200 cities and 32 countries, and we have taken part in some 60 international festivals for adults and 20 for young audiences, as some of our productions are for children. Our touring productions generally involve an average of eight people.
Why perform outside the country? First of all, on an artistic level, it is an opportunity to meet other audiences, to discover what is being done elsewhere in our field and to establish partnerships abroad. For example, we are currently working on three co-productions, one with Liverpool and two others with France. Finally, for the type of work we do, as a research-based theatre company, the domestic market in Canada is simply too limited. In fact, economic realities require us to amortize the money invested in research over a very long performance period, and we cannot afford to do that only in Canada. Furthermore, for many years, the fees we received in foreign countries, particularly for children's theatre, were higher than in Canada.
Of course, we could also broach another aspect of this international activity, which is that it is part of the symbolic, diplomatic, cultural, commercial and civilized exchanges that countries carry on with each other. How many times have we heard Canadian embassy staff tell us, at the end of a performance, that we had done more to promote Canadian values in one evening than they had been able to do themselves in months and months of discussions and networking on the ground. They told us that people who had seen the performance had had a chance to really get involved and see what Canada is all about.
Across the globe, shows are abundant and there is no lack of talent out there. If someone invites a show to come from abroad, it is because it stands out, it is special. The Canadian government should be very proud to see just how many of its artists and creators are performing on foreign stages. Unfortunately, instead of that, the elimination of the PromArt Program means the end of touring abroad for Canadian productions. It is important to realize that federal government assistance to support the export of cultural products was primarily available through the PromArt Program. Its budget was $4.7 million.
For its part, the Trade Routes Program was aimed at funding the marketing and promotion of artistic productions, but the only direct funding available for performances, cultural events, exhibitions and fairs, including book fairs, was through the PromArt Program. Indeed, the bulk of that funding supported such major Canadian institutions as the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the National Ballet, the Canadian Stage Company, the Grands Ballets Canadiens or the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. More than half of its budget went to large companies, and the rest to small companies such as ours, some even smaller than our own.
I would like to speak briefly about what a tour involves. Of course, no one tour is the same as the next. Sometimes we give several performances in several different cities, and at other times, as occurs in Canada, as a matter of fact, it will be a foreign show that is presented once or twice at a festival. It is important to understand that the assistance provided through PromArt was only a small portion of the complex financial funding package required to export our product.
I have prepared some statistics with respect to our company. I would like to give you an idea of what a typical tour involves. For the two or three tours we would mount on a yearly basis, we received $40,000 through PromArt. For example, on our last tour, we gave 13 performances in 27 days, in five cities across France. The total cost of the tour was $145,000. We received $13,600 in funding through PromArt, which amounts to 9.3 per cent of the total cost. Foreign distributors paid the performance fees, the cost of accommodation, per diems for team members, and shared cost of local transportation.
Already the show cost them more than a local one. For all intents and purposes, the federal funding covered only the expenses related to the international travel of the people involved and their sets. For that tour, we are talking about $30,000, or 20 per cent of the cost. In fact, one could almost say that it was an indirect subsidy to Canadian carriers.
We have calculated that, since 1991, for every dollar provided by PromArt to Les Deux Mondes, we have leveraged an amount of money that is six times higher—in other words, $5.72—in foreign currency. Of course, part of that money is spent in the countries where we perform, but a significant part of it is also spent here in Canada. In actual fact, we are raising money in foreign currency that is then injected into the Canadian economy. Performance fees and copyright represent between 30 and 40 per cent of our costs. In strictly financial terms, we can say that art grants do not cost Canadian taxpayers a single dime. Their elimination is an economic absurdity.
When the government announced the program would be cut in 2005, there was a strong pushback from the cultural community, and the government decided to conduct a study, entitled “Evaluation of the Arts Promotion Program of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada”. That report was released in January of 2006. It did not conclude that administration fees were exorbitant, certainly not in the case of PromArt. On the contrary, it stated that the program had generally attained its original objectives, even though its contribution had been limited by the availability of resources and that its elimination three years later would therefore be absolutely incomprehensible.
It took years of work for companies and artists in every province of Canada to develop networks and partnerships with these countries, and all of that is in jeopardy with the elimination of PromArt. Of course, it is our hope that the federal government will provide an immediate injection of additional funding to the Canada Council for the Arts—indeed, there is no one left to manage the PromArt Program, since the officials in charge of it have been fired—so that it can pick up the slack and save the co-productions and tours that are now under discussion. The work of organizing an international tour is something that has to begin a long time in advance. Our projects are now in jeopardy as a result of this program being cancelled. For companies like Les Deux Mondes and many others, this most certainly means cutting back our touring activities and the ensuing spiral in terms of a significant drop in our independent income, and our ability to hire artists, technicians, support staff and pay residuals, as well as a weakening of whole areas of artistic activity that depend on touring, such as theatre for young audiences and dance.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to begin by thanking the committee for having Magazines Canada here today.
My name is Jim Everson. I'm the executive director of public affairs for the association.
Magazines Canada is a national trade association representing leading Canadian-owned, Canadian content, consumer, cultural, specialty, professional, and business magazines in the country.
Canada's magazine policy and programs are currently the subject of a substantial review led by the Department of Canadian Heritage. This review has coincided with the strategic review of arts and culture program expenditures that the committee is looking at today. We'd like to take this opportunity to discuss some of the challenges ahead and highlight the importance of continued investment in the Canadian magazine sector.
Canada's magazines are challenged currently by a very serious economic downturn, the one that we're all experiencing. Advertising revenues make up, on average, 60% to 65% of magazine revenues. As companies deal with today's economic turmoil, they have pulled back on advertising expenses, which has had an impact on all media, including magazines. There have been layoffs, reductions in freelance commitments, and work-sharing in some of our work environments.
In this environment, the uncertainty around our national policy framework and investment in key programs is an added challenge. There has been considerable uncertainty as a result of a decision by Canada Post to eliminate its $15 million annual contribution to the publications assistance program, which is used to help distribute Canadian magazines across the country. This would have reduced the value of the program by 25%. So our sector very much welcomed the January 27 federal budget announcement of $30 million over two years, which replaces that Canada Post contribution that was eliminated. We further welcomed the announcement by Minister Moore just last month, on February 17, of the creation of the new Canada periodical fund, which will replace both the Canada magazine fund and the publications assistance program. The financial investment provides much-needed stability for the sector in this time, and the new program, we expect, will update the existing framework and provide greater flexibility and targeting of support.
While not all the details of the new program have been finalized, there are areas we feel require more work to ensure that the program meets the diverse needs of the sector. For example, under the existing program structure, Canada's arts and literary magazines benefited from a specific and targeted program as part of the Canada magazine fund. This program will not continue under the new framework; however, the design of the new program allows for special eligibility guidelines for some classes of magazines and a flexible formula of support. So we'll be urging the minister to take steps to ensure that these magazines' special needs are addressed through the instruments that are already built into the design of the program, to ensure that those magazines' needs are addressed.
With respect to the investment in collective industry initiatives, the part of the current programming that was reduced through the expenditure review process, the new program will maintain a component for this purpose. These collective projects are valuable to the sector, and we support maintaining them. They've been used for promotion initiatives on behalf of all Canadian magazines and research into industry issues, types of things that the whole industry can benefit from.
In conclusion, we want to highlight how effective and valuable the federal support is. Successive governments have supported and continue to refine and improve our national magazine policy. It includes the Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, Canadian ownership regulations, the publications assistance program, and the Canada magazine fund. Together they've proven to be very successful. We have one of the most open and competitive magazine sectors in the world, with a very high ratio of magazine titles, both domestic and foreign, per consumer. At the same time, we've been able to steadily improve access to Canadian magazine content relative to foreign magazines. Canadian titles make up about 40% of magazine purchases in Canada, which is better than the Canadian share of most other cultural media, and it's largely as a result of a consistent application of federal magazine policy.
We are looking forward to continued support from the Government of Canada to build on this success.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for setting aside the time to come and speak with the committee today.
I'm sure you're all aware--this isn't going to surprise anyone--that governments have finite amounts of money. There is only so much to spend, and some of the decisions that have to be made involve asking where the best area is to spend money. Where are you going to get the most results with the money you have, the tax dollars that Canadians have entrusted us with?
One of the things that we have decided is a priority for our government is investment in arts and culture. In fact, the department has seen--by percentage, I'm certain--some of the largest increases of any department that we've actually allocated funds to.
Now I want to go back to a question by Mr. Rodriguez and I want to get some response to it. I notice, Mr. MacDuff, your company was incorporated in 1975, so you've been around for quite some time. In 1992--I'm reading from the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia--there was a report presented by the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture that stated that funding in the cultural sector had failed to keep pace with inflation.
Did you take part in that study at that time, Mr. MacDuff? Were you a witness at that? Do you recall?
You don't recall? Okay, that's fine. The only thing I'm getting at is that Mr. Rodriguez keeps asking folks if they were consulted before there was a cut. Well, in 1992, there was a report that came forward that said that funding in the cultural sector hadn't kept pace with inflation. But then in 1995, in the Liberals' budget, they cut funding across the board to arts and culture. Infrastructure programs were cut by 44%; multiculturalism projects were cut by 71%; and transfers to provinces were cut by 40%. They did all of that without consulting any arts groups. Now they would argue that they made those decisions because they were faced with tough circumstances, and that may very well be; I wasn't elected in 1995. But I'll tell you that I find it a little bit surprising to ask people whether or not they were notified when I know for a fact that when these massive cuts occurred under the Liberal government, nobody was consulted.
Now, Ms. White, you talk about an increase to the Canada Council. Are you aware that prior to 2006, the Canada Council's total budget was $100 million?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank our four witnesses for being with us today to present their views regarding funding cuts to be made by the government in a number of different areas that will affect them.
Ms. House, you used the expression “new creative economy” a number of times. I really think that is exactly what we are talking about. The arts economy does not result in any costs in terms of human time, it doesn't damage the environment—at least, not as far as I know—it doesn't require the use of natural resources or anything else. As you so aptly explained, it is profitable in a number of different ways, not only financially. It also has an impact on the image we project, both here and abroad. It is an economy that harms no one.
The traditional economy, as it currently operates, is on a downward trend. Or, as they say in English:
[English]
If you do more of the same, you're going to get more of the same.
[Translation]
If we persist in doing things that way, we will continue to see the economy deteriorate. That's why we have to spend more money on the creative economy of both the arts and education, in particular, which do not rely on the traditional economy.
Do you not think that cutting this funding is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing, not only in terms of the arts, but economically as well?
:
I'm not sure what those funding projects are.
As I said in the earlier piece, consistent application of magazine policy and a fairly stable environment have allowed the industry to really concentrate on investing in Canadian artists and Canadian photographers and make more and more of our content available and accessible to Canadians.
I certainly understand the issue with Newfoundland, because it's a big country and sparsely populated, and magazines are a heavy, physical product. To get them from one place to another is a major challenge, compared to that of our partners to the south, who have a big entertainment and magazine industry and can easily get into the Canadian marketplace and compete directly with us.
What's happened, in our experience, is that every ten years or so there's a major review of magazine policy and programs. It happened with the Perrin Beatty review back in the early nineties; it happened in the late nineties with Minister Copps and the relationship with the United States that was agreed to. Now we're going through another similar review, where we're updating and improving the framework for magazines and making it more relevant in today's economy.
From the point of view of consultations on the questions there, I would say there was no specific consultation on the specific cut to a part of our programming, but I wouldn't want to leave that impression from the point of view of the department's consultation around our programs, policy framework, and the priorities the sector has for the future. We've been very well consulted by the department. They've done summative evaluations, public consultations, and round table meetings across the country. We've had lots of opportunity for input to that, not on the specific question about cuts, but certainly in terms of their understanding the priorities and needs of the sector as it evolves and the needs of the sector to continue the success we've had, as new technologies like online magazines and so on become available.
:
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, I would like to thank you for this invitation to come and speak about the importance of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal's export activities for our country.
It could be said that Les Grands Ballets, a non-profit organization created in 1957 by Ms. Chiriaeff, has always been a company that operated on an international scale, from its very beginnings. The company's first international tour was in 1958, when it visited the United States at the invitation of the renowned Jacob's Pillow Festival. Following that, a series of historic tours took place, thanks to the federal government's support at the time, including the first European tour in 1969, the first South American tour in 1976 and the first Asian tour in 1983.
Currently, Les Grands Ballets tours outside Canada three to four times annually, for an average of 20 performances per year over the last five years. With 33 performances this season, we will be reaching more than 53 000 people across the globe.
When Les Grands Ballets goes on tour, that involves 55 to 60 people—dancers, technicians, costumiers, ballet masters, etc.—a sizeable cargo and, as you can well imagine, some complex logistics. All of these are reasons for us to plan negotiations, memorandums of understanding and contracts carefully, to guarantee Les Grands Ballets' international presence at least three years in advance.
Financially speaking, Les Grands Ballets has benefited each year, through the PromArt and Trade Routes programs, from export assistance in the approximate amount of $200,000 annually, which represents, on average, 2 per cent of our annual budget.
Why should the Government of Canada support the export activities of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal? Allow me to use my five minutes today to focus on factors that are socio-economic and, in some ways, political.
We all know that the arts, a natural human form of creative expression, reflect a country in all its cultural diversity, give it its identity… In short, as a great philosopher once said: “Science without conscience is the soul's perdition”.
Beyond the mission of Les Grands Ballets, which includes international visibility, the company's export activities are a necessity, for the simple reason that the Montreal market alone does not hold sufficient potential to generate the annual revenues that we require.
The Grands Ballets' export activities are also a direct response to international demand. Our cultural product is popular because it is distinctive, original, innovative, and because our company has a reputation for excellence and performance. In other words, Les Grands Ballets has succeeded, thanks to the devoted work of our dancers, designers, crafts people, board of directors, committees, employees, freelancers and volunteers—several hundred people, in fact—and thanks to the support of the three levels of government, in earning a place among the ranks of Canada's most active cultural institutions, and is now one of the most highly demanded on the international scene. This success is built year after year, month after month, and day after day.
But international competition is fierce, especially at this juncture. My international colleagues have benefited from the continued support of their governments and, for the most part, from increased support—particularly our European competitors, which makes them even more competitive today, especially considering the cuts we are currently facing here in our country. Our situation is all the more fragile in that Les Grands Ballets, like all other major North American cultural institutions, is also dependent on revenues from the private sector, which is currently in crisis. It is extremely difficult for us, despite all the extra efforts we are making, to maintain our current level of private sector revenues and, as you can understand, even more difficult to compensate for the financial losses resulting from the cancellation of the only two federal programs that assist with export activities.
This situation threatens Les Grands Ballets in the short and medium terms as regards its financial viability, but it also creates a major image problem for our country outside our borders.
The foreign cultural milieu—and the political one, because let's not forget that our embassies throughout the world “use” the presence of Les Grands Ballets to forge ties with local governments and economies—has a difficult time understanding the reasons why a country like Canada, a member of the G-8, does not support its cultural actors even while they—and I will say this once again—inspire unprecedented interest from international audiences. If Les Grands Ballets were a dynamic and innovative SME producing electronic components, for example, whose products were in high demand on the international market, it would be logical, even strategic, to support that SME so that it could gain market share, especially in the current economic context. Why would a cultural product be treated any differently?
Can Les Grands Ballets survive without financial support to export its product? No—for all the reasons I have mentioned, but also because we, like every other economic sector, operate in a competitive and standardized world. These international standards require that a company invited by a promoter cover the entire cost of transportation and accommodations—the very reason why the PromArt Program was created to begin with. As for Trade Routes, this program was particularly effective in that it allowed us to host future buyers in order to guarantee our future export contracts.
Let's take, for example, the last performances of Les Grands Ballets at the Les étés de la danse Festival in Paris last summer. More than 32,000 people applauded the company's performances at the Grand Palais. Thanks to the Trade Routes Program, we were able to host more than 40 promoters interested in the company.
And here is the result:
- tours are currently being finalized for France and Holland for February 2011, and for the United Kingdom for spring 2011;
- we began negotiations with the Bregenz Festival in Austria, Cologne and Berlin, the Ravenna Festival and the Venice Biennale;
- but the most prestigious export contract is, without a doubt, Les Grands Ballets' historic tour of the Middle East this coming June, to Israel and Egypt, as Les Grands Ballets has been invited to take part in the official celebrations of Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary.
It is also worth mentioning that our presence in Israel will coincide with the 60th anniversary of bilateral relations between Canada and Israel.
The consequences of the federal government's decision to eliminate all of its support for export activities are disastrous.
I will close with a couple of concrete facts.
This year, we cancelled a tour of the United States—four cities in California and Pennsylvania in January, 2009—and we had to cut three cities from our U.S. tour last fall, for lack of financial support under the PromArt Program.
We cut short all our negotiations with the Venice Biennale, which wanted to present the company in June 2010, even though we know full well that an invitation as prestigious as that is the result of many years of effort and excellence. Performances scheduled in Poland, in Lodz and Krakow, were also cancelled.
Italian promoters are now asking us for confirmation of our federal grants for the anticipated tour of Les Grands Ballets in April of 2010, to Ferrara, San Vincenzo, Bolzano and Modena, and should no confirmation be forthcoming, Les Grands Ballets will be replaced by more cost-effective competitors.
Our Middle East tour scheduled for June is now in jeopardy because we have not yet been able to replace the export funding of $250,000 that we had expected to receive through the PromArt Program.
In closing, as a manager who has been active with Les Grands Ballets for more than 13 years, and in the cultural sector for much longer than that, I can state that today, regardless of our differences, whatever they may be, the Canadian government's financial support for touring—and let's not forget that we are talking about $3 million for the performance arts under the PromArt Program and $500,00 under Trade Routes—is, in my opinion, not only justified, but logical and absolutely vital. I would even add that it just makes good business sense.
Thank you.
:
I'll try to pay attention.
Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm here on fairly short notice, and no one can say that government doesn't act quickly when it wants to.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Robert Labossière: I think we received notice on Wednesday last week, but thank you to the clerk for his help in familiarizing me. I'm delighted to be here and to meet you all.
I'm here as much to let you know about our organization as to participate in this very interesting dialogue you're engaged in. I say this because the clerk didn't know who we were, and you probably don't either. The Canadian Art Museum Directors' Organization, or CAMDO, is a professional association that represents directors of art museums across Canada. We have over 80 members, and they are the directors of our largest institutions, like the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada. And they are the directors of regional art centres, like the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon, Manitoba; and the Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, B.C.
CAMDO represents executives who are responsible for budgets anywhere from millions of dollars to a few hundred thousand and for staff in the hundreds to fewer than 10. CAMDO works primarily in two areas, professional development and the development of policies and standards to help guide the challenging work of directing an art museum. CAMDO also facilitates research on topics of concern to the art museum community and serves as an important conduit for sharing information, networking, and partnering between institutions.
Rather than delving into the particulars of some of the things you've already discussed today, which my colleagues have so well addressed, I'd rather focus more on strategic approaches, particularly from the perspective of executives.
For art museum directors, arts and culture programs are tools that help them lead their institutions. We believe leadership is important, especially in these times of economic uncertainty, no matter what sector we're talking about, whether it's manufacturing, resource development, health care, or culture. I'm sure you all appreciate that our leaders carry enormous responsibility, and they must have the right tools if they're to make their organizations successful. Determining what tools are needed and whether they're good enough is all about strategy, and we assume that's what the committee is really here for.
I'd like to speak briefly about just four categories of tools, and not go over my time limit, hopefully. One is the essential recognition of art and culture as a keystone of national identity. From Hockey Night in Canada to Mordecai Richler, we have cultural products that give Canadians a sense of common purpose and well-being. These cultural products are essential for cultural stability. Public institutions, including art museums and public galleries, give their local communities a sense of coherence and meaning. They give local citizens a sense of responsibility and pride. Public programs offered by museums keep a running dialogue on cultural matters, dialogue that is open and informed, which minimizes the misunderstandings and inward-looking cultural thinking that so often leads to conflict. Our cultural institutions are keystones of civic life.
Now, for education, I don't know a parent who doesn't heap praise on their kids when they draw, paint, play music, or dance. What parents know intuitively is that imaginative play is a sign of mental health and the development of complex reasoning, which is to say that we know that it's good, even though we may not know exactly why. We need to ensure that arts education does not simply dry up after grade 6. It falls to our art institutions to provide the opportunities for Canadians to engage in this kind of life-long learning.
On training, more specifically, CAMDO has identified a need for specific skills development in the area of arts administration and cultural leadership. Some years ago, U.S. author, Daniel Pink, in an article in the Harvard Business Review, observed that the MFA is the new MBA. MFA, for those of you who might not know, is a master's degree in fine arts. He was the first person to identify a confluence between the increasing importance of innovation and knowledge-based businesses in western economies and increasing enrollments in post-secondary fine arts programs. In fact, enrollments in fine arts programs are second only I think to engineering and computer sciences. Today, Mr. Pink's insight can be taken another step: there is a need for advanced education programs to train the next generation of cultural executives.
As for efficient access to sustainable funding, arts and heritage institutions are presently crippled by the administrative burden of securing and sustaining funding. To be frank, there are too many small and short-term project-oriented programs that consume disproportionate time and resources in applications and reporting. What we need is consistent multi-year funding programs that are inclusive of the wide diversity of art museum activities, both operations and programs, and tools that simplify the application and reporting processes.
Some innovation has already started in this direction. Last year there was the launch of CADAC, which is the Canadian Arts Data/ Données sur les arts au Canada, an online database that allows arts organizations to use their same program and financial information for applying and reporting to different levels of government and agencies.
I think you know the problem. You have to do a budget for this organization, another budget for this organization, and the budgets are not quite the same, so you end up spending huge amounts of time. This idea of harmonization, which the Pew foundation started to develop in Pennsylvania, in the U.S., is very successful and they're starting to roll it out. Obviously, different provinces are even going to be interested in applying the same kind of mechanisms.
The Department of Canadian Heritage is one of the supporting partners, teaming up with both provincial and city funders in order to make this possible. We need to see CADAC-like systems roll out to other provinces. This is infrastructure and clearly worth the investment.
A last note on copyright. Although I know this is not really a focus for this committee—it's an industry matter—I think you're aware of the challenges of addressing copyright and its importance in terms of cultural materials. We have an increasingly complex and restrictive copyright standard. That seems to be the way things are going. There's a lot of lobbying in order to make it more restrictive. For public institutions that are responsible for maintaining and preserving public collections, the importance is to make sure the public has continued access to them.
Thank you.
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Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today on behalf of the professional dance community in Quebec. The Regroupement québécois de la danse is the only professional association representing all practice sectors, that is to say teaching, research, performance and choreography. It has some 500 members, including the majority of professional dance companies, 300 performers and a hundred or more teachers. Of the 300 performers, at least 100 are young graduates of our schools. All this to say that is a very dynamic discipline.
Between the two linguistic communities, and specifically, between Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver, there is a free flow of dance artists. Dance is neither Québécois nor Canadian. It is international in scope, and it travels in all languages. According to statistics from the Department of Foreign Affairs, it visited almost 35 countries between 2004 and 2007. Almost one third of the performers who are members of our dance companies in Quebec are from abroad: Europe, the United States, Holland, Argentina, Russia, Vietnam, etc. Dance is international.
Before coming today, I carefully re-read a speech given by the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage, when you were beginning your work on February 9. I would just like to quote a couple of sentences from it, which helped me prepare my own arguments. He said, and I quote:
Building stronger communities has been a priority for our government since day one. It is stable, vibrant communities that will provide opportunities for individuals and contribute to our great country's health and identity.
Funding from the federal government for the purpose of supporting and fostering outreach activities by all our companies internationally, whether it is through grants for touring, market development, hosting foreign programmers or budgets for cultural embassies in the major capitals of the world, has allowed dance to exist in Quebec and Canada. Without that outreach internationally and upstream through festivals, live performance markets, embassies and cultural centres, dance would not exist.
Behind that hard won reputation, which has been patiently built up over the years, even now, several hundred artists, performers, teachers, choreographers and others involved in dance have unacceptable working conditions and compensation because of public funding which has not kept pace with the exceptional expansion in this discipline that began in the late 1970s.
A strange destiny has accompanied professional dance in Canada. Having come through three economic recessions and, facing an unprecedented financial crisis, the dance sector now finds itself cut off from what has thus far been a lever for artistic development and excellence: access to foreign markets and the most prestigious stages in the world.
I don't have to tell you that the new generation is growing in strength, talent and number and that it would very much like an opportunity to step into the shoes of those dancers who are members of our current companies. The economics of dance is based on exports. The majority of sales revenues comes from outreach, not including the significant investments made by co-producers in the creative work itself.
Let me give you two examples: the Édouard Lock Company and the Marie Chouinard Company. If you calculate both investments by co-producers and international outreach revenues, you can see that 80 per cent and more of their operating budget is composed of funds raised abroad. The growth of small- and medium-sized companies depends almost entirely on their ability to perform on the international market and pique the interests of programmers who are beachheads in international performance networks, in the hope of securing investments from co-producers. That is the only way they can develop.
Let me give you another example: b.l.eux, a young company. Despite the fact that the performer-choreographer already has more than 20 years of experience under his belt, this is a young company. As such, it receives very little money in the way of operating grants. Its last two creations, by a Quebec and Canadian choreographer, were co-produced by 15 foreign producers. That represents $350,000 in revenues for the creative work. The results in terms of outreach are about the same. The company receives $250,000 in public funding from the three levels of government. However, it was able to leverage that funding by $1.2 million through international outreach. And this is a young company.
I would like to quote another sentence from the speech given by the Minister of Canadian Heritage.
Is that it?
:
I think it will be under five minutes.
Good afternoon. I would like to start by thanking the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for this opportunity to present on behalf of our members and the diverse communities we represent. The Independent Media Arts Alliance is a national network of over 80 non-profit independent film, video, and new media production, distribution, and presentation organizations representing over 12,000 artists and cultural workers across Canada. We have member organizations divided into six regions across Canada. These organizations are established in both small communities and large cities, from Whitehorse, Yukon, to Nain, Labrador, and everywhere in between.
When I heard about this strategic review, I put together an online survey. It consisted of a list of the programs that were cut and simple questions related to each one that asked for feedback from the community. By the end of the first day, we had over 100 respondents. These individuals were staff of not-for-profit organizations and emerging artists. We even heard back from Canada's most established documentary filmmakers. We determined that the programs most affected by the sector include PromArt, Trade Routes, CIFVF, the Canada Feature Film Fund, the National Training Program for the Film and Video Sector, and Canadian Culture Online, so I'm focusing on all of those.
Of the thousands of answers we received, not one had anything negative to say about these programs. In fact, it was clear that these programs were very effective and vital to the independent media arts sector. Many people questioned whether they would even be able to continue with their artistic practice, because even before the cuts, funding for the independent media arts sector was very inadequate. For example, the films Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media and The Corporation are Canada's all-time top-grossing feature documentaries. Mark Achbar, who co-directed and co-produced these films states, “The fund was absolutely crucial to our financial structure. It made the films possible.”
I have here a compilation of the survey. As you can see, it's quite big with very small font. There are thousands of answers, literally, from people giving their briefs to me. I'm not going to go into full detail, but just so you know, if anyone wants a copy, I have a few here.
The federal government claims that these programs were cut out of necessity, that the overall funding for arts and culture had to be reorganized. However, taking money from the incubators of art and culture and putting it into the top commercial cultural industries is like chopping the roots off an apple tree and fertilizing the upper branches: it just makes no sense.
Twenty-five million dollars is now going to an international art prize. We all think that sounds very exciting; however, the federal government needs to invest in emerging Canadian artists and new and growing art forms so that Canada actually has a chance at winning it. The trend of increasing funds for the larger industry and cutting from the foundation of art production will have detrimental consequences over the long term. In the immediate future, we will see a dramatic decrease in quality, diverse, and educational programming, a decline in festivals in smaller communities, and an increase in mainstream programming that blends in with the larger productions from south of the border. Yet even these productions over the long term will suffer because we will not have cultivated our creative minds, or offered sufficient training, production, and exhibition opportunities to grow a healthy media arts industry.
To jump back to the specific programs in question, we prioritize the CIFVF and Trade Routes as being absolutely essential for the production and dissemination of independent media art. They, in fact, have had economic spinoffs that far exceed the initial investment. In practical terms, a major and alarming consequence of the loss of these programs will be increased pressures on the Canada Council for the Arts, specifically the media arts section in our case.
The media arts section at the council has one of the lowest budgets of all departments, far below music, theatre, writing and publishing, and even visual arts, yet this is one of the fastest-growing sectors, and we all know that producing a film is really not cheap. Not only does this section lack the human resources to administer the increase in grant applications, but the section will have to turn away hundreds of applications that warrant support.
So let's focus on finding a solution. Based on our report, which was circulated to you all beforehand, we have three suggestions: first, that the federal government reinstate funding to the programs that I mentioned earlier; second, that these and other Heritage programs be reconstituted to expand their focus to include independent media art--currently the Heritage programs do not support independent media art enough, and we feel it would be wise to invest in new art forms and emerging artists; the third is that the federal government invest in the media arts section at the Canada Council for the Arts so that it can address the needs of a growing industry.
Thank you. I would be happy to answer questions if the time permits.
Thank you, witnesses, for appearing today. I do appreciate your time and your patience, as we had to leave for the vote.
I had a couple of things I wanted to go through. I want to correct the record a little bit, because there have been a number of things said that are not factually correct.
Mr. Rodriguez is not here, and I won't speak ill of him, but he did accuse our party of being ideological in its approach. I just wanted to make a couple of statements and then I'll get around to some questions.
In the strategic review, of some of the items that were indicated, one, for example, was the Canadian Memory Fund, a program of almost $11.6 million for working with the National Archives on archiving historical works and so forth. They completed their objective. That's why it wasn't renewed. The northern broadcasting program was about $4 million. Of course, with the move to digital, nobody actually uses antennas, or won't be using that kind of broadcasting, and that's why it wasn't renewed. Then, of course, we had Culture.ca, a search engine that was running at $2 a hit because essentially nobody was going to it.
Just those three programs together are half the money that we're talking about. I'm pretty sure that none of the parties opposite would actually advocate those programs being restarted. This was not ideological. That's my first point.
Mr. Dancyger, I don't want to misquote you. You have some tours, which you reduced from 16 cities to 4 in the United States, and there are also some trips to Poland, France, and possibly Britain that you may not be able to go on. Is that right? Okay.
I did look up to see how much support you received from Trade Routes last year and I found that your group got about $8,000. Is $8,000 really the difference between 16 trips and 4 trips and all these trips to Europe?
I have a couple of comments to follow up.
We keep hearing from my colleagues about the overall amount of money. What I find more interesting is the fact that whether it's less or more by $2 million, $3 million, or $10 million, it's a question of how it is spent.
In this particular situation you make the case for a program that is certainly exhausted with not much more demand on it. Culture.ca is perhaps not getting the pickup that it was, and to a certain degree that's understood, but what's lost in the narrative is the communications.
I would put this on Mr. Del Mastro's radar. You say in the particular situation of the north, of the over-air transmissions for people with televisions that are not hooked up to cable, yes, they're going digital, and yes, they will be obsolete, but that still doesn't solve the situation of whether these people have a right to receive that information. This is what Barack Obama is battling with now in providing coupons for set-top boxes for digital transmission. I just want to take a little bit of an issue with that.
In this particular situation I have a simple question. For 2011, it's a pretty bold tour you have here, with the United Kingdom, France, and Holland. I apologize if you didn't cover this off the top, but I want to ask again, if that's the case, where do you go? How are you going to do this in 2011? What is your plan B?