:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, colleagues.
Joining me is my deputy minister, Daniel Jean, and also Robert Hertzog.
It's Robert's birthday today, so happy birthday to him.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
Hon. James Moore: I know this is how he's always envisioned spending his birthday. It's safe to say his birthday will get better from here.
[Translation]
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for inviting me to join you today and for giving me the opportunity to discuss arts and culture in Canada. Since we are on a tight schedule, I will be brief.
As I said earlier, I am accompanied by Daniel Jean, Deputy Minister, and Robert Hertzog, Director General of the Financial Management Branch at Canadian Heritage.
[English]
Tomorrow our government will table our budget. It's a budget that's focused on what we believe is most important to Canadians, which is creating jobs, growth, and long-term prosperity. It will support this while also returning us to a balanced budget by 2015.
We will build on what we have already delivered for arts and culture across Canada and the importance of arts and culture to the quality of life of all Canadians, and indeed to the Canadian economy.
This includes our choices to increase and then maintain funding through a period of fiscal restraint for the Canada Council for the Arts. It includes renewing and locking in for five years all of our programs across the government that support arts and culture.
[Translation]
We passed strong and balanced copyright legislation that received praise from creators and consumers.
We have created two new national museums outside the National Capital Region—the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, in Halifax, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, in Winnipeg. We are in the process of creating a third museum—the Canadian Museum of History, here, in Ottawa.
[English]
The only thing I would like to say further on this, because I know this committee will have further discussions about our government's proposal to create a Canadian museum of history—again, just to underline what I've said in the past—is that I believe this is an issue. The Canadian museum of history should be treated like the Canadian Museum of Immigration, as well as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. It's an issue that in my view, frankly, should be beyond partisanship.
I look forward to the genuine input from the opposition on the legislation we've put forward to create that museum and their suggestions on how the mandate of the museum might be improved and tweaked. We think the celebration and support for an institution that is pan-Canadian in focus—to celebrate, educate, talk about, and continue the study of Canada's history—is a very important exercise. We should all be very proud of that as we head towards Canada's 150th birthday in 2017.
[Translation]
We have also doubled the annual indemnification limit—from $1.5 billion to $3 billion—to support our museums and art galleries across the country.
We have done all that while at the same time making the Department of Canadian Heritage leaner and simplifying the application process for Canadian arts organizations.
[English]
As a result of our efforts, I am proud to say that the arts in Canada are thriving. They're doing incredibly well.
Two weeks ago, as a matter of fact, at the Prime Time conference that was held in Ottawa by the Canadian Media Production Association, their report was tabled, entitled Profile 2012: An Economic Report on the Screen-based Production Industry in Canada. In that report they noted that Canada's film and television production sector grew by over half a billion dollars last year, from $2.5 billion to $3 billion, a 20% increase that resulted in the creation of almost 70,000 well-paid jobs across Canada.
The volume of Canadian theatrical productions rose by 14% last year—a 10-year high. Theatrical production is an industry now worth over a third of a billion dollars to our economy each and every year. Canadian television production rose over 21% from 2011. That's a 10-year high of $2.58 billion. The Canadian documentary production in Canada also increased by 15%. It, too, is an industry with over a third of a billion dollars invested in Canada's economy: $369 million. Canadian animation and production increased as well, by 47% in 2011, to $208 million.
These numbers are the result of the efforts of Canadian creators combined with investments of our government, the private sector, and private philanthropy all coming together in support of Canada's creative economy. All told, with all of us working together, we have come an incredibly long way.
Sixty years ago in Canada this was not the case. For much of Canada's history, the creative economy was not understood and not supported by any level of government, and the results, quite frankly, were an embarrassment to this country.
[Translation]
In June 1951, the Massey Commission published one of the most significant reports on arts and culture in Canadian history. The report outlined how Canada's culture was crumbling and slipping into foreign hands.
One of the findings of the Massey Commission was that the only truly national publication in Canada was Reader's Digest, which was the sole magazine to reach households across the country. Of course, Reader's Digest consisted entirely of American content at that time.
[English]
Because of American dominance in the textbook industry, American textbooks filled Canadian classrooms. Canadian students of the day knew more about the 4th of July than about the 1st of July, more about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln than Sir John A. Macdonald, George Étienne Cartier, or George Brown. In fact, the largest collection of Canadian publications in the world were at the Library of Congress in Washington, the New York Public Library, and at Harvard University in Boston. The National Gallery of Canada at the time had a permanent staff of only four people. At the exact same time, at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, they had 26 full-time staffers.
In 1948 there were over 1,800 original works of fiction published in Great Britain, over 1,000 published in the United States, and in Canada there were exactly 14.
[Translation]
We have come an incredibly long way when it comes to supporting our culture. Some fantastic opportunities lie ahead of us over the next few months, as we prepare to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary in 2017.
The road to 2017 will allow us to tell Canada's stories to all Canadians. We should use Canada's 150th anniversary to stimulate our creative economy.
As my time here is brief, I will now turn it over to you for questions.
[English]
I do again want to thank the committee for inviting me to speak with you today. I think there's a great deal to be proud of in Canada's cultural communities—how far we have come since that Massey report, the great accomplishments that have been achieved by the creative sector in spite of incredibly difficult times, when we see larger and larger crowds coming out for festivals than ever before, and the philanthropic community stepping up and supporting things.
I think it's really important that this committee continue to do the great work it's done in the past, as we move forward to continue to support Canada's creative economy.
Thank you.
:
Sure. I appreciate the opportunity.
The Canadian Museum of Civilization, which will become the Canadian museum of history, is actually moving forward very well. Mark O’Neill, the president of the museum, and the board are now undertaking the hard work that it takes to build and to stand up this new museum that will be national in scope—not just as a great institution here in Ottawa, but one that has roots all across the country.
They've been going to cities across the country—I'm not sure if they have completed their entire tour yet—inviting Canadians to come in and participate in a dialogue about how Canadians.... Again, it's not my museum, it's not yours, it's not ours; it's the museum of Canadians. They've been going to Canadians and asking Canadians how they think Canadian history should best be told.
There are different ways, of course, to do that. If you look at different history museums around the country and around the world, you can take a chronological, thematic.... You can do thematics based on regions of the country, thematics based on different Canadian experiences, and so on. So they're having that discussion and dialogue with Canadians. They've been going around the country. The feedback has been great.
I know civilization.ca, which is the current website, has an online opportunity there for Canadians to engage. As part of this project, the Canadian museum of history is going to be.... They're signing MOUs with other history museums all around the country. I had the privilege, I believe it was just two weeks ago, to be in Victoria at the Royal BC Museum, where we signed the first MOU with another institution.
There were folks there. They had school kids there. The whole staff of the museum was there. They were enthusiastic about it, signing an MOU, which will open up to this museum the entire vault of the Canadian museum of history—over three million items, 90% of which are in storage right now—so that local museums across the country will have access to it and tell stories of Canada's history locally, not just here in Ottawa.
That's how we're going to bind this country together. There are three more museums that I can tell you we've signed MOUs with. We're going to be announcing them in the next couple of weeks in other regions of the country.
We're moving forward and it's going to be a great success. I hope that all parties will see this for what it is, which is an opportunity to build a pan-Canadian institution to talk about Canada's history.
:
We'll be coming forward with a plan on that very soon. The way we've divided it up, as a government—I don't think this is a secret—is that I'm responsible for domestic celebrations within Canada and the Minister of Veterans Affairs is responsible for celebrations and commemorations that will happen in Europe for the First World War. That's how it's traditionally been done, and we'll continue that.
I think this country made a real mistake in the past by not taking advantage of the fact that our First World War veterans were alive, allowing them to tell their stories, to digitize their stories, and to have made a proactive effort on that.
We're now working with the legions all across the country, reaching out to veterans, and asking them to come forward and tell their stories. We've already put funding forward for this, and we've announced a second tranche of funding for the Korean War as well. We are digitizing these stories, housing them at the Canadian War Museum, and putting them online so students can have access to them. These are stories of gallantry in battle, of service and self-sacrifice. They might be stories about how they met the love of their life and came home after the war and had a new beginning. There are stories of sorrow, courage, pride, and fear. We're working with the legions, reaching out to Second World War veterans and asking them to come forward and tell us their stories so we can digitize them, make them available to the next generation, so that their stories will forever be protected in Canada.
We missed that opportunity with the First World War, but this is the centennial of the beginning of the war, and I don't think we should miss the opportunity to tell the stories of the First World War to Canadians. So we'll be doing that with a commemoration program that I think all members of Parliament will embrace as something that is meaningful and respectful to those who fought for Canada.
:
Thank you, Chair. It's good to see you again, sir.
You said earlier, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, that it's a mistake to forget our collective history. You were talking about it in regard to the new museum.
I understand that. We do not currently have a museum of that stature. The problem is this. When you start using words like “digitization” or “collecting the works of our history”, there is a group of people out there.... You mentioned one group that didn't protest too much. One group that did protest a lot was Library and Archives Canada. They're not happy. I would never think to tick off a librarian to the point that they keep writing me to the nth degree, but they are very good at it.
One of the programs was a great little program—it worked in my riding, it worked in hundreds of ridings—called the national archival development program, or NADP. It allowed small communities to digitize and to archive their collective history.
If you want to see collective histories, sir, I don't think cutting programs such as this is the way to go. It seems to be that now you have a centralized version of history that can only be done by the people who can afford it outside of government help.
I know the budget is tomorrow. It's always a little awkward to talk about estimates before we actually get our budget, but having said that, the Library and Archives Canada has a pretty good beef about this program and the ILL they use.
Would you not agree? Is there something for them?
:
The outcomes are very transparent. We publish a list. If you go to the Department of Canadian Heritage, it's down to a dime—everything that every organizations gets.
The reporting the Canada Council for the Arts does is exhaustive. The Auditor General looked at the Canada Council and came back saying that if every Government of Canada organization were run as efficiently as the Canada Council, she wouldn't have a job. It was Sheila Fraser who said that.
So I think it's done quite well.
One thing that I suppose has frustrated me a little bit, and this wasn't his point, is that very often with cultural funding there's an expectation that because you received $5,000 for your Canada Day celebration, or for your Festival du Bois in my riding, for example—they get $5,000 a year for some staging, equipment, some fencing, some lights and all that, and sheet cake for the kids and whatever, to add a little something to it. Because they received it one year, there is an expectation that they should get it in perpetuity.
The problem with that, of course, is that there are all kinds of very entrepreneurial cultural people out there who wish to have access to funding for the first time and often can't get it because we have funding organizations, sometimes like the Canada Council, who are afraid to upset incumbents who are currently getting money. I think there needs to be a little more accountability and flexibility and openness.
I can give you an example. There are two communities in British Columbia that are celebrating their centennial years this year....
I extend this to any member of Parliament. I say this often.
Many communities, as you know, especially municipalities that are very small, or organizations....
As you know, Scott, there are many organizations in this country that are volunteer-led. These are not people who are professional politicians at getting government funding and support; they don't have a bunch of lawyers and accountants and actuaries who can go in and get all this stuff. They are working on a volunteer basis, and sometimes the applications can be too cumbersome and a hassle.
What I often tell organizations, especially those who are applying for funding for the first time, is to call my office. We'll sit them down with the Department of Canadian Heritage staffer in the regions, because we have offices all across the country.
They sit down with staffers at Canadian Heritage and say: “Here's what we have in mind for our festival. How do we put together our festival in a way that will be successful for applications?”—not “How do we apply?” and then be turned down, and then “Omigod, it's the eleventh hour; we can't have our festival this year.” Start it the other way around: what does one have to do to qualify for funding?
Design your festival that way, and then you have a successful outcome. We've had great success with that all across the country with organizations. That's what we do to try to get rid of any mystery there might be between the department and organizations seeking funding, because that's not how it's supposed to be: we don't want to have a tall wall that's impossible for small organizations to scale.
:
As you said, our pre-Confederation history and the importance of it were the reason we supported so robustly the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City. It's why we're very proud of our commemorations of the bicentennial of the War of 1812. The War of 1812 was the most important thing, pre-Confederation, that led to the confederation of Canada in 1867. Without the War of 1812, you don't have the protection of aboriginal peoples. Aboriginal Canadians would have had much the same future as American Indians did. There is the protection of the French fact in North America, and the defining of our territorial boundary and integrity with the United States. It also paved the way to Confederation in 1867, with the conferences in Quebec City and Charlottetown in 1864. It was the most important event that happened prior to Confederation itself.
So you're right. But to answer your bigger question, I always phrase it this way: Canada is the second-largest country in the world, but in terms of population we're the 34th-largest country in the world. A great number of things can be said about this country. The most impressive thing is that in spite of extraordinary differences of east and west, north and south, Protestant and Catholic, francophone and anglophone, and aboriginal and non-aboriginal, this is a country in which, with extraordinary tensions east and west all over this country, we have been able to not only endure and stay united, but to thrive in a way that few other countries in the world have. It's a remarkable achievement by all Canadians that we've been able to do that over the years.
It's a very impressive story, and I think Canadians should know more about it. We should have institutions like the Canadian museum of history that talk about that. And by the way, it should wrestle with not just the great and glorious and wonderful stories, but also with some of the more challenging questions of our time: Japanese internment, the Chinese head tax, the treatment of aboriginal peoples in our residential schools. We've had some very challenging parts of our history, issues we should not be afraid to discuss and debate. The War Museum does it already in some ways. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights will do it as well.
Canada's history is a story of really impressive achievements in the face of extraordinary odds. These are the things we want to highlight and talk about and celebrate in a non-partisan way as we head towards 2017.
Again, I hope that all political parties will take me up on it when I say sincerely that this is really what we're trying to do. It's really what we want to accomplish. That's why we put people on the board of the new Canadian museum of history who are not Conservatives. Richard Gwyn is on the board. He's a columnist with the Toronto Star who is very thoughtful and smart, an intelligent man. He is Pierre Trudeau's biographer. He also wrote the biography of John A. Macdonald. He's a very thoughtful guy. We put him on the board as well because of his expertise in Canadian history.
I hope all parties will see the merit of this effort and support the legislation when it comes before this committee.
:
I wanted to get into the issue of the reality of how artists make a living in Canada and the sense we have that your government doesn't understand the way artists make a living in this country.
One of the reasons we feel this way is that when your government slashed the budget for StatsCan, it was forced to abolish its culture division and its programs to understand arts and culture in Canada.
The music industry is one that I know well. It's close to my heart. Based on a recent Canadian Independent Music Association report, they pegged the average annual income for musicians in Canada at $7,228. That's the reality for many people in the music sector.
But in the independent music sector, for every dollar the government spends on support, they get back about a 22% return on investment. For every dollar that federal and provincial governments put into the independent music sector, they get $1.22. An amount of $76 million was invested from combined provincial and federal sources, and an amount of $93 million was received in revenue in 2011.
I just want to give a couple of other quick little facts. The reason I'm doing this is that we need to track these things.
In 2011 the total direct impact on GDP from all the culture and arts sector.... Well, we know that the number for 2007 for the sector in totality, with the spinoffs, was $84 billion. In 2011 the direct impact on GDP was about $46 billion.
Some of these numbers are from the Canadian Independent Music Association and some are from the Conference Board of Canada.
The question is this. You've mapped out a lot of ways in which the government works in the arts and culture space, but isn't it time to invest in departmental measures to help government understand how artists make a living in this country?
Thanks for being here, Minister.
I have a few questions. Hopefully I'll get time for them all.
I think it was Mr. Boughen who was asking about the upcoming centennial of World War I, and you mentioned in response the efforts being made to digitize the stories of the Second World War veterans, and now the Korean War veterans. That's something that I believe very strongly in. Three years ago I had an opportunity to take my son, when he was 14, and one of his friends over to tour some of the battlefields that Canadians have fought on and to see Juno Beach, where so many Canadians laid down their lives for our freedoms. The impact that had on my son, at 14 years of age, to see those battlefields and to see those beaches.... I think it's something that all young Canadians should have some ability to experience. One of those ways is through those stories. Certainly, our generation had the opportunity, whether it be the fathers or grandfathers, to hear first-hand those accounts, those stories of the sacrifices that were made on our behalf.
I want to just ask a little more. I had a chance to participate and bring the memory project to my riding and to visit with a lot of my World War II veterans. There were a lot of great stories that were shared and are going to be very well preserved for future generations to be able to have that understanding. I know the World War II project was in partnership with the Historica-Dominion Institute. I assume the Korean project is as well.
Can you give us a little more information on that project, how it's proceeding, and what we, as members of Parliament, can do to help and support it?
:
It's modelled in very much the same way. Anybody who's curious about it should go to the Historica-Dominion Institute, which is managing the memory project. We'll follow the same procedure, because we found that it was very successful as well.
We fly to and from Ottawa a lot—you're from western Canada—so we accumulate a lot of Aeroplan points. Over the years I've taken it upon myself, on my own self-guided trips, to go to Commonwealth grave sites in all different parts of the world. On my desk I have sand from all five D-Day beaches. Of course, Juno is prominent. And then I have rocks from the beaches of Dieppe. I have sand from the beaches of Anzio. And I have a rock from the train bed of Auschwitz as well, from a different tour I did of 16 different Holocaust camps.
It's very important to understand World Wars I and II, what they were about, why they fought, what was sacrificed, what was to be learned from those battles as well. I've had the privilege to go and visit all these different sites and learn those lessons and see those museums and talk to veterans.
One of the great things the Canadian War Museum does here in Ottawa is that when you go in there, typically the first person you'll meet is a veteran—all volunteers. I did a tour of the Diefenbunker a month ago or so. You go in there and there are veterans just waiting to volunteer to tell their stories. After a life of public service in the most noble way possible, they give back and they volunteer again at our museums to tell our kids stories. It's an impressive thing.
So anything that we can do to make it easier for them to tell their stories, not just to those like me, who have the privilege to go and visit all these museums, but to generations of kids to come, and digitize their stories and have them online at the national Canadian museum of history or at the national War Museum, so that kids can hear in the correct tone and voice and the chosen language how people describe their experiences.... It's incredibly impactful. That's what we're trying to achieve with the Second World War project and the memory project's extension for the Korean War. It's really important.