Canadian Heritage Committee on May 30th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I see a quorum.

I welcome everyone to our meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

There are a couple of things I'd like to bring to your attention before we speak to Mr. Sirman. First of all, I remind the committee that the Honourable Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, has confirmed that she will appear before the committee on Thursday, June 1, from 3:30 to 4:30.

Today we are pleased to welcome Mr. Robert Sirman to review his certificate of nomination to the position of director of the Canada Council for the Arts. I'd like to remind the committee of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, which outlines the range of the committee's review:

The scope of a committee’s examination of Order-in-Council appointees or nominees is strictly limited to the qualifications and competence to perform the duties of the post. Questioning by members of the committee may be interrupted by the Chair, if it attempts to deal with matters considered irrelevant to the committee’s inquiry.... Any question may be permitted if it can be shown that it relates directly to the appointee’s or nominee’s ability to do the job.

We'll be following the order of questions adopted during our second meeting. As such, I will call upon Mr. Sirman to make a 10-minute opening statement, if he chooses.

Welcome to the committee, sir.

[Robert Sirman, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of the standing committee,

may I begin by expressing my sincere thanks for allowing me to delay my appearance before you until today. You will know that I was originally asked to appear before this Committee two weeks ago, but as fate would have it, I was already scheduled on that day to host over 200 senior donors and government funders at an opening gala at the National Ballet School. It would have been impossible for me to be in Ottawa without compromising my responsibilities to my employer, and I am grateful that my appearance could be rescheduled.

I am greatly honoured to be nominated as director of the Canada Council for the Arts. The Canada Council, without doubt, is the most important single instrument for stimulating and strengthening the creation, production, and dissemination of the arts in Canada.

Despite the profile of my recent work at the National Ballet School, the majority of my working life has been spent in the public service. For five of those years, I worked as a senior advisor in Ontario's first ministry of culture, and for 10 years I held management positions in the Ontario Arts Council.

During this time, I had the opportunity to work very closely with counterparts in other jurisdictions across Canada, including Quebec.

I have long had a special interest in arts funding. In 1986 I was fortunate enough to undertake an independent study tour of England and Wales under the auspices of the British Council. The purpose of this tour was to study the funding practices of the Arts Council of Great Britain, the organization upon which the Canada Council was modelled when it was established in 1957.

In 1989 and 1990, I spent five months in France, including three months as an intern in the French Ministry of Culture and Communications in Paris. I was specifically stationed in the Ministry's research department, where I had the privilege of studying the latest research on the relationship between funding and cultural practices in both France and the other nations of the European Union.

In 1991, I took what I expected to be a short break from public service and joined Canada's National Ballet School. I was not trained in dance--my formal education was in the social sciences--but I was intrigued by the challenge the School presented, being at the time in very serious financial difficulty. The School's professional attraction proved greater than I anticipated, and I have been there now for over 15 years.

After stabilizing the School's finances--in large part by reinforcing its national identity and diversifying its revenues--I turned my attention to the deplorable state of its facilities. The result was a 100 million dollar capital expansion program called Projet Grand Jeté.

As of today, we surpassed the 90% mark on both fundraising and construction, and the new facilities have been met with both popular and critical acclaim. The project won an architectural excellence award at the Ontario Association of Architects annual conference held two weeks ago in Ottawa. Also, on June 5, I will receive a national leadership award from the Canadian Urban Institute for my work in using the project to build community.

For some time now, I have made a conscious effort to broaden community involvement beyond my immediate employer. For many years, I chaired the boards of a small dance company in Toronto and a social service agency in the neighbourhood in which the National Ballet School is located. I have also served for many years on the advisory council for the Co-operative Program in Arts Management at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.

Not surprisingly, I have served on many juries for national, provincial, and municipal grant-giving programs.

In recent years, I have also acted as a mentor and facilitator for a number of arts groups, including a national aboriginal theatre school, a dance action committee in British Columbia, a Calgary dance company, and a cooperative venture by the Canadian Dance Assembly and the Regroupement québécois de la danse in Montreal. I am also on the board of a public foundation, the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation, which funds the performing arts, community development, and the environment.

It is this combination of both breadth and depth of experience that I presented to the selection committee for the position of director of the Canada Council for the Arts, and which I present to you today.

As you well know, the Canada Council's mandate is to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. As it approaches its 50th anniversary, it is only natural that the Canada Council turn its attention to the future, to considering what the role of the arts will be in the lives of Canadians for the next 50 years, and how public funding can invigorate and energize that future.

The circumstances facing artists in Canada today are very different from those in 1957. So too are the challenges facing public funding bodies. I am convinced that the Canada Council for the Arts can play a significant role in shaping Canadian culture for the next 50 years, as it has in the past, but it cannot do this alone. It will need to work closely with politicians, other funding bodies, the private sector, provincial and municipal levels of government, the arts sector, and of course the citizenry that makes up Canada itself. I am excited by the prospect of helping to lead and inspire this historic process of collaborative transition, and today I respectfully present to you my candidacy for the position of director of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Thank you. Merci.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you, Mr. Sirman.

Mr. Belanger, you have the first question.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Mr. Sirman.

I have a rather generic question to ask you, after which, if time allows, I will put to you a series of more specific questions. Otherwise, I would hope to come back to you in a second round.

First of all, could you, in French please, outline for me your vision for your personal future and your vision for the future of the Canada Council of the Arts over the next five to ten years?

[Robert Sirman]

That is a good question, Mr. Bélanger.

For me, it is the opportunity to lead, to stimulate the Canada Council of the Arts staff, to work with the arts sector, with the artists and the arts organizations of Canada, to visit the communities, the regions, the villages, all of the places where artists are creating in Canada. It is also an opportunity to offer a vision of culture by giving the citizens of Canada the means to establish links between communities.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you.

This is not a criticism directed at your qualifications--please, au contraire--but there have been people wondering if your nomination would perhaps cause déséquilibre, or too high a concentration.

My understanding from Madam Kain is that she is from the dance world. Is that correct?

[Robert Sirman]

Yes, she is.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I believe the vice-chair of the council, Monsieur Simon Brault, is as well. Is that correct?

[Robert Sirman]

The vice-chair is not from the dance world. He's from the theatre world, I understand.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

The theatre world, okay.

And you are from the dance world, or you have been for the last 15 years.

[Robert Sirman]

For the last 15 years I have led, administratively, a national training institution. It happens that this national training institution trains in dance, but that's not my specialty. Nevertheless, it's true that it is in the dance world.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

What answer would you offer to those who are concerned that there may be a bit of a concentration at the top in one particular field of endeavour as compared with the others?

[Robert Sirman]

If I may, the answer, I hope, is my experience. I worked for ten years at the Ontario Arts Council for no particular discipline. I worked in management for all disciplines. I was director of operations for most of that time, and also director of research and strategic policy for the last year and a half.

During that time, I tried to seriously address the need for a balance between the investments in different art forms, the investments in different regions of the province of Ontario, and the strategies for addressing what we called in those days the “supply side” and the “demand side” for arts in Ontario.

I do not believe my experiential base--at the Ontario Arts Council, at the Ontario culture ministry, at the arts administration program at the University of Toronto--is in any specific field other than trying to lead and pull together the various forces that contribute to an effective cultural organization, an effective cultural infrastructure, whether in a particular discipline or in a community as a whole.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Okay.

This question may or may not be appropriate, Mr. Chairman--I'm sure you'll tell me if it isn't--because it doesn't pertain to Mr. Sirman himself. It pertains to the process that got his nomination in front of us.

I'd be curious if you, Mr. Sirman--or someone else, for that matter--could explain to me the process by which the various nominees were sought out and the process by which they were screened. Would you happen to know what that process was?

[Robert Sirman]

I can speak from my own experience, if that would be helpful to you.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Yes.

[Robert Sirman]

In the fall of 2005 I was approached by an HR firm--what we call “headhunting” firms, in my business--asking me if I would be prepared to compete in a competition for director of the Canada Council for the Arts. It was awkward timing for me, because I was about to open the new National Ballet School in Toronto, but I did go through an interview. I did not actually submit my full curriculum vitae until December.

In December I was told by the outside firm that I was one of a series of candidates that the selection committee wished to interview. The selection committee--when I actually went--was made up of four board members of the Canada Council for the Arts, plus an outside member, former Auditor General of Canada Denis Desautels. I was introduced to these people in my first interview, the first week of January, in Ottawa.

A day or two later I got a telephone call that the pool had shrunk, but there was still a pool and I was still in it. I was told that I would be called for a subsequent follow-up interview. That interview took place the last week of January, in Toronto. My understanding is that they were meeting other people in Toronto and possibly other parts of the country, although I don't know that.

I was subsequently contacted and told that I was the candidate that the selection committee wished to present to the board of the Canada Council for their consideration. From that moment--and I was not an insider in that process, but this is from what I understand--it had to go to the board, and the board in turn had to recommend it to the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The process went on until...it's here.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Chairman, if it would be of value, it will only take one minute to give a complete answer to Mr. Bélanger, as I have it, relative to the process.

The position was advertised in the Canada Gazette and in various national newspapers, with a closing date of December 9, 2005. Forty-five applications were received. Thirteen applications were interviewed by a search firm. Six candidates were interviewed by a selection committee. Three qualified candidates were chosen from that, and the selection committee unanimously decided on Mr. Sirman as the most qualified for the job.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Monsieur Kotto.

[Maka Kotto, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good afternoon, sir, and thank you for being here. I will be putting to you a few simple questions, and I would ask for simple answers, nothing too involved. I have gone over your curriculum vitae, and I see the path you have followed and your involvement in finance, management and structures.

What is your relationship to creators per se?

[Robert Sirman]

That is another good question. I have had two opportunities, in the context of the experience I have had, to deal with creative arts. In 1980, I took five months off to write a play. This experience was for me very important and very nerve-wracking, as you will understand. I finished the play, I had the opportunity to distribute it to theatres in the United States and Canada and I received very positive responses, but I decided to return to my job at the Ontario Arts Council.

I got my start in 1995, but in 2002, I was the librettist for a ballet of the National Ballet School, which was celebrating its fifth anniversary. The ballet was called The contract, and it was a full-length story ballet.

The ballet was performed in Ottawa and in New York, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as well as its run in Toronto.

For me, these two experiences were truly in the field of creative arts.

[Maka Kotto, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Have you been in touch with or met the team that is in place at the Canada Council for the Arts?

[Robert Sirman]

Only to introduce myself to those people, but not to work.