Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 25th, 2014

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for being here today, Minister.

In terms of their profession, Canadian musicians are amongst the best in the world. In fact many of them are the best in the world. I was going to name some names, but there are too many to name. I would be here too long, and I'd be afraid to leave some out. The evidence of that is the millions and millions of records sold worldwide in over 100 countries. They tell our stories to us and to the world. Their songs bring joy into our lives. While they are doing that, they create thousands and thousands of jobs for others—dancers, choreographers, agents, managers, security guards, ticket sellers, sound engineers, technicians, artists, and even bus drivers. None of that happens until a song is written and performed. This is somebody sitting at home by the hour, with a piano or guitar or something, all by themselves, trying to create something and communicate with others.

That is my little tribute to musicians, because I think they're wonderful.

Having said that, a musician's life is not easy. It's an extremely competitive business. They have to travel, particularly in Canada, thousands and thousands of miles to find an audience. I know that many of them have worked years and years with very little income; not a great financial return.

Our committee studied the Canadian music industry last year. I wonder if you could please comment on our recommendations and what measures our federal government is taking to support musicians in the Canadian music industry.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I take a special interest in the music industry. In fact the Canadian music industry generates about $3 billion into the Canadian economy every single year. I am so proud that we have the talented artists we do have. Every year when the Junos occur, I hope that all Canadians are watching. I know that Parliamentary Secretary Dykstra and I were able to watch our talented artists receive their Juno awards in Winnipeg.

I have to say that I'm proud to be part of a government that supports this industry with the Canada music fund. It was temporary at one point. They had sunsetting amounts. We made it permanent in budget 2014. That fund helps to support over 1,000 marketing, touring, and showcasing events. It helps to support 1,000 emerging and established artists. I think of people like Carly Rae Jepsen, I think of Metric, and there are so many others who have benefited and gone on to be incredibly well known across the entire world. We have to continue to support this cultural industry, not only because of its economic benefits but because it really does speak to who we are as Canadians.

You as a committee did a fantastic job with your report. I met with many of the witnesses who appeared here, and they were very thankful. I'd like to thank all of you on the committee for the hard work you put into making that report as successful as possible. We are looking at the recommendations. Some of the recommendations of course touch on some areas that are outside of our jurisdiction, but I continue to work with my counterparts at either the provincial or territorial level to ensure that there is funding and support for our musicians for years to come.

We do have a number of programs that are also available for our official language minority community musicians and artists. I am proud that we have these funds available. In my home riding, they support musicians like Chic Gamine, for example, from St. Boniface. I'm very proud to be part of a government that does support musicians.

But more can be done, and that's why we are looking at your recommendations very closely. I did send a letter to the committee with some of the advice that we've been given. I look forward to perhaps coming out with more good news for our musicians in the near future.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you.

We'll now move to the second round, which is a five-minute round.

We'll start with Monsieur Nantel.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, when questioned about the CBC situation in the House, you keep saying that it is up to the corporation to find a way to attract more viewers.

Do you know that the CBC's 2013-2014 annual report completely contradicts what you are saying? Have you read that report?

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I have received the report.

I can tell you that a decline has been noted in some demographic aspects. That is actually why the CBC has certain problems. However, that is not the only area where they are having issues. There is also a drop in advertising revenues. The loss of broadcasting rights for hockey matches has also contributed to the drop. I hope that the crown corporation can figure out a way to provide programming that will attract other viewers.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Okay.

I will yield the floor to my colleague, Ms. Mathyssen. However, the fact remains that this is the fate of all conventional broadcasters. The CBC doesn't have the framework of other conventional broadcasters to defend its record.

With that, I yield the floor to my colleague, Ms. Mathyssen.

Thank you.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and Monsieur Nantel.

Thank you for being here, Minister.

I have questions about the museum sector. You've been talking about the 150th anniversary celebrations of Confederation and quite a list of historic events, sporting events, but nothing about the importance of the museum sector in the contributions they make to art, heritage, and science.

What are your plans to include these incredible, rich, and I would say, important parts of our history in the 2017 celebration?

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I am so pleased that our museums have embraced the road to 2017 initiative. If you attend any of the museums right now you will see many of them have historic milestones on display that reflect the 150 years that Canada has had to develop into the greatest country in the world. At the War Museum, Mark O'Neill has150 exhibits on display. Had you been with us the other day when we were at Library and Archives on Wellington Street, you would have seen that Guy Berthiaume has some exhibits on display that reflect the Arctic. During my visit there we announced $80.5 million for the Museum of Science and Technology, which will of course help it to deal with some of the issues of mould and asbestos but also to put a new face to the museum, rejuvenate it, and fix the exhibition spaces.

Our government has provided more than $372 million to our museums since we came to power in 2006. We believe they are important to our history. That's why we continue to support them. We did create the first national museum outside the national capital in my hometown of Winnipeg, the Museum for Human Rights. It is an absolutely beautiful jewel, and I would encourage all of the committee members to visit it one day.

Museums will be intrinsically important as we move toward the 150th celebrations.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I hope so, Minister.

I too have been visiting museums. I have some quite interesting ones in my riding, but I'm hearing a slightly different story. For example, despite the fact that, as you pointed out, cultural industries contribute about $50 billion to GDP and attract 60 million visitors every year, the funding level from your department has decreased. It has declined from $18 million to less than $7 million. I think that puts these very important programs in jeopardy.

Are you prepared to invest the needed funds to keep this sector healthy? Would you introduce a short-term national program where donations from private sector individuals are matched by the government to help museums and galleries get over what is a very difficult time for them?

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Chair, the information just provided isn't correct.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

They are the only museums providing that information to us.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Some of the museums, as their appropriations expire—for example, as I said, we have provided more than $372 million extra to our museums since 2006, much of that for renovations, for repairs, for expansions, and when that money comes to an end it doesn't reflect again on the budget lines of the following year or the year after that.

The fact remains we are one of the only countries in the G-7 that protected not only our museums, but our direct funding to artists, our official languages programs, and sport during a global recession.

I'm proud to have a Prime Minister who, as a G-7 leader, stood out among them all to support those industries with no cuts, and as I said before, we've provided an extra $372 million to our museums since 2006.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you, Minister.

We're now going to move to Mr. Dykstra for five minutes.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks, Minister, for being here and kicking off the renewal of our committee structure and our committee meetings, which were, I guess, non-starters leading up to our time back in the House in September. I'm sure it's good to know that you're kicking off the start-up of really our first official meeting this fall.

Minister, one thing I see in the estimates when I go through them is a lot of transfers in funding taking place during the year and appropriations moving from one of our top-level ministries to the agencies that we support, including the CRTC, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. A couple of things that have happened over the last year were included both in the throne speech and also in comments and statements that you made, including some earlier this fall, regarding the government's opposition to a Netflix tax. I know that some members of the opposition parties have indicated they don't support you or that position, so I thought it would be at least apropos to give you an opportunity to explain to the committee where this started and what our plans are regarding that issue.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

You're right that we did indicate both in our Speech from the Throne and in budgets—not only this budget but previous budgets—that consumers should come first. This is a government that believes in that, and we don't just say it. We act on that. You've seen that in budget 2014 as we try to eliminate things like pay-to-pay policies. Of course, we are looking at unbundling channels. That's something the CRTC is presently studying and getting feedback on from Canadians.

The CRTC has been clear in the past that they did not support a Netflix tax. They did come out recently after doing more consultations to say they still don't support it. Our government has been clear that we will not raise taxes on Canadians. We believe that the 180 times we have reduced taxes for Canadians have in fact helped them to prosper and have helped their families to secure what they need for their children and for themselves. We will continue to look to a low-tax agenda because doing so is in the interests of the economy and in the interests of all Canadians, and particularly in the interests of families. When it comes to trying to regulate the Internet, that is a vast system. It would be almost impossible for an entity to regulate the Internet, and we have no interest in taxing Canadians in order to try to do so. But we do welcome our broadcasters giving their input. The CRTC is continuing its consultations and Canadians are free to visit the website or send information to the CRTC as it does so.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

One of the other pieces regarding the CRTC, an initiative that you worked toward earlier in the year, which also came out of our throne speech, was the discussion around unbundling and consumer choice for TV viewers. I thought this might be an appropriate time—it's been a while since we've had you here—to give you the opportunity to comment on any progress that's been made since last May with respect to the issue of unbundling.

For those who don't understand or wonder what the term “unbundling” means, of course, it's the opportunity for Canadians to pick and choose which stations they would like to see on their televisions in their homes versus having a lot of stations bundled together. A lot of folks across the country feel that they never watch those stations or never intend to, so they should have more freedom of choice.

I wonder if you could just update us on how things have been going since May.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

That's a very important question to many Canadians. When we said we would move towards unbundling television channels, it was because we knew consumers ought not to have to pay for something they don't want. This government will side with consumers every single time.

We asked the CRTC, through section 15 of the Broadcasting Act, to look at unbundling and give us some advice on how we might do this while protecting Canadian jobs. It has given us some initial feedback, but it is continuing its CRTC Let's Talk TV process, and I await its report.

In the feedback it gave us—and it was important feedback—it pointed out four things it envisions: a “skinny basic” that would be complimentary; a pick-and-pay system; a choose-your-own-channels system; and the status-quo bundles that exist. It gave feedback on these four issues.

I await its report, and I look forward to unbundling channels for Canadian consumers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dykstra.

We're now going to move to Mr. Stewart for five minutes.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Minister, for coming today.

I have a question about the Canada Science and Technology Museum funding. You say that it's $80.5 million—and this is from the press release—“to repair, retrofit and renovate” the museum, but you said in the Ottawa Citizen that “for all intents and purposes this will be a new facility”.

I'm just trying to get the numbers right here, because it's $80 million to build essentially a new museum, but it was $25 million just to rebrand the Museum of Civilization. I find these numbers a little confusing, in that it would cost $25 million just to rebrand but $80 million is somehow enough to build a new museum.

I'm wondering if you wanted to perhaps modify your comments that you made to the Ottawa Citizen, or even retract them, to say that this isn't really a new facility, that it's just a sprucing up, perhaps.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

What I'd like to do is actually correct what you've just said.

Mr. Chair, in fact, there was $25 million provided to the Museum of Canadian History so that it could renovate exhibit space to make it more modern. There are renovations happening as we speak. The $25 million is going to good use, so that Canadians can visit the Canadian Museum of History and be in today's generation. The museum had not been updated for a very long time. Exhibit space had to be made. That is what's happening, so the $25 million is for much more than just rebranding. It is in fact for renovations and upgrading.

With regard to the Science and Technology Museum, the $80.5 million will be going a long way not only to renovating and repairing, but we are modernizing the facade of the museum, which means that those Canadians who have visited the museum before will have a new face to the museum. The exhibit space is also being altered. There will be some extra exhibit space, which will allow for some of the stored exhibits to be seen.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

With all due respect, do you stand by your statement that “for all intents and purposes this will be a new facility”? It sounds like you're overhyping the amount of money you're putting in, and it would have cost much, much more to actually create a new facility.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I don't have the article in front of me, but I do remember some of the things I said. Some of the money in the $80.5 million is going to be used by the museum of science and technology to build a new storage facility. It is a new facility, that piece of it, but the museum itself is being renovated. It is not going to be a new museum, which would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars and taken literally years and years to complete.

We want to be able to share this museum with Canadians as quickly as possible. We want to be prepared so that in 2017 they can use this museum, as your colleague said, to learn about their history, to celebrate their history, and to know that Canada's 150th has the national museums engaged and they can visit them to learn about their past.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

On science, you're spending $80 million on the Science and Technology Museum for what you've admitted is just a renovation, really, but across town, the world's strongest magnet is being shut down due to the cuts that your government has made to science, with over $1 billion in cuts over the last four years. I'm just wondering if you see the irony here. You spend $80 million to talk about science and technology of the past, which is great, but you won't even spend $100,000 to keep the world's largest, most powerful magnet open.

Do you see the irony here and why Canadians are frustrated with your government's approach to the science funding? You've cut over $1 billion from science and technology and actually laid off 4,000 researchers. Do you think that perhaps your government could do a little better when it comes to funding the science and research that's happening now rather than what happened in the past?

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Well, I think Canadians can trust this government to continue on the path we've been on, which is to support science and technology, to support innovation, and to be the leaders for them and for their future generations.

The Prime Minister of Canada only yesterday announced a further $6 billion—almost $6 billion—that will go toward, for example, the NRC's new facility in Winnipeg. These are researchers who will benefit from the investments made by this government. There is no mistake to be made here. This government has invested in and committed very strongly to science and technology. We will continue to do so, because we know that we can reap the benefits our scientists present for us in the innovative ways they come up with inventions.

I have to brag a bit about Manitoba, but many of them are able to actually do their research, do their science, and save lives. I think of the National Microbiology Laboratory that is also in Winnipeg. They're at the forefront of the Ebola crisis. This is why we invest in these facilities. This is why—