Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 8th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Kotto, Mr. Angus isn't here, so we'll give you another question, sir.

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

Yes, I would like to make a final comment. I hope this will be one of the last times we hear you trying so hard to convince committee members who are supposed to be here to defend culture, not destroy it. That is rather the job of the Standing Committee on Finance. That committee is definitely not our friend, because figures and art, or culture in general, do not always get along well together. These people generally have a great deal of difficulty even understanding the role of culture in society. It is our job to defend it and you can count on our intellectual support now and in the future.

I hope your frustration will disappear as quickly as possible so that you are in good shape between March 28 and 31 of next year, when you will be celebrating the 60^th anniversary of the CMA.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It's an honour to be here today, sitting in with the committee on Canadian heritage. I feel proud and privileged to be Canadian, and I think it's incumbent upon us to preserve and promote the history of Canada. I believe our museums do a very good job of that.

I wanted to start with Mr. Osmond. You made a couple of points, and I think they're really quite important. You talked about predictable multi-year funding. I assume that you're talking about core funding, something you could apply for and could know is coming.

[Gerry Osmond]

It can be project funding, as long as the projects can extend over a multi-year period. Right now, there's a very short timeframe, so we need something we know we have over the long term.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

For clarification, right now funding turns into a pumpkin on March 31. If you haven't spent it, it's gone. You'd like to get away from that, so you could plan a little better?

[Gerry Osmond]

Planning, absolutely. Museums need to know on a two- and three-year basis, if not five years, what they have in terms of grants.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I come from the business world, and one of the things I never wanted to hear is that I might be at some form of competitive disadvantage with one of my competitors. MAP is a competitive process, so in your opinion that specific program wasn't necessarily level across the country?

[Gerry Osmond]

It was level in terms of having criteria. How the criteria were applied across the country, I'm not sure. I've heard different things.

In terms of the competitive process, that is essential. As my colleague says, we can't fund all museums, so we need some mechanism to determine who gets that funding. There has to be a competitive process. I don't see it as winners or losers, but we need to have some mechanism. At the same time, we need criteria consistently applied across the board.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Right. Okay, thank you.

Mr. McAvity, you made a number of very good proposals for a new museum strategy. I just completed a tour of the entire country with the finance committee and spoke to a number of museums. One of the things I heard over and over and over again was how much work it was to get funding from the MAP, that it was very labour-intensive. I notice that's one of the comments you've made.

Did you want to comment on that a little bit? A lot of museums said it was almost a full-time job for them.

[John McAvity]

The cost to administer, particularly with the new accountability regimes that have been coming into place, has been onerous. In museums it's quite frequently said that costs to apply and administer and be accountable are probably in the 25% to 35% range. I don't have any firm figures on it, but that's a gut feeling.

I wouldn't even want to know what the total cost is for the government departments that have to administer it, but it is going to be close to the amount of money that's spent, or a very high percentage, at least. I don't know what those figures are, but it's going to be a significant cost.

We're interested in seeing a system that works—that works fairly, judiciously, quickly. We think there could be special consideration for very small applicants, grants that are under a certain dollar level. There needs to be a bit more flexibility to make sure that money is getting out, it gets out quickly, and to the people in need.

Those are the general comments. We believe in a third-party delivery model, let me use that terminology. It works in Alberta, with the Alberta Museums Association doing it for the province; it works in British Columbia with the museum association there; in Saskatchewan. So there are very different ones.

I'm not looking for a new job for our organization, but we need to be prepared to do what is going to work, and how it works. As you may know, we deliver Young Canada Works, a summer student employment program, and that's delivered at less than 15% of cost.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Okay, good.

An issue that Mr. Warkentin brought up, and this is something else I heard a lot, is the growth in total numbers of museums. I've heard this from local museum operators as well.

Is there anything you could do? Are there criteria the CMA could set up that would qualify people for federal funding or make recommendations? Could this be in the recommendations you might make by Christmas? Quite frankly, we know there's going to be a finite amount of money. Any time it looks as if the picture may be brighter, you may have a bunch more museums. Ultimately, it could mean no one museum gets anything more and the new programs aren't any more helpful, if there are a whole bunch more players on the horizon. I'm just wondering if that might be something you might consider putting in your recommendations to the minister.

[John McAvity]

In part that's why we've called for a study to look at the needs of these new ones that are coming up, and over a number of years I think a reasonable projection can be made, so we're better informed about them.

You asked if there were ways in which the playing field could perhaps be limited, and the answer is yes. The answer is in two parts. First, what is the federal role and how narrowly do you want to tie it? And second would be setting up a criterion or accreditation program, as operates in other countries, saying that for museums to be eligible—just as with the indemnification legislation this committee's been looking at—there is a defined clientele group of institutions that meets national standards on conservation, standards on humidity and light control, or in all of these technical areas in museums, and also in terms of community relations, with the museums having a board that is open and accountable, and published annual reports and audited statements. All of those can go in there.

Such programs do exist in the United States, and in Europe there are well-developed accreditation programs recognizing those who need to get up here. In an interesting way they also help those who aren't making it, because if the program is done correctly, it's like a doctor going out to visit the patient: he does the diagnosis and writes a prescription, and that prescription becomes what your business plan must be in the next five years to rectify the following areas.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you.

I have nothing further, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much.

I must say it's been very interesting today to hear all of the presentations and answers. I think they've been great; I think they've been beneficial to this committee.

I always try, if I have time at the end, to give a couple of my comments as chair.

I think it was back in 2004 or 2003 in a meeting not about museums, but about copyright, when I said at this committee table that copyright was very confusing to me and that I wished we got onto things that I had come to the committee for, such as small museums. I was told at that time that it was one of the first times museums had been mentioned for quite some time in the committee.

I am very, very interested in heritage and museums. I've been fighting very hard for three or four years for the Dr. Frederick Banting homestead, which right now is in the hands of the Ontario heritage organization, but which I feel has been neglected.

When you're talking about new museums coming up, I live not too far away from a town in Ontario called Lucan, and there've been a lot of books written about the Donnellys of Lucan. It's terrifying how the Donnelly tradition has lived on around that area. But they do have something they've been working hard on, having fundraised almost $100,000 for their museum, which would help stimulate the economy of that small town, because there are a lot of people who are very interested in the heritage of that area. So there are things like that.

Something else that was mentioned besides museums was libraries and archives, and I think there's a knitting together of all three of those entities. I know that archives have had some real problems and that archives are really a museum—

[John McAvity]

Good, we like that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I think so.

Again, as chair, those are some of the things....

There's one question that I have, which we talked about a little bit the other day, and seeing that we have you folks here, I'll ask you about the travelling exhibition indemnification program. One of the things we were looking at were the maximums and minimums; I think $1.5 million was the maximum and the minimum was $500,000. We were wondering in this committee whether a lowering of the minimum, such as to $200,000, would help any of the small museums.

[John McAvity]

It would help, but not the truly small museums. It would have to go down to a lower level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay. It would have to go down to a lower level, but again, the criterion for receiving that is that you've got to have all the right stuff. So will some of these museums have that?

[Guy Vadeboncoeur]

Yes, some of them in small communities do have it. That's a fact.

What we are really looking at when we're talking about indemnification is the types of objects that travel. It's certainly not a small community museum that will have Picassos travelling around the country. And all the big museums, like a natural science museum, will probably never organize a travelling exhibition valued at over half a million dollars. So what's the use of it for them?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay.

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

Mr. Chairman, just as a comment, the maximum is $100 million.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

The maximum is $100 million. I see that.

[Michel Perron]

In our opinion, for a compensation program to be really of help to a significant number of institutions as the organized travelling exhibitions, it must take two factors into account. First, the large exhibitions with high market value that would probably take good advantage of the program.

The problem lies with all the things that do not directly concern the art market, like scientific or historical exhibits, that have a much lower market value. In this respect, we think that it would be very useful to add a second part to this program where insurable values would begin at $50,000, not at $200,000 to $500,000. This would be of great help to travelling exhibitions. For instance, institutions are left on their own to insure exhibits that might be worth $70,000 or $100,000 in insurable value, if there is no assistance program. Insurance companies have very little competition, and museums are left on their own to battle with them. Of course, in such cases the cost is very high.

We think that the compensation program is working well for high-value exhibitions, but what really should be done would be to lower the floor of insurable value to $50,000 and create a second phase. This could partly remove what is thorn in the side of travelling exhibition organizers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much. I hope we around this table can take that as we study the program a little bit more.

Again, on behalf of all my colleagues around this table at the heritage committee, I thank you very much for your answers and presentations.

The meeting is adjourned.