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.