Evidence of meeting #30 for Canadian Heritage in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was artists.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
It's a wonderful thing, no doubt about it, but the grants are what interest me.
11:55 a.m.
Gary Cristall Artist Management, As an Individual
The Canada Council gave grants under this program. They gave money that was not expected to be paid back. It was up to 60% of the cost of the project based on the percentage of Canadian content, which was often 100%. I hope that's clear. It was free money that did not need to be paid back and it gave the artists the licence to do what they did.
As to peer review, the decisions were made by three, four, or five people drawn from the milieu represented by the artists. We had what we called a pod system, which meant that when we looked at contemporary classical composition we would have contemporary classical artists, composers, managers, and symphony administrators from across the country. The same thing for folk. We would have people from that milieu, and on down the line. The decisions were made by people who had a great deal of knowledge about the specific genre of music that was being performed. We would listen, we would talk, there would be bloody battles in the room, and in the end the decisions were based more or less on the number of applications in each genre and the money available.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
It must be a difficult situation. A bloody brawl in the room, and perhaps you're putting it mildly. Do you find that we're drifting away from the previous funding models?
11:55 a.m.
Gary Cristall Artist Management, As an Individual
That's not the case at the Canada Council. The Canada Council still operates on peer review. Not to beat up on FACTOR too much—I've been on their juries—but they use a three-jury process, so it's relatively opaque. At the Canada Council, at the end of the meeting the next year they release the list of peers, so you know who did you in or who was generous to you. It allows you to assess the credibility of the program and ask who was on the jury. As Mr. Angus pointed out, the three people who made the decision about this program had nothing to do with the kind of music they were determining the fate of. At the Canada Council, it's the opposite. At FACTOR it's somewhere in between.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
In that kind of model, we're drifting more towards the administrative decisions involved in disseminating the money, as opposed to the artists disseminating the money. Then it becomes a question of which artist, but at least it's the artist.
Mr. Zubot, you talked about how as a musician you make a living through certain revenue streams from wherever you can get them. I'm not asking you what you make; I'm just asking what portion of your revenue you get from these programs. You said you're also a studio musician, and I'm assuming that would be from other sources, maybe CBC or the like. But when it comes to these specific programs, what percentage of your annual revenue are we looking at?
Noon
Musician, Owner of Drip Audio, As an Individual
The money in my pocket that I make from this for session recordings is probably 5% to 10% of what I make in a year. I'm just guessing; I'm not sure.
There's an important point I would like to make about the new digital forms of media. You don't need any money to infiltrate the recording industry in digital form. With my company, I can call a person in San Francisco who distributes all of my music worldwide on the Internet. All I have to do is send him one CD and within a month it's available everywhere, and they even do marketing. Giving money to this new area doesn't make any sense to me at all.
Noon
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
So you're more interested in the money up front to produce, in other words, the CD.
Noon
Musician, Owner of Drip Audio, As an Individual
If you don't have any money to make the music, there is no music to promote.
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
We have to call this morning's round over.
Folks, I thank you very much for making the long journey from B.C. to be here this morning. Thank you for being so very candid with us. We appreciate that. Thank you.
We will pause for five minutes.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
We will reconvene for the second part of our meeting today. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying cuts to the Canadian musical diversity program.
We welcome for this session Erick Dorion, Andrea Menard, and Bill Garrett, speaking as individuals.
If you can, please try to keep your introductions to ten minutes. I'm going to try to put our questioning down to maybe four minutes for questions and answers, so that we can get a little more diversity.
Mr. Angus.
12:05 p.m.
NDP
12:05 p.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Yes. There is a first for everything.
I'd really oppose going down to four minutes—
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
Okay, then I will enforce the five-minute rule. I'm the chair. I let it go a little longer the last time.
12:05 p.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I have no problem with your being a tough taskmaster, Mr. Chair, but we need our five minutes.
Thank you.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
12:05 p.m.
Erick Dorion Musician, As an Individual
Good afternoon. Over the next 10 minutes, I will be talking only about facts and will use no stylistic devices whatsoever.
My name is Erick Dorion, I am 34 years old and I live in Quebec City. I am an artist and I have been earning a livelihood through my art for six years now. I am an audio artist, a musician. I am also an audio commissioner and an installation artist. My work has been presented in Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, England, Mexico, Cuba, Australia, the United States, Japan and at Canada's major festivals. I lived in an artists' retreat for two months in Spain last spring and a month in Mexico in November. My career is beginning to be well established. I am quite happy about that.
I will now share with you my life journey, which will give you an idea of the reason why I undertook all of these activities. In 1999, I decided to turn my pastime, which was to create, into a profession. In 2002, something quite special happened. I was able to obtain a grant for specialized sound recording and I recorded some pieces in a professional studio. The recordings were done professionally and were presented to a company that accepted to produce the record. It was a small release of just 1,000 records.
This however allowed me the benefit of critiques in more than 15 countries, of making myself known and of participating in major festivals. This first record was financed by the Canada Council for the Arts that provided me with a grant for specialized sound recording. The grant was for roughly $4,500. I did not take a cent of this money; the entire amount was spent on production. I was easily able to live on these $4,500 for four years, because I was invited throughout the world and I was able to secure some contracts.
Over time, these contracts allowed me to perform and to make myself known. All of a sudden, my career began to develop and thrive. In 2004, I produced a second album. It too benefited from a grant for specialized sound recording. I was given close to the same amount of money. This time, an Australian radio station heard my record. It then recommended it to two festivals. I was thus invited to two very important festivals in Australia. I was offered a plane ticket. I was able to live in Australia for three weeks, all expenses paid, and I also was given an appearance fee. All of that was a direct result of the fact that I had sent a record to that radio station, a record that was recorded and produced professionally. I went on to be invited to France and all over the place. That gives you a brief outline of my professional journey.
Recently, I was awarded a grant for the recording and production of a double CD as well as of an Audio Surround DVD, as commissioner for an organization in Quebec called Avatar. I am not talking just about a CD, but also an audio DVD. Perhaps that in five or six years' time, other recording formats will be used. What matters is not the release itself, but rather the recording and the way it is distributed. Audio art means just that. It is an art form in which one really works on the sound quality. It is therefore very important to have a grant for specialized sound recording because it is the quality of the sound that matters, be it on vinyl or on cassette.
I would now like to relay to you a few other facts involving the artists who work in my creative field. In 1998, a Toronto artist, Michael Snow, who is a world-renowned multi-field artist, earned the Governor General's Award. A few years ago, he was able to record a triple album of his work at the piano, a first in the career of this artist who has been practising art for 60 years. He was produced by Ohm Editions.
He too was given a grant for specialized sound recording.
At the other extreme of the spectrum, last year, Nicolas Bernier, who is 34 years old, received a grant for his recording entitled Les arbres. This album was recognized by the very prestigious Ars Electronica Awards, in Austria. All of a sudden, sales of his album went from 10 or 12 to 500 units, and this in the course of but a few weeks.This is obviously a very important festival. None of that would have been possible without the grant.
This grant provides artists working in parallel or lesser known fields the opportunity to reach a broader public, or at least an international audience. It also provides young artists the opportunity to show what they can do. A young artist can be given money in order to produce a quality recording that can then be presented to record companies, which is very important.
In my case, my first CD is still generating income, ten years later.
Thank you.
12:15 p.m.
Andrea Menard Artist, As an Individual
Hello. My name is Andrea Menard.
I am a Métis and a Saskatchewan actress and singer, and probably none of you have heard me on the radio, unfortunately, unless you listen to the CBC, but I am a success. I am a person who has followed my heart, right from my own ideas. The Canada Council grant for specialized music was the focal point and the beginning of my recording career, and in many ways my career in general.
My first CD as a Métis woman, The Velvet Devil, was the music from a one-woman show. It's jazz and traditional, so where on earth would I have gone for a play for native traditional chanting and jazz all on one album? There are not many places I could have gone. I went to the Canada Council because there was a place I could go. I have been funded by others--by the Saskatchewan Arts Board and by FACTOR--but Canada Council was my focal point, and it was the trigger for other funding.
I am a success. You may not have heard me on the radio, but I am a success because of that CD. I have three CDs to my name. I was able to take that CD and trigger my music, to trigger my play into going around the country and being made into a film, and it started because I had a CD in my hand. A mere $18,700 from the specialized music grant triggered that. It started it. It's a mere pittance, but it made my career. It allowed me to be able to hand a physical copy to whoever else needed it wherever I needed to go. Maybe now I could have e-mailed it, but back then, in 2000, I didn't. I had a physical copy that could take my work to the world.
From that very first CD, I was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award. I was nominated for a Canadian Aboriginal Music Award, or several of them, and I was nominated for an Indian Summer Music Award. These are also award ceremonies that mainstream music, CHUM music, probably has never even heard of. These are big in my community, but even within my community, if we were to look at the categories of music, and even in the aboriginal category, I sometimes don't even fit within my own category.
Again, specialized music is what I, the artist, come from, and what is in my heart that I want to get across. As an aboriginal person, I'm Métis. I'm a jazz artist; in aboriginal country, that's a weirdo. That does not fit. What's that? What's this music? Those are my own relatives going, “What is this music?” I am specialized even within the aboriginal world, and I don't quite fit in the jazz world either. I don't fit anywhere, but my heart and my music are important to the landscape of Canadian music. It is missing my voice. If there's not a place where I can go for funding, you are missing a very important voice.
Again, I am lucky. I am a success. You may not have heard me on the radio, but someday maybe you will. I have a plan to get my music out there. I have commercial intent. I'm not just doing it because I'm an artistic artsy-fartsy; I have plans. This is my job. This is my purpose.
Even within my own world, I have to come.... I can't put a native flute in just because I'm native, because somebody else on a panel says, “Well, that's not native enough” or I'm jazz. Well, you're right, and I don't play an instrument. I'm not that great--I'm no Jesse Zubot--but I sing in a way that would classify me as jazz. I have an original voice and there has to be a place I can go. I am a success now because FACTOR has recognized my work, but that's because I had a place to go to first. I became established: “Oh, she's successful; she got money from the Canada Council”. That's a stamp of approval.
I am a visible role model and I am one of the lucky ones. I sing in English. I don't sing in Cree. I have a voice that reaches across both cultures, that reaches across both languages. I have French, Cree, and Michif on my albums. I am going with what I want to create, and it's important that that always stays the same. I never ever want to create a song for the mainstream radio. Yes, maybe I'd make some money doing it, but I don't know how, and I won't. I have a voice that is unique and it needs to be allowed to be the voice it is. It needs to be left alone to create what I can. But I also need to be funded.
So where can someone in the middle of Saskatchewan, a girl from the bush as I like to call it.... I need a focal point, and with this grant gone, that's a crime. It is a shame, because I would have never gone to FACTOR first. This was the focal point. This was the grant that I knew I had a chance with, because it allowed my weirdness to be seen—because I'm weird, but beautifully weird. All of us artists who are being funded in this category are weird and wonderful and important. But because of that very first one, I have received $18,000 from this grant and it made my career. That's enough to have helped me move forward, and $1.4 million makes a lot of $18,000 grants. And for people with their first time going somewhere, who have never done a grant before, who have no idea where to go, that gives them a focal point. And $18,000 spread to many people is absolutely valuable, and it should never have been cut.
Thank you.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
October 20th, 2009 / 12:20 p.m.
Bill Garrett Musician, Borealis Recording Company Ltd.
Thank you. Good afternoon.
I'm going to read a bit of prepared material just because there are some thoughts that I don't want to miss. I'm also an artist and a producer, but I am also a partner in a record label, an independent Canadian record label. Perhaps I can throw some light on another side of this argument for not eliminating diversity programs from the council. I will speak mainly to the specialized music program.
Our label, Borealis Records, was founded in 1996 to fill a void that existed in the Canadian recording business, namely, a company that would manufacture and distribute an all-Canadian catalogue of folk roots artists. At that point there was no such company, despite a growing number of musicians and songwriters. They were doing their best to eke out a living by playing and recording their music. Our goal is twofold. It was and is twofold. It's to give these musicians an outlet for their recordings, while at the same time negotiating fair artist contracts that allow the creators of this music to own and maintain their own music. In other words, we don't take publishing like many record labels do.
Above and beyond our contractual obligations to tour, we're also active in helping our artists find other kinds of representations, such as agents, managers, overseas contacts, etc. To date, we have some 50 artists and approximately 100 recordings in the catalogue.
I'd just like to point this out because we set out to work this way in the mid-1990s, and we've been a bit of a model for some other companies that have come along--not to toot our horn, but that's the reality.
The artist provides us with a finished master recording for an agreed-upon term, usually five years. We manufacture and distribute the recording through worldwide distributors, both physical and digital--i.e., iTunes or Amazon.com, as well as bricks-and-mortar record stores around the world. We send promotional copies to some 900 media outlets in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. We promote and buy advertisements in support of our recordings in the above-named territories and provide tour support with publicity and more advertisements in local areas where our acts are gigging.
Unlike most record labels, we do not take a piece of the artist's publishing royalties. We feel these royalties belong to the artist or the creator. We're able to make these arrangements work for us due to the fact that we don't underwrite the cost of recordings. In other words, we don't pay for the studio, the musicians, etc. We license a finished product from an artist or a group.
Depending on an arrangement, depending on the number of musicians, depending on the recording facility, as these people will be able to easily tell you, recordings can go anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 to $20,000 to $25,000 for a folk-roots style of recording. If we were to take those costs on as a company, we would have been out of business ten years ago, easily. It just wouldn't have worked.
The music under the folk-roots umbrella is pretty wide-ranging and diverse. There's an age-old argument: what is folk music? I wouldn't even try to begin to tell you what it is. The music in our catalogues is anything from traditional fiddle tunes from Newfoundland, Cape Breton, and Quebec, to singer-songwriters across the country, to Balkan music, etc. It's a pretty wide scope of music.
The one thing I want to say about folk and roots music is that in one way or another the music represents diverse cultural traditions across the country. They're not formulaic love ditties that you hear on pop radio, and that's why we're not on pop radio. That's why none of us here are on pop radio. It's because we don't compose pop music, which is for the most part formulaic. There are formulas for putting it together. There's a way to make it sound like the last Britney Spears album, and maybe you'll have a chance of getting on CHUM, or whatever the station is these days.
It's not disposable music, I think that's what's so important to point out here. That's what is understood by the Canada Council; they're not dealing with disposable music.
The specialized music sound recording program does not have criteria that say this music has to appeal to a mass audience. Instead, the music is judged on its inherent artistic merits, a realistic budget, and the ability of the production team to complete a professional product. And finally, persons known and respected in their individual fields of music carry out the judging. I'm sure you heard all of this from Gary Cristall before I was here.
To us, by moving the funding for specialized music to FACTOR and MUSICACTION, I feel there is a great risk of the criteria changing to more reflect the needs of the large commercial media companies and the pop music business. Both FACTOR and MUSICACTION are, after all, largely funded by private broadcast interests. That’s okay, but that’s what they are. I have taken part in FACTOR juries, and it is stated implicitly that we should take into account the ability of the project to be commercially viable. This is understandable, as the FACTOR program is considered a loan, and it's not an outright grant. Therefore they are operating on a loan system, where they like to see a dollar back from each recording sold, and therefore are working within a market system, etc.
And please understand, I don't hate pop music. I love a lot of pop music. However, today it is not the same business model that gave us Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, or Neil Young. Today, the pop music business is essentially run by accountants and not by artists and repertoire people. It’s basically run as a nuts-and-bolts widget business. The possibility of challenging new music being produced by these conglomerates is pretty small.
The Canadian sound recording industry is dominated by the four multinational record companies, which control anywhere from 80% to 90% of the Canadian music market. These are the companies that feed commercial radio. On the other hand, Canadian-controlled firms release about 90% of Canadian-content recordings, while foreign-controlled companies release about 10% of Canadian content. I think that’s an important step for everybody to understand.
According to the Department of Canadian Heritage, the three main objectives of the Canadian sound recording policy are:
To enhance Canadians' access to a diverse range of Canadian music choices through existing and emerging media; To increase the opportunities available for Canadian music artists and cultural entrepreneurs to make a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian cultural expression; and To ensure that Canadian music artists and entrepreneurs have the skills, know-how and tools to succeed in a global and digital environment.
Certainly I do not see where the first two of these objectives will be easily met by moving this program to FACTOR and MUSICACTION. I submit that a diverse range of Canadian voices and stories and the ability to make a lasting contribution to Canadian cultural expression by artists, whether by themselves or through companies such as ours, will be severely eroded with the loss of this program at the council.
In the end, I think it is a choice between supporting our cultural identity through music or adding funds to commercial interests with only the bottom line in mind. That’s the scary part to me.
So in closing, I would just say that the next time you reach into your wallet and pull out a $20 bill, you might read on the back these words from Gabrielle Roy: "Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?"
Thanks.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
Thank you.
The first question, Mr. Rodriguez, and we'll be sticking to five minutes.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Yes, I'll just take a minute, Mr. Chair, because I spoke before. Ms. Dhalla will follow me.
I would simply like to put to the three of you the same question I asked a little earlier. Given what you have told us, we should be congratulating and encouraging you and not cutting your funding.
Mr. Cristall stated a little while ago:
“It's a crime against arts and culture”.
Ms. Menard said:
“...this grant gone, that's a crime. It is a shame.”
Virtually everyone who benefits from the program could make such comments. Were you consulted, in one way or another, with regard to these budget cuts?
12:30 p.m.
Musician, As an Individual
No, not at all. In fact, the people in my field of endeavour — and most probably the others as well — reacted with complete disbelief. We failed to understand why such a small amount of money would be cut. As small as it is, this amount of money delivers major results for many Canadian artists. It was therefore completely incomprehensible that it be cut.
The first question that everyone asked was the following: if such small amounts, that are so important, are being cut, what is going to happen with the larger amounts?
12:30 p.m.
Liberal