Good afternoon.
I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for inviting Les Deux Mondes theatre company to be heard, a company I have led since 1991. Les Deux Mondes is both a research company and creative centre founded in 1973 and incorporated in 1975 as a non-profit organization. In its 36 years of existence, the company has presented 3,400 performances and created 25 shows. It has eight permanent employees and, each year, hires some 50 freelancers, including actors, technicians, and so on.
The bulk of our independent income is generated by the sale of touring shows. Our sales amount to approximately $1 million a year. Our tours have taken us to over 200 cities and 32 countries, and we have taken part in some 60 international festivals for adults and 20 for young audiences, as some of our productions are for children. Our touring productions generally involve an average of eight people.
Why perform outside the country? First of all, on an artistic level, it is an opportunity to meet other audiences, to discover what is being done elsewhere in our field and to establish partnerships abroad. For example, we are currently working on three co-productions, one with Liverpool and two others with France. Finally, for the type of work we do, as a research-based theatre company, the domestic market in Canada is simply too limited. In fact, economic realities require us to amortize the money invested in research over a very long performance period, and we cannot afford to do that only in Canada. Furthermore, for many years, the fees we received in foreign countries, particularly for children's theatre, were higher than in Canada.
Of course, we could also broach another aspect of this international activity, which is that it is part of the symbolic, diplomatic, cultural, commercial and civilized exchanges that countries carry on with each other. How many times have we heard Canadian embassy staff tell us, at the end of a performance, that we had done more to promote Canadian values in one evening than they had been able to do themselves in months and months of discussions and networking on the ground. They told us that people who had seen the performance had had a chance to really get involved and see what Canada is all about.
Across the globe, shows are abundant and there is no lack of talent out there. If someone invites a show to come from abroad, it is because it stands out, it is special. The Canadian government should be very proud to see just how many of its artists and creators are performing on foreign stages. Unfortunately, instead of that, the elimination of the PromArt Program means the end of touring abroad for Canadian productions. It is important to realize that federal government assistance to support the export of cultural products was primarily available through the PromArt Program. Its budget was $4.7 million.
For its part, the Trade Routes Program was aimed at funding the marketing and promotion of artistic productions, but the only direct funding available for performances, cultural events, exhibitions and fairs, including book fairs, was through the PromArt Program. Indeed, the bulk of that funding supported such major Canadian institutions as the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the National Ballet, the Canadian Stage Company, the Grands Ballets Canadiens or the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. More than half of its budget went to large companies, and the rest to small companies such as ours, some even smaller than our own.
I would like to speak briefly about what a tour involves. Of course, no one tour is the same as the next. Sometimes we give several performances in several different cities, and at other times, as occurs in Canada, as a matter of fact, it will be a foreign show that is presented once or twice at a festival. It is important to understand that the assistance provided through PromArt was only a small portion of the complex financial funding package required to export our product.
I have prepared some statistics with respect to our company. I would like to give you an idea of what a typical tour involves. For the two or three tours we would mount on a yearly basis, we received $40,000 through PromArt. For example, on our last tour, we gave 13 performances in 27 days, in five cities across France. The total cost of the tour was $145,000. We received $13,600 in funding through PromArt, which amounts to 9.3 per cent of the total cost. Foreign distributors paid the performance fees, the cost of accommodation, per diems for team members, and shared cost of local transportation.
Already the show cost them more than a local one. For all intents and purposes, the federal funding covered only the expenses related to the international travel of the people involved and their sets. For that tour, we are talking about $30,000, or 20 per cent of the cost. In fact, one could almost say that it was an indirect subsidy to Canadian carriers.
We have calculated that, since 1991, for every dollar provided by PromArt to Les Deux Mondes, we have leveraged an amount of money that is six times higher—in other words, $5.72—in foreign currency. Of course, part of that money is spent in the countries where we perform, but a significant part of it is also spent here in Canada. In actual fact, we are raising money in foreign currency that is then injected into the Canadian economy. Performance fees and copyright represent between 30 and 40 per cent of our costs. In strictly financial terms, we can say that art grants do not cost Canadian taxpayers a single dime. Their elimination is an economic absurdity.
When the government announced the program would be cut in 2005, there was a strong pushback from the cultural community, and the government decided to conduct a study, entitled “Evaluation of the Arts Promotion Program of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada”. That report was released in January of 2006. It did not conclude that administration fees were exorbitant, certainly not in the case of PromArt. On the contrary, it stated that the program had generally attained its original objectives, even though its contribution had been limited by the availability of resources and that its elimination three years later would therefore be absolutely incomprehensible.
It took years of work for companies and artists in every province of Canada to develop networks and partnerships with these countries, and all of that is in jeopardy with the elimination of PromArt. Of course, it is our hope that the federal government will provide an immediate injection of additional funding to the Canada Council for the Arts—indeed, there is no one left to manage the PromArt Program, since the officials in charge of it have been fired—so that it can pick up the slack and save the co-productions and tours that are now under discussion. The work of organizing an international tour is something that has to begin a long time in advance. Our projects are now in jeopardy as a result of this program being cancelled. For companies like Les Deux Mondes and many others, this most certainly means cutting back our touring activities and the ensuing spiral in terms of a significant drop in our independent income, and our ability to hire artists, technicians, support staff and pay residuals, as well as a weakening of whole areas of artistic activity that depend on touring, such as theatre for young audiences and dance.
Thank you.