Canadian Heritage Committee on March 4th, 2009

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Order.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I have the floor; you can check with the clerk. No one has a right to interrupt me, except for a point of order—a real one.

I will be quick. The racist comments that your colleague, Mr. Poilievre, attributed to that newspaper were taken almost word for word from the platform of the ADQ, led by Mario Dumont. It is quite true that Mr. Bourgeois and Mr. Falardeau were not very clever about this. The Bloc Québécois completely dissociates itself from their comments. However, I am tempted to say, in jest, that the Conservative Party may, in that case, want to consider dissociating itself from the National Post, which published an editorial last Tuesday that verged dangerously on Quebec bashing.

That is what I wanted to say, Mr. Chairman.

Of course, the Bloc Québécois has no choice but to vote against as ridiculous a motion as this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Do you want me to call the motion?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

No. I'd like to speak to what was just said.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

If you'd like to speak to that, please be very short, if you can.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I will.

Madame Lavallée, once again you've misrepresented what was said. To begin with, the financing of Le Québécois is unquestionable. If you flip through it, you'll find all kinds of ads placed by both members of your party and members of the PQ.

There are all sorts of things written in that paper that are offensive. They're offensive to Quebeckers and offensive to Canadians. I think it's shameful that, with the types of incitement going on around this event--a commemoration of Canada's history--the Bloc did nothing. It did nothing to distance itself from it and nothing to condemn it.

It appears that the coalition is alive and well: you are going to specifically support this type of action that occurred in Quebec rather than come out and condemn it and see that the funds from the Parliament of Canada cannot support this in the future.

Taxpayers' money should not be used to finance this type of garbage. That's the point of this motion. If you all want to gang up and vote against it, and see that parliamentary funds can be used to support that kind of garbage, go ahead. Conservative members will be voting in favour of the motion.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Mr. Rodriguez.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

It's this type of excessive language that I condemn, Mr. Chairman, just as I condemn the fact that the Bloc Québécois politicized the whole debate over the re-enactment of Battle of the Plains of Abraham. I condemn the fact that they wanted to exploit that. I don't like this type of excessive language or extremism on the part of Conservative members of this committee. It's not that I'm defending the Bloc Québécois nor is it my job to do so—but MPs did distance themselves from those comments and have been advertising the fact ever since. I strongly condemn the extremely harsh comments made by some of the more extremist elements, such as Mr. Falardeau, Mr. Bourgeois and others as well.

However, I don't understand why the Conservatives don't get it. With all due respect, I invite them to ask one of their Quebec members of Parliament to sit on the Heritage Committee; perhaps he or she would understand what this is all about. I don't understand how they can engage in such excess. Mr. Chairman, we can't have people highjacking the work of the Canadian Heritage Committee. We have people here, artists who have had their funding cut, as well as theatre and dance companies. That is what we are here to discuss, so I would ask that people not highjack this committee's work by moving motions intended to have Mr. Juneau appear, for example, or other such futile motions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Mr. Pomerleau, and then Mr. Simms.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I am a little surprised because I was expecting that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Keep it very short, please.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

It could take quite a while.

Mr. Chairman, I did some research last night with my assistant, and I found at least 22 pages of hate propaganda published in Canadian newspapers. A good example is Diane Francis, who wrote in the Financial Post: they whine and complain, hurt our economy, plot and scheme and dream of creating an ethnocentric state, etc., etc., etc. In other words, they are worthy of contempt.

And, this is the same person who, at another time, was asking for Lucien Bouchard to be strung up. Now that is violence. Did the government then declare that it would not longer publish ads in the Financial Post? What is the meaning of this witch hunt? It has to stop.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Just for the record--I'm not even going to ask--I'm going to beg you to actually put this to a vote right now, because this is absolutely ridiculous. You guys want to battle this out here. It is an absolute charade. I could have stayed home and watched Jeopardy or something and been more productive. These people have come a long way. Don't put stuff in other people's ridings that's garbage. You guys do much of the same. Otherwise I'd like to talk to these people to find out how we can help them out in their cause. Please vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I want to talk to these people also.

Madame Lavallée, keep it very short.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a suggestion. We will be starting at about 3:50. I suggest that we hold two sessions of one hour each, which would have us end at 5:50 p.m.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I have no problem with that.

If we can keep quorum, we'll go to two one-hour stints.

(Motion negatived)

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Now we'll get back to business. This is meeting number 7 pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a strategic review of arts and culture program expenditures. For this session we'll start at 3:50 and we'll finish at 4:50.

Welcome again to our witnesses. From the Association of Cultural Industries of Newfoundland and Labrador, we have Amy House, president. From the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, we have Lucy White, executive director. From Les Deux Mondes theatre company, we have Pierre MacDuff, executive director. From Magazines Canada, we have Jim Everson, executive director, public affairs.

Welcome, everyone. We'll start off with five-minute statements, please, from each of you, starting with Ms. House, please.

[Amy House, President, Association of Cultural Industries of Newfoundland and Labrador]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

Thank you for inviting the Association of Cultural Industries to speak on behalf of the cultural community of Newfoundland and Labrador.

I am Amy House, the president of ACI. I am a member of the advocacy committee for PACT and artistic animateur for the Resource Centre for the Arts theatre company in St. John's.

The cancellation of the Trade Routes and PromArt programs announced last year left a significant gap in how Canadian cultural producers are able to export to foreign markets and tour their work to foreign audiences. Further, cultural agencies striving to bring foreign buyers and financial gatekeepers to Canada to view our products are also impacted.

These cuts create significant challenges for a broad range of artists and arts organizations, and they dampen the entire sector's ability to not only create and sustain financial opportunities in the new creative economy, but also to act as Canada's cultural ambassadors abroad.

In Canada, recognition of the cultural sector as an economic generator is new, yet it has made incredible contributions to the social and economic fabric of the nation for quite some time. In a report published in 2008, the Conference Board of Canada estimated that the real value-added output by culture sector industries totalled $46 billion in 2007, approximately 3.8% of total GDP.

The economic footprint of the culture sector is much larger when accounting for combined direct, indirect, and induced effects. The Conference Board calculates that this full contribution was valued at $84.6 billion, about 8% of the total GDP in 2007.

The culture sector in Newfoundland and Labrador contributes an estimated $400 million annually to the provincial economy. Being an island culture, Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans experience even more intensified challenges in export and touring. For every challenge an artist in the rest of Canada faces getting their work to the world, we experience the same to even reach the rest of the country. Transporting art, mounting interprovincial tours of bands and performance companies, shipping books or recordings, and shooting film on location all have costs that significantly increase as soon as airfare, freight, and lodging are taken into consideration.

Many of these costs are hidden or non-intuitive to non-creators. Take, for example, the cost to a visual artist of crating and shipping their work to either foreign or even domestic galleries. Support for these kinds of ever-increasing costs used to be applied for under the Trade Routes and PromArt programs. With this money gone and other avenues of funding not increased in the new budget, the burden is downloaded to artists and will result in less work reaching a national audience, or, in our case, even a domestic one.

Instead of investing in development of the arts and culture sector as part of the creative economy, the cuts mean a loss of economic activity, to single out the monetary aspect of the results only. Our provincial government has been forced to provide $250,000 in support to Newfoundland and Labrador artists and groups to account for these cuts to export programming.

You probably heard about the East Coast Music Awards this past weekend. In the past, the ECMA has tapped the PromArt and Trade Routes funding to bring foreign buyers to the east coast, where a networking and buying conference is set up annually to allow Canadian musicians, large and small, to sell their work to a hungry international market. With an investment of approximately $60,000 between the two export programs, the ECMA is able to bring in dozens of foreign buyers and generate many more thousands of dollars of investment and working hours for Newfoundland musicians, technical staff, promoters, retailers, etc.

The St. John's International Women's Film Festival has similarly brought in buyers under this plan. Both of these programs will end with the end of PromArt.

Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador has also used PromArt several times. A couple of years ago, TNL took an original production to Tasmania, where they not only developed important international contacts that have led to further business and sustainability through co-productions and cost-sharing with Tasmanian groups, but they have also directly impacted tourism in the province. The number of Tasmanians visiting Newfoundland and Labrador has doubled each year since.

Foreign ticket sales, provincial funding, and foreign investment constituted the bulk of the cost of this exchange, but the production would not have been able to go ahead without PromArt money to help offset costs.

The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador now has an exchange agreement with Tasmania. Without PromArt funding we will not be able to honour that agreement in the years to come.

Economic downturns in the arts and culture sector work much the same way as in other sectors, though the majority of primary businesses are individual cultural producers or small companies. Without funding to sustain and grow their practices, cultural producers and artists cannot feed the constellations of others--businesses, individuals, and organizations--that rely on their product to exist.

Musicians feed everything from management companies to recording studios, CD manufacturers, graphic artists, sound technicians, distribution companies, retail outlets, and performance venue owners. Authors have a stream of reliant others, including editors, publishers, designers, printers, distributors, and retail outlets. Furthermore, the interaction between the sectors cannot be underestimated. Film relies on the literary sector for stories, the music sector for sound, and the visual sector for design, etc.

A failure to recognize export as a basic need of doing business in a global culture is a failure to support the sector as a whole. If government believes the programs that were cut were inefficient, it has an obligation to either fix those programs or replace them with new options that are efficient. The money that made up these programs was essential to the process of doing business, and business cannot go on without it.

To wrap up, I'd just like to say, restore support for export, touring, and foreign networking for Canadian artists to levels at least commensurate with past budgets. Ensure that this money is administered through successful and transparent agencies, such as the Canada Council for the Arts, as suggested by so many other stakeholders.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much.

Ms. White, please.

[Lucy White, Executive Director, Professional Association of Canadian Theatres]

Thank you, and good afternoon.

PACT represents over 140 professional not-for-profit and for-profit theatre companies in English Canada. We are a member of the Performing Arts Alliance and a founder of the Canadian Arts Coalition.

I'm very pleased to be able to speak to you today about the contributions made by our members and the arts community as a whole to the high quality of life enjoyed by Canadian citizens, and about the critical role government policy and support play in ensuring access and opportunity for all Canadians. The current global crisis places Canadian arts organizations in a precarious position not of their making. Current federal government programs and recently announced funding increases go only part way to stabilizing the arts and culture sector. Cancellation of some programs threatens to topple other activities in this sector.

We thank the federal government for the recent increase of $30 million to the base budget of the Canada Council for the Arts and for an additional one-time funding increase to Cultural Spaces Canada. Equally important is the continuation of a national arts training contribution program. These economic measures are invaluable to the sector and send an important message to Canadians that there is federal government confidence in the arts and culture sector.

In contrast, the cancellation of PromArt at Foreign Affairs and Trade Routes at Canadian Heritage threaten to destabilize the performing arts in Canada and to close down, first, the development of international markets and, second, the existing market in international touring by artists and arts organizations. At present, the overall trade deficit in cultural services for Canada was $919 million in 2004. We cannot expect this deficit to become a surplus until Canadian artists have their creations exposed to the world stage.

A healthy and thriving performing arts sector requires ongoing complementary government support in five key interrelated areas: arts training, production, domestic access, and touring; international market development and touring; financial stability and organizational help; and cultural infrastructure. These five key areas represent the spectrum of a vast amount of arts activity currently taking place in Canada, and there is real and immediate potential for the destabilizing of a large number of performing arts companies when any one program area is significantly reduced or eliminated. Of course, the reverse is true as well. Increased activity and viability result from investments by the government in strategic departments and programs that support the arts. An increased investment in arts and culture will secure current and future prosperity for Canada. It will secure the sector's contribution of $25 billion in taxes for all levels of government and $46 billion input into the GDP--economic returns that cannot be generated for Canada by an arts and culture sector in recession. A thriving arts sector will contribute to Canada's success as a leader in a global society.

Today we are making five specific recommendations to this committee. First, increase the base budget of the Canada Council by $100 million per year. Second, re-invest a minimum of $12 million in international market development and touring for the arts and culture sector. Such funding is to be allocated to the Canada Council and other established agencies to ensure the maximum efficiency and impact of the investment. Third, continue the endowment incentives program past 2010. Fourth, the announcement needs to be made at the earliest opportunity to create a program of investments that will provide bridge funding to arts organizations over the short term in order to ensure that they remain viable in this period of economic recession. Fifth, renew the Cultural Spaces Canada program to provide a knowable level of base funding to encourage the capital campaigns on which arts and cultural facilities projects rely and to contribute to the local economies in which these capital projects will occur.

Previously, this committee has made bold and visionary recommendations such as doubling the budget of the Canada Council for the Arts. Today we call on the standing committee to recommend that the Government of Canada invest in the arts and culture in all economic stimulus measures in order to increase Canada's competitive advantage.

I thank the committee for your thoughtful consideration in the past and urge you to continue to show your support for the arts and culture sector.

Thank you for your time today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Now we'll hear from Mr. MacDuff, please.

[Pierre MacDuff]

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.