Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
My name is Colette Brouillé. I am the Executive Director of RIDEAU, the largest network of French-speaking presenters of artistic events in Canada. I would like to thank the committee for agreeing to hear the views of an institution from the performing arts sector.
After 30 years of existence, our organization has 150 members based in over 200 sites across Quebec, and three member networks in French-speaking Canada as a whole. In 2007, box office revenues totalled $87 million in Quebec alone.
RIDEAU also operates at the international level. A leader in the presentation of the performing arts, it is one of the founding member organizations of the AREA network, which brings together partners from Canada, France, Belgium and Switzerland.
Every year, RIDEAU organizes the Bourse RIDEAU, the largest annual gathering of Francophone professionals from the performing arts. Our 22nd edition, which has just taken place, attained a new attendance record, with 1,400 participants. Among these, some 50 artistic companies showed their works to presenters from here and abroad, and 170 booking agents set up stalls at the venue. Over a three-day period, these stalls were visited by festival or theatre presenters intent on building their programs.
In concrete terms, the Bourse RIDEAU is a market place for discussing business, signing contracts and making deals. It is a forum for commercial transactions, a meeting point for supply and demand, and an extraordinary showcase that brings together established and emerging artists, from every discipline, which has huge economic spinoffs for Canadian companies at various stages of their development.
Ten per cent of the artistic programming presented through the Bourse RIDEAU is made up of foreign content: productions which, for the most part, tour Quebec or Canada within two years of their presentation at the Bourse. This creates an opening onto the world stage for all of the audiences served by RIDEAU, as well as its members across Canada. The countries of origin of artists who perform at the Bourse RIDEAU, and then on tour, are responsible for international transportation costs, while we defray the domestic transportation costs and daily expenses during their stay.
A government's support for its exports is a guarantee of quality for the importing country. Without this support, business dealings become much more difficult. The cultural industry should not be exempt from these principles. Yet budget cuts imposed by the government, particularly to the PromArt and Trade Routes programs, effectively end this reciprocity, thereby destroying years of work and investments and adversely affecting our international image.
It is in this spirit of reciprocity that the Bourse RIDEAU hosts a delegation of foreign presenters. At the last edition, presenters from Belgium, France, Switzerland and Mexico came to witness, for themselves, the vitality of our artistic productions and, more concretely, to sign performance contracts with Canadian artistic companies. That is just one of many examples I could choose.
You will have heard some pretty big figures mentioned at your recent meetings. Ours are smaller, but just as convincing. At the 2008 Bourse RIDEAU, the theatre company Le Clou presented its latest work, entitled Isberg. Allow me to give you some details regarding the economic spinoffs of their participation in a single tour across France: 16 performances, which represent 33 per cent of the 2008-2009 season for that show; five designers and the playwright will receive residuals; a 33 per cent increase in performance fees and residuals for the actors; the production will be presented at seven different venues, including one of the most important festivals for young audiences, Mélimôme, which is an ideal showcase where other presenters can see their performances and include them in their own programming; independent revenues of some $80,000, which represent 13 per cent of the company's independent revenues for the 2008-2009 season; and, finally, meetings that have already been scheduled with presenters, in order to develop co-production agreements for the company's next production.
That is just one example, compared to the 50 or so productions presented annually and 170 booking agents and artistic companies that attend the event. These spinoffs, it is safe to assume, can be multiplied accordingly.
Another remarkable initiative is that 10 foreign presenters invited to the Bourse RIDEAU got together and, in association with SODEC, created a $40,000 prize for a singer, called the Prix des diffuseurs internationaux. The winner of the prize in 2009, singer-songwriter Caracol, will thus be able to take her latest show on a European tour involving no less than 10 performances in French-speaking Europe. In 2008, Andrea Lindsay, originally from Ontario, was the prize winner. This has enabled her to give 12 performances at 11 different venues in France, Belgium and Switzerland.
In 2009, support received by RIDEAU from the Trade Routes program totalled $16,000. We found out in November, three months away from the event, that PromArt was withdrawing our financial support. The figures that have just been mentioned clearly demonstrate what an important economic lever these investments were.
How could anyone possibly have shown this kind of support to be ineffective, such that the program would be cancelled? If the program had flaws—flaws that we would like to see properly explained—it is important that they be analyzed alongside members of the artistic community, and that solutions be found quickly, based on a vision that goes beyond the effect of a single program.
For RIDEAU, it is essential that the networks which present artistic events, which affect the daily lives of people throughout Canada, have access to funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, in order to maintain and develop their international relationships. Presenters of multidisciplinary productions are not part of the Canada Council's clientele.
Furthermore, we would be remiss in not mentioning the elimination in the medium term—in our view, unjustified—of the Skills Development program. According to studies, this program was effective, particularly in Quebec. With the challenges facing the new generation of presenters, it is critical that we continue to develop and adapt business models in our sector and to fully support these initiatives.
In closing, I would like to point out that RIDEAU believes in cultural diplomacy—the process of forging ties with foreign countries with a view to increasing their understanding of the ideas and ideals of our government, of its institutions and the culture it represents. We believe that this diplomacy operates primarily through international programs focused on dissemination and education, as well as cultural exchanges.
Today, we are here to talk about the cancellation of inexpensive government programs, although we are still waiting to see evidence of their ineffectiveness. To say that these programs are a “waste” of public money, in order to justify their cancellation, reflects a deplorable lack of understanding of the real issues and of the extraordinary role played by our artists and cultural workers, who have done so much to enhance Canada's image at large. Whether by accident or as a consequence, is this image now not being tarnished?
Thank you for your kind attention.