Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 17th, 2011

[Brian Levine]

You have to understand that El Sistema Toronto rolled out for the first time about four-and-a-half or five weeks ago. It's brand new. It's a pilot project.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Fair enough. We'll move on then. Understood.

When I listened to Mr. Thorsell's excellent idea, I thought we could all go home. We have the plan right here. We don't have to spend any more time. We don't have to get a defibrillator for the heart palpitations this creates—or maybe we'll have to get more.

When I listen to what you're talking about, one of the groups you haven't mentioned--and maybe you would, if you'd had more time--was the mixing of social classes, which Ms. Healey referred to. That's an essential issue going forward for Canada. We see that in the “occupy” protests sweeping not just Canada but North America.

This is an essential part of the mixing. You referenced it when you talked about the kids from Jane and Finch. We know this is a huge problem in our city and across the country. We have difficulty in cities in getting people to mix, right? El Sistema creates that arena for mixing. Not only does it create an arena for mixing, it also creates a legacy that's not just about arts and culture. It's also about public safety. It's about education. It's about nurturing children. It's about keeping families together. It's about saving the federal government a lot of money when they're thinking about building prisons.

Do you think that this kind of idea could have a place in Canada 150?

[William Thorsell]

You mean the El Sistema thing?

It's another one of those things that sound like they would qualify really well under this rigorous filter. The growth of these kinds of programs would qualify really well.

There was an earlier question on how this is done. In 1967 we had a centennial commission, so what you probably need is some kind of Canada 150 commission or something like that. If it had a mandate that was rigorous, it would not only receive ideas for mixing up and moving around, but it could provoke ideas, particularly when it comes to social class mixing, which I think is a great opportunity here. Sometimes people maybe haven't quite figured out how to do that, but with that kind of commission, without their programming, they could provoke and inspire things and say, “Hey, here's somebody who has come up with this, and other people might want to do this as well” to get out there and market this idea of mixing up and moving around. It would be a little bit of stimulus—not programming.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

You mentioned the need to focus, and I agree. I think we can get sidetracked. We really do need to settle on a legacy, to settle on an idea of what this means and to whom it speaks. Well, it speaks to us. Who are we? Know thyself, right?

Getting back to this wonderful little program that exploded in Venezuela, a country much smaller than our own and with fewer resources, we're looking for a place to hang this, a structure to hang this Canada 150 on. Children, mixing ethnicities, regions, classes, music.... One of the problems with classical music, as we know, is that it's often the place for privileged people. That's just what it is. That's just how things have gone.

I was able to travel the country and mix and mash up because I played music. I was able to go right across this country, say 25 times. It was an amazing opportunity. I think we need to strive for that kind of a mixing. We have the programs. The federal government has programs; provincial governments have those kinds of mixing....

Music is such a fantastic way of bridging these gaps, and I would just encourage this committee, with the input from all of you here, to really drill down on this issue of a model like El Sistema.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Thank you, Mr. Cash.

Mr. Jim Hillyer.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Thorsell, in your paper you talked about Expo 67 being this big deal that everyone got excited about and that we still talk about and carry within our memories. You said it didn't have much of a lasting impact on the country, that it carried forward in our memories rather than in our lives, because shortly after Expo 67 and the centennial celebrations, you listed some pretty non-unifying things in the country, like the FLQ crisis and western alienation.

Could you comment on that a little bit? Is it just a fact of life that we may put too much expectation on this event to create some lasting legacy of unity? Should it just be a celebration? Was that a failure of the celebration for the centennial that we can learn from and make it work this time?

[William Thorsell]

That's a good question.

I think we can be overly portentous about these things. As I said in that paper, there's nothing wrong with having a great party just to have a party, even if it doesn't have any consequences. Of course, Expo and the centennial did have consequences in terms of a lot of good infrastructure. There are concert halls, libraries, art centres, bridges, and sidewalks all over the country that have Expo or the centennial on them.

I suppose, as I said, things might have been worse without Expo, because things got bad very quickly after Expo. It had nothing to with the centennial. Pierre Berton called 1967 Canada's last good year until about the 1990s, or sometime. We just ran into one problem after another thereafter. Perhaps there were global reasons for that and historical reasons for that. That's why, having been at Expo and having had a great time at the age of 21 in Montreal, when I was thinking about this idea of 2017, I wondered whether there's another way to come at it, where the odds of having a more constructive, lasting consequence would be higher than just having another world's fair, or building another building or having some parties.

If you're thinking about where the country is today and where it is going, there's a saying that if you don't change direction you're likely to end up where you're headed. On multiculturalism, I think we're headed in the right direction, so I don't think we have to change direction. As I put it in the paper, if that's true, gas up, hold onto the wheel and make sure you don't go into the ditch, because the challenges of multiculturalism are thicker now.

There are no guarantees, but I really like Brian's idea of a legacy of consciousness or legacy of relationships and building character. These are incredibly important things to do for a country. I really admire this meeting of the committee because most countries don't even have the capacity to think in these terms about themselves going forward. They're thinking about much more basic things, because they're not as wealthy as we are—or perhaps because they don't have our past. It's a marvel to be able, as a country, to think about a 150th birthday as a year of character building instead of “stuff building”, of relationship building instead of trophy building. It's a marvel to be able to talk about it like this.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Dr. Healey, I understand and actually share your concern about revisionist history. We say, let's tell our stories but let's not change them.

I don't know enough about the voyageur pageant to know what it really was. You talked about how it was a bunch of white Anglo-Saxon protestants who were doing it, when in fact it was Métis, first nations, and French who did it in the real world. Was that a case of rewriting history or was it just the fact of the matter that it was mostly the white Anglo-Saxon protestants who were participating in it? Then it was a failure of not including people in the party, more than revisionist history.

When we celebrate the Christmas pageant, we know that Joseph and Mary weren't really little kids and we know that the three wise men weren't there at the birth but showed up two years later, but that's not really the point.

We would be upset if some Chinese, some Blackfoot Indians, and some Punjabi participated in the pageant of the War of 1812, even though they weren't really there.

I guess my question is this: how do make sure we're not revising history without being too hung up on stuff like that?

[Dr. Robynne Rogers Healey]

Let me say that the story we choose to tell says a lot about who we are. That particular pageant offered a very specific nationalist narrative of nation building that wasn't reflective of what actually happened. I don't think that there's a problem at all if individuals want to engage in re-enactments for children of all ethnic backgrounds whose ancestors may or may not have been there to be a part of it. That's just participating in the story; that's not my point. My point is that the people whose ancestors were part of the voyager experience do exist in Canada and their participation was not sought. That's my point.

It's not that those who may be newcomers to Canada cannot participate in the story of Canada's past, but the fact that the story of Canada's past was changed in order to offer up a grand narrative. So when you have tourists coming and viewing this and this is the story you choose to tell, it's like getting your history from film and saying, I saw that in the movie theatre, therefore it must be true. We do a lot of analysis of that.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Thank you, Dr. Healey.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am aware that I do not have much time. Anyway, my colleague Mr. Cash has already asked my first question. It was about social achievements which I think are very important. We have an opportunity to advance our Canadian social agenda, and I think we must do it on Canada's 150th anniversary.

I will therefore focus on museums. It is true that both small and large museums need help to survive. You mentioned volunteers. I for one have worked in museums for about 20 years. It is true that volunteers are very important but they do not have the same responsibilities as employees. For example, as a gallery attendant—I have a master degree—I could notice a difference in people's reactions when they tour a museum with a professional guide as opposed to a volunteer. You cannot ask volunteers to do the same things as permanent employees.

How can we help museums, both small and large, in the context of Canada 150?

My question is to Dr. Rogers Healy, and also to Mr. Thorsell who has experience with large institutions like the Royal Ontario Museum. By the way, I just got a message from my husband who asked me to say hello.

Dr. Rogers Healy, what can we do in general to help museums?

[Dr. Robynne Rogers Healey]

I do think that funding is an issue. I think though that funding for local museums needs to come from a number of different levels, from the municipal level to provincial levels. As a board members of a very small museum, I agree with you that we can ask and expect far more of staff members than volunteers.

But I think that in terms of funding, we make a priority those things that we to be a priority. If we believe that telling local stories is an important part of the national story, then we will make that a priority.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

This was not exactly my question.

How can we help museums survive in order to tell these stories?

[Dr. Robynne Rogers Healey]

Survival is, for some of them, critical. Some museums operate on such a shoestring budget that there is very little leeway.

I guess I would say that is going to have to come. There is going to have to be some commitment to funding some staff for museums. Other than that, there has to be the will. There must be the political will to do that.

Without that, the history will disappear.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Thorsell, what are your thoughts about this?

[William Thorsell]

Thank you.

I'm a great fan of the smaller museums. I am a member of them in my own province. They tell stories that are intimate and personal in a way that the big ROMs don't. They are more artistically oriented, in large part.

I don't think we have what is known as a national museum strategy. There was some talk some years ago about the national museum strategy from the federal point of view. I don't think there is one. We have national museums, but we don't have a national museum strategy looking at the whole sector across all jurisdictions and sizes. So getting a national museum strategy is probably a good piece of homework to work on.

On the issue of how that would that fit into Canada 150, I use the example of a school bus of kids from Jane Finch coming down to the ROM, kids who had never been to the museum and had never been downtown. The only way they got there was through philanthropy, because we have to charge the kids for the school visits. We now have a whole program there where we go out to our philanthropic boards and ask them to fund school buses to bring in kids from the whole GTA, from economically disadvantaged areas, and get them into the museum. We ask them to try to get 50,000 students who don't have to pay to get here. They'll pay for the bus; they'll pay for all of that stuff and get them in and out. So that's mixing up and moving around, isn't it?

They're coming into a world they haven't been before, they're coming downtown maybe for the second time or the first or the third time. Programs like that would fit in with Canada 150. Maybe you're not going to support museums for Canada 150, that they are just one of a number of worthy causes; but if the museums come to you and say they've got the message and that their approach is to get all of these people who have never been to their museums, from the areas where people never visit museums, and they will visit as a result and somehow reciprocate, they might qualify for something like this.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Your national museum strategy is very interesting.

Do you have any special ideas or suggestions?

[William Thorsell]

First of all, I noted with amazement yesterday that the federal government gave $122 million to help fund the new Royal Alberta Museum. It's astonishing. I heard about it on the plane coming down, because the guy sitting beside me was coming here with the Premier of Alberta, who is meeting with the Prime Minister today, and said they had made an announcement that afternoon of more than $100 million in support of a provincial museum. It's amazing and very good that it happened.

In terms of a national museum strategy, there is a great diversity of institutions. Some are provincial, some are local, some are NGOs, etc., and some have nothing to do with government. I think the emphasis of a national museum strategy should not necessarily be on the biggest ones but those on the next levels down. Places like the ROM received valuable support for our expansion from the Government of Canada. It was a breakthrough again, as the federal government normally doesn't deal with a provincial museum.

Getting over some of those jurisdictional attitudes, as you did yesterday, is a very good thing to do. I think it should be focused somewhat on the smaller museums that have intimacy and that have a relatively greater need. That's probably where you might show some bias.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Thank you, Mr. Thorsell.

Thank you, Ms. Boutin-Sweet.

Ms. Wai Young.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you so much, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I've certainly learned a lot. I'm not a member of the standing committee, but am just filling in for somebody. I deeply appreciate the wealth of ideas and information I received today.

Having said that, I am a sociologist and I've lived in Vancouver, Ms. Healey, for over 45 years. I've seen a great change in that city and across Canada, as one of my key things I do in going across Canada and seeing different communities has been visiting all of these little local museums, because it's a passion of my husband's. My children have been everywhere, including all over the world, experiencing UNESCO world sites, etc.

I really get this mix-up and move around thing, but I have some questions and have very limited time. So I'm going to be very specific, if you don't mind.

We have recently come through, I think, one of the most successful Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I think your notion of a strategic heartbeat is a really impressive concept. I wanted to explore that a little bit, because I believe that Vancouver and the Olympics were so successful because we had that. Everybody knows about this own the podium concept. We as a country set a goal. We included all communities in that goal via the torch relay, and then we joined together to achieve the single goal. Across the country we were inspired as Canadians. It wasn't just about winning medals; it was about our pride as a nation.

Having said that, I also believe that we can leverage this 150-year opportunity as an investment in a lasting legacy, whether via the memory of travels across Canada, as we've already discussed, or building a substantive program that our children and grandchildren can benefit from in the years to come.

My specific questions are to Ms. Healey. How can we dramatically correct our history, which I know as a Chinese Canadian is not accurate because the Chinese have been here for over a hundred years? That is not reflected in any of our history books and not taught in any of our schools. Perhaps I can pause on that for a minute before you answer.

Then I'd like to ask this. There seems to be a spectrum here of discussion around how we can correct our past and our history, but also around visioning for the future. How do we go forward, as I think I agree with you, as one of the symbolic nations in the world, as a global, multicultural, successful nation despite some issues in communities? I think that would be a successful statement to the world and a celebration of our global multiculturalism. We're not quite there yet; we need to do some work, absolutely.

Thirdly, how do we do this mix-up and move around thing--I guess that's an operational term at this point, or a concept--and still capture a legacy beyond that? How does one convert that in-the-moment experience? Throwing a great party is a great idea, but do we also want to have lasting icons and lasting legacies from that experience?

I'm going to give you a couple of things.

I don't know if Ms. Healey is aware of this, but in the City of Langley, B.C., community members are actually planning, for the Guinness Book of World Records, to hold the largest community gathering ever to create a Canadian flag of people. They need 22,000 people in a football field in Langley to put up placards--we've all seen this done--to do a Canadian flag. This will happen in the spring of next year. These events are already happening in people's minds and in communities.

I know a lot of Chinese seniors in Vancouver. A couple of years ago, VIA Rail had a discount, charging only $99 per senior to go across Canada. They could stop anywhere, get on anywhere, and experience Canada. I knew of so many Chinese seniors who had never seen Canada, but that's what they did. They went across Canada and were so excited. There were groups of them and tours of them. It was the most amazing thing. Is that the kind of thing you envision?

I know that's a lot to ask, but I only have a few minutes. Please, Ms. Healey, perhaps you can respond to some of the past and the future things and jump in as you want.

[Dr. Robynne Rogers Healey]

I'll try to be very brief so that we can move to the other speakers.

As for how we can correct our history, I think the history has been corrected. That's what historians have been doing. The problem isn't that we don't know our history, but that we don't teach our history in our schools in the way we should.

I think that the multiculturalism narrative is an example of this. The multiculturalism narrative in education has been so successful that I've had students come into my classrooms at the university level and say, “I would like to write my paper on Chinatowns as an expression of our wonderful multicultural heritage”. My response to them is, “Are you aware that Chinatowns exist because of the separation of Chinese Canadians from the rest?” So that's what I'm talking about. There's a disconnect, it seems to me, from the history that's taught in the grade schools and the history that students get as they go into post-secondary education.

That would be my comment on that.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Great.

[William Thorsell]

I would like to say that your reference to the Vancouver Olympics was excellent, because that was another example of a clear strategic vision with a brand, a personality, and a program that was then developed to make sure that we all shared in a certain circle of understanding and experience.

It's very hard to say no to things, and it's very easy to see things dissipate. Vancouver was an example of a strategic vision closely held by the leadership there and implemented so that everything fed into the same sense of participation. That ran across the country with all of the different groups, symbolizing that very effectively in the way that first nations participated and so forth.

It just reiterates my sense, coming out of my own work experience, that on something like this, you need to decide what you want to do and what effect you want to have and to focus on that. Once you do that, it makes it really easy for a lot of other people to say, “I get it”. Then it liberates all sorts of participation and creativity. If you don't do that, you will just have a wish-wash and it will go away, and you won't get anything for your buck, if you will.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

I wish to thank all those present this morning, and particularly Ms. Farrugia and Mr. Levine from the Glen Gould Foundation, as well as Dr. Rogers Healy and Mr. Thorsell. With your presentation entitled "Mix-up and Move Around: Canada's social network in person", you gave us a very good example of the unifying theme of the Canada 150 celebrations.

Thank you very much. We hope to see you soon.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Chair, I had submitted a notice of motion, which I'd like to present before we adjourn.