Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 1st, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage as we continue our study on Canada's 150th anniversary.

I'm pleased to have with us today Andrew Campbell from Parks Canada. He is the vice-president, external relations and visitor experience.

Welcome, Andrew.

As you know, committee, we are meeting for the first hour with Parks Canada on the Canada 150, and then for the second hour we're moving into the consideration of the supplementary estimates, when the Minister of Canadian Heritage will be appearing.

Mr. Campbell, you have the floor.

[Andrew Campbell, Vice-President, External Relations and Visitor Experience, Parks Canada Agency]

Thank you very much, Mr. Moore, and thank you to the group.

Good morning, everybody.

As the vice-president of external relations and visitor experience at Parks Canada, I really appreciate the opportunity this morning to be able to contribute to the preparations of Canada's 150th anniversary. Since it's the federal agency responsible for many of Canada’s most cherished natural and historic treasures, we've already been thinking of the sesquicentennial ourselves, and I have already been working very closely with the Department of Canadian Heritage on the planning for the road to 2017.

At Parks Canada, as many of you know, we're very committed to ensuring the protection and preservation of Canada's natural and cultural heritage through a network of 42 national parks, 167 national historic sites, and 4 national marine conservation areas. We believe that Parks Canada really sets the stage and invites Canadians and people from around the world to engage in personal moments of inspiring discovery of our treasured places in Canada.

As a bit of background, our mandate, just to remind everybody, is as follows: On behalf of the people of Canada, we protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada's natural and cultural heritage, and foster public understanding, appreciation and enjoyment in ways that ensure the ecological and commemorative integrity of these places for present and future generations.

Our vision, which we established about five years ago and are still working closely on, is as follows:Canada’s treasured natural and historic places will be a living legacy, connecting hearts and minds to a stronger, deeper understanding of the very essence of Canada.

We were fortunate in 2010 to be able to celebrate one national milestone: the 125th anniversary of the first national park in Canada, which was Banff. In fact, it was the third national park in the world.

Over the last year, we were able also to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Parks Canada, or, as it was first established, the Dominion Parks Branch, which in 1911 became the first national parks organization in the entire world. This began the tradition of world leadership in conservation of nationally significant natural and cultural places.

The celebration of this first-in-the-world anniversary presented Parks Canada with a real immediacy and opportunity to look for increased connection with Canadians. The concept of the national celebration of Parks Canada offered us a chance to use the multipliers that we had been working on and also to cost-effectively accelerate progress towards the achievement of our mandate and vision.

Although we did receive a fairly minor amount of confusion about why we would celebrate a 100th anniversary after a 125th anniversary, for the most part the increased attention and awareness that we gained during the 125th anniversary of the first national park actually was a great stepping stone for the celebrations in 2011 of the centennial of Parks Canada. Really, I think it holds a bit of a lesson for all of us as we look at the road to the sesquicentennial in looking at events leading up to that.

Obviously that road to 2017 approach being developed currently by the Government of Canada to mark significant anniversaries leading up to the 150th anniversary of Confederation promises to give similar benefits, as Canadians will become increasingly aware and informed of their heritage about significant events in their history that led to Canada becoming an independent country from coast to coast to coast.

As we look at Parks Canada's centennial strategy, we're able to share some of the factors of that success and hopefully lead to the success of the sesquicentennial. I think one of the first major elements in that success was coming up with very clear and articulate strategies and having very few of those.

In our case, they were: to leave a legacy of lasting improvements; to expand out the impact of the celebrations by engaging partners, whether they be in the media, amongst our stakeholders, in the private or the public sector, or of course in the federal family; and finally, to engage all Canadians, including also, obviously, our employees from across the country.

With our centennial year now entering its final phases, it's evident that the strategy has proved to be highly effective for us, as the amount of attention and the amount of connection to Canadians, through different independent surveying we have done, has proven to be. It would also appear that the strategies could be applicable to Canada's 150th.

The second area in which we had great success in learning was in trying to stream our activities. The first stream we had was signature events, large events that exemplified Parks Canada's programs and services to Canadians. They brought our messages directly to our priority audience of youth, new Canadians, and urban Canadians.

The second was to look at natural outreach and awareness activities through traditional and new media, with a focus on being able to have initiatives that went across multiple channels, whether they were traditional media, new media, or in-person media through stunts in areas where there were already large crowds.

Finally, we had enriched activities at our own places to attract and re-attract visitors, especially from those priority audiences that I've already discussed.

With these strategies and activities, we were able to achieve significant results with only a modest budget of $3 million reprofiled from within our existing resource base.

Really, we believe there were four keys to our success. The first was making good use of existing resources and activities by theming ongoing Parks Canada activities towards the centennial and increasing the relevance and impact. This included changing our youth hiring strategy over to the centennial and the first National Parks “Canada's Greatest Summer Job” strategy. We also highlighted different activities across the country. Our Fundy days took on a significant centennial theme, the Rideau Canal Festival this year had a significant centennial theme, and obviously there were some other elements across the country.

Second was partnering. For example, we partnered with new and traditional media, such as Rogers Communications, National Geographic, Canadian Geographic, GlassBOX Media, HLP productions, and others. We partnered with the tourism and entertainment sector, with players such as VIA Rail, the CN Tower, the Toronto Blue Jays, and Fairmont Hotels.

We partnered with non-governmental organizations, such as CPAWS, the Trans Canada Trail, and many others. Within the federal family, we partnered with groups such as the National Capital Commission, Canada Post, and the Royal Canadian Mint. Finally, we worked with major media, such as The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and CTV. As well, I think one of the keys there was working with Canadian artists as we were doing all of this: from Sam Roberts, to the Skydiggers, to 13 of Canada's greatest independent filmmakers.

The third area that I think leaves us with some ideas for the sesquicentennial is leaving a legacy by striving to develop activities and elements with lasting value. To give you a few examples, we developed an outdoor signage program where we could do interchangeable sign faces that we installed as part of the National Parks 125th program. That same set of posts and sign faces for the centennial can be flipped and will now be able to carry messages about the War of 1812 and the road to 2017. To give you some idea, around 22 million Canadians come to our places on an annual basis, putting quite a number of eyeballs in front of these important government messages.

There were another couple of areas. One was to look at bringing in a family-friendly guided experience. In the new Xplorers program and the Learn to Camp program, we brought in urban and new Canadians to learn to camp. That will now be repeated year after year. Another was the renewal of our mascot, Parka. I think that and the new campfire song with Sarah Harmer were two very successful elements. Parka really showed us the value of a mascot--now a recognizable face at Parks Canada.

Finally among the lessons learned, we learned to focus our centennial budget primarily on a small number of big events where people were already going. Thus, we achieved breakthrough levels of awareness and impact. We were able to manage workloads and costs and, by partnering with existing events and festivals, we avoided that direct competition of the federal government coming in and competing against other festivals.

As we plan our forthcoming participation in the commemorations of the War of 1812 and other events on the road to 2017, we at Parks Canada believe the success of our centennial celebrations offers important lessons to guide our future activities, as well as approaches that worked for us during this time. We also believe that Parks Canada can help because it is in a unique position to bring Canadians a better sense of their natural and cultural places, their identity, and being part of Canada.

As Canada plans for our 150th birthday take shape, Parks Canada will be doing our utmost to add to the benefits and to add our benefits to the experience. Our efforts and the expertise of our people will be working towards this momentous occasion.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Campbell.

Now we'll begin our rounds of questioning. They are seven-minutes rounds, beginning with Mr. Brown.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Campbell, for being here today. I, for one, am extremely pleased that you're here today. I happen to represent a riding that has probably the biggest concentration of multiple Parks Canada assets in the country. We have the St. Lawrence Islands National Park, of course, which is the first national park east of the Rockies, and was formed in 1904. As well, the Rideau Canal is the northern boundary of my riding. We also have Fort Wellington in Prescott, as well as the Old Stone Mill in Delta. Fort Henry is in Kingston, just outside of my riding. There are a lot of Parks Canada assets around my area, so I am happy that you're here today.

I'd like to add that yesterday I introduced a bill to change the name of the St. Lawrence Islands National Park to the Thousand Islands National Park. I'm going to take a moment to talk about this because I know that our other members are here. There are many reasons to do that, but the St. Lawrence Islands National Park really could be anywhere from Kingston to almost Newfoundland, from a Canadian standpoint, whereas it's in the Thousand Islands, so it should more appropriately be called that. I'm sure you're aware of that, and I'm happy that you're here today to talk about Canada 150 and how we can leverage Parks Canada's assets to help celebrate Canada 150 in 2017.

Back in March of 2010, a conference took place here in Ottawa to talk about Canada 150. In the final report, there's a recommendation to revitalize urban green spaces and dedicate new national parks. I would just like to know what you think about that.

[Andrew Campbell]

I participated in that conference, and I believe that would be a great step forward. When we start to look at commitments in the last Speech from the Throne, for instance, on creating the Rouge national urban park--or near urban--I think that will be a great direction for part of the celebration. But to continue to develop and have new national parks I think would be a wonderful element for the 150th.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Has Parks Canada been asked in the past to play a part in national commemoration initiatives such as Canada 150? Maybe you can tell us a little about what may have happened in 1967 with the centennial.

[Andrew Campbell]

In 1967 there was quite a large push, in fact, in National Parks and National Historic Sites. In fact, it was a period of looking at the systems plans in both of those areas.

From a national historic sites perspective, it really pushed off the idea of system planning, looking at the areas of history in Canada, quantifying them and categorizing them, and then asking, “Where do we want to have commemorations for different elements of Canada's past?” It really set the chart forward for Parks Canada in that element. Then, in National Parks, there was quite a push at that time to put together the system plan of national parks, whereby the 39 ecological zones of Canada were in fact put together. That really started the movement towards the creation of new national parks and new ecological zones.

I'm proud to say that we now have a protected area space in Canada that is as large as the total land surface of Germany. It should be an element of pride for all Canadians. That was one way in which we have done past commemorations.

Obviously I've had a big role in elements such as the upcoming War of 1812. Parks Canada will have a fairly significant role; using a hockey analogy, if our centre is Canadian Heritage, we will be on the right wing. What we offer are great locations, great elements of history, and great interpretation, and we've used that for many celebrations throughout the years.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

As many members know, I never miss an opportunity to promote...well, it's not something that we should be promoting, but it is a fact that only three out of ten provinces in Canada require a history course for students to graduate from high school, which I think is a real tragedy. Maybe you can tell us a little about how you see us leveraging the assets of Parks Canada to really drive home an opportunity in 2017 to celebrate Canada's history and use some of Parks Canada's assets. Maybe you can tell us about how you might see some of those things happening.

[Andrew Campbell]

We've really been focusing on a connection with youth. As much as it's in the popular media today to talk about the nature deficit, we believe that we also have an equally disturbing history deficit among our youth in Canada, and perhaps among all Canadians.

One thing we have been doing is very much from a youth focus, and that is to look at things like the My Parks Pass program, which we launched for the anniversary of Canada's first national park. That program allows all grade 8 and grade 9 students in the country to get into our places for free.

We've teamed that up with the Xplorer program, which I talked about, so that when kids and that age group of youths do come to our places, we have activities specifically defined for them. It's an important age, we believe, and we've done some research around it. When you start to look at youths of 13 and 14, you actually see that when they're 13 in Canada it's the last time that they may in fact have any social studies as a mandatory program. So we look at that as an important point, with the youth then being able to pass this on to their parents.

Also, within the new citizenship, we've been working with Citizenship and Immigration Canada to include more elements of history. In fact, one of the great elements that we've been able to do is to move a lot of citizenship ceremonies out of courthouses and into national historic sites. There are citizenship ceremonies now going on all across the country at national historic sites, whereby new Canadians are connecting with our Canadian history up close and personal in an immersive experience as they're getting their citizenship.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Mr. Nantel.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Good morning. Thank you for being here with us this morning.

I think that Parks Canada will certainly have a major role to play in Canada's 150th anniversary. Certain topics, certain moments in Canada's history inspire all of us and are of particular significance.

I remember that my colleague Mr. Calandra told me that one day he learned some details about the St. Lawrence Seaway on a Web archives site—I think that it was either Radio-Canada or the NFB. The Canada Lands Company is eventually going to cede some land around Pointe-de-Longueuil, under the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, which is itself directly at the entrance of the St. Lawrence Seaway. That is where ships leave the river and enter the seaway.

You were saying earlier that you took part in the conference on the 150th anniversary. It was suggested that new historical sites be created. We have heard here many, many times—and God knows there has been a great deal of talk about the 150th anniversary since we began our hearings—of the importance of involving people, of having this start from the grassroots.

What type of consultations do you intend to hold with the population? I know that in connection with the 150th anniversary of Canada, a lot of people in Longueuil would like to see a commemorative park to mark the importance of the seaway. At that spot, the banks of the river are easily accessible by subway, among other means. However, access to the Seaway Park is much more restricted. It is in Saint-Lambert close to the locks, and to visit it you really have to want to.

Do you think that this project might see the light of day? How should we consult the population in that regard?

[Andrew Campbell]

I forgot to mention that point, but consulting Canadians is indeed very important when it comes to creating new parks or new historical sites. Parks Canada considers it crucial to communicate with urban populations. However it is difficult to do so because there is a lot of noise from the various media.

We increasingly use social media to communicate with Canadians and consult them. As for the example you gave, it would be very important to use the various types of consultations we have used in the past. That is certainly a direction Parks Canada has already taken.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Are there already infrastructures in place, Internet systems that make it possible to consult the public? I'm thinking here of some means to allow people to express their desire to see this type of park, for instance; or, in the case of the people of Longueuil, some means to ask that the strip of land that will be disposed of by the Canada Lands Company, and may be resold, be attributed to Parks Canada to be turned into a pedestrian walkway near the St. Lawrence River. What must people do to express those wishes in a concrete manner?

[Andrew Campbell]

All Canadians may request that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada confer the status of national historic site upon a given place.

In addition to the 150th anniversary, there is another very important event in the history of Parks Canada; I am referring here to the 100th anniversary of the national historic sites that marked the history of Canada. This will take place in 2016. It could be an opportunity to review the future of that program and add other sites to the list of historic sites.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

At our last meeting, we had witnesses from the Trans Canada Trail. This project is certainly going to become one of the best commemorative symbols of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary. However, one has to be realistic and note that these efforts began 20 years ago and it will have taken 25 years for the trail to be completed.

As for the creation of historical sites, or sites that seem to be good potential parks to mark the 150th anniversary of Canada, that is certainly a long process. If we are aiming for the summer of 2017, by which date should the decision be taken? I imagine that if something has to be built, that can take quite a long time, but if all that needs to be done is to put up a few explanatory plaques and lay some paving stones, it would not take as long.

[Andrew Campbell]

It's quite difficult to say. If the place in question is already a historical site it should normally be the object of a certain protection. In other cases it is longer because we have to wait for the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada to confer the status of historical site on the site in question, it must be protected, and in certain cases, an interpretation program has to be put into place.

Partnerships are an increasingly interesting formula. The people from the Trans Canada Trail, for instance, are among our important partners. Together we prepare the interpretation for various trails. On the federal side, the same thing goes for the National Capital Commission. In the case of several sites in Canada, the design and interpretation are prepared jointly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Nantel.

Mr. Simms.

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

Mr. Campbell, my riding has in it the beautiful park of Terra Nova National Park. Could you please pass along to the senior executives nationally that we really desperately need a meeting about our highways and also about the snowmobile trail and an access route for snowmobiles?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Okay.

Is there anyone else?

Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today. It's great to hear about more people going to our national parks.

I wanted to ask not just about the Learn to Camp program, but about any other ideas you have. For the first time in history we're going to have a new national park very close to Toronto, an urban area. It's very exciting for me because it means that everybody in the GTA, including people in my riding of Oakville, can get in their car or get on a bus on a weekend and within less than an hour be in a national park, as long as there's no accident on the QEW or 401.

What is the status of that? Also, what might you be doing, leading up to 2017, to bring to a national park those people who may have never been to one before? I'm thinking of young people and new Canadians as well.

[Andrew Campbell]

Fortunately, just last month Minister Kent was in Toronto to kick off the consultation process on the Rouge Valley urban national park. We certainly received a lot of ideas. We started with a small group of people who had been highly dedicated to the Rouge Valley over the past 20 or 25 years. All levels of government, I would like to say, and all parties as well, participated, and some fantastic ideas came out of that.

As you said, it's a great park in its nearness to a population, one could say, of 10 million to 12 million people. We really look at it as an opportunity to give Canadians in that area the opportunity to explore not just the Rouge Valley but all of Canada.

Some of the concepts coming out of this include how we can have a centre in that park that deals with our entire country from coast to coast to coast, with all of the national treasures and all of the things people can get out and do, and bring that as a real focal point to the sense of Canada. What's being discussed is it being a real people's park, with a people focus, and one of those people focuses is very much about that sense of Canada or the very essence of being a Canadian.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

It sounds excellent.

I wanted to ask you as well about the Learn to Camp program, because it always struck me that knowing how to camp and what to buy and all that kind of stuff was something you learned in Brownies, Boy Scouts, Venturers or something--or from your parents--or not at all. It would never occur to a lot of new Canadians to go to a Canadian Tire, buy all the stuff, load up their van, and take the family to a park. You need somebody to show you how to do it.

It's a great concept, so I wanted to ask you about its success rate.

At the same time, I want to ask you about a process they used at Expo 67, which was very popular and effective. They had a passport. People would arrive on the grounds, use it to go to various displays, and get it stamped. Have you ever thought of doing something like that for our national parks?

[Andrew Campbell]

To look at both of those questions, I'll take the second one first.

We did have a passport program in the seventies and eighties. It was quite successful. This Xplorers program we developed gives you a guidebook to each of our parks and sites and, as a youth, you can explore. The nice part is that at the end of the day when you come in with your Xplorers book and you've done some of the activities out of that book, we give you a commemorative medallion from that park.

People are now collecting those commemorative medallions. In the first year, we had one great photo of a girl about 12 years old, with her 10 or 11 medallions around her neck, who was saying that she couldn't wait to get more. From that perspective, it was highly successful in that type of engagement.

Also highly successful was the Learn to Camp program. In its first year, we did a pilot at the Halifax Citadel. We had 100 families, primarily new Canadians, sign up within half a day. We probably should have run it for more than 100 Canadians, so we said we would do it the next year. We ran it at national historic sites in about 15 locations. Due to their urban nature, national historic sites are often closer to urban centres. We ran it with a lot of the immigration help groups across the country. In Calgary, for example, the Calgary Catholic Immigration help centre brought the 100 families out to do that with us.

We teach people how to be in the outdoors. We did one where people from Hamilton, Toronto, and Oakville--new Canadians and others--came by bus to Fort George for the weekend. One of those families wrote to us. They ended up buying a tent trailer later in the summer and driving to Cape Breton. They say this will now be their family tradition for the next however many years.

So it pays dividends, and people feel they now have a way to see the country.

I'm sure, Mr. Moore, that they stopped by Fundy on the way out just to make sure they caught a couple of places on the way.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have more time, Chair?