Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 6th, 2011

[Daniel J. Caron]

No. There are indeed fewer old documents than before. Therefore, we are monitoring the situation and watching for any developments. I have been with Library and Archives Canada for eight years. Sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose. Documents are often sold by auction. I remember certain documents—such as Captain Skelly's diary—we were unable to acquire because private sector bidders could offer more money for them.

We are talking about a market, and a tremendous number of documents are involved. So we monitor the situation and get involved in areas we think are important. We continue to do so in the same way as in the past.

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

In both cases, how has the transition to the digital age affected employment within your organization? I assume that people must have different qualifications. Could positions need to be abolished as a result of this transition, in both cases?

Mr. Joli-Coeur, if you....

[Claude Joli-Coeur]

As part of our digital transition, we have a collection of 13,000 films and 500,000 photographs. We have a considerable amount of material we are currently digitizing. So the transition is actually creating jobs. Given the large amount of material, no one in Montreal, or even Canada, was able to take on the job of digitizing our collection. Therefore, we used our own money to hire new staff.

So we have actually created jobs.

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

What about the people who were already there?

[Claude Joli-Coeur]

Over the years, we have had an attrition rate that was generally.... Our number of employees certainly has decreased considerably. We have 435 employees this year, but that decrease in staff was not caused by the digital age. As the parliamentary allocation has been the same since 1995-1996, our purchasing power has decreased every year. We have had to face all kinds of challenges, such as employees retiring.

However, there was no crisis, no major layoffs, with the exception of the cutbacks in 1996 when $30 million was cut from the NFB budget. That was a huge cut.

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

But the number of positions was reduced through attrition.

[Claude Joli-Coeur]

It was reduced through attrition, but many new positions have been created, including on our Web teams, especially within the team that manages and organizes our NFB.ca platform. It is a fairly interesting process, as we are realizing that young people are bringing new skills to the NFB. We have an age range, but I don't have the specifics with me. We have employees who have been working at the NFB for a long time and are about to retire. However, we also have a significant number of new employees in their twenties and thirties who are changing the face of the institution. Everything is now interactive, and our whole interactive production is attracting many creators.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you very much, Ms. Boutin-Sweet.

Mr. Simms.

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

Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Over the past month or so we've heard a lot of talk, that when it comes to celebrating the 150-year anniversary, they're pushing out a lot of material for promotion, for telling the stories of who we are. There are several facets.

You at the National Film Board have done certain projects based on certain themes that are fairly narrow in scope. This one, obviously, is—and I guess it's the big reason we're here—to find out where one starts when celebrating a whole nation. There is quite a myriad of stories that have created us and sustain us.

My question is, where do you start when it comes to the 150 celebrations? Let's say you've commissioned...I'll say three films, maybe four. What's the process for doing that? Do you come up with your theme first? Or do you just throw it open to what is out there for you to sanction?

[Claude Joli-Coeur]

The approach we have now—and I know that 2017 is “tomorrow”, but it's still five years down the road—is to make the road to 2017 and to develop the equivalent of Canada CODE, which we developed. It was extremely popular all over the country. If we can team up with other organizations, other departments of the government, we could be one important actor in that digital storytelling in which we excel, in which we have leadership, creating interactive works and making tools accessible to Canadians.

We just launched last week an app for stop-motion animation, whereby people can make their own animation films.

James can say more on this.

[James Roberts]

The approach starts with each and every Canadian. We're connecting with Canadians now in a way that we haven't in the past. That includes their having access to everything we've produced, but also having their own voice, whether it's through the formal process of producing films through our studios across the country or through projects such as Canada CODE or other citizen involvement projects like it.

The important stories throughout our history have bubbled up through our process, regardless of how that process worked at the time, and they will continue to do so through the interaction we have with Canadians online or when we meet them in person through all the events we're in every year, or through the meetings we have locally in our regional centres.

[Claude Joli-Coeur]

The way we're organizing our content on nfb.ca is also a way for Canadians to get a sense of how the nation has been built over the last 75 years that we have been here. All that content becomes available, and people can see different phases of the story of this country, at least for the last 75 years. That's our approach: making our content available, interacting with Canadians, putting forward new tools, and adding projects.

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

With some direction, of course, from the Government of Canada itself, I would assume, as to how the 150 will take shape.

[Claude Joli-Coeur]

That will be essential, but we'll align with that direction, for sure. We hope there will be a global plan and that we'll be able to have our way in that approach.

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

That is, you want a degree of autonomy, to pony up and to—

[Claude Joli-Coeur]

Of course, but given our autonomy, we feel it's important for us to take opportunities to serve Canadians. If there is a general approach, we want to be part of that approach; we don't want to isolate ourselves. We want to be part of the fabric of the country, basically.

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

I hope a lot of people take you up on that challenge and certainly get in there and do their material. Perhaps “challenge” is not the right word, but you know what I mean; it's an opportunity for people.

[Claude Joli-Coeur]

To complete that, I'm sitting on committees where we meet regularly on the 150th anniversary, so brainstorming will come out of that. I'm very positive that we'll be able to fashion something that will be exciting.

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

It must be a difficult task, because obviously when you're dealing with the 100th anniversary of World War I or the 75th of World War II, it's a little more precise.

Congratulations on your app, by the way, which I have. It works very well.

Mr. Caron, is it my understanding that archives now are becoming more decentralized—can I use that term—over the next little while? Is this a strategic shift for Library and Archives Canada?

[Daniel J. Caron]

It's not becoming more decentralized, it's becoming more organized as a portal for the entire nation. I would go further and say that I am discussing with the Mexicans and the Americans to have an Americana portal, like they have an Europeana one.

We are, in fact, connecting the various archives across the country through the stakeholders' forum to make sure that Canadians will have access to all of the material that we have in this country through a portal. We're working together to have common descriptions, methods, and standards to know what you have in Alberta, what you have in New Brunswick, what you have in P.E.I., and what we have in LAC. We are developing an approach, what we call the agora, where we are discussing—and this has just started—where the physical material should be located, because as we move into the digital, the question will be different.

We have criteria. The question is, where is it going to be most appropriate for consultation, or for preservation—so can you preserve it properly? What is the interest? Is it local interest, provincial interest, or national interest? We're starting to ask those questions collectively with the provincial archives and the local archives.

It's a different model in a sense. As I said in my presentation, we were more of an isolated national archive working—sometimes, in fact, competing—with the provincial archives. So we sat together two years ago, and we said, “We need to work together. This is what is currently happening. Make sure that we know what you have.”

In fact, I did a tour two years ago and I discovered a lot of material that, as a student, I didn't know we had in this country. We have some collections that were buried in Manitoba and nobody talked about it.

Now we're trying to bring all of this to the surface, so all together we can make sure that Canadians—wherever they are in this country—will know where it is, and over time, I think, it's going to be made accessible through digitization, if the demand is there.

That's the approach. It's more of a portal bringing together, under one umbrella, the collections we have in this country.

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

For you—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Simms.

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

No, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Are you thanking me for the extra minute you had there?

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

That's exactly why I'm thanking you.