Canadian Heritage Committee on May 10th, 2012

[Richard Haycock]

Yes, Mr. Chairman, without question, and I will speak as a Canadian member of this international association. We always have to apply filters to the information we receive from abroad. It's not unlike going from jurisdiction to jurisdiction within the United States. When we step out of that country and we look at our own needs, we have to apply filters so that we are making it more applicable to our local circumstances, as I mentioned earlier.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I just wanted to make sure, because my NDP colleague doesn't seem to understand the difference between safety and security and the Canadian traditions that we're talking about in national protocol.

With that, I'll hand it over to Mr. Hillyer.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Pollard, in regard to the protocol at hotels, you mentioned a whole bunch of areas for which protocol is a concern, but to what extent, in your experience or from talking to your colleagues, do guests or space renters look to the hotel management for guidance around protocol when they're trying to set up something? Do they ask what to do in that situation?

Also, to what extent would protocol procedures be useful when a group already knows what protocol they have in mind and tells you what resources, materials, and labour they need to put the protocol in place?

[Tony Pollard]

Let me give an example. Let's say, Mr. Hillyer, that you want to do an event in a hotel and you really aren't too sure what to do. You've never dealt with a hotel before. We will walk you through all of the various steps. I don't want to be disrespectful, as I said before, but remember that in hotels—and this is going to sound very unCanadian—we're in business to make money.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Tony Pollard]

That said, in a hotel, you have banquet managers, sales managers, and sales teams, and we generate revenue by asking if you would like to have a meal served. You say, “Oh, very good, thank you very much.” We ask if you would like to have entertainment, which we can arrange. You say, “Very good, thank you very much.”

For example, let's say you have a podium. You say that you have with you a federal member of Parliament or a provincial MPP or MNA, or whatever, and you ask where you put the flags. We'll tell you where to put the flags and in what order. We have all of that.

But what I will go back to is that we have people in place who are paid to upsell. Again, it sounds very unCanadian, Mr. Chairman, but we have people in place to walk you through everything you need to do. Now, if you want to do something very untoward.... As I said before, so long as it's legal and moral, we'll do it for you. We have people in place.

I would tell the committee that if you're looking for protocols in a hotel, we can help you with all these various steps. For this submission today, I just put down a whole bunch of things that we do, but we'll help you walk through that.

But I want to reinforce that one of the things we would do first if it were something for the state would be to ask whoever is organizing if they have talked to Heritage Canada. If it's a funeral, the very first thing the hotel person would ask is, “Who is arranging the funeral?” Then they would say, “Let's speak with Mr. McGarry, Mr. MacLeod, or Ms. Lasher...”. We aren't funeral directors. We will go out to wherever the expertise is.

But within the hotel itself, Mr. Hillyer, we can walk people through each and every step of the way.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Do you have any comments on that same question, Mr. Haycock?

[Richard Haycock]

Fundamentally, as was mentioned earlier, the clients who are coming into our venues are our guests. We too are intending to make money—although most don't—and there certainly is a very strong desire to meet clients' needs in every way, shape, or form, given certain parameters. We have access to all the same sorts of resources as the hotels have. Typically the biggest difference between us is perhaps capacity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Hillyer.

Now we will turn to Mr. Dubé for five minutes.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mainly, I want to come back to the whole funeral issue. I am fascinated by the desire to do the right thing—perhaps “proper” would be a better word. I'll give you a personal example. Someone in my family passed away a few months ago, and we added touches to the funeral to celebrate that person's life, not all that different from what was done when our former leader, Mr. Layton, passed away. It was my grandmother's brother who died. After the funeral, my grandmother said it was a good thing that the priest had been flexible, making it possible to add touches that ordinarily would not have fit with a traditional ceremony.

I appreciate how important tradition is. It involves a ceremony and a certain level of decorum or protocol—our topic of study. There has to be room for some flexibility, however, and in listening to you, I got the sense that you all agree on that point. All the witnesses we heard from previously considered it an acceptable compromise, contrary to what some people claim. I hear a lot of talk about the mistakes that were made, protocol procedures that were not followed. And yet, it all seems to run quite smoothly most of the time; there are some fine partnerships at work.

If we consider protocol for state funerals, for instance, would you say you work well with the people involved, be they at Heritage Canada or the House of Commons? Have you encountered problems in the past that may have prevented you from arranging a proper funeral service, particularly a state funeral?

[Brian McGarry]

I guess the short answer is no, or at least not in our experience. We've had wonderful professionals from Heritage Canada and....

I've forgotten the name before Heritage Canada, but même chose.

There have been a couple of issues raised here, though, and you've alluded to them whether you realize it or not. Our industry is of course very different from the hospitality industry, the hotels or the other colleagues here. There may have been a time when we were trained to upsell. That's gone, it really is, and thank goodness.

The point I'm coming to is that we should be obligated now, as funeral directors, because we have so many imported caskets and products...and that's fine. I mean, we can get our products wherever we want. I do think there is an obligation on our part, however, and it's happened twice in our experience, to be transparent to the family about where the product came from, whether it be from China....

And there are caskets coming in from China. My wife is Asian, so I'm not criticizing my wife, believe me.

I think there's an obligation to say, in the selection room, that this one is a Canadian-made casket, that one is from the U.S., etc., and let the family decide. Some families frankly don't care, but I can think of two families who did care. It caused a very awkward situation.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I don't mean to cut you off, Mr. McGarry, but I don't have a lot of time. I would like to know how that affects protocol. You say there should be better consultation with the family. How exactly does that tie in with specific regulations? Since we're dealing with families and their wishes, there has to be some room for flexibility. In short, what you are saying is that the process of consulting the deceased's family needs to be improved.

[Brian McGarry]

Yes, that and flexibility, as I think Mr. Cole and my colleagues alluded to earlier on. We're in a society now that is not what it was when I started—50 years ago; I'm in a rut, guys and ladies.

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Oh, oh!

[Brian McGarry]

No one will hire me anywhere else.

But no, sincerely, your question is absolutely correct: flexibility is the order of the day in our work.

As it happened in Quebec, if I may add very quickly, when René Lévesque died, his body was cremated and put in the casket, just like you referred to. That was his wish. Now, as far as the ceremony went, it was the usual.

So we have to be prepared to acknowledge those requests by the families. Flexibility is the answer.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I have one last question. You said you work well alongside the various authorities involved. Let us consider a military ceremony for a soldier who died tragically overseas and is being repatriated. As I understand it, the Department of National Defence already has very strict protocols in place, in light of all the military traditions, and that is perfectly understandable. We will have an opportunity to meet with DND officials later. So if you have a good partnership with them, I gather that they could consult people when a military ceremony is involved, and then hold a more traditional ceremony. Take a well-known situation that happened recently, Mr. Layton's funeral. His family was consulted and a more flexible ceremony took place. With cooperation, the right balance can be found, can it not?

[Allan Cole]

I would answer that in a couple of ways. First, generally, when you witness the funeral or the ceremony that unfolds in front of you, it will be seamless. Whether we've had to negotiate a variety of options and make adjustments and try to adapt, when you see it unfold it's always going to be like, “Boy, this is perfect.”

An example that comes readily to me was the case of the memorial service to commemorate the tragic loss of the four soldiers who lost their lives in Tarnak Farms in Afghanistan, the original losses in Afghanistan, the first four, who were tragically killed by friendly fire from the Americans. Individual funerals were held in the communities where they came from.

An enormous memorial service was undertaken in a large venue in Edmonton, because they were all members of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. That ceremony was spectacular. I witnessed it on television, and there were aboriginal aspects to it, there were drums that appeared out of the darkness—there were a variety of things, as I try to recollect. The organizers of this were artful with the tremendous tribute they paid to those soldiers; however, in my recollection it was not in keeping with standard protocol and that sort of thing. That's fine; however, when you go to duplicate that 15 years from now, or you say, what did we do the last time, if it doesn't reference specifically the protocol or the traditions or the normal practices that we view as part of the Canadian way of doing things, you lose track of what you did the last time.

I'm trying to explain it as best I can, and that would be my answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Armstrong.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If we do establish a framework, who should do it and where should it be located? A couple of you have touched on the fact that you already coordinate and work with Heritage Canada.

I'm going to start with Mr. Head. In your presentation you said CSC has established two formal protocols, one for change-of-command ceremonies and one for the half-masting of the national flag of Canada within CSC. And you developed those in partnership with the Department of Canadian Heritage. Can you explain to me the process you worked on with them to establish those protocols. How did you do that?

[Don Head]

Most definitely. Thank you.

We reached out to them on where there needed to be protocol. I think one of the interesting things this committee is examining, or should be examining, is the definition of protocol. I hear the word being used quite a bit, and I would argue some things are not protocol; they're customs, approaches, or processes.

Protocols for us are a little different. When we talk about protocols we look at things such as our national symbols. I believe there need to be protocols for how we use and display our national symbols. When we engaged Canadian Heritage around the half-masting of the flag, we wanted to make sure we respected the protocols that existed. Was there any opportunity, in terms of flexibility, for doing anything differently, particularly related to the death of our own staff while on duty? So we worked with them on where there was absolute protocol that needed to be followed, standards that had to be respected, and where there was some flexibility. That was a really important piece.

We found Canadian Heritage very willing and forthcoming in helping us through that piece. There are some things we believed were protocol, only to find out they weren't. With other things they confirmed, “Yes, this is the way they need to be done.” I think for us and the committee it's just a matter of understanding the definition of protocol and what absolutely is protocol.

Others have commented on having some kind of framework or guideline. I think that's a very interesting approach. As it relates to protocol, I think it should be defined as where there is no opportunity to deviate. When we're talking about national symbols, they should be defined as protocols, but other things should be defined as guidelines and best practices.

Many of the very knowledgeable people around the table here who work in service industries talk about various practices and customs, and some good practices. I think one of the difficulties for organizations such as mine, or other uniformed organizations, in going forward and trying to do things is trying to find out some examples of those best practices. Unless you know Mr. Cole or Mr. McGarry, or know the right people to call, you're sort of left to your own devices to come up with things.

So when you go forward, if you look at establishing something, I think the right place is Canadian Heritage. If you're going to talk about protocols related to national symbols, then also look at putting in place something that is accessible in terms of best practices or approaches, or things that could be considered.

I think Mr. Cole's point earlier about the flag was a really good one. Outside my office are the names of all the employees in our history who have been killed on duty. I've been to many of their funerals, particularly back in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The most recent one was when we had a staff member murdered in the Northwest Territories. We worked very closely with Canadian Heritage on the funeral because the minister was coming. We worked very closely with the family to respect their wishes. We adopted an approach where we would offer the flag to the family. But we found out very quickly, after going through a dry run, that folding a vinyl flag was impossible. We ended up finding a cloth one that could be starched so we could do it. Starching the flag seems a little strange, but it needed to be done so it could be folded and presented in the proper way. That's the kind of thing you don't know unless you know people like Mr. Cole or Mr. McGarry, or you find out through experience. Then you say, “Okay, next time we can't do that.”

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

If you hadn't done a dry run, it might have caused an awkward moment there.

[Don Head]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.

Mr. Thibeault has five minutes.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start with the funeral directors, since I know you'll probably be the last people to ever let me down.

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Oh, oh!