I think it's a great way of framing it.
I saw some criticism. You may remember there was an interview with Maggie Gillis where she was attacked because of the assumption that there wasn't a return for investment in the arts. Sometimes there isn't, but it's also not subject to a very static analysis, such as saying, “We built this bridge and we had this many crossings, and the typical speed was this. Therefore, we're moving this many people to and from work in different parts of the city. Therefore, we can assume that we've taken this many GHGs out of the atmosphere. Therefore, we've improved productivity.” We can do those kinds of analyses on a number of projects, for example on shipbuilding, but when you invest in the arts, it's not subject to such a quick and easy static analysis of what the economic and social benefits are. This is often why those of us who believe in the importance of the cultural economy have to very persistently engage and re-engage in making and bolstering and re-emphasizing the argument for supporting the arts and what it means to our economy and to our society.
The macroeconomic numbers are known, and I say them every time I have the opportunity. Arts and culture is $46 billion in the Canadian economy and over 640,000 jobs. It is three times the size of Canada's insurance industry, twice the size of Canada's forest industry. It's a massive part of our economy.
When Les FrancoFolies happens in Montreal and all the people rush into town to see these fantastic performances, they fill the hotels, they buy gas, they buy sandwiches, they buy drinks, they go out at night. Maybe they take a side trip to Charlevoix or they go up to Quebec City. The economic benefits and the spinoffs are things that are often hard to quantify, but we all know they're there.
We also know that housing prices go up when houses are next to a park. Housing prices in Vancouver go up for homes that are next to the park that hosts Bard on the Beach. We know these things. How do you quantify and loop into the economic benefit of investing in the arts if we're supporting Bard on the Beach? All those condos in Kitsilano and on the west side of Vancouver have higher property values. Why? Because of the green spaces and because of the arts and culture and because of the milieu that is there and that has been nurtured for years.
There is an economic benefit to that, but it isn't expressly quantified by those who would attack the arts and ask, “You invested how much in Bard on the Beach? What were the ticket sales? What were the numbers? Then it's an economic downturn.” It's not true. Investing in culture is investing in the economy. In the long term, it's investing in the economy by stirring children's imaginations and brains.
When we talk about wanting the next generation of kids to be inventors of iPad apps, to be the great technological innovators and thinkers of the future, it doesn't start when they're choosing their major in university and college after high school or grade 13. It starts when they're five or six years old and we take them to see the performing arts and we expose them to music, which their parents may not have had the opportunity to do. When they see culture, those synapses in the brain fire. Those cultural sectors of the brain are stirred at a very young age. That's when it starts. It starts when they're five or six years old.
Sometimes that does require public subsidy, and it does require our working with organizations to ensure that galleries and museums and films are available to our kids, because it's so critical. The economic benefit of all that is immeasurable.
You know of Richard Florida's book in which he segments the country into the different zones. He makes an argument--which is not always true, but I think there is a compelling argument--that it's not a coincidence the most prosperous and innovative part of the digital economy in the United States is housed in the same place where we find Berkeley, in San Francisco, one of the most creative cities in the United States. The cultural sector and the arts are generated in San Francisco and those places that are seen as the cultural hubs of North America. It's not an accident that all the technological companies are based there as well. These things actually feed on one another.