Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 27th, 2011

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Perfect.

If I may ask a question of Ms. Shaw, in what way did the Olympic planning committee seek out and incorporate local or grassroots suggestions for the events and activities? Can you expand on that?

[Andrea Shaw]

Are you talking specifically of the torch relay, or the games in total?

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

I mean the games in total.

[Andrea Shaw]

Community was very important to us. We knew that we could not achieve what we wanted to achieve by ourselves. It took all kinds and all levels, whether it was government, corporate partners, community, or sports. So we engaged very much at all levels of the communities.

How did we do that? It was through our relationships with every province in Canada, and how they could take back assets from the Olympics and bring them into the grassroots of their communities. It was very intentional, because we knew that without doing that--whether it was the torch relay, the Cultural Olympiad, or whatever--the engagement would never get off the ground and galvanize the country the way it did. So we were very proactive in our planning, to ensure that engagement happened very much at the grassroots level with our partners assisting us in doing so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Gill.

Mr. Cash.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the three of you for coming today.

What was the level of corporate sponsorship in the centennial?

[Dr. Helen Davies]

I'm not sure that at the time there was even the idea of corporate sponsorship. The business community was actively involved. The Royal Bank of Canada had a number of initiatives, and I think it supported some publications. Similarly, I believe E. B. Eddy used to have a presence on the river here; I think they were matchstick makers. They also had a presence and contributed. The contribution was by way of some of their own initiatives to promote and celebrate the centennial.

So I can't speak confidently to the theme of corporate sponsorship or partnering. It was more that they were in alignment and supportive of the federal framework, and looking for ways to promote and lever the centennial.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

You don't have a sense of what kind of financial commitment it is?

[Dr. Helen Davies]

No, not off the top of my head. I'd have to go back and look.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Dr. Neuman, did you ask a question like, how would you feel about corporate Canada helping to sculpt the celebrations of our 150th anniversary?

[Dr. Keith Neuman]

We didn't get into that. We did ask about the importance of involvement from different sectors. In the question on leadership, Canadian companies were on the list. We asked how important each of these sectors might be in playing some sort of leadership role in supporting the 150th celebration. All of them are seen as having some importance. The federal government's at the top, followed by provincial and territorial governments, then Canadian companies, 46%.

What this tells me is that the corporate sector is not seen as the lead, but that Canadians are comfortable with a significant corporate presence. My sense is that Canadians were fairly appreciative of the corporate partnerships entered into during the Vancouver Olympics, and they didn't seem to see that it created any particular problems.

We couldn't get more specific on this survey about this sort of topic, and I suspect that it would be difficult to get a more meaningful response without a better understanding of what the celebrations are going to be, what the events are, and what the activities will be.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

What was the budget proposed originally for the Olympics in Vancouver?

[Andrea Shaw]

Are you talking about corporate sponsorship?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

No, the total budget.

[Andrea Shaw]

The total budget for the games was $1.3 billion.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Right, and what was the final budget?

[Andrea Shaw]

$1.6 billion.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

When you talk about Olympic legacy, one of the enduring legacies for me was to see Roberto Luongo win that game. I somehow care deeply about the health and welfare of Roberto. I'm not as worried about Sid as I am about Roberto.

There was a reference to the sensitivity about public finances and infrastructure. Part of the legacy of the Vancouver Olympics, and it is replicated in almost every Olympics, is cost overruns the public is on the hook for. The optics of cuts in city services alongside Olympic costs overruns are, to put it mildly, not good. This was mentioned in a Sports Illustrated story at the time.

One of the things that concerns me about this discussion is that we are talking about two different things, conflating them, and then turning them into the same thing. That thing is that this becomes a vehicle for corporate sponsorship. We are celebrating the 150th anniversary of our country. If we want it to have the kind of resonance that the centennial had, I have to say that our interest in how the global corporate world helped to sculpt the Vancouver Olympics is troubling to me.

What we need to do is drill down and find out why many of us who weren't even born at the time of the centennial still remember it. The fact that the corporate community didn't play a huge part is not necessarily significant. What is significant is that we're still talking about the centennial 50 years later. I think that if you look at the history of the Olympics, you will find that not a lot of people talk about the Olympics in a particular city 20, 30 years later--although I will remember Roberto Luongo.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Mr. Cash, we're going to have to get back to your thoughts on this, because you're a minute and a half over.

We'll go on to Mr. Hillyer.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I remember Calgary's Olympics. I was just a kid.

I have three quick questions. First of all, Mr. Neuman, before I ask my question, I just want you to know that you probably don't realize that you were making a quotable quote. I wrote it down, and I'm going to quote you for a long time. You said that national pride isn't necessarily patting ourselves on the back so much as it is an expression of gratitude. I like that. It's beautiful. Sometimes Canadians are really worried, because they want to celebrate, but they also want to be nice and humble. By putting it that way, we can be both, passionately. That was well put.

Now here's my question. Without abdicating our responsibility as a committee, we talked about the importance of getting the corporations involved, without selling out. As good as your survey was, we must confess that 1,001 is not the hugest sample in the world. Have you considered doing a similar survey with a much larger sample?

[Dr. Keith Neuman]

That's a good question. Let me respond in two parts. In terms of the sample of 1,000, it's not the largest sample. Speaking as somebody who has been trained in this business, it's large enough to get a representative sample of Canadians nationally with some look at the regional numbers. We certainly wouldn't go beyond that. A thousand is accurate enough. It's not as precise as a larger survey, but I think in terms of the kinds of questions we asked and the similarity across the population, I would be comfortable saying that this provides an accurate picture in a broad sense, and it's consistent with other research.

In terms of doing a larger sample or a larger survey, I would certainly recommend that the committee keep in mind that probably further research is needed. This survey was an interesting snapshot taken a year ago that gives you a sense of where Canadians were. But by no means is it static, nor does it answer all the questions you probably have or need to have as planning goes forward. I would expect that at some level, some organizations involved in this will do further research. And I think you would probably need to target certain parts of the population regionally or demographically or whatever to understand some of these issues much better for specific parts of the population, particularly as the planning moves forward and you get into some more specifics.

This is just a starting point, and I think it's useful that this research came about. This survey was also the result of corporate sponsorship from MasterCard. Without them, it wouldn't have happened. They took a hands-off approach in the sense that they had no involvement in the design of the questions or the interpretation. They simply provided the money to make it happen.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Andrea Shaw, can you give us your opinion on how Canada 150 could and should be promoted internationally? Does it make sense to invest money in advertising at things like the London Olympics? Do you have any other ideas about that?

[Andrea Shaw]

I would say that it goes back to the vision. What are the objectives? It starts there with the federal government figuring out what we are trying to achieve. I can't stress enough the importance of that as your starting point, because that gives you your direction for all else, quite frankly.

One of the things the games did for Canada was that we got onto the global stage as we've never been on it before. When you look at that as a platform for economic development, tourism, and all these initiatives that help us as a country, it makes a good deal of sense.

To answer your question directly, we need to figure out our vision. What are we trying to achieve through this? Once that's done, that informs your strategy for what you want to do.

I said this earlier. It takes time and proper planning, but if you get it right, you're sailing to success. If you negate that step and try to backfill to objectives and strategy, you spend a lot more money than you need to, and success is much harder to achieve.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Hillyer.

On to you, Mr. Nantel.

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

Thank you.

I have three questions to ask.

I'll speak in French.

Mr. Neuman, firstly, were Canadians ever asked how much money they themselves, through their taxes, would consider appropriate to invest in such celebrations?