Thank you very much.
I'm very gratified to see that there's interest and engagement from the committee here. I've been quite active in speaking to other elements in the industry at the provincial and municipal levels. It's very nice to see that at the highest level of government you're interested in hearing from and working with the industry.
I am the director of operations at North by Northeast, NXNE. We're a large annual music festival in Toronto. I have been with NXNE since 2007. I've seen its metamorphosis from a local festival with local bands and local audiences into one of the premier music festivals in North America. I've also seen how, partly with the support of the Ontario provincial government through the Ministry of Tourism, we've grown our impact on the city and on the province and had a great impact on the tourism industry overall, with economic impact in a number of different areas.
I'd like to tell you a little bit about that, about festivals in general and about how live music, supported in the right ways, and left alone in the right ways as well, can generate tremendous growth in tourism across the country.
What do we talk about when we talk about tourism? In Canada we often focus the discussion on the natural environment. That's understandable. I'm a former professional musician, and I've driven back and forth across the country. As I'm sure you have seen as well on the Trans-Canada Highway, our national identity is reflected even in the licence plates that we see on vehicles: Beautiful British Columbia; Wild Rose Country in Alberta; Land of Living Skies in Saskatchewan; and Canada's Ocean Playground in the Maritimes. We have the ocean, we have the sky, we have wild roses, and in B.C. the whole province is beautiful, of course.
I came to Ontario from B.C. 25 years ago, but my migration had nothing to do with nature. Remember, it's Toronto I went to. It was all about the music scene. It was about the tremendous cluster of artists and venues, and the buzz that existed in districts like Queen Street West, College Street, the Annex, Kensington Market. I believe that same music cluster, that same scene, can be used to drive tourism internationally.
We all love the outdoors, but I would urge the committee to recognize that in Canada I think we've underplayed our unique strengths in the cultural industries, especially in live music. We're still talking about wheat fields and whales. We haven't kept up with the rest of the world in selling the urban experience. I understand we've dropped from seventh to eighteenth in the list of the world's most visited destinations in the last 10 years. The statistics tell us that tourism employs 600,000 people, which is more than the oil patch employs. The stats show us that tourism generates $85 billion in economic activity, which is more than agriculture, fisheries, and forestry combined.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that live music is already a great driver and the reason that thousands and thousands of people cross the border and fly over to our country. We have world-famous festivals across the country. We have folk festivals in Vancouver, in Edmonton, in Regina, and in Winnipeg. We have Ottawa Bluesfest right here. In Quebec there's the Montreal Jazz Festival, there's POP Montreal, there's M for Montreal, there's Osheaga. In the Maritimes they have Halifax Pop Explosion. I have only eight minutes, so I can't tell you about all the events we have in Toronto.
What I would like to state is that each one of these events has built its business largely on its own. Each festival markets to a far-ranging consumer base, mostly using social media. Each one is sustainable. Each one is growing in impact. But this avenue is ripe for expansion with just a little bit of support at the national level.
Imagine a marketing campaign, a public-private partnership by which the federal government joined forces with key festivals across the country to reach out to music tourists in the United States, for example, to bring them here to Canada and keep them here for longer than just a couple of nights by helping them put together a plan that gets them going from Osheaga in Montreal to the Regina Folk Festival and on to Edmonton, travelling by train, perhaps, in less than 10 days. This would be a wonderful thing.
It's possible, and we can help you do it.
The music industry isn't looking for old-school handouts, for the blank cheques written because we all know how noble it is to support the arts.
I would encourage the committee to recognize that support of events like this and support of the industry is an investment with very high ROI. My own event, North by Northeast, taps into a program called Celebrate Ontario delivered through the Ministry of Tourism. They give us between $300,000 and $400,000 annually which we leverage to partner with corporate partners. We put together free public shows at Yonge-Dundas Square. We close the street and we bring in a lot of people. We can turn that into a multi-million dollar return on investment at Yonge-Dundas Square alone with massive benefits for the local economy. Supporting live music helps the economy, it helps the country, and it certainly helps the musicians by giving them larger audiences to play for, more shows, and more exposure to vital industry that they look for and value so much.
Therefore, I recommend that the Government of Canada first identify and then support festivals and events, venues, promoters, and other industry directly involved with putting musicians on stages across the country. If you stage it, if you book it, the audiences will come. It's all about the programming. We see that with my festival. If we put a big free outdoor concert together with the right kind of headliner, we'll get 50,000 people in a day. We know about the audience. We know that probably 30% of them will come from outside the Toronto area and 20% will be from outside the country. We know that most of them are probably age 19 to 34 because we're dealing with that kind of audience and that kind of music. Many of them won't have full-time jobs yet. Lots won't own cars or houses yet. Some of them will probably be couch-surfing when they're at the festival but all of them will be spending money in bars, in restaurants, in taxis, in retail. They will all leave the festival with a T-shirt and with a fantastic memory of our country. And they'll be back.
I believe the traditional tourist marketing campaigns are not engaging these young music tourists, who are engaging with our kind of entertainment, who are travelling for commercial music versus the high culture represented by the symphony, the opera, the ballet. I see wheat fields and whales, wineries, and water parks, but I don't see Queen Street on a Saturday night.
I've visited Austin many times and I've seen first-hand how its brand, the Live Music Capital of the World, has animated not just the city but the State of Texas itself. I've seen 57,000 hotel room nights booked during South by Southwest alone. I've seen how the city has used its music sector to drive tremendous investment in tourism and other benefits as well. There's a lot more information on Austin in this wonderful report put together by Music Canada called “The Next Big Bang”. Suffice to say for now that we don't need to sit back here in Canada and look with awe and envy on what Austin has done, because in Canada we already have one of the world's most diverse, dynamic, and unique live music scenes with tremendously talented artists, iconic venues, historic club districts, and passionate, articulate fans. We even have the support of the media.
With all that, what we need is for the federal government to encourage further growth of this already vibrant sector. We, the industry ourselves, are finally starting to talk with a more cohesive voice. There's talk of a national association in the works. The live music industry can help the government undertake studies to shape priorities, to create programs to help service those priorities, and to ensure that the support reaches those who can do the most with it to generate tourism, jobs, and economic productivity, while helping the musicians and the music we all care so deeply about.
I'd ask the committee to recommend that live music is a key facet of the music industry and to engage the industry to learn more about it as it exists in 2014, to work with us to create a strategic plan to develop and leverage existing assets and to tap into this largely untapped cultural juggernaut.
Thanks for listening. I look forward to telling you more.