Evidence of meeting #19 for Canadian Heritage in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was artists.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Conservative
Liberal
Yvonne Jones Liberal Labrador, NL
This is very interesting.
I'm a little bit alarmed when you say that Canadians make up 80% of the market right now and only 20% is international. I think that there's a lot of success for us, as a country, when we can really expose and attract people internationally to what we're doing.
There have been some suggestions that maybe a public-private international marketing campaign would be set up to kind of increase the tourism visibility of a lot of festivals in Canada and basically, looked at in a way to attract more international tourists and more interest. As you say, Mark, it would boost the economic prospects of the work that you're doing.
I'm just wondering what your views would be on that particular initiative and how you could see it working or not working to benefit the work that you do.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Tourism Industry Association of Canada
There's a specific initiative that FAME is working on that we're supportive of, which I'll let Mark speak to.
The first answer to the question, Ms. Jones, is that a lot of that cooperative work is already happening through the Canadian Tourism Commission. We have a proposal with the Canadian Tourism Commission in front of the government right now, which we're calling Connecting America, which will look specifically at the U.S. market. We're proposing a $35 million a year co-investment for the next three years with the federal government and the private sector to drive or to re-ignite, if you will, that U.S. market. We would see festival programming, particularly music festivals and sporting events, as a key driver for that visitation.
That proposal is in with Minister Bernier right now and we're obviously having discussions across government and would love your support.
Executive Director, RBC Ottawa Bluesfest
My comment is just that we're very supportive of the Canadian Tourism Commission and giving them the ammunition they need to attract more people to Canada. We see that, as the destination music events, we have to put out the product. We are not specialists in marketing: we're specialists in creating the best product that will draw the most people to our event. That's where our focus is and that's where we hope to gain support.
Liberal
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Tourism Commission
Sure. Thank you very much.
You're quite right. One of the points that we want to make is that we are always a public-private partnership. We work fully in collaboration with other levels of government as well as with the private sector to co-invest our dollars in 12 countries around the world.
We do believe that the time and the conditions have changed in the United States to support a much more significant push into that market than we may have found in a post-SARS era. We do still see the thickening of the border. The Canadian currency drop is going to help a bit and we see a lot more air travellers coming in from the United States to Canada. So we think there's a huge opportunity.
We also have stats that say 60% of Americans are interested in travelling to visit a music festival and almost 20% of Americans are saying that it would be the main reason for travel.
We have these iconic music festivals going on in Canada, and some not-so or soon-to-be iconic festivals going on in Canada, that can be discovered by international travellers. Again, Americans or people from around the world discovering a great Canadian act is possibly the best way to distribute the notoriety of that particular act to other markets around the world, especially with that huge engine called social media to help support that.
Conservative
Liberal
Yvonne Jones Liberal Labrador, NL
One of the other things I'm wondering about, and maybe others already know this.... We talked about the ability of artists to be able to earn money and so on and how record labels have become promotional campaigns for them in many ways.
In terms of the events that you do, is there a percentage of the revenues from ticket sales that would actually go to record labels or to artists or producers, creators, any of those people who are involved? If so, how are those percentages negotiated or agreed upon? Could you tell me a little bit about that?
Executive Director, RBC Ottawa Bluesfest
Basically, with an event like ours, we would spend roughly 50% of the total revenue on artists' fees. That would go to several hundred artists or different groups. Honestly, what happens with the top level groups is that there's really a negotiation with their agents or managers, so if we're negotiating to bring in Lady Gaga, as we are this year, that is a negotiation that's not easy, but in the end concludes.
Then there's another level of artists--most of the artists actually--where it's not really much of a negotiation. It's a budget that we set to support those artists, and we bring in artists that we think will interest, will create excitement. Then there's a third level of artists that is strictly about Canadian and local artists, who are not really there because we think they're going to sell tickets. They're there because we think they're important artists to present and who will have a huge impact on a live audience. As you said, the recording industry now are cheerleaders; they're not driving the industry any more. We're not looking at record sales, because no one has any record sales. What we're looking at is what their live performances are like, whether they are exciting to the people who will come to the event, because we're promoting live music.
Liberal
Yvonne Jones Liberal Labrador, NL
Did you want to add anything? Would you like to add anything, Mr. Klassen?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Tourism Commission
I'm fully in agreement with that comment. It is the excitement that is the fuel that helps us sell tickets, both within Canada and internationally.
Conservative
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, panellists, for joining us today.
I'm always trying to follow the money in everything, and it seems as though there's money in the industry. It seems as though some parts of the industry are doing quite well and others are suffering. We're consistently hearing that the artists and the musicians and the songwriters are not receiving the funding they should, or the financial recognition for the work they're doing.
Mr. Monahan, you made some interesting comments at the beginning of your presentation, that we've never seen such an increase in music as we have today, and there are still about the same number of musicians making a living at it and their revenues are actually fairly consistent.
Can you expand a little more on that? What do you see and what do you base that on?
Executive Director, RBC Ottawa Bluesfest
Again, I base it on my conversations with recording industry executives. Generally, being in the industry for about 30 years now, I find that people lamented the fact that artists weren't making money 20 years ago, because most artists never made money. The record labels, when they gave an artist, for instance, a $0.5 million recording contract, the artist ended up in some cases with zero, because all the money went to marketing, the creation, the production, and so on.
Really, back then they said, “We're going to create this record but really the record will only gain you notoriety to go out and play live music and get money there.” Well, that hasn't changed. It's still the same. The artist is still not making any money. They're making money from their live performance.
I think that's really my point here. The proliferation of music is not really about the money the artists are making. It's about their desire to make music. And the proliferation of people listening to music is not about having to pay for it, it's about their interest in wanting to listen to music. So it's not really being driven by funding or money.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
That's an interesting concept.
I would like the other panellists to maybe expand a little bit on exactly how they view their organizations, promoting, incenting musicians and artists through the work they do. This is to both Mr. Klassen and Mr. Goldstein.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Tourism Industry Association of Canada
Well, Mr. Klassen's organization takes the promotional role, so I'll yield to him on that.
Our job is really to create the public-private partnerships to make Canada a more competitive destination. To go to Mr. Klassen's earlier point, most of these are not-for-profit festival organizations, and all of these are partnerships with the private sector, which generate partnership multiples. So every dollar that's invested, whether it's public or private, ends up being part of the multiple mix. If you can imagine the layers of a club sandwich, the more meat there is, or the more participation there is by investors, that begets increased investment.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Tourism Commission
Great. Thank you, I'll add a little to that.
First of all, we operate, as I said, in about 12 different countries around the world. We do trade events, marketing, and PR events in all of those countries. and we frequently bring Canadian artists with us to both entertain and be part of those particular events. Because, again, that three sides of a triangle between the people we have in Canada and the geography we have in Canada, is really rounded out nicely when we talk about the culture of Canada and that's where we need a little extra oomph.
As we pointed out, fame is really the top 15. These are the ones who are best known and these are the ones who have the best international potential, and we use those 15 festivals and events to create a sense of urgency to come to Canada. It not only brings people here for the first time to discover these events themselves and Canadian artists, but it gives us a chance to have them come back year after year, especially those coming in from the U.S. So we leverage that opportunity for us to help, again, bring international travellers here and focus on them.
The third one is we've actually brought in an artist, created and commissioned pieces for music or something close to music, like spoken word poetry that has music elements to it. We brought in Shane Koyczan. We created an epic ode to Canada that ended up on the Olympic stage and many places since. So we've had an opportunity to take Shane and expose him to billions of people around the world to some great success as well. We'd love to do more Shanes if we can find them and keep rolling with that.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Okay. We sure appreciate the work that you're doing on that aspect.
You talked a little about economic development and there's a piece missing there. Describe a little to me about what that looks like in your eyes.
Executive Director, RBC Ottawa Bluesfest
In terms of the festivals you mean?
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Just that we don't have an economic development focus I think is the comment and there's a gap.
Executive Director, RBC Ottawa Bluesfest
Right.
Going back many years, Canadian Heritage has provided funding through different programs, much of it focused on the proliferation of music, the support of the artists, and so on. But it really has not had a focus on the events side and how the events, using music, can promote economic development.
My key point here is that we had that focus briefly for two years with the marquee tourism events program, which promoted and created some very important initiatives. However, we were not able to sustain them, because for many of those initiatives, we didn't have a chance to garner enough corporate sponsorship and other sources of earned revenue to support them on an ongoing basis. It was too short-lived. It was an economic development program that came and went. That's really what I'm suggesting here, because if there is going to be a program looked at in the future, there has to be some sustainability and investment made over a period of time, because, as with any business, you cannot have a one-year or a two-year investment and hope that it's then just going to live on at that same level.
