Thank you for the opportunity to appear in front of the committee today.
I represent Lula Lounge, a mid-size venue in Toronto that specializes in presenting world music, often through partnerships with other presenting and community organizations. In tandem with the venue we run a not-for-profit organization, Lula Music and Arts Centre, which receives some support from arts councils for its multicultural presenting and educational activities. This private-public partnership model was inspired by organizations such as Harbourfront Centre in Toronto and the Public Theater in New York City, both of which derive some income from a separate for-profit corporation.
While best known for our weekend salsa nights featuring 10-piece to 12-piece live salsa ensembles, we also present many other forms of Latin music as well as jazz, opera, classical, flamenco, Brazilian, African, Eastern European, and South Asian music.
I'm sure you're all aware that Canada is home to some of the world's very best musicians working in these genres. Many of these receive support directly or indirectly from Heritage Canada programs.
With a capacity of 250, Lula tends to host emerging rather than established artists. While more mainstream musicians such as Feist, Metric, and Norah Jones have performed at Lula, most of our programming focuses on artists from diverse cultural backgrounds whose work lies outside of the commercial mainstream. Although we serve audiences with quite particular musical interests, our presenting activity has significant economic, artistic, and social impact. More than 30 people are employed year-round by the venue and each year hundreds of musicians, mostly Canadian, derive income from playing at the club. Performing at Lula, they build their fan bases, sell CDs, and develop artistically.
Our venue and other places like it are spots where projects funded by municipal and provincial arts councils, FACTOR, and Canada Council come before an audience, creating connections between communities and art. Lula and other world music presenters provide opportunities for immigrant communities to engage with their musical traditions and for audience members to learn about and enjoy a diversity of artistic cultures.
We hope that the results of this study will recognize the importance of small, mid-size, and non-traditional presenters and venues. Small presenters in bars, churches, and libraries in and outside of major city centres make tours across Canada possible. It is through such tours that artists can build an audience and launch their careers. Collectively the social, artistic, and economic impact of these small presenters is very important and needs to be taken into account.
To support such presenters we suggest Heritage Canada continue to foster the presenting infrastructure by encouraging networks across the country. The Canadian world music presenting community has formed such a network. We hope that our efforts will be supported as we have seen firsthand how such a network can increase touring opportunities for artists and allow presenters to do more with the resources that they have at their disposal.
We urge Heritage Canada to work with Immigration Canada to eradicate the new LMO application fees for foreign artists. A healthy music industry cannot be insular. Canadian audiences clearly have an appetite for hearing great music from around the world and are interested in emerging artists from elsewhere.
While our foremost goal is to support Canadian artists, we've seen that working with international musicians can benefit those from Canada. For many years at Lula we've programmed concerts that bring together local and international artists. We do this with an eye to creating unique experiences for audiences, as well as professional and artistic opportunities for Canadian musicians. Often the invited guests are further along in their career path and a mentoring relationship develops. These international collaborations have been very successful in terms of the calibre of art created, economic impact, and the career development of the artists involved.
The new LMO application fees make such international collaboration significantly more expensive and difficult. While we've been able to obtain exemptions for some of our activities, each exemption is done on a case-by-case basis and is not guaranteed. The process to apply for an exemption is cumbersome and acts as a barrier to taking on such projects. We know that colleagues who present some of their jazz and world music festivals and series in bars face similar uncertainty.
We hope that the Canadian government will see that, unlike other industries, our goal in bringing in foreign workers is not to save money or to cut out Canadians, but to enrich the artistic lives of creators and music fans.
On the flip side, Canadian artists need to tour in the U.S. as well as Canada. Given the importance of access to U.S. markets to Canadian artists, we wonder if an agreement of sorts between Canada and the U.S. for touring musicians might be possible.
We'll also briefly mention that the unwieldy process for applying for tax waivers for foreign artists puts additional stress on many festivals and serious presenters funded by Heritage Canada programs. Perhaps this is another issue on which branches of government could work together to strengthen our industry.
Many presenters to this committee have stressed the importance of music education. We would like to reinforce this point and add that we need to simultaneously foster a culture of professional music journalism. With changes to the publishing industry and cutbacks to the CBC, many of the writers and broadcasters who used to celebrate and critique Canadian musical arts are no longer active. Perhaps this could be achieved by working with university journalism programs or perhaps through the Canada Media Fund.
Finally, going back to the importance of supporting a diversity of musical cultures, we would like to point out that CBC Radio has been crucial in helping us to develop audiences for our programming and the artists we present. We have really felt the impact of the loss of the initiative to do live recording for a future broadcast as this was an effective vehicle for reaching new listeners across the country and affirming the importance of artistic contributions being made by culturally diverse Canadian artists.
Thank you.