Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My colleague, Harold Rhéaume, and I represent the Regroupement québécois de la danse. Harold is its president.
I am going to speak to you about the realities of the sector we represent. Essentially, it is made up of dance companies that focus on research and original creation. We will describe our advances and our challenges as well as the observations and recommendations that we have included in our brief. The brief draws its inspiration from the master plan for professional dance in Quebec, which we published in June 2011. This is the result of several years of work by more than 200 dance professionals. The activities in our sector are atypical. My colleagues talked to you about it just now. I will go over a few points only.
There was a boom in dance research and original dance in the 1980s. That was a time of deep recession. Recessions have continued and reoccur to this day, meaning that the sector has had to find ways to organize itself and to pool resources and services in order to reduce costs. The sector has therefore developed a number of organizational models that are based on that sharing of resources and services. We are very proud of them.
In dance, there are organizational models like Diagramme—gestion culturelle, La Rotonde—centre chorégraphique contemporain de Québec, the Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique, La danse sur les routes du Québec and la Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault. In a way, they form the backbone of our ecosystem.
The operations of about 35 research and creation companies are supported by at least two levels of government. In most cases, those companies are very small organizations that rely on one or two employees. In 2008, we did an internal study in conjunction with the HEC. The study showed that the salary of an employee working in a dance company is $35,000. Working conditions are very stressful given the multi-tasking required and the number of overtime hours worked.
Yet because the companies remain very efficient, the dance economy has been growing since 2004. The growth is slow, but it is sure. According to figures from the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the revenues from the activities of those 35 dance companies came to a little more than $33 million in 2012-2013. But the manoeuvring room was extremely tight because the expenditures came to a little more than $31 million.
Funding comes from the governments in part and outreach, specifically international outreach, in part, actually the larger part. In our opinion, the local market for dance is underdeveloped.
The many underpaid hours of work and certainly the many unpaid hours of work, in the case of dancers and choreographers, also contributes to the budgetary balance in the ecosystem. According to statistics from a recent study on the status of dancers and choreographers—the same source of figures that we mentioned earlier—total income earned from dancing itself, not from teaching or other related tasks, is an average of $13,900. When you subtract expenses for training, career management, travel, preventative or therapeutic health care, auditions and even personal investments in creative works, the net income goes to $9,300.
We should tell you that 70% of the choreographers and dancers who took part in the study are self-employed workers. Forty-two per cent have chronic pain as the result of dance injuries and the same percentage has no complementary coverage from social protection or income security programs.
According to another study, recently conducted by the ministère de la Culture et des Communications on social protection for artists and others who are self-employed in the arts, governments must implement programs to provide artists with access to a social safety net. Such programs are already in place in countries such as France, Belgium and Germany.
In conclusion, improving working conditions for artists and workers is a vital issue for all our organizations, but our sector cannot solve it alone. Yet dance has made some major advances in the last 30 years, especially on international stages. But those advances are fragile. The dance ecosystem is efficient, but it is fragile and vulnerable to change.
For example, the changes announced to the Canada Council for the Arts’ funding system is a cause for concern. We may find ourselves in a situation of diminishing funds allocated to dance in general or in a situation where the distribution of those funds ignores the nature of our ecosystem. That ecosystem is essential for productivity and artistic excellence in dance. All of its elements are interdependent. If one link is weakened, the entire chain is weakened.
Earlier, my colleague spoke about the impact of the changes to the international mobility program and the foreign workers program. Unfortunately, we are experiencing that impact and seeing its effects. It jeopardizes co-production projects and touring, as well as company development projects. It is costing a great deal. It gives us a lot of administrative hassle that is frankly counterproductive.
Why is dance not entitled to an exemption, like the one granted to the Cirque du Soleil, given that international mobility lies at the heart of its history and its economics? I would say that there is still a future for dance because dance is built on structures, on organizations and on extremely committed artists who want only to dance, at least for a while. The commitment to dance is a deep and very personal investment, not in order to make a lot of money but in order to make a lot of oneself.
Future challenges mean future investments. We need more investment in international outreach, more investment in the the entire production chain—