Canadian Heritage Committee on May 4th, 2015

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

That is pretty indicative of the working conditions. When you are passionate about dance, the fact that the total income is barely double the specific income from dance shows that they cannot have a career with a large salary. They need to work part time because, in total, the amount is $35,000.

Are there any incentives for improving this situation? What can we do to help the dance sector with respect to salaries? I imagine your resources are not unlimited, and you spoke about increased support from the private sector. Are we seeking better compensation for dance artists in this context? Or are we talking about support for the industry, presentation, production, or something else?

[Marc Lemay]

It is not an issue that has a simple solution. There are investments from different levels of government and the private sector. That is why the average incomes are not very high for dance and other arts disciplines.

However, we have to be careful. The dance ecosystem is fairly complex. The way we invest funds could have negative, unintended and major consequences.

For example, I don't think that investing more money to train more young dancers, who would have difficulty finding relatively well-paid jobs and work as professional dancers, would strengthen the dance sector.

There is something else that was mentioned by our colleague from the National Ballet School, and that is building audiences. I think it's important for Canadians to appreciate and value dance. A good part of the solution could be found there.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Lemay.

I would like to ask Mr. Dalrymple the same question.

Does the government play a role?

[John Dalrymple]

I would second that response. The government obviously plays a huge role in this. In terms of increasing compensation for artists, it's quite true that even if you were the principle dancer at the National Ballet of Canada, meaning that you were at the summit, the best dancer in the whole country, you might make $150,000 a year. If you imagine being the titan of the mining industry, you would certainly get paid a lot more. I think the government has a role to play, but it needs to be strategic. As we've discussed, I think investing in programs that provide more access to dance for young people in diverse ways will create more value for the work as those people grow up.

We have great infrastructure in terms of our performing arts building. Certainly in Toronto there was a huge investment in that. Our facility for training dancers is the best in the world. For Canada to say that it has an arts training centre that is better than any other in the world is significant.

We need to ensure that we are looking to the broader society and asking, “Are you part of the growth of this art form with us?” I think that the government won't have enough money to just award more grants to help artists make more money. But if companies are more successful, if corporate sponsorships are more valuable because the art form is more valued in society, I think we will see a cascading effect that will bring artists to where they should be, to where hockey players are, because they train just as hard and they work just as hard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you, Mr. Nantel.

Mr. Dion, you have seven minutes.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dalrymple.

Ms. Bowring, Mr. Lemay and Mr. Hunter, I would like to thank you for providing us with a very good overview of the situation.

However, if I used my seven minutes to ask you to describe the film, what kind of presentation you would have made, all three of you, five or 10 years ago? What has changed? Where would we be in five or 10 years from now if we continued to apply today's policies? It would be very helpful for the committee to hear what you have to say about the situation historically and as it is now.

Mr. Lemay could start.

[Marc Lemay]

Thank you.

Let's go back 10 or 15 years.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

We are talking about dance.

[Marc Lemay]

We would see, for example, that access to professional dance performances in Canada has greatly increased. People have more access to more diversified dance programming in more communities and municipalities across the country. That is the case not just in the large urban centres but also all across Canada.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Do you have data on that?

[Marc Lemay]

Yes, we do.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Can you share it with the committee members?

[Marc Lemay]

Yes, we can do that.

In fact, I probably have some figures right here on the investments from the Canada Arts Presentation Fund. About 12 years ago, in 2002-2003—

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

It's okay; I believe you. Go on.

[Marc Lemay]

Arts organizations, specifically in dance, also receive support, both federally and from other orders of government, in order for them to do more to diversify their sources of funding and increase their revenue from private sources. Our arts and dance sector is more entrepreneurial and better able to obtain support from the private sector. Partnerships have developed over the years and we can demonstrate that.

Major investments have been made over the last 10 or 15 years to start dance companies, which has allowed organizations working in dance to achieve greater financial stability. In the arts in general—and this is certainly also true for dance—arts organizations are better organized and have more robust governance than was the case 10 or 15 years ago.

Where challenges still exist is clearly in terms of audiences. We are well aware that the world has changed. Digital technology has completely changed the world of culture. Cultural offerings are much more extensive than they were 20 and 30 years ago. It is a challenge for a discipline like dance to continue making a place for itself, attracting people to its venues, renewing its audiences and expanding them.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Is that because of the digital revolution?

[Marc Lemay]

In part. There is also more competition. People have much more choice in the way they spend their money on culture than they did 30 years ago. The supply is greater. It takes effort. I agree that it must start with the very young. Often, it starts in the family and continues at school. The more kids have a contact with art very early in their lives, the more likely they will be to become interested arts consumers.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you very much.

Madam Bowring, what is your perspective on that?

[Amy Bowring]

My perspective is more anecdotal, being in the trenches with the artists. But I would say that investment hasn't kept up with the fact that eggs, milk, and butter cost more than they did 5 or 10 years ago. Subsidy is key. We had quality professional dancers prior to 1957, but we did not have professional dancers who were paid. We went from paid to unpaid to paid again. We went to vaudeville where people were paid. Then from the end of vaudeville, basically 1930 until 1957, people worked other jobs and danced on weekends and evenings and so on. Then with the Canada Council people started to have jobs again.

The reality is that subsidy is very important to having an artistic country, and education is also key. I know that is not a federal jurisdiction. It's up to the provinces, but I would say there is still not enough art exposure in the classroom, for dance, in particular. I have two little boys who are not that interested in sports. They don't like competition very much. One draws and the other one dances. That's just how they came out. Yet they don't get a lot of exposure to that in their classrooms in our little town of Whitby.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Dalrymple, what is your perspective?

[John Dalrymple]

I would follow up on the digital piece. I think that's usually significant. I see it as an opportunity for this sector. We know that people who visit a website to watch cultural content online are twice as likely to buy a ticket for it later. So in terms of that audience development piece, the digital thing is essential. For young people it's even more pronounced. We're immigrants in the digital world, but they are the natives. We need to make sure that we're investing and providing quality content and programming in that digital sphere, because that's where we will find the young people, and the scalability that comes with that is significant. It's one thing to get bums in seats of a certain sized house, but it's another thing to actually think about delivering programs to thousands or millions of people. You can do that with digital technology.

The public health element is something that wasn't well recognized or talked about five years ago either. We at the National Ballet School are getting a significant amount of interest from potential funders and partners who would never have thought of partnering with us, like Canadian Sport for Life and the Public Health Agency, all because of the really strong arguments we can make for dance as something that's good for emotional, mental, and physical health.

The last piece is accessibility. We need to look at dance as a physical art form, but there are ways we can create quality dance activities for anybody, regardless of their state of health or physical mobility. These issues are more significant now than they were five years ago.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Okay, thank you very much.

We'll now move to Mr. Hillyer for seven minutes.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I just have a couple of questions. Not all of these questions are going to be in the same stream of thought, so they might seem a little bit random.

Ms. Bowring, I was interested in your presentation. Was it you who said that dance was beyond the consciousness of most Canadians, or was that Mr. Dalrymple?

[Amy Bowring]

No, I said that we have a history that goes deeper than the consciousness of most Canadians.