Canadian Heritage Committee on March 29th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to Mr. Shields for six minutes, please.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To the witnesses, I very much appreciated your presentations. They were very interesting.

To begin with, Canadian Arts Coalition, you mentioned the words “small” and “medium”. What's your definition of “small”?

[Frédéric Julien]

I'm thinking of an artist-run centre as a very specific example of the smallest kind of arts organization.

Kate?

[Kate Cornell]

I have a couple of examples of smaller organizations that have come together to propose the idea of a cultural hub. In Davenport riding, Theatre Gargantua, Théâtre français, and Obsidian Theatre are working together on a proposal. In Montreal, there's Playwrights' Workshop. Those organizations are run by a staff of two or three or four. They can be quite small but because they are talking to each other and willing to collaborate, it makes the project that much more innovative and interesting.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Yes, I have that in my riding. It would be in a town of 1,000. There was an old service station type of building. The guy hadn't been able to sell it. They turned into an arts centre. Rosebud, a hamlet of fewer than 50, is now a cultural arts hub with a lot of production, with a theatre school. They have a passion play in the summer in the badlands. Okay, that's what “small” means.

You talked about gentrification, the process that happens when they move in, it's cheap, and they move out. I hear about multi-use. If they become community hubs, not cultural hubs, somebody else in that hub has got skin in the game and wants them to keep it alive. Would that make more sense than calling it strictly a cultural hub? It would be a community hub and draw other pieces to it.

[Frédéric Julien]

This is a very relevant question because as we prepared for this hearing today we went back to our membership and asked what they thought we should highlight. Actually, we heard conflicting views about community hubs versus cultural hubs, so there is definitely a model that exists out there where cultural hubs are also community hubs. There have been studies around the world that have found that those hubs that are more rooted in the community tend to be more sustainable in the long term, less dependent on public funding, more resilient. There's a model that needs to be explored. Because the study was on cultural hubs today, we did not go too far into this notion of community hubs, but it is definitely a very important complementary matter.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I think that's critical in what you're saying. If the process is such that they start and they disappear, that's not what we want. We want sustainability. If you don't have sustainability, we're going to need a different model.

One of the things you mentioned was municipalities and the 1%. I know of a city of a million people where something has gone badly wrong, because they had the 1%. They would bring in art designed by foreign artists. Nobody knew what it was until it appeared. In the last election, they elected a council that's going to get rid of that 1%. They've not only upset their local residents, but the indigenous communities as well, because the art didn't connect to the people in the city, nor the indigenous communities. It insulted them. That city council is going to vote against that 1%.

That's a problem, when the arts committee sits isolated and doesn't have that connection to and support from their citizens. That's when things go wrong. You love to see that 1%, but when you get a disconnect, then we lose it, which is wrong.

With your project, I think I'm seeing the economic value of what you brought to that project, because you brought many different pieces. I saw in 2010 a $3.5-million federal grant, and then $366,000, so you've not identified any other funding source.

[Monique Savoie]

Actually, you have a picture.

You can see the amount received from

the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Montreal Arts Council, the Ministry of Economy, Science and Innovation of Quebec, and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Land Occupancy of Quebec. We also received a subsidy from the city centre and a subsidy from the borough of Ville-Marie.

To the right of the table, you can see a list of SAT's independent revenues.

This year, we will finish the year with independent revenues of 71%, and 7% recurrent operational assistance funding. This means that the SAT lives on the basis of what it produces.

We received precious government assistance to build the structure. As I said earlier, we were to submit a request to obtain a subsidy from the New Media Research Networks Fund, thanks to which we earned almost $1 million, year after year. But the program was cancelled and has never been replaced by anything similar.

Today, if we want artists to play a role as full-fledged researchers, there is no program that aligns with that at Canadian Heritage. We are going back to models we knew in the past.

At this time, the SAT does not receive one penny from Canada, and that has been the case since 2011. We may have been your worst investment; when we opened the building, we were already sidelined because we no longer had access to those funds.

In the eyes of the Canada Council for the Arts, we suddenly became a centre that was of no interest. The operational assistance we had received every four years was withdrawn in favour of annual funding. Whereas two years before, we had been classified as an underfunded but key organization, all of a sudden we became an uninteresting organization. Our operational assistance was withdrawn and we were given annual funding of $35,000 a year, and we are somewhat reluctant in the face of that.

If we want a resumption of operational funding, we have to have special projects that span two years. Canada is not a part of the project.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I have to interrupt you.

Mr. Nantel, you have the floor.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I've been writing to my daughter to ask her to remind me of the name of the contemporary artist we saw together at the Copenhagen Art Centre. The artist was actually part of the work itself. It spoke to us a great deal. The city of Copenhagen is very inspiring. I can't help but think of it since we are indeed talking about cultural districts and community hubs. I also remember the Papiroen, in Copenhagen; it's a type of gathering of food trucks and food stalls that bring a community dimension to the art of dining and of gastronomy.

I think that this morning's group of witnesses is very interesting, once again. The Canadian Arts Coalition representatives have reminded us of the need for mediation spaces, work spaces and residential spaces for artists. Based on Ms. Engle's presentation, we are really talking about projects.

Honestly, I have to tell you that I only learned about your existence this morning. It is abundantly clear that you really provide enormous support to a multitude of fresh and engaging events. The images you showed us as examples of involvement were exceptional.

However, I cannot help but go back to your presentation, Ms. Savoie. Personally, I remember that when the Spectrum de Montréal was still in existence, it was in the front of an old Toronto-Dominion Bank that had closed its doors. We don't know what the modalities were. And that is in fact the subject of my question.

We are talking about communities that are affected by the closure of certain businesses. The TD Bank was located at the intersection of Bleury and Saint-Catherine streets, and it looked like an open wound; there was nothing there. And then, you arrived.

Did you get any support at the time? If so, which government level provided it?

[Monique Savoie]

As you know, when you are a pioneer, you have to suffer in the beginning.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Yes.

[Monique Savoie]

I spoke before the standing committee in 1999 and explained that digital culture was coming and that we needed this type of equipment. I was asked whether this was a trend, and whether I thought that this would pass.

And so we had to do this ourselves; we negotiated—as you said, the building was closed—and we managed to get the space for $3 a square foot at the time.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

And what was the local going rate in that market, per square foot?

[Monique Savoie]

Around $8 or $10.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Good for you.

[Monique Savoie]

It was very sought-after. A lot of cultural organizations that worked in the digital domain set up shop in former banks because they had fabulous electrical systems, and high ceilings. So there were several of us who recycled buildings. What I was saying earlier is that now we are recycling an old public market that was the first market in Montreal outside of the fortified walls. You are correct in saying that we are also taking over such locations and bringing new life to some neighbourhoods through these actions that make a make a difference.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Ms. Engle, from that angle, given the committee's mandate to explore the program, do you believe—some people have raised this, and personally, this is what I have retained from previous meetings—that we should concentrate on the creation of a type of label as yet to be defined, for what we call “community hub” and “cultural centre”? Those who acquire that label would be eligible for federal funding, whatever form it takes. We would like to avoid winding up with cultural centres that are too expensive to operate.

I would go so far as to say that that is to some extent what CIBL went through in the sense that the weight became too much to bear. Artists should not be condemned to misery and homelessness, but your projects seem to be inherently temporary.

Do you think that is what we should do?

[Jayne Engle]

Well, I think it's ideal to be locally responsive, to make these contexts dependent, depending on local needs. As I intended to illustrate, there are so many different models and different ways to do it, and that is quite preferable.

To the point of community hubs, cultural hubs, for me, one of the reasons it is interesting to keep culture in the name is to make sure that there are artists involved. I can think of an example.

Laboratoire transitoire, which we created.

For the call for proposals, we had a whole range of social entrepreneurs, but we wanted to make sure there was a sampling of artists there as well. We think that in all of this there should be artists, but it doesn't necessarily have to be only artists. It depends on local needs.

I'll just make one other point, and it gets at what you said about Copenhagen. You gave the example of Copenhagen. For those who don't know about it, there's an informal space, which is actually a large portion of the city that has become this venue where food trucks are inside and thousands of people are there on any given day. It's incredible, and it's totally unregulated, by the way. It's completely illegal.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Yes? That's where I'd hang out.

[Jayne Engle]

One of the things that's interesting about it is that Copenhagen is allowing these kinds of regulatory experimentation sandboxes and trying out this kind of thing to see what happens, to study what happens, and to build up an evidence base to see if it should be enshrined in rules. I think that opportunity for regulatory experimentation is quite critical.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I have half a minute, so I'll just ask if you have seen Christiania in Copenhagen.

[Jayne Engle]

Yes, absolutely.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Copenhagen is truly letting artists responsibly create and explore. Christiania is a complete neighbourhood of hippies who have actually been there for 35 years, and they actually sell weed—oh, we will too.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!