Canadian Heritage Committee on April 17th, 2018

[Heidi Reitmaier]

I think mentorship is of huge benefit to young leaders growing up in this country. The opportunity to use the resources and talent of people who have either gone abroad and come back as I have or have actually migrated here is of huge benefit to this country. The federal government could look very closely at a mentoring system through which leaders can bring younger leaders in and develop skills and talents with them, but to actually exploit the skill set that's coming from elsewhere into the country would be really advantageous.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. I think those are all my questions for you.

To the Hockey Hall of Fame, you had mentioned that you're well funded, well supported, but a key area seems to be your collections and actually maintaining those. Is there something at the national level beyond just providing additional funding that we can do to be supportive?

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I would just give the caveat that we're down to about less than half a minute, so it will have to be a quick answer. Thanks.

[Jeff Denomme]

Certainly, if at Canadian Heritage there are grant programs in support of collections management initiatives, particularly for the labour side of it, I think that's the key. Digitizing collections and making them accessible is important to all museums.

One of the major projects we accomplished with the International Ice Hockey Federation was digitizing their entire video archives of over 9,000 hours of footage. That was a commercial exchange and that worked out very well for us. That's the sort of thing we need to do, branching out to keep the Hockey Hall of Fame self-sufficient. As I've said, we're subject to economic factors and current events, and the peaks and valleys of any cyclical business. I think that area is one in which we need to look at additional support. With the endowment program, we look at the key objectives and the permitted purposes and use of those funds. That will be important, but if there are programs through which matching grants can be brought into this, we have a massive collection, we continue to accumulate, and we are under-resourced in that area.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I'll have to cut you off there. We've gone over by just a bit.

We are going to Mr. Van Loan now, and maybe he can continue as well on those issues.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Thank you.

I want to focus on long-term sustainability. I'll start with Bellevue Underground Mine.

I think you're an extraordinary museum. You have a great museum in and of itself as an interpretation centre. It's an experience to go there. It's high quality, and it has that passion of volunteers. Even your so-called paid people are really to a large extent volunteers and have that passion among them. Also, as you mentioned, a lot of the volunteer side is on the mining side, maintaining the physical structure, and those folks are getting old. Have you contemplated or has there ever been talk of some kind of administrative consolidation or merger with the Frank Slide site to create one museum of the area that's provincially funded, or is there a concern that you might lose that volunteer passion that makes a visit to Bellevue of such high quality?

[Elaine Hruby]

Frank Slide Interpretive Centre actually managed the Bellevue Mine for a couple of years and returned it back to a volunteer board after. I'd say a lot of our problems do stem from volunteer boards not being aware of the larger implications of museums, museum standards, and so on. Educating the boards is a challenge in itself. I don't mean to say that they're not knowledgeable people, but maybe just not about museums. I really like Heidi's ideal of mentoring. We have used the Galt Museum before for internships, but it really is hard to attract people who can make a big difference to the mine. We're not afraid of losing volunteers and so on. Frank Slide Interpretive Centre is an excellent centre, but their focus is on geology. I guess we would be secondary to them, for sure.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

That's certainly one of the things that has been discussed. Mergers are a way of dealing with some of these challenges, but it sounds like that's been tried before and didn't quite work.

[Elaine Hruby]

I think the role of the AMA, the Alberta Museums Association, could be expanded. There is a real need for museum professionals rurally. Sometimes it's hard to get to conferences and workshops and things. If there could be a more regional centring of those types of services, maybe with professionals who go from small museum to small museum to help with strategic planning and board development, it would be helpful. There are a lot of small museums out there that could use that.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

To the Hockey Hall of Fame, you now benefit from being a pilgrimage for every Canadian on their first visit to Toronto, and that gets you a good gate. It hasn't always been that way. The old hall of fame site, when it was at the CNE, was, I think, challenged. I think that's a fair way of putting it. We've had the CFL Hall of Fame, which had a similar relationship with Hamilton, which had the space there, and it has gone under, which tells us that these things aren't good forever.

I want you to talk about two things, if you could. First, you have a great marketing guy, Peter Jagla, and you do some good counterintuitive marketing. How is it that you are successful in developing that gate? Secondly, in terms of the long-term sustainability—so you don't go the way of the CFL Hall of Fame—and in view of the different cultural approaches to philanthropy between the States and here, how important is that notion of expanding to the museum sector the matching grants for endowments that we now have for arts, theatre, symphonies, and so on?

[Jeff Denomme]

Fifty per cent of our gate comes from Ontario, about 15% from the rest of Canada, about 22% from the U.S., and then the is rest from overseas. There was a day when the U.S. number was much higher, but 9/11 and all the border issues, etc., brought that down.

Because the Hockey Hall of Fame has not only national relevance but international and global relevance, marketing it is a challenge in terms of the use of our limited marketing dollars. That's where leveraged partnerships come in for us. We have strong corporate partners such as TSN, Imperial Oil, and others. Always activating partnerships and getting the Hockey Hall of Fame out beyond, without having to draw on our own financial resources, has been the key to driving the gate.

In terms of sustainability, we're at an interesting point after 25 years. Particularly in the past 10 years, we've had an intense growth period as far as development goes. We are uniquely situated in a class A office development in downtown Toronto, whereas the other major halls are in smaller communities. In particular, there is Cooperstown, a community of only a couple of thousand people in upstate New York, Canton, Ohio, for football, and Springfield, Massachusetts, for basketball.

Our challenges will include growing or expanding the facility in a class A office development in downtown Toronto, where rents are quite significant and space is at a premium, with very little space available. Then there's the question of how much growth is too much growth, because there's always a requirement to reinvest. That was the founding principle of the Hockey Hall of Fame: to continually reinvest and change and make sure we're relevant. It's not only about the past but about the present. In our research, we find that fans want to see as much of hockey today as they want to see the history, so that's been important to us.

From some of our initial market studies, we saw that when we first opened at the current location people thought the Hockey Hall of Fame was just the historical building at the corner of Yonge and Front. It connoted “museum”. For hockey fans, that wasn't a positive, so we came out very strong on emphasizing the hands-on interactive elements of the Hockey Hall of Fame. Most of our advertising campaigns draw on that, and that I think is why we have great success.

There was an article a few years ago in The Wall Street Journal about the Internet generation snubbing Cooperstown—

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Jeff, I'm just going to give you the warning that you've gone over seven minutes, so if you can, wrap it up quickly.

[Jeff Denomme]

I'm sorry.

From a sustainability standpoint, this new endowment program is for us, particularly the focus on preserving the collections.... Our goal is to raise $10 million in the next five years, so we're going to need it from various sources.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Nantel, you have the floor.

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

Ms. Hruby, I don't know if you can hear the interpretation, but I'm guessing not. So I'll simplify things and switch to English.

You are the best example of why we are doing this study. Mr. Van Loan's question was advocating for the fact that you're more of an interpretation centre and a historical site.

How much support do you get from provincial governments and from Ottawa? I can't recall exactly, but I would ask you in your answer to come back to the first recommendation you made, which seemed quite accurate to me.

[Elaine Hruby]

We do get some money from matching grants from the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation. We have to match those grants. We don't have a lot of unrestricted funds. We're a popular site, but staffing takes quite a chunk of money. We are eligible for MAP grants because we are open all year long. We do have a professional museum person. The big thing is matching grants. For the portal, you have a geological study that could cost $30,000, and we just don't have those types of funds.

I know that this looks like a plea for long-term government support. That's not it. It's about trying to split the small amount of funds that we get every year for large infrastructure that's really important. It goes beyond a new building for a museum, or whatever. If that is not sustained or rehabilitated, the whole site goes down.

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

Do you think it's possible to reach out to the mining community or mining workers across Canada, or companies that do enjoy good wealth on many occasions?

[Elaine Hruby]

Absolutely. One professional staff member can't deal with marketing, travelling, and getting out and networking as much as they should. The mines in B.C. have been approached, and they've said that they would like to see a commitment from either the provincial or federal government, which I think is fair. It's not like we're looking for big sums of money, ongoing. It's just—

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

It's money you need. This is why some witnesses have come up with the endowment funds programming from Ottawa, so that we provide money and we actually have a program to incite companies or individuals to contribute. Matching funds come up—

[Elaine Hruby]

Absolutely. What I'm seeing in grants, from the mining industry as well, is that their focus is on health and wellness, which is a part of sustainability and is totally admirable, but it doesn't help our long-term planning.

I really want to emphasize the mentorship and a more supportive role—more people out there—for small rural museums that might not have the skills.

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

Like Ms. Dzerowicz said, it's a very interesting panel, as you come from three very different angles. Toronto is a community, and contemporary art is something to bring to everyone, especially to kids, to open their minds. We have various approaches to the museum world this morning.

The Hockey Hall of Fame has a very niche market that's internationally attractive, but there's a small community that just went through the worst horrible nightmare.

I'm thinking about what happened in Humboldt. The wife of our colleague Kevin Waugh is from Humboldt. According to my colleague Erin Weir, from Regina—Lewvan, Humboldt's hockey community has fostered the emergence of many Canadian talents.

The Humboldt community contributed a lot of hockey talent to the NHL. Would you consider placing a spotlight on this community, with it being suddenly super local, as an international hall of fame? I think this for the same reason that the hockey community allowed the hall of fame to be in Canada.

[Phil Pritchard]

It has been a tough week for not only hockey but Canada and worldwide. My daughter goes to school at the University of New South Wales and she read about it in the Sydney newspaper, so it has impacted the world hugely.

From our point of view with Humboldt, we went to Humboldt on Friday. We took the Stanley Cup there on behalf of the hall of fame and the National Hockey League. It was a request from one of the doctors to try to cheer them up a bit. It was under the radar that we went in there. They were thrilled. It offered a few smiles for a while, but still the major impact is there and will be there for a long time.

We have a display outside the hall, where you don't have to come in, that pays tribute to the Humboldt Broncos right now, but next month, in May, which is the 100th anniversary of the junior A hockey tournament that was dedicated to the veterans in World War I, the Memorial Cup tournament is in Saskatchewan. We are taking a big display out there. Timing, obviously, is a big part of that, but there will be a big display not only on hockey across Canada but, obviously, Humboldt and the Memorial Cup as well.

When things like that happen we try to preserve it in a way that is elegant but respectful. It touches so many people. I think the way hockey comes across to Canadians, not only Canadians who were born here but new Canadians, is touching in a way that only hockey can be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you. I'm going to have to cut it there.

Mr. Virani, please.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Do I have seven minutes, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

If you can do a little less, that would be great.