Canadian Heritage Committee on April 19th, 2018

[Gilles Renaud]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Nantel.

Let me go back to your specific question about the De Gaspé project, where the issue of property taxes is the key one.

Let me give you an idea of the magnitude. When the project began, property taxes for the artists came to about 70 cents per square foot. Today, five years later, they are at $5.06. As a not-for-profit organization, we are meeting the need for access to places that create synergy and that turn into organically into cultural hubs. In another aspect, the city of Montreal and the Government of Quebec provide us with financial support from public funds.

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

However, your taxes go up.

[Gilles Renaud]

Let me give you an example. This year, the artists in the Regroupement Pied Carré group are going to pay the city of Montreal $1 million in property taxes for a space of approximately 200,000 square feet.

Moreover, revenue has to develop and become more concentrated in order to pay the costs of maintenance and other things. We are looking for a formula through which all layers of government can recognize the essence, the activity, of artists’ workshops or creative hubs. That would pave the way, through provincial legislation, to breaks such as property tax exemptions or reductions in the property tax rate. Examples like that actually have to do with municipalities, districts, and the provincial government. But if the federal government recognized the organizations using criteria like the fact of coming together, a certain square footage, the presence of an on-site manager, and a defined mission with criteria to meet, the door would be open to other departments or public authorities feeling encouraged to do the same thing. That could make a difference. Some artists are paying $12 or $13 per square foot, $5 of which goes to pay the taxes, and they can no longer afford that. It is a very specific detail, but it is hugely important.

We have been talking about Pied Carré, but you can see the same phenomenon in cultural cities elsewhere in Canada, such as Toronto and Vancouver. You have heard of the cultural centre located at 401 Richmond St. in Toronto. The people in charge of that project found a solution this year with the city and the provincial government. The recognition of organizations like Artscape and Akin Collective—with which we have established links, such as sharing best management practices—would give easier access to openings in the area of tax breaks. This would not involve a grant from the city, which would be less of an advantage; it would be a reduced tax rate.

Let me emphasize that the artists are still contributing to public services and they bring a lot to the neighbourhood. What they bring to sustainable development and to the quality of life must be recognized. We must keep them in central locations, otherwise they will go to the suburbs and outside the city. There will then no longer be a cultural cityscape in places like Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver.

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

I have been looking at the Wellington Control Tower for what must be 20 years now and I wonder what is going to be done with the building whose architecture—that may be too strong a term—whose shape is quite unique. Actually, I am trying to determine, as clearly as I can, what our committee, which is responsible for studying the program for the Department of Canadian Heritage, could recommend.

My impression is that the intent is to establish what could be called hubs, creative centres, without worrying about everything being the same. We want to support existing projects and, ideally, to stimulate additional projects along the same lines in various places. Is that more or less it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

That is all the time we have.

If any witness has comments to add, everyone would be really interested if you could send them to us in writing.

We're going to Mr. Hogg, please.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I'm interested in the course that you were referencing. We've had a number of small groups from rural parts of Canada. Is there any connection that can be done virtually? Are there virtual connections for the creation of a cultural hub?

Perhaps each of you could comment on whether or not you see some value in that, or some way the government could support the value of what you've been able to accomplish in your very established creative hubs. Is there some residual benefit that can be generated through a virtual hub or some other way for small very rural areas that are struggling to maintain some level of cultural or artistic value within their communities?

[Gilles Renaud]

We already have some level of exchange with rural areas, like Lac-Mégantic, for a creation of a hub there. We act as a consultant without any fees, just for the community. There could easily be a virtual link. We are developing that kind of link with other gestionnaires sur place elsewhere in Canada, in the States, and in Europe. Another aspect that would be interesting is a virtual and physical exchange. Artists or creators from a region could come to one of our installations and participate for three, four, six months as a resident, and the other way around as well. There's a lot of interest in that kind of exchange. The virtual link could be done easily, just for the exchange of good practices, what studios or lodgings are available, or a repertoire of spaces and artists. It needs some funding, and no organization has the funding for that. There's a need and an interest for both a virtual and a physical exchange.

[Christa Dickenson]

Thank you.

I'd like to echo what Gilles just said about the importance of the virtual piece. I was just in Colombia a few weeks ago visiting Centro Audiovisual Medellín. It's incredible because they very much are a creative hub, and I saw all these different creators working together. Their largest piece that's growing is the fact that they've added a virtual membership to it in order to reach out to remote locations throughout Medellín and Colombia.

The live streaming component is something that I addressed in my presentation this morning. I truly think, as Gilles was saying, this is the differentiator: to be able to disseminate the information, the knowledge, and to network. That is critical.

As far as some other qualifications are concerned, I really think that looking at diversity itself is important. We find that when you look at a digital media company that is run by numerous men, they most likely will hire like-minded people. We we have not done a study on cultural hubs. We have done a study on diversity and inclusion within our sector, and what we found is that the young and emerging creators are looking to find their own space, to grow, to be like-minded and to be able to hire people like themselves. So I would just really think of that as potentially another thing to look at when you look at criteria.

Thank you.

[Alanna Jankov]

Thanks.

If anyone has been to Prince Edward Island, they would probably realize that you can go from rural to urban in about 30 seconds, so when it comes to that virtual piece and offering up The Guild from tip to tip to Prince Edward Island, it's pretty easy for us to do that.

The Guild is a founding member of what we call the Professional Theatre Network of Prince Edward Island. We're a group of theatres that meet in different areas all over P.E.I. We share resources, ideas, and even lighting equipment, actors, sound and tech people, and directors, and stage managers. We're doing that, and it's working for us.

I try to hire from one end of the island to the other. When I'm hiring my students, because we're so close, somebody could live in Summerside or even as far as Tignish and still come and work at The Guild and have that experience of coming to P.E.I.

I just wanted to say that.

[Alexandre Fortin]

I'll just make a short remark that goes to exchanges with rural communities.

Right now what I can see, even as an artist myself, is that one of the main problems we have is isolation. As artists, we rarely see what happens on our doorstep, far less in other regions or in other studios. Because artists are often in survival mode, they don't have time to flourish or expand and exchange with other communities or other artists.

The development of a network or a system to do even virtual exchanges with other regions or other artists would be of huge benefit to us. Oftentimes, you could say that we toil in the dark for a very long time without looking at what's outside. We relish opportunities to do residencies in other countries or even in other regions of Canada. We would cherish that opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

You have half a minute.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I'll pass that on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Perfect.

That will bring this panel to an end. It was really interesting, and I want to thank all of you.

If there were some questions that you may not have been able to give your full answers to, I really encourage you to please put those in some written submissions.

Thank you to everyone. We will suspend for two minutes so we can move on to our next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

We'll get started again.

We're doing this all by video conference today. We have Ana Serrano from the Canadian Film Centre and Andrew Mosker from the National Music Centre.

Let's start with the Canadian Film Centre, please.

[Ana Serrano, Chief Digital Officer, Canadian Film Centre]

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee. It's my pleasure to be here speaking with you guys about the cultural hubs issue that you so courageously decided to tackle.

As Madam Chair indicated, my name is Ana Serrano. I'm the chief digital officer of the Canadian Film Centre. I'm also the managing director of Canada's only media and entertainment technology accelerator, IDEABOOST.

I want to start this conversation with all of you today by articulating three specific points of view about what a cultural hub could be.

First and foremost, the Canadian Film Centre, which is situated north of downtown Toronto, at Bayview and York Mills, for the past 30 years has been accelerating talent across the film, television, music, acting, and digital media sectors. Based on the experience we've had as a really efficient, effective wealth-generating network of stakeholders in the media and entertainment ecosystem, we believe, based on this experience, cultural hubs need not necessarily be so predicated on a place-based strategy. Indeed, cultural hubs, especially today in the digital age, could be seen as distributed networks of services—as spaces, of course, but most importantly as people-driven networks. That's one part of this intervention that I'd like to share with you, that we think cultural hubs should be seen as distributed networks.

Of equal importance is the notion that cultural hubs, to be more effective in especially today's climate, typically will need to be more interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral. They will need to focus on being embedded in real live experiences, lived experiences, of the cross-section of networks they serve and in the specific domain, in this case arts and culture, they might be focused on. In much of the work we are currently doing at the Canadian Film Centre, we have started to stitch together not just media and entertainment talent and content creators but also technology start-up founders and community spaces that are embedded in communities, whether that's the library system, specific other communities that we're working with, subject matter experts in areas that we might be interested in exploring as part of our content productions, and so on. There are all of these types of stakeholders. Typically, when we look at a cultural ecosystem, we only think of the parts of the ecosystem that are attached to the production value chain—for example, from those who produce the content to those who distribute the content—but increasingly we're finding that playing with the other sectors that touch on or are adjacent to this production value chain makes for richer conversations amongst the stakeholders involved.

Last but not least, another thing we've discovered is that a hub is only good if it is actually connected to other hubs internationally. It's very important. Although we may be looking at creating these vibrant, intersectional, inter-sectoral spaces and networks in our communities in Canada, unless they are also somehow connected to other spaces abroad, their impact is likely limited.

These are the three things we'd like to discuss further. I'll repeat them for you: the notion that the cultural hub is actually increasingly becoming a distributed network of individuals and interdisciplinary teams; we need to think of hubs across sectors; and we really need to think about their reach and impact at a global level.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

We will now go to Mr. Mosker, please.

[Andrew Mosker, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Music Centre]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank everybody for your time today and also for the opportunity to participate in this really important subject about cultural hubs and creative districts.

I'm the founding president and CEO of Canada's new National Music Centre, which is located in a building that's called Studio Bell. It's in the heart of one of Calgary's oldest neighbourhoods, called East Village, on the east [Technical difficulty—Editor] Calgary [Technical difficulty—Editor] .

National Music Centre opened what I would argue is an emerging hybrid organization that aspires to be a creative hub and within a cultural district. It combines both of those dualities into one facility. We opened very recently, just 22 months ago, on July 1, 2016. It took roughly 10 years to build National Music Centre. It was funded from all levels of government—municipal, provincial, and federal—as well as through a considerable amount of philanthropy, corporate donations, and/or sponsorship. [Technical difficulty—Editor] in this neighbourhood.

National Music Centre has many elements of a cultural hub and a creative hub. We created a new model for an operational cultural facility in that we are part museum, part live music presenter, and part incubator within this particular building. We are an interdisciplinary cultural organization that involves numerous sectors—not just music—on the non-profit side of music but also on the for-profit side, the music industry. It includes tech and education, and I would go so far as to say even health to a degree.

Our programming [Technical difficulty—Editor] including artists, thought leaders, educators, music fans, and a wide range of other audiences as well. I can speak first hand about what it was like to be involved in helping to create a new cultural district within Calgary, then also specifically an emerging cultural hub within the organization of the National Music Centre. We are very much in our early days. We just opened in July 2016, as I said. We're very much pioneers in a lot of ways. I think what has led to our success in a lot of ways, at least our early success, even though we're still at the pioneering phase, was leadership from the City of Calgary.

Government has played a very significant leadership role in helping to set the stage for this new cultural district. [Technical difficulty—Editor] from a digital perspective, it's both an evolving network and also a series of cultural infrastructure amenities that live within a certain physical ecosystem here in Calgary.

To give you a sense of the neighbourhood, East Village is a mixed-use aspiration, amenity-rich neighbourhood. It will be home at some point to more than 11,000 residents. The city has invested in some significant infrastructure projects, including the refurbishment of an island, a river walk, a brand new central library, which opens later this year, and of course National Music Centre, in which they invested $35 million. We broke ground in 2013. We've incentivized a lot of new activities to move into this neighbourhood. That's at a particularly interesting time in Calgary's [Technical difficulty—Editor], which is obviously a hotly debated topic nowadays. Tech and culture in particular are new areas at which the city is looking very seriously with respect to diversification. It's a digital network, and it's also an infrastructure network that is really in the early phases of developing.

My own view on cultural hub—because I've been involved with his project for well over 20 years, and that's how long it's taken it to get off the ground largely in some ways because of the shift that has to happen in Calgary's mindset—is that a cultural hub physically needs to be within a very eclectic neighbourhood. While it welcomes cars, it needs to be very pedestrian friendly, which East Village is aspiring to be. At the same time, it needs to have a very strong sense of authenticity about it and diversity within it.

All of those elements are actually [Technical difficulty—Editor] neighbourhood. Our government, as I said, has played a significant role in creating East Village. The City of Calgary created an arm's-length, wholly owned subsidiary called the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation to oversee the development of this neighbourhood.

The province eliminated or stopped collecting taxes in this neighbourhood for a period of 20 years to incentivize the CMLC to fund— and use those tax dollars to fund— and build projects such as infrastructure upgrades, and also to incentivize developers to move into the city.

I can share from my perspective how National Music Centre, hybrid cultural organizations [Technical difficulty—Editor]. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you. We were supposed to have another witness with us today from the Jasper Community Habitat for the Arts, but they have not connected by video conference, so those are our presentations by witnesses. We will go into our question and answer session beginning with Mr. Hogg, please.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

With reference to model types—and referred to the issue of non-profits—I've looked back at some of the research, and the heritage committee at some point also looked at the concept I referred to in our last meeting, on the blending of the non-profit and business models.

I'm wondering whether or not you have had a chance to look at it, or whether there's some value in looking at, a model in British Columbia that blends the non-profit and the for-profit models. Nova Scotia has done some work on it and so has England. British Columbia has done some work on it. With a non-profit or a foundational model, you are limited in the number of things you can do. You can't buy franchises. You can't pay a board of directors. You can't sell shares. You can't do all of those things, but in the business sector, you can.

Is there some value in government looking at a blended model? Would a blended model, with business principles combined with non-profit principles, from a philosophical point of view, represent a model for incorporation? Would something like that give you more flexibility, more options, in terms of being able to address the initiatives you so clearly outlined?

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Do you want to start?

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I got a good silence out of that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I will start with Ms. Serrano, please.

[Ana Serrano]

It depends on whether your vision of a hub is a single place. I think, by its nature, a hub is a distributed set of networks. It could be a district. It could be a series of connected spaces across multiple districts. In that instance, if the vision of the hub is broader, I do think you need to have a public–private sector model to make a go of these things.

However, it is important to have a kind of anchor tenant facility in the hub who adheres to a set of not-for-profit values. You really want to make sure there are spaces that are more inclusive and more diverse and can take on some of the services that perhaps aren't as attractive to commercial enterprises.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

You wanted to add to that?

[Andrew Mosker]

I agree that there needs to be some latitude between non-profits and for-profits co-existing, and even some policy—and that's obviously down to legislation to, I think.... I guess I would describe it as loosening the reins a little bit, just because of the narrowing of the gap between the non-profit sector and the for-profit sector in certain instances.

For example, with the National Music Centre, one of the things we have seen within cultural districts, certainly in North America, is the relationship between live music centres and the clusters of tech companies that surround them. It's no secret, I think, to most people that [Technical difficulty--Editor] Austin has the largest concentrations of tech companies anywhere in the world, and they are also the live music capital of the world, because we've seen a relationship between tech workers and companies in the creative sector wanting to be close to that kind of vibrant music scene.

In the case of National Music Centre, I think that when the building Canada fund provided $25 million under the previous government for this particular project, there was a real restriction in the guidelines of the money, which could not be used to fund our live music venue here at the National Music Centre because it wasn't considered a core charitable activity of the National Music Centre. The National Music Centre is a charitable organization registered under the CRA. [Technical difficulty--Editor] We were quite motivated to go to the CRA and really argue this point, because we felt that, as a music organization, being able to present live music within a club environment was an important activation and a way we could incentivize others to locate within this hub and neighbourhood.

I think that's one thing we certainly learned throughout the process of working through the bill [Technical difficulty--Editor] that I would very strongly recommend you consider creating a little bit more latitude, because as a charitable organization, presenting live music—given our mandate—is a very important part of who we are as an organization. It has a direct link to certain investments in the for-profit sector that otherwise may look elsewhere within a given district to locate. That's a real concrete example I could give you to think about for consideration.