Canadian Heritage Committee on April 24th, 2018

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I'm out of time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Van Loan]

Thank you very much. Yes, you're out of time.

We now go to Mr. Nantel of the NDP.

Mr. Nantel, you have the floor for seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I will speak in English.

Mr. Spence and Ms. Thomas, thank you for your presentation.

I also want to thank the representatives of the Jasper Community Habitat for the Arts.

Ms. Douglas-Murray, can I say that there is a parallel between Les Arts et la Ville in Quebec and your organization? Are projects like the Jasper Community Habitat for the Arts or The Guild in Charlottetown examples of what you're trying to do?

[Sarah Douglas-Murray]

Yes. The majority of our members are municipalities and regional organizations, but we also open up our membership to—

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

Cultural organizations?

[Sarah Douglas-Murray]

—cultural organizations and groups.

We have an annual summit every year that moves from province to province. We do find when we are in a local area we have a much higher participation from those local non-profits. Certainly, we know from our member municipalities that the municipalities themselves are in very close contact with all of the not-for-profit cultural organizations in their communities. The majority of them do have some form of cultural granting process. Many of them are operating hubs or districts, or providing space to these organizations. Almost all of our member municipalities have undergone an extensive cultural planning process where they have identified with their community what the needs are and what the specific direction is of their community.

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

Thank you very much for this very precise answer.

What's obvious with the witnesses who we have had the chance to hear from is that the cultural milieu wants to have access to better audiences, to mediation with the clientele. We want to create these communities, but what we hear as a principle, but not as accurately and concretely, is the social impact on the clientele, on the citizens.

This is why I want to speak to you, Ms. Marcuse. Would you be interested in advising these cultural arts projects so that the social impact is always effective and accurate?

[Judith Marcuse]

I think there is a strong place for consultation from this perspective, through this lens. For example, I would recommend that there be community consultations in the planning process for these cultural centres, because so often they are beautifully designed but are not used by the full community, particularly by people who are newer to the community, new immigrants, and by youth and seniors.

It feels to me that there are convening possibilities for Heritage to not only do that convening with local inhabitants but to also look at research, which really proves the impact of social arts in various ways and how to integrate that better into a hub, which is usually about people consuming art or making art for sale.

I also really endorse the notion that Sarah Douglas-Murray just expressed to your committee—and others have too—that there needs to be profound consultation, despite all of the vicissitudes of doing that, with the city, the province, and also with private foundations, which are increasingly involved in social practice arts. Universities as well are doing enormous amounts of outreach, not only in their arts, but in connecting arts and health, reconciliation, and the settlement of new Canadians and working with isolated seniors and with street-involved youth.

The range of the work of the arts needs to be extended so that we see its full range and the integration of citizens into making art—not just consuming it.

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

In the notes you sent us, you referred to Wapikoni mobile and to la cité des arts, les arts de la rue, or le cirque de rue. Please tell us more about these examples. I think that even though you were not necessarily involved, you found them to be very good examples of the impact of art on people, on people practising art, which is the difference here.

[Judith Marcuse]

Absolutely. Yes, exactly, Monsieur Nantel.

As I said, we've done six years of research looking into the impact of these forms of artmaking and what it does for people. We see, for example, an organization called “Cirque Hors Piste” in Montreal, a program that works with street-involved youth. What we see from our research is that a very high percentage of them report back to us on returning to school or learning job skills or just on being more socially included and returning to or going to a state of better well-being.

We see a group of breast cancer patients in a hospital in Ontario, unhappy with their treatment, creating a play with an art-for-social-change playwright. They performed it for the whole hospital and, as a result of that, policy was changed for the better.

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

Would you see it appropriate to have the intervention and support from other ministers' departments?

[Judith Marcuse]

Absolutely. In all my conversations in Ottawa over the last year, I keep hearing the words “lateral integration”. I can't stress largely enough how important it is that there be connection between the silos.

If we're going to address really complex problems in our country, we really need to bring artists together with health practitioners and with people who are doing cross-cultural work and building consensus around how best to use the arts to make Canada a healthier, more integrated, and more creative place. So often, these policies that come down reflect only a certain lens. If we have these conversations across disciplines and sectors, we stand a much better chance for sustainable resources and also just basically for inclusion of more people who are telling their own stories and, in doing that, creating policies and approaches for positive change.

I hope I'm making sense.

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

Absolutely. I'm sure the health ministers would see very good positive impacts on the health of these cancer patients through the arts. Am I right in saying that?

[Judith Marcuse]

Absolutely.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Van Loan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Nantel.

Thank you to all the witnesses. Although Monsieur Hébert was supposed to go next, we are unfortunately out of time. We will have to bring this session to a close.

This meeting is adjourned on the motion of Mr. Shields. Thank you.