Evidence of meeting #127 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Association of Canadian Publishers
The short answer is yes. Export is incredibly important to Canadian publishers operating in this market. In terms of Canadian education and the types of books you were speaking about earlier, those regional perspectives and unique Canadian stories, those are books that.... Some will travel internationally, but in order to produce those stories for Canadians, we need a marketplace that works here at home, too.
Edmonton Centre, Lib.
Okay.
Mr. Huffman, could you share perspectives from the north on these issues of getting voices heard in this current framework?
Marketing Manager, West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, Dorset Fine Arts
We're the conduit, in many cases, for the artists in Dorset. As I mentioned, our organization has a broad mandate. We don't just manage copyright. This is a very small part of what we do. We are promoters; we are marketers; we are travel companions when artists are travelling internationally.
It's very remote, and the gap in understanding is immense. Not one of our artists, since the birth of Inuit art in Cape Dorset, has ever been traditionally trained. This is all mentorship through the community, intergenerational information exchange. As I mentioned, there are artists who have never travelled outside of the territory. We have a relationship with the Brooklyn Museum. You can imagine what kind of culture shock it is when I spend two weeks with an artist who has never been farther south than Ottawa.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
That brings us to the end of the time we have for this panel.
Building on what Mr. Boissonnault said, The Red Word is actually published by ECW Press, so a big shout-out to them for having taken a chance on that book.
I would like to thank all of you. It was really helpful to hear all of your perspectives. If you have other thoughts that you want to submit later, building on what you heard today, please do put in written submissions as well. Thank you.
We're going to suspend for about two minutes to change panels.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Let's start it again. We have another panel with us.
We have here present the Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference.
We are welcoming their representatives, Anne Bertrand and Jason Saint-Laurent.
On video conference, we have the Visual Arts Alliance, with Emmanuel Madan.
We have with us here present the Contemporary Art Galleries Association, with Émilie Grandmont-Bérubé.
We'll start with Mr. Madan and talk about technology.
Emmanuel Madan Spokesperson, Artist and Director of Independent Media Arts Alliance, Visual Arts Alliance
Would it be possible to start with Ms. Bertrand, since the notes I've prepared will follow on what she'll say?
Liberal
Anne Bertrand Director, Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I would like to thank the committee members for inviting us to appear today.
My presentation will be mainly in English, with a few short paragraphs in French. I work for a national association whose members are mainly in Canada. So I work a lot in English, but I do everything in both official languages on a daily basis.
In response to the committee's mandate, the Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference, hereafter referred to as ARCA and represented by myself and Jason Saint-Laurent, is thankful to appear before you to address remuneration models through the unique perspective of artist-run centres, also known as ARCs—an infrastructure of 180 organizations located across Canada. ARCs provide multiple access points to the arts for both art professionals and the public.
Artist-run centres are non-profit organizations governed by artists. ARCs support the production and public presentation of new and innovative practices and are committed to paying artists the recommended minimum CARFAC fees of $1,996 per exhibition lasting four weeks on average. In 2015-16, artist-run centres presented the work of over 4,000 Canadians—Canadian artists, I should say, but they are also Canadians—across the country in more than 900 exhibitions attended by some 1.5 million audience members.
A statistical study conducted in 2010 by the Observatoire de la culture et des communications of the Institut de la statistique du Québec on a sample of professional visual artists found that only one-third of artists had received royalties, for a median annual amount of about $890. Although this source of income is important for artists, it is far from providing a living.
It is impossible to establish with certainty the amount of exhibition royalties paid by artist-run centres to artists with the current Canadian Arts Data—also known as CADAC—as there is no clear differentiation between fees and royalties in financial reporting.
Because royalties represent such a small proportion of revenues, salaries and honoraria are an important source of income for artists. Artist-run centres actively work toward providing adequate pay for curatorial and administrative staff, half of whom are also practising artists. This labour force plays a key role in integrating new generations of artists and cultural workers by bridging the gap between higher education training, professional artistic practice and cultural management.
In 2015-16, only 77 artist-run centres of the 180 received core funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, representing less than half of our members. With total revenues of over $21 million, the median annual operating budget of these 77 centres was less than $250,000. Approximately $5.5 million of this revenue was paid in salaries and professional fees, representing over half of total artistic expenses. The remaining portion was dedicated to production costs, special projects, publications, professional development, outreach and education. Only 35% of the overall workforce positions were full-time, with a decrease of 2.7% since 2010, likely due to the growing freelance and part-time workforce, for which we only have anecdotal data.
Organizations systematically operate with fewer paid staff than what is needed.
Artist-run culture draws from an exceptional, highly specialized labour force. Designers, copy editors, translators, technicians—often artists themselves—are experts in the production of programming. Exhibiting artists are encouraged to give public talks and facilitate workshops along with their exhibitions. This labour, whether related to production or exhibition, provides additional revenues in the form of honoraria. Payment of these honoraria, however, can vary considerably according to organizational budgets.
I have a proposal. The current data, despite its gaps, suggests that current copyright-based remuneration falls short in providing artists with a living wage. Artist-run centres are currently providing additional sources of artistic income, on shoestring budgets.
In light of the above presentation, we ask the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to consider recommending the following to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.
One, strike a partnership between the Department of Canadian Heritage and Statistics Canada to develop and fund new statistical tools to better gauge today's complex visual arts sector according to key indicators and monitor the evolution of the socio-economic conditions of artists and cultural workers over time with greater granularity than the Culture Satellite Account can currently provide.
Two, before developing programs for the cultural hubs infrastructure—I read it this morning on the bus and it's fantastic, actually; thank you for that work—examine the current challenges faced by the existing Canadian artist-run network, representing a cross-section of artists, curators and managers who have been making Canadian art happen locally, nationally and internationally for over 40 years.
In closing, ARCA is grateful to members of Parliament for their part in approving the doubling of the Canada Council for the Arts budget. In the first round of core funding results since the increase in 2017-18, artist-run centres received an overall increase of 30%. More increases are expected after this year's second round of applications.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Thank you.
We'll now hear from the Visual Arts Alliance.
Go ahead, Mr. Madan.
Spokesperson, Artist and Director of Independent Media Arts Alliance, Visual Arts Alliance
Okay.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Emmanuel Madan. I've been a professional artist for the last 20 years. My works have been shown in galleries and museums all over the world, as well as domestically. Since 2014, I've also been the director of the Independent Media Arts Alliance, or IMAA. IMAA is the national representative of the Canadian independent film, video, digital art and sound art sectors. Through our nearly 100 member organizations spanning 10 provinces and two territories, we serve over 16,000 independent media artists and cultural workers.
I'm not here on behalf of IMAA today, however. I've been asked to appear on behalf of the Visual Arts Alliance, a larger consortium of national arts organizations, of which IMAA is one.
The Visual Arts Alliance comprises 14 national arts service organizations, working in the domains of visual art, media arts and craft. Our 14 constituent groups represent artists, curators, art museums, artist-run centres, and art dealers. We've been in operation since November 2007, when we first convened at a national visual arts summit.
I'd like to echo and build on the statements that my colleague Anne Bertrand has just presented. The organization that Madam Bertrand leads, ARCA, is also a member of the VAA.
I've been following the proceedings of this committee and the testimony of your previous witnesses. Many have noted the immense challenges they face in the new copyright environment as a result of digital transformation and the consequent increase in mobility of content across borders.
These huge shifts are definitely not alien to me or to my own organization, as they pertain largely to audiovisual content. They deeply threaten the viability of the existing model for ensuring equitable and sustainable remuneration for creators.
What stands out for us in the Visual Arts Alliance is that for independent artists engaged in contemporary visual art and related fields, the previous model was never sustainable to begin with, even before the current pressures on the copyright regime. This is why so many contemporary artists tend to rely on a diverse range of income in order to make ends meet, as has been documented repeatedly, for example in a report by Michael Maranda, “Waging Culture”, from just a few years ago.
In this mix of revenue, certainly exhibition royalties.... Copyright-related royalties are part of the mix, for some artists anyway, but so are many other types of revenues related to the artist's practice, including sales of work, teaching, and other arts-related professional employment. Completing the mix, we have micro-gigs, contracts, and a myriad of part-time jobs that are not directly related to the artist's professional artistic career. That's actually my own experience, and it's the experience of many artists working throughout the field, whether they're emerging artists, mid-career, or often even established and senior artists. This precarity is of note. As I mentioned, it really predates the current disruption of the copyright environment.
We at the Visual Arts Alliance believe that the solution to the problem of remuneration for professional artists and content creators, although it's certainly affected by changes in the copyright landscape, cannot be solved exclusively through modifications to copyright legislation. Rather, a more holistic set of measures must be brought to bear in order to effectively address the ongoing systemic socio-economic precarity of this country's independent and professional artists.
At the moment, two committees are working in parallel on the revision of the Copyright Act. I understand that here at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, your priority is the well-being of Canadian artists and creators. The Visual Arts Alliance is therefore confident that the holistic approach it advocates, which certainly involves, but is not limited to, revising the Copyright Act, will appeal to the members of the committee.
This is the very spirit of what Ms. Bertrand was just saying, namely that we must ensure the social and economic security of creators themselves. After all, they are the starting point for the entire creative chain and are therefore the key element of the cultural industry as a whole.
Most independent artists in visual arts, media arts and crafts have the status of self-employed workers. They manage their businesses like any other small business owner. However, given the great instability of income sources, they are subject to major fluctuations, with good years often following years of significant losses.
While the Income Tax Act sets the reasonable expectation of profit as the determining criterion for carrying on a business, it must be recognized that, for many artists, this expectation may take many years to materialize and that, when the benefit finally arrives, it does not necessarily last forever.
I will note here that we have been in discussions with your colleagues at the Canada Revenue Agency, particularly in the aftermath of the Steve Higgins case last spring, to the effect that the Income Tax Act be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the realities of self-employed professional artists.
Applying the existing law correctly and appropriately is therefore the first recommendation of the Visual Arts Alliance with regard to remuneration models for artists. Tax relief in the form of income averaging, for example, would be another measure to investigate further.
The second and principal recommendation that the Visual Arts Alliance is making today to the standing committee is that you equip yourselves with the appropriate tools to measure and monitor the socio-economic conditions of working artists.
The existing mapping tools for artists' remuneration and the broader socio-economic context are incomplete. A report commissioned in 2011 by our own alliance, the Visual Arts Alliance, from Guy Bellavance of INRS, pointed out a range of gaps and blind spots, and recommended a clear path to address these gaps through a strategic foresighting process that would enable us to measure, analyze and track the evolution over the long term of a comprehensive set of data and trends.
The existing statistical tools, such as the Culture Satellite Account, are inadequate for achieving a thorough understanding of artists' remuneration and artists' socio-economic conditions. As Madame Bertrand has pointed out, even the Canadian Arts Data system, CADAC, which was initiated by public art funders across the country, does not differentiate between royalties and other forms of payment to artists.
We therefore support the recommendations stated by ARCA just now advocating for statistical tools that rise to the challenge of monitoring and analyzing the Canadian visual arts landscape, tools that would be explicitly geared toward understanding and improving the socio-economic conditions of artists and cultural workers.
We believe that PCH and Statistics Canada have a central role to play in this work, and we would advocate in the near term for the formation of a working group in which the Visual Arts Alliance could also play a role.
Thank you very much. Those are my remarks for now.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Thank you.
We will continue with the Association des galeries d'art contemporain.
Émilie Grandmont-Bérubé, you have the floor.
Émilie Grandmont-Bérubé Board Member, Contemporary Art Galleries Association
Good afternoon.
My name is Émilie Grandmont-Bérubé, and I own a contemporary art gallery in Montreal. I'll make my presentation in French, but please feel free to ask your questions in English. Perhaps it will help refresh my English a bit.
I am on the board of directors of the Association des galeries d'art contemporain, AGAC. I also served for several years on the board of directors of the Art Dealers Association of Canada, ADAC.
I am here mainly to discuss the issue of resale rights. The Canadian Artists' Representation, or CARFAC, has proposed that this resale right be included in the Copyright Act. This proposal is of great concern to us from the point of view of the art market and, above all, from the point of view of the primary market, consisting essentially of the galleries that AGAC represents.
Right off the bat, when we talk about the primary market, we are talking about the first time a work is sold, that is, when it leaves directly from the artist's studio. It is a sale from which the artist benefits. The secondary market is all the sales that follow.
Finally, resale rights are a tax on resale. The goal of this tax is to ensure that artists benefit from the added value of their works when they are sold in private galleries and auction houses.
From the outset, it is very important for us to recall the obvious role of gallery owners, who have a very privileged position in the art world in general. They are the only ones with such a long-term relationship with artists. We support them when things are going well and when things are not going well, in fact, at all stages of their careers.
There is no doubt that all gallery owners fully support the goal of helping to improve artists' incomes and socio-economic conditions. The income of gallery owners depends directly on the sale of the works of the artists they represent.
Gallery dealers, especially those in the primary market, who therefore deal directly with artists, practise a form of patronage. They believe deeply in art and artists, and they put their money where their mouth is. They personally invest their time, energy and money to defend with incredible passion the artists they represent and in whom they believe, hoping one day, perhaps, to reap the benefits of all this work.
It is a very high-risk enterprise. This is evidenced by the increasing number of galleries that have closed in recent years in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. It's a little scary, actually. Galleries don't close because gallery owners no longer believe in their artists or their mission, but because the market doesn't allow them to survive.
The proposal to include resale rights in the Copyright Act may be very attractive at first sight, but it has major weaknesses that have been identified in several studies published in countries that have adopted this measure. The main weakness of this measure is that it does not benefit artists who really need it. There is no doubt about that and the figures prove it very clearly. This measure benefits established artists, the 1% of artists who have a very strong market. They are the ones who will receive royalties.
The studies published in France, the UK and Australia clearly show that resale rights, which aims to improve the situation of visual artists, misses its target and is based on the somewhat romantic idea that all works of art will be sold at a profit and that artists would deprive themselves of perhaps huge royalties. However, in reality, very few works of art sold end up on the secondary market and are even less sold at a profit.
One of the problems with the proposed resale rights measure is that it does not make any distinction. The tax would still be applicable on the sale of a work, whether it is sold at a loss or at a profit.
This meagre 1% of the artists generally receive between $50 and $100 in royalties per year. This is clearly not what will improve their socio-economic conditions.
In France, 70% of all royalties collected were distributed to seven artists, or seven estates, because this is of great benefit to the estates of dead artists, ultimately, and not to living artists who really need it. In the United Kingdom, 80% of all royalties collected were distributed to 10 artists. Once again, we are basically talking about their estates.
As my colleagues mentioned in their presentation, the situation of artists is extremely precarious. They are scraping by and often have to take jobs in different fields. They scrape by while hoping to find their place in the community and establish themselves one day. They dream of making a living from their work and from selling their works. The sale of works is the best way to improve the socio-economic conditions of artists. It is also the most respectable, and that is their goal. However, implementing resale rights in Canada will not achieve that objective at all. On the contrary, this right weakens an already extremely precarious market.
I mentioned the lack of nuance, the fact that the resale right could apply to a work sold both at a loss and at a profit. This would make collectors more inclined to take fewer risks and move towards better known works. Once again, the emerging artists most in need of selling their works would be left out.
By reselling a work at a loss and then having to pay a royalty on the resale, we would be doubly penalized for taking a risk. We would not have made a good investment and, in addition, we would have to pay for it. According to published studies, this would harm the market for emerging artists.
Another potential perverse effect of the measure is the shift of the resale of works outside galleries and auction houses. Canada is very close to the United States. It would be very easy to sell works in the United States, by mutual agreement between individuals, and thereby avoid both taxes and the resale right. That would also result in lost revenue for galleries and, ultimately, for artists.
It has been proposed to incorporate resale rights into the Copyright Act to correct an apparent inequity between visual artists and literary, musical or film artists. Yet, the ownership of rights already applies in the visual arts in the same way as it does in other settings. Unless visual artists have surrendered their rights, they may also monetize their authorization to reproduce their works in books, magazines, films, and so forth. That's why CARFAC's role is very important in maintaining reproduction rights.
AGAC strongly hopes that the government will put in place measures to improve the socio-economic conditions of artists. They deserve to be able to earn a decent living, we all agree on that. However, we believe that, in order to reach all, not just some, artists, the solution lies mainly in measures that will stimulate not weaken the buyers' market. For example, instead of taxing collectors when they resell works, why not encourage them to buy more works from the primary market by giving them tax credits, for example? Why not remove the capital gains tax on the sale of a work of art or take inspiration from the United Kingdom and its Own Art program, which encourages the acquisition of works by living artists?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
We will now start with questions and answers.
We will be starting with Mr. Hogg, please.
Liberal
Gordie Hogg Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Thank you.
Can you inspire me with the inspiration of the U.K. that you were just talking about?
Board Member, Contemporary Art Galleries Association
Do you mean Own Art in the U.K.?
Board Member, Contemporary Art Galleries Association
I will switch back to French.
This program, which encourages the acquisition of works of art by living artists, is managed by the arts council and funded by the national lottery. It offers interest-free loans for 10 months to acquire works of art by living artists. It is an incentive. There have been some
big promotional campaigns to really promote the idea of buying work and buying art from local artists and local creators, and the results have been quite impressive.
Liberal
Gordie Hogg Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Are there other practices that we can learn about from other jurisdictions, from other parts of the world that would help us in terms of addressing this? Where are the best practices, and what are they?
Board Member, Contemporary Art Galleries Association
I would say that the U.K. is among the most interesting and proactive in terms of promoting acquisition of works of art. There's the idea of tax exemption, a like-kind exchange.
If collectors sell a work of art and make a profit, and reinvest that profit in the community right away, they will not be taxed on the capital gain. The money is put back into the business right away, and that's what we need.
Liberal
Gordie Hogg Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Ms. Bertrand, you had taken a different position with respect to resale rights. Can you talk about them within the context of what we just heard?
Director, Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference
I don't believe ARCA has a position on the artist's resale right because it is not a measure that really immediately touches artists who are supported by the not-for-profit, artist-run network.
At the Visual Arts Alliance, there is no consensus currently around the artist's resale right, so this was not included in the Visual Arts Alliance presentation.
I understand that there are issues on both sides, and I commend both sides for presenting their respective positions at this committee on that issue.
Liberal
Gordie Hogg Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
I asked the question previously with respect to other jurisdictions and the best practices that might be in existence there. Could each of the witnesses comment on what they see as best practices, and what we can learn from other jurisdictions?
Director, Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference
Is that specifically with regard to the artist's resale right?