We imagine it is no easy undertaking for the council to undergo a huge strategic shift at the same time as receiving an incremental doubling. PACT, most of our members, the Canadian Arts Coalition and many others advocated for the doubling of the budget. Many of our members are long-standing council recipients and are likely to come to you with concerns about the rollout. These concerns are legitimate in respect to council-client relations and the integrity of arm's-length decision-making. We see these concerns as opportunities for evaluation and readjustment in the council, and we will no doubt require consultation, open communication and action by council leadership.
This is the spirit in which we come to you today, to encourage more responsiveness, reciprocal dialogue and action between the council and its clientele as we undergo this strategic shift and doubling of the budget together.
Our members had mixed responses as to how easy it was to identify which funding stream they should apply under. Thirty-five per cent of our surveyed members found it easy to identify, 40% were neutral and 25% found the process difficult. We believe that the council's current cross-country outreach sessions and presentations, along with client-officer relations, will help ease some of these difficulties.
Program officers presented at our national conference two weeks ago in Saskatoon, giving an important opportunity for theatres to understand the new funding streams and the criteria for assessment, and to clarify any confusion or misinformation that theatres had about eligibility. We value this close relationship with council and hope to continue this opportunity for officers to meet with our members.
We understand that council staff are also undergoing a learning curve with the new model. As a result, our members were split fifty-fifty on whether or not staff were helpful. In terms of overall communication, including that from the leadership, 58% said that communication was not transparent and 61% felt that it was unclear. This is especially troublesome in two areas. For one, many were told before they applied under the new funding model to dream big, to reach for the stars, to be aggressive in their budgetary ask. This set unrealistic expectations and was especially frustrating for recipients who remained flatlined or who saw a decrease in their funding. We believe that the council is now well aware that they did not set realistic expectations in the first year, especially since the doubling of the investment is incremental, not fully realized in year one.
Second, a huge change was made to the peer jury assessment process, the lifeblood of the arm's-length funding decision-making. The Canada Council and provincial and municipal councils have always had other artists and arts practitioners assessing and ranking the applications and have then allocated funding amounts to each recipient. Previously staff and leadership were required to approve and have the final sign-off only on funding allocations over certain amounts.
We met with a program officer this week to discuss our member survey, which helped demystify the new jury process for us. Under the new model, jury members rank and submit recommendations but the council staff make the final funding allocations. It is our understanding that officers adhere to the jury's ranking and allocate funding increases of as close as possible to the applicant's budgetary ask. Under the new ranking system, juries have three choices: green, fund an increase; yellow, flatline; or red, decrease. Juries are reminded of the implications of their decisions; however, it can be easy to fall into the yellow flatline zone, and for juries who rank many green, the funding might run out before it makes its way down the list.
In addition, it is clear that well-written funding applications continue to be well assessed. The council and others are doing outreach sessions across the country on how to write a good grant application, and we believe in the importance of developing grant-writing skills. However, small theatres with limited staff capacity who must undertake multiple roles in addition to grant writing or some companies that may have limited experience with grant writing but that have no less merit in their artistic or operational abilities risk making their way into the yellow or red categories. We will continue efforts to build grant-writing skills across the country; however, we need to determine how to assess merit as expressed in something beyond a well-written application.
Many of our members are also questioning whether jury makeup is as diverse as it should be. We have submitted our concerns and our survey results to the Canada Council officers with whom we work most closely. However, we are looking for more open dialogue and active consultations with the council's leadership, especially as this new model is evaluated. We are looking to, first, an understanding of new strategic decisions and then to readjustments of the model as necessary to truly benefit the council's clientele and their communities. We see a lot of promise through our artists and arts organizations that the doubling investment of $180 million will realize its full impact, all while the council and its clients work together to ensure that the new model is as strong as it can be.
Thank you for your time, and we look forward to your questions.