Canadian Heritage Committee on June 9th, 2016

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

I just had one further question. A lot of the smaller museums tell me that one of the big things they could use help with is training on how to maintain and display artifacts, as well as proper storage and conservation and so on. I know you have the Canadian Conservation Institute. Are their services or knowledge—it says here “expert advice”—available to all museums, regardless of their status? If so, I think there is a challenge there in making smaller museums aware that this service is available to them, if that is indeed the case.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Yes, actually the museums assistance program and the Canadian Conservation Institute combined funds to support the Ontario Museum Association to conduct a major program aimed at...almost training the trainer to help spread best practices for museum storage.

That has been identified as a major gap, a major need, for museums across the country. Under MAP, we can provide up to $50,000 toward storage solutions in individual museums. That program has been modelled on an international program, and it is also being videoed so that it can be available as widely as possible to organizations across the country.

For exhibit displays and so on, some of that programming is for training done by the Canadian Conservation Institute, which offers training to museum professionals across the country through workshops and training sessions. We are trying to get into more videoing of that so that it can.... Some of those small museums just can't afford to send anyone to a conference to learn how to do that kind of work. We are looking at moving into the area of videoing more and more of our training services so that they can be online.

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

How well that information gets transferred is an area we have to work on.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Yes.

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

I turn it over to Mr. Waugh.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

In my city of Saskatoon right now, we have a major project going on. It's the Remai Modern Art Gallery. It's going to be over $100 million. Now we've had another spinoff in our city, a children's museum. We're trying to raise upwards of $30 million to $50 million. You can that see right now in my city, we have $150 million going to art galleries.

The volunteers right now are split, because we have two major projects going on. Now we have professional fundraising groups going on as well. Could you talk about that aspect of it? As you know, we're short of volunteers, so people often hire a professional fundraising group to raise the money.

How does that look? In my city there has been some dissension about this. Thank you to the former government for coming forward with much-needed funds, but the costs have escalated dramatically in this project.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Typically professional fundraisers come in to the non-profit world for major capital infrastructure projects, which is what you're talking about. We don't see that very much in smaller infrastructure projects. Usually the local community does that kind of work itself. It's often led by the board.

In my experience with major capital, you almost always have to engage professionals, because there aren't dedicated staff for that kind of function. Generally, though, big institutions might have a foundation associated with them that is very experienced at fundraising. They have the in-house capacity, but as you're discovering, for projects of that size in a community the size of Saskatoon, I can understand why they would probably have to hire the external expertise.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

The only thing I'm going to say about your presentation is that the decline in memberships of 64% is dramatic.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Yes.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Have you looked at why? To me that would be a flag.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

We're puzzled by it as well. We don't know what to attribute it to.

We can speculate, but we don't have any good information on it. It might be a question to pose to....

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Don't you think it should be posed?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Yes. Absolutely.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I think we need to find out why the membership in this country has gone down by almost three-quarters. Do you have any suggestions about how we're going to reach out to people?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Compelling programming brings people in. It's just one of the many challenges that museums have. Their programming and their relationship with the community drives membership.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Who takes the lead on that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Waugh, I'm very sorry. Perhaps this question can be picked up a little later on.

Mr. Vandal, for the Liberals, you're next.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Thank you very much for your presentation.

I'm looking in our briefing note at your Canada Cultural Spaces Fund. You went from $63 million in 2009-10 to under $20 million in 2011-12. You increased it to almost $25 million last year, and I understand that in budget 2016 there will be an additional $168 million over the next two years.

What are your priorities? How will this be administered? Will it be available to all the museums all over the country? How will this money be invested across Canada?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

The budget of that program is typically about $25 million a year. It can fluctuate from year to year because of the multi-year nature of some of the projects. Sometimes with construction you have variables, and something might slow down.

The additional investment announced in the last budget amounts to about $80 million a year for infrastructure capital. The funds are being delivered through our regional offices across Canada. It's part of the current government's commitment to social infrastructure.

They've made some changes to the eligibility criteria. For example, the cap on that program used to be a maximum of $10 million, but the average project was much lower than that. I used to be responsible for that program in a previous job, and at the time about $500,000 or $600,000 was the average because it funds specialized equipment as well as— .

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

We only have five minutes, so I'm going to cut you off and move on.

I have a specific question. Will the funding be allocated geographically so that it's not all swallowed up by Ontario and Quebec?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

We always make sure that the funding is distributed as fairly as possible.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Pardon me; I didn't hear you.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

In the department, we always try to make sure that there is a good spread of projects across the country. It's a challenge when you have big amounts in one year, though, because you need things that are shovel ready.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Shovel ready. Yes, okay.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

But the ceiling has been raised to $15 million.