Evidence of meeting #21 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 museum.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Where is the biggest need in museums across Canada? Specifically, we're talking about smaller museums. Do you have any information on that?
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
No. I think you would really need to speak to museums. I think most museums would say that they're in need.
Most of the smallest museums are found in the most rural areas, of course, but there is a significant spread across the country. Newfoundland, for example, has a huge number of small museums. Atlantic Canada as a whole has a significant number of small museums, and they have challenges. Many of them are seasonal operations, so they're not open year-round. They depend a lot on tourism, weather, and so forth, so there are variable conditions.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
The city of Winnipeg must have at least 12 to 15 smaller museums. Some of them, such as the one in my ward, Saint-Boniface Museum, have quite an impressive collection of Métis artifacts, things associated with Riel. Others, which I won't name, have large collections of.... I'm not sure if they're artifacts or just old material. How do you accredit them? What's your role in the accreditation of museums?
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
Well, we don't accredit museums.
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
We don't have a role there. That's why we establish professional standards as thresholds through which to access the program. If it is a not-for-profit organization that calls itself a museum but doesn't employ professional standards to operate a museum, that's the cut-off point. These standards mean that they have to classify, properly store, house, and display their objects, which requires professional staff. Those are cut-off points for accessing our programs, but we have no formal accreditation program.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
I also know some museums that do very good work and don't have paid staff other than for summer programs. Are they not eligible for...?
Actually, they've been complaining to my office that they're not getting the funding that they used to. Do you need paid staff in order to access, for example, the Young Canada Works program?
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
No, not for Young Canada Works. That program has a component specifically geared toward museums of the type you're describing, small museums.
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
However, it's very competitive. There's a lot of demand in that program.
Liberal
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Vandal, thank you for coming back to the main topic of our study, the state of Canadian museums, by focusing on local museums.
We will have three exploratory meetings and we'll have to agree on whether we want to tackle this topic and, if so, from which angle we want to do it. Hundreds of museum representatives will want to come to tell us how difficult their situation is.
I have a very relevant question about the young Canada works program. Ms. White-Thornley, from page 17 to the end of your presentation, you mention various programs. In your view, which ones will best meet the needs of small regional museums? The young Canada works program, especially during tourist season, is certainly the most popular, but are the other programs well known? Should we talk to the various museums?
I will wrap up with a comment from the various remarks made by Internet music providers. I am the first to say that we are slow to go digital and to transition to the new technologies. For their part, museums have placed great emphasis on making their collections and works digital. In the iceberg diagram on one of the slides, we can clearly see that everything below the water must go on, even though the works have been digitized and made available on the Internet.
Does that program also meet the needs of small regional museums? We will soon hold two meetings on this topic. In your view, what challenges will those small museums be facing?
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
I will start by answering your first question.
You asked which of our programs best serve the small and local museums, did you?
Young Canada Works certainly does. The museums assistance program does, especially the exhibition circulation fund, is a very useful program for them. The aboriginal component also helps small aboriginal organizations, and what we call collections management can also help small museums.
Through moveable cultural property grants, we have a fund of up to $1.2 million with which we can help organizations of virtually any size. As long as they can store an artifact in the right conditions, we will support them to purchase material that becomes available on the international market if it's very important for them or if it's something that has been subject to an export delay and is in danger of leaving the country—say, military medals that belonged to the ancestor of someone whose family is present in the community. If they want those, we can help them buy them. It doesn't matter how small they are.
Also of use to small museums are the training services that we provide. We provide funding for training programs that will help to teach them how to digitize their artifacts. This is in-person training or online training.
We talked about the Cultural Spaces Fund, and it can also be useful, but I think the principal question the committee is trying to grapple with may be about the museums that really are so small that they don't meet the minimum professional thresholds. We have very few programs that address those museums. Our programs are primarily aimed at those that meet the minimum standards of professional museums, because the bulk of our money goes to support the national museums and the other money that we have supports those that fall above a certain threshold. Young Canada Works is the principal program to help those that are below that threshold.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
May I ask you if that has always been the case? Was Heritage more ahead of its time early on, a few decades ago? Have cuts maybe affected your capacity to steer the milieu, to give good advice? Are you just supplying support to the demand? Do you still have some know-how, some knowledge to provide oversight? Can you still transmit this?
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
We don't provide a huge amount of direct services, except through the Canadian Conservation Institute. That organization has about 60 scientists and professional conservators and so on. What we do fund, for example, is the Canadian Museums Association. We fund a significant part of their operating budget to provide guidance to museums of all sizes across the country.
Our role is primarily as a program delivery organization. We deliver these programs primarily through our regional offices, and we implement policy and legislation—for example, the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, the Museums Act, and the Canada Travelling Exhibitions Indemnification Act—through our indemnity program. We don't provide broad direction to individual museums. We're really a policy and program delivery organization.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much, Mr. Nantel.
Mr. Waugh, we're just going to do a little three-minute round.
Oh, you didn't want to finish your questions?
Conservative
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I noted with interest that the Cultural Spaces Fund budget has been increased this year, by $168 million over the next two years. The budget was just under $25 million in 2014-15.
Can you tell me how you are going to prioritize, or what your intentions are in regard to priorities in using those funds?
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
That program actually isn't run out of the heritage branch, though it does serve heritage organizations; it is run out of our arts policy branch in our regional offices.
In terms of priorities, one clear priority will be aboriginal organizations. As part of the government's objectives, prioritizing support for aboriginal organizations will be one priority.
They will, however, be looking at social infrastructure, meaning infrastructure that benefits communities broadly in both the arts and heritage. Typically about 25% of the Cultural Spaces Fund budget is provided to museums. Arts organizations tend to access that program more than heritage organizations. I don't have a list of the specific criteria, but I could get back to you with it after consultation with my colleagues.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
That would be fine. Thank you.
My last question would be in regard to those museums that you referred to in your opening remarks that are under $50,000, or in that range—under $100,000 for sure—and the programs that might be there. I know you've mentioned that the Canada Summer Jobs initiative has increased. I noticed museums in my own area that have taken advantage of it.
You say you have a minimal number of programs, but can you outline what kinds of supports there are for those? There must be an awful lot of museums that are just in and around that $100,000 range as well.
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
We look at our eligibility criteria. We don't make a distinction between whether they have budgets of, say, $70,000 or $170,000 or $570,000. We're looking at whether they meet the core eligibility criteria and whether they are proposing a project that is in line with the program criteria and they have the capacity to deliver it. Beyond the core threshold below which they aren't eligible, we don't differentiate between the different sizes per se.
The question is, are they bringing forward a project that they have a reasonable expectation of completing? Have they secured the other sources of funding? Do they have clear results that are going to come from the project that are linked to the objectives of the program?
What the smallest organizations tend to access are the museums assistance program; Young Canada Works, for sure; occasionally grants from the movable cultural property program; very seldom the indemnification program; sometimes the strategic initiatives component of the Canada Cultural Investment Fund; and often the Cultural Spaces Fund. Those are the programs that I would say those organizations access.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Maguire.
Now I go to Ms. Dabrusin, for the Liberals, for three minutes.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
Being from a large urban centre, I'm struggling a bit with the word “local” as we're using it, because my local museums are often larger museums as well. I do have some smaller museums. For example, in my riding I have the National Presbyterian Museum, which is open only by appointment and is quite small. I have Todmorden Mills, a city museum that represents our local history. If I think in terms of the museums my children will also go to, often I'll have an Ontario science museum that's right nearby. There's Design Exchange and all sorts of museums that are close by too.
Can you help us with defining “local” in the scope of how we're going to be approaching this study?
