Canadian Heritage Committee on June 9th, 2016

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Maguire]

I call the meeting to order.

Unlike the name tag, my name is Larry Maguire, vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. I just want to welcome our witnesses here and welcome all the members of the committee.

This morning we're here to begin a study on Canadian museums and study the state of Canadian museums. We're very happy to have the Department of Canadian Heritage here this morning to give us an outline of the issues that you feel strongly about and give us an overview of the Canadian museum program.

With that, I'll turn it over to the witnesses. There are 10 minutes for your presentations, and then we'll follow that by rounds of questions. I'll let you begin.

[Cynthia White-Thornley, Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage]

Good morning. Thank you very much for the warm welcome.

I'm the executive director of the heritage group at the Department of Canadian Heritage, and with me today are Guylain Thorne, who is the senior director of heritage policy and programs, and Kathryn Zedde, who is the senior analyst and manager of policy and legislation.

Thank you for the opportunity to inform the committee on the state of local Canadian museums. We would first like to place museums in the context of other Canadian heritage institutions.

We had planned a longer presentation, so we're going to just go through the first part of our presentation, which gives you some context and some factual information. The second part of the presentation is really focused on the programs and services that we provide. You have this information here, and we're happy to answer any questions that you have about our programs, but I won't focus on that this morning.

If we may, we would first like to situate museums in the context of heritage institutions more broadly.

If you turn to the second page of your deck, you'll see the breakdown of non-profit heritage institutions in Canada. When we speak of heritage institutions, we're referring to 2,600 archives, art galleries, historic sites, museums, and zoos and botanical gardens. We will focus mainly on museums, which make up about 55% of those institutions, and not-for-profit art galleries, which make up about 10%. Together they make up about two-thirds of the heritage institutions in Canada.

I'd like to clarify that many institutions have more than one function. For example, many museums are also archives. When we survey them—and we'll speak a bit more about survey in a moment—we ask them to identify their primary purpose, and that is the basis on which we classify them.

On slide 4, you'll see a portrait of where the heritage institutions, and more specifically the galleries and museums, are located across Canada, and how they're spread. As is typical with other parts of the world of culture in Canada, we are challenged by a massive amount of land and a relatively sparse population. You can see from this map that the heritage institutions are noted in black, and the red figure is the percentage of the total of museums and galleries across the country.

As you can see, in some cases there are significant regional differences in terms of the population of Canada, and in some cases it's quite close. In our department we look at everything in terms of the regions, because this is how we distribute our programming. British Columbia and Alberta, for example, make up together about 25% of the population, but they comprise about 25.4% of museums and galleries. The situation elsewhere in the country, though, varies quite a bit.

The slide on the following page looks at visible and non-visible activities of museums.

Only the part of this iceberg that you see above the water is what is visible to the public: public participation, presentation of collections, the celebration and commemoration aspects of museums and galleries, and the physical and digital infrastructure that you might see, for example, in the facility or on the website.

There is a great deal of work that goes on behind the scenes in terms of the protection and preservation of the existing collections, knowledge transfer and expert training, research and policy development, developing exhibits, and so on. Those are the non-visible aspects for the public. Generally speaking, we find that museums tell us that it's more difficult to raise money for the kind of activity that you see below that waterline.

Of course, there are all the administrative aspects of running museums as well—managing human resources, both paid and volunteer—and all of the issues relating to building maintenance.

On the eighth slide, you will see some general information about our second Government of Canada survey of heritage institutions. This survey was conducted in 2015, and it's based on data that is from the 2013 year. Before launching our own survey, there was very little in the way of comprehensive information about heritage institutions in Canada. We had been relying on Statistics Canada's annual survey of heritage institutions; however, it did not capture institutions with revenues below $50,000. That comprises quite a significant number of museums in Canada, so it was not capturing a wide swath of small museums.

We have conducted two of these surveys to date.

This survey has become an important tool to inform our program planning and policy work. The survey also provides individual heritage institutions with information about the context in which they operate.

It's become a very important tool to inform our policy and planning work, and it serves other levels of government; national, provincial, and territorial museums; and museum professionals, academics, and others. It provides individual heritage institutions with information that can situate them in the context of their peers.

Page 7 outlines a selection of data about museums and galleries specifically taken from the survey. We have taken the data from the heritage survey, which I believe you have seen and been briefed on, and we have done a special report on the situation facing museums and art galleries in Canada.

We can provide that survey to you. It's not yet available publicly on our website, but we have made it available to museum associations. We're happy to provide you with copies of it. It will refine the data a little bit for you and will help you to look at the situation in each province and territory. If you're interested in that, we can provide it.

Concerning the figures you see here, because it's our second survey, we're asking a bunch of quite standard questions coupled with some new questions with each iteration. The survey has a very high participation rate, so we're quite happy with the reliability of the data. It's significantly better than what we had from Statistics Canada. It's all done in-house.

We know, for example, that museums and galleries in Canada are protecting nearly 51 million artifacts. Visits in person are up 21.6% from the last reporting period; that's an additional 7.6 million people. Online, visits are also up, almost 32% from the last survey.

Volunteers have also increased 10%; however, we know that while the numbers are up, volunteers are providing slightly fewer hours. Museums tell us that there is a trend and that this is because their volunteer workforce, which outnumbers their paid or contracting workforce by about three to one, is an aging volunteer workforce. That's a challenge for them.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Maguire]

Ms. White-Thornley, you have a minute left.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Okay.

One significant change that we are unable to explain is that membership in museums and galleries has declined significantly since our last survey. It's down about 64%.

The next few pages just look at the revenues by size of institution. In all of our data you'll see that we break it down by small institutions—those with budgets of under $100,000—and then the medium-sized institutions, those from $100,000 to $1 million, and the large, which are considered to be anything above $1 million. You can start to see the disparity. We've broken this information down in terms of revenue sources for museums of these sizes and expenditures as well.

I'll conclude my time there and turn it over to you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Maguire]

Thank you very much.

We'll begin the round of questioning with Mr. Breton.

This will be a round of seven-minute questions and that, for our witnesses, includes the answers as well. I'll try to let you know when there's a bit of time left.

Thank you.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for the information on the state of museums. You have taught us a great deal about the topic. It is unfortunate that you did not have time to conclude your presentation.

I think you still had a lot of information to share with us, but you had only 10 minutes. In fact, you had only just started talking about governments' financial support to museums. I see that federal support is between 7% and 19% of revenue, depending on the museums' size. They receive provincial and local financial support as well as the entrance fees.

Could you describe the trend—because it is still a good source of revenue for museums—in terms of visits to museums in the past five years? What are the statistics on that? Do they show an increase, a drop or a stable number of visitors? Could you give us an indication of the situation?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Yes. Thank you for the question.

First, I would like to say that a number of museums

do not charge admission. The majority do, but some do not, and some provide free-will offerings. I've seen great debates among museums about whether or not they should charge admission as a source of revenue. Some small museums find they are able to get a greater amount of money if they allow people to offer a donation.

Visits are up. Physical visits are up about 21%; these are in-person visits. People certainly are continuing to go to museums for the in-person experience. There has also been a significant increase in online visits; they're up about 32%. Our most recent survey results show about 36 million visits in 2013, the most recent year for which we have statistics, and about 83.7 million online visits.

Many people, of course, are doing both. They'll go to the museum and will use their smart phone while they're there to look up more information about a particular exhibit or they will check out the museum online before they visit it, but there certainly are a good number of very robust in-person visits. Some of the museums are seasonal, of course, so they have visits only at certain times of the year.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Okay.

One of the major missions of heritage institutions and museums is to conserve and protect our heritage. Could you tell us what the current state of museums is, as a lot of museums are aging? We clearly need the proper infrastructure to protect the heritage across Canada. Do you have any data on the current state of the infrastructure? What requests could those institutions make to upgrade and be up to date?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

We know that about 72% of all the museums and galleries in Canada are 40 years old or more. Many are starting to experience significant needs for upgrading of their infrastructure or for major repairs. We don't have a comprehensive survey of the physical state of all museums, nor of the state of all the artifacts.

Capital repairs are happening all the time. About half of the museums and art galleries in Canada are responsible for the capital costs of their buildings. This is a significant part of their expenditures.

One of the programs that our department delivers is called the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund, and it provides an opportunity for museums and art galleries to upgrade their facilities in a number of ways, whether it's through the purchase of specialized equipment to care for artifacts or whether it's for the physical upgrade of the building or construction of new facilities.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you.

Do I still have a little time, Mr. Chair?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Maguire]

You've got another minute and a half.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you

Ms. White-Thornley, could you name the most significant challenge facing Canada's museums right now? In your discussions with your colleagues from the museum industry, have you identified a primary challenge?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Museums generally tell us that their most significant challenge is to have adequate operating funding. They are challenged to fundraise. They can only charge so much for admission fees because they are essentially a public good. They struggle, as do many not-for-profit organizations, with the cost of running their businesses and creating compelling exhibits to bring people in and keep their audiences interested. With all the other needs they have to serve, whether it's caring for artifacts, ensuring that the health and safety costs are met, digitizing artifacts, or creating compelling virtual exhibits to bring more people in, most of them tell us that their basic challenge is to ensure that their revenues address the expenditures and do more than just the basics.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Maguire]

Thank you, Mr. Breton.

We'll move to Mr. Van Loan.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I will start by asking if you could provide us with the results of that recent survey the department conducted. Our researchers have referred to it a bit in the documents they prepared for today; however, a copy of the whole thing, I think, would be very helpful for us to have.

One of the big divides in the museum world in Canada is between museums that have a full-time professional curator and those that don't. My experience in talking to them is that you actually learn the most about museum challenges by talking to those that don't, because they are the ones dealing with all of the issues in the toughest ways.

As I understand it, that is one of the thresholds, though, for the museums assistance program. You have to have a professional curator for it, which locks out all these smaller community museums. Could you tell us the rationale for that, and if you think there is merit in considering to expand that program to also allow grants and contributions to non-curated museums?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

I'm going to turn that question over to my colleague responsible for the museums assistance program.

[Guylain Thorne, Senior Director, Heritage Policy and Programs, Department of Canadian Heritage]

Thank you very much.

I would like to make a clarification.

I can answer in English as well.

Just for precision, to meet the requirement for eligibility in the museums assistance program, we're talking about one full-time staff person for the year. That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be a curator per se, but it has to be a full-time staff person for the museum.

I don't know the origins of the facts for the program, but it was just to make sure that we deal with some sort of professionalism when we're dealing with museums. Also, because the program probably cannot fund everything, we need to establish some criteria to make sure that the program is appropriate to the size of the needs.

On whether that could be removed, with regard to dealing with other museums, two years ago we added a little component under the Exhibit Circulation Fund that allowed these museums to borrow artifacts from the Museum of History and the War Museum. In terms of eligibility for borrowing from those museums, they didn't meet the requirement of having a full-time person working for the museum.

It's just for a very small part of this program that we've opened up a bit. I think we look at the needs for the borrowing of artifacts. There might be museums in Canada that are in a position to borrow artifacts but don't necessarily meet the criterion of having a full-time staff person.

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

I'll say in passing that with many museums being seasonal or focusing on just Friday, Saturday, and Sunday traffic, sometimes having a full-time person just doesn't make economic sense if they want to make ends meet. I will say that.

Does the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund have any minimum criteria or threshold for who will be considered?

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Yes, it does once again have minimum criteria as well. I would say the challenge is that with fixed amounts of funding, in particular when we are talking about the museums assistance program, which has a total budget of about $6.7 million, without thresholds we would simply not be able to meet the demand or to process in anything like an efficient manner.

In terms of the Cultural Spaces Fund, the main requirements are that they must be incorporated not-for-profit arts or heritage organizations operating in a professional manner, and they have to have a historically demonstrated track record, so we require at least two years of operation.

In terms of the minimum thresholds for staff, it is the same as the MAP, I believe.

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

So they get locked out.

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

The threshold is about the same as for the museums assistance program.

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

Again, while you're talking about how to apply money judiciously, sometimes it is in those places that are being locked out where a few dollars can make the biggest difference—

[Cynthia White-Thornley]

Yes.

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

—whereas you're targeting money at places that need a lot of dollars to make a difference. I simply say that in passing.

One of the programs of the department that I have heard gets very high marks is the travelling exhibitions indemnification program. That is something museums appreciate. It makes a big difference. Most of them say it works very well. Certainly the bigger art galleries and so on say that.

I have heard, though, from some smaller ones that they have occasionally had challenges getting answers soon enough about whether their travelling exhibits will be insured. As a result, they've had to go out and get private insurance and then swap it out at the last minute, but that's still a cost to them.

Do you have any comment on that observation I've had people share with me?