Canadian Heritage Committee on June 14th, 2016

[Manon Blanchette]

It is very difficult to digitize in all museums. Actually, we are waiting for grants to do a little digitization. Very few museums have digitized their collections, either in Quebec or in the other provinces. We are doing it little by little. I would say that hardly 2% of the collections are currently digitized.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

In my experience, it's one of those things that immediately makes common sense, but it does take a tremendous amount of time and resources.

[John McAvity]

If I could bring this up, there's another complication with digitization, and that is copyright. For contemporary art, when the rights are still owned by the artist, which is usually the case, the simple costs of paying royalty fees and getting permission to put things online really is preventing a lot of contemporary Canadian art from coming online.

If you go to the National Gallery's website or to that of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and so on, you'll see a very limited amount of their collection. There are only items whose copyright has expired or that are in the public domain, generally speaking. That creates a huge lacuna in terms of the public's access and ability to see contemporary art.

The other thing I'd like to point out is that there's been a lot of emphasis on digitization, yet we're seeing an increase in people walking into galleries. They want to see the real thing. The participation online hasn't really been that significant. The Canadian Heritage Information Network has been trying to digitize and put together an inventory since 1972 of all the artifacts in Canada, and it's still woefully inadequate. There are large gaps in it and, to be quite honest with you, not very much public use of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. McAvity.

I think we'll move on now to Mr. Van Loan for the Conservatives.

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

Thank you.

We heard from Monsieur Rivard at our last meeting that there's a bit of a training gap that exists. In museum studies, they do well at teaching people to become a director or curator of the Musée des beaux-arts in Montreal, but then students find themselves in a one-room museum in the Gaspé. That was his example. They're not really equipped for all the nuts and bolts of running museums. I wonder if you could comment on that.

[Karen Bachmann]

Definitely, it is a different field. When you are in a large museum, you can specialize. You become somebody who can do some wonderful work. When you're in a one-room site or a smaller site, you have to be a jack of all trades. The ability to adapt to that and to still maintain the standards you're being held to can be very difficult for people who have a very formalized training, and it can be difficult for people who don't have any training. There is that gap in between that needs to be addressed somehow.

There are a lot of good programs out there that are being supported by the federal government through the provincial museum associations and their ability to deliver programs and training to smaller sites. Perhaps a bit of standardization throughout the country would also help in that connection.

[Susan Burrows-Johnson]

I just want to add that the Galt museum sits in southern Alberta. We've formed a network of all our regional museums. I'm wondering if the federal government could look at some mechanisms within Canadian Heritage that would assist in partnering. We can bring together groups and we can go out and assist. Our curator can help. The small towns around us care for their collections.

It would be very helpful, under a complete review of the national museum policy, to encourage partnership work and the sharing of resources. I think if this government were to continue down the road of generating a new national museum policy, you would attract attention to the public value of museums and assist us.

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

Building on that, one of the federal programs is the Conservation Institute. They are available to do training. They do a lot of it through, for example, the Ontario Museum Association, but I've heard from other museums, and we heard at our last meeting, that some of that trickle-down doesn't happen. There seem to be a lot of smaller museums saying that they need help on curating, that they need to be taught how to train. I just want to observe that this gap seems to be there.

On the co-operation aspect and so on, Madame Blanchette, you're from Montreal, where the museum directors have created a collective storage solution. Perhaps you could tell us a bit about that. It seems to me to be one of the innovative solutions to one of the bigger problems that people have.

[Manon Blanchette]

Actually, we established a shared collections centre in Montreal a few years ago now. It is now full and we are starting a second phase, another collection centre. As for the management model, this is a building belonging to the ETS. It has been renovated with cutting-edge technology. For example, when the climate changes, an exterior membrane maintains the temperature constant. This really is high technology. All the museums in Montreal rent a space and share the costs, so that it is much less expensive than for each to build their own storage themselves.

There is going to be another project, probably a little outside Montreal with some similar museums. With contemporary art especially, the pieces are very big. So a second project is on the drawing board for the development of another collection centre. I feel that the model is a success. It has generated international interest and a significant number of visits.

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

What's the role of your museum association in trying to encourage such solutions elsewhere? Do you have a role in doing that?

[John McAvity]

I'm sorry; I didn't get the first part of the question.

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

Should your association have a role in trying to encourage some of these collective solutions we're talking about with regard to training, storage, and so on?

[John McAvity]

Absolutely.

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

If these solutions aren't in place everywhere, what's the right vehicle for delivering them, and how should it be done?

[John McAvity]

We work very closely with all the other associations or provincial museum associations across the country. There are even some municipal ones. We work very closely with them and coordinate as best we can with very limited resources.

I think it's important to say that with all the cutbacks that have happened in the sector, even the associations have taken quite major hits, and the money is not there for travel anymore. We're having to find new ways of doing things.

There are urgent needs for us to get together and coordinate activities much better. In the training area, for example, there's quite a bit of duplication of effort and a lot that could be simplified. It could be made available electronically and made more accessible. There's no need to be reinventing the wheel.

You mentioned the Canadian Conservation Institute and its training program. Its training program is magnificent, but it is limited. They can do only one seminar per province every year. That's all. That institute is full of expertise. Those doors need to be blown open; the staff need to be getting out there and sharing their expertise.

It's the same thing with the national museums. We're very fortunate to have very well-established and very professional national museums. They have tremendous collections. They have tremendous expertise. That expertise needs to be shared much more than it is. The Canadian Museum of History, for example, does an excellent job on training and on sharing its expertise. We would like to see that put in place with all the other national museums as well.

These are just some examples of working together and collaborating.

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

Do I have time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have a minute to go, 30 seconds now.

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

Maybe we'll repeat this in the next round, but what I hear from museums is that while there is funding for various things, the only thing there is never funding for, what they consider the biggest gap, is promoting and marketing. Can you speak to that?

[John McAvity]

You're hitting the nail right on the head. The public understanding of what museums are and what they do needs to change. We don't have the ability to do that kind of marketing. We would like to do it. We'd like to improve the public's understanding, and we know that by doing so attendance is going to flourish and people will become better educated and better informed about this country. We will all be better citizens as a result of more engagement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now I go to Mr. Nantel for the NDP.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My thanks to all of you for being here this morning. We really feel your commitment to your communities. I certainly notice it.

But there have been several decades of partisan interests and short-term strategies. I feel that it is time to do an in-depth study on the matter. I thank my colleague for proposing a study like this.

That said, we are only devoting three sessions to the study, which will allow us only to do an overview of the matter. We all remember the librarian or the person responsible for the history centre at school telling us, when we were children, that nothing is more lost than when it is misfiled. By seeking to draw conclusions too quickly, I am afraid that we are simply filing the issue away by claiming that we have finished our museum study, whereas there is a lot of information to gather.

When we look for a solution for a given issue, we normally ask the witnesses to make recommendations. I will not ask you that question because I believe that we first have to hear from everyone on the issue. As you said, it would be good for you to come back to the committee as a wrap-up.

Mrs. Blanchette, you mentioned the number of volunteers involved, but I do not remember the exact number.

[Manon Blanchette]

It’s 103,000.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

They are all worthy, passionate people who want to share. The very nature of their involvement is to share. We are told that there is no longer any money for marketing. Indeed, with community organizations, that task comes at the very end of the list. Everyone has all kinds of goodwill, but the roof is falling in and it has to be repaired. All of a sudden, the season starts, the doors have to be opened, and on it goes. As with a lot of seasonal things, we never manage to think long-term and we are always reacting to emergencies.

Can the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation still get you excited about conducting an interesting pilot project? It could serve as a test in finding various solutions and in verifying the validity of some ideas. We are investing in that at the moment and it is a good time to do it.

I am sure that everyone agrees that not enough has been done as regards Canada 150, but is there still time to do something?

[Manon Blanchette]

I think that everyone agrees that there is not a lot of time left. However, things can be done in the short time remaining.

We could rely on flagship projects that had already been submitted and set aside. We need to continue some of the aspects that have already been started, so that we can make sure that those key projects are completed and that the public will be interested in them.

So there is still work to be done.

I do not just want to speak for Quebec only, but you are also very aware that the 150th anniversary of Confederation and the 375th anniversary of Montreal are linked. The Government of Canada is involved in both birthday celebrations, Canada’s and Montreal’s.

As I see it, there is still work to be done on this and it still can be done.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I can tell you this morning that everyone remembers Mr. Rivard’s recent testimony. He impressed us greatly with his knowledge and his charisma. In the best of worlds, we would build on some of Mr. Rivard’s hypotheses, and your own, and then test them in certain museums. We can be very ambitious. We are, for example, in our study on regional media. In that case, our involvement as members of Parliament in each of our regions is to stand up for the vitality of our communities through the media. We are even planning to visit communities in remote regions that have to deal with the situation most specifically. We are ambitious; I feel that the committee wants to solve some problems.

Do any points jump out at you, in your view?

Earlier, my colleague was talking about training. A centralized storage facility has been discussed. People have also talked to us about a fund for regional coordination. If I were planning a trip to a region, it would be good to deal with each of the museum-related themes.

For the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, that need for distance training could be tested with volunteers. We could tell them about the themes of the 150th anniversary. It could provide a kind of common approach that you could provide to your visitors, while still preserving the regional angle on the ways things were experienced at the time.

We do not have to reinvent the wheel, as they say. Personally, I am looking for a solution, something stimulating, an immediate test, rather than a thick document that, at the end of the day, is not going to be used.