Canadian Heritage Committee on June 16th, 2016

[Robin Etherington]

Hey, cool, I can get through all of my notes. I'm a happy camper. I plan to entertain.

What I want to emphasize is that the federal government needs to take seriously the revitalizing and the revolutionizing of the national museum policy and the MAP grants. Please know that it is not just this set of wonderful consultation sessions. They're very important, but this is the groundwork. This is the first step in a long-term process to revitalize the funding model and the policies and strategies that will support community museums and community galleries across Canada as they do their community, national, provincial, and even international work.

What this entails is a comprehensive review and, as I said, a revolutionizing of a suite of policies and procedures and an overall funding model for community-level museums and galleries. That includes but is not limited to the national museum policy, the copyright policy, the Corporations Act, the MAP, the Canada summer jobs program, the Young Canada Works programs, the Canadian Heritage Information Network, the Canadian Conservation Institute, and national museums serving as resource centres for community museums.

Both of us have incredibly good working relationships with the national museums, but this is now a broader issue of becoming resource hubs for everyone and of the federal departments communicating with each other and with community museums and coordinating programs and resources to facilitate community museums and galleries and their work on behalf of the Canadian people.

I serve as a witness before this committee from the perspective of a small but vibrant community museum, Musée Bytown Museum. You are quite correct: if you go out your office, you can roll down the hill and land at our front door. You are most welcome—not to roll down the hill, but to come to the museum. We have first aid kits and will take care of you.

It is also, though, on a national heritage site and a UNESCO world heritage site and is managed on behalf of the Canadian people by Parks Canada.

Most museums across Canada are at the community level and have served their community, province, and country for many years.

Museums are addressing the challenges of the 21st century, such as digitization, which was discussed at the session on Tuesday. Youth engagement is absolutely critical. There are dramatic changes in demographics, not only with the baby boomers and the aging population but also in terms of the ethnic composition of our Canadian society, including the arrival of new immigrants ever year. For example, most national museums serve as sites for citizenship ceremonies, as will the Rideau Canal heritage site this year on Canada Day. It is unbelievable.

We also deal with the global economy. On top of that, we're dealing with just the old-fashioned traditional issues of tight budgets, retention of incredibly good professional staff, increasing demands on our museum services, and infrastructure problems.

Museums are a critical part of Canada's cultural industry, which contributes billions of dollars annually into Canada's economy, yet the returning investment into culture is, relatively speaking, quite minimal. The Department of Canadian Heritage has not updated its national museum policy or its museum assistance program since the 1990s, and those policies no longer reflect the needs and realities of museums and cultural services in the 21st century.

The Canadian Heritage Information Network serves Canadian museums and galleries well with regard to online requirements and digital requirements. CHIN services have been transferred to the Canadian Museum of History.

If I emphasize anything else apart from the idea that we need to address a suite of policies and programs to support museums and galleries across Canada, it is that digitization of collection records and museum services to provide local and global access to museums is the most critical 21st century reality for museums. It is the foundation of their future.

In my humble little museum, the Bytown Museum, in under four years we have already digitized 4,000 images and uploaded 2,000 records and images onto an online database for public access. We've done that with one provincial grant—and that program has been cut—and two MAP grants, for which I am eternally grateful. My problem is that I can't apply for another MAP grant for that project because it will be considered operational after two years.

These are all project-based grants. There is no operational funding, and digitization for any museum is a long-term project, so we need to have funding in the long term. There are no other grants at any level of government, whether provincial, municipal, or federal, for technology in museums.

In addition, museums are becoming community hubs and centres. They have always been, but they are becoming more so. For example, the Bytown Museum has a community gallery, which we make available for free to any community group, any ethnic community group, any local artist, or any local photographer to put up their own display. In four years, we've had the Chinese community, the Guatemalan community, the Mexican community, and the Polish community. We're about to get the Indonesian community into that community gallery, and we've had a lot of local artists.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

You have two minutes left, ma'am.

[Robin Etherington]

Thank you.

I'm going to skip over the rest.

The government reviews and updates the funding model, and I'm asking you to do so. It is 2016, yet the federal funding model is based on 1970s economics and currently does not reflect or respond to the needs and reality of 21st century museums and galleries across Canada.

Here is a list in point form of some of the issues that all of us are facing.

Enhance museum infrastructure physically and digitally. We are a multicultural society, and community museums and galleries are at the ground level. That's where multiculturalism is happening, and we are dealing with that in our exhibitions and programming.

Invest in enhancing cultural heritage and management programs—and I think this was discussed before—not only for the current professionals in continuing to upgrade their skill sets, but also to address the college- and university-level programs in museum management and cultural heritage management.

This last point is very important: the federal government needs to work with us to coordinate federal, provincial, and municipal granting programs and other programs, not only to reduce and streamline the application process that Mr. O'Regan mentioned the other day but also to ensure that we can do our work well for the Canadian people.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

I'm sorry, but your time has run out.

[Robin Etherington]

I'm going to leave it at that.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Thank you very much, Ms. Etherington.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Badzak and the chair back to Ms. Fry.

[Alexandra Badzak, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Art Gallery]

Good morning. My thanks to the committee for inviting me to appear today.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. In the interests of time, I will stick to my notes.

I am the director and CEO of the Ottawa Art Gallery. I have the honour of representing our municipal art gallery, but also to speak more broadly on behalf of municipal and regional galleries across Canada.

My perspective and a lot of my examples come from my local public art gallery, which is in the midst of a major expansion project, not only in the physical plant and infrastructure—we are moving from 12,000 square feet to a new building that is over 80,000 square feet—but also in undertaking growth in human resources, development, fundraising, the adoption of new technology and digital platforms, revenue generation, governance, and expanded programming.

The OAG expansion is slated to open in the fall of 2017 as a cultural legacy project for Ottawa, and many of the challenges and expectations faced by our sector, including the shifting paradigms of the 21st-century museum that are occurring, are paramount in our organization's collective mindset.

No longer just a temple of high culture, a public art gallery needs to be that third space, a cultural hub, a thought leader that can help set progressive agendas within our cities.

What is working? As Robin mentioned, the museums assistance program is one. I can really speak to the impact of this program, because we received a major MAP grant for our Alma Duncan exhibition. Not only did this grant allow us to do primary research on this little-known female artist, who was the first Canadian filmmaker with the NFB—so it was essentially a feminist recovery program—but it also allowed us to create a major publication that went along with that, and then we were able to tour that exhibition regionally. Nobody would have known about this very important artist without that essential funding from MAP.

However, as Robin mentioned, we need that grant, as well as other Canadian Heritage department grants, to be looked at, reviewed, and updated for the 21st-century museum.

As for Cultural Spaces, I can tell you that the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund is fundamental to our growth currently. At this stage, we have accessed that grant through the “specialized equipment” category, but it helps with feasibility studies and things like that. It is fundamental. No gallery considers growth without looking at the support of that grant.

We were very pleased to see that it was reinstated, and with more funds, but given the state of cultural infrastructure across Canada, the demands on this program are going to be extreme and oversubscribed. I will say that a lot of galleries have struggled with the matching portion of that particular grant.

Robin also mentioned the Canadian Conservation Institute. I can't tell you how important they have been for us, guiding us through all aspects of functional design and planning for our new museum, as well as reviewing all major milestones for our design plans. Essentially, they are making sure that when we are in our new building in a year and go back to the federal government to ask for our museum designation, we are compliant on temperature and humidity control, HVAC systems, security, etc. They have been fundamental to us. This essentially allows us to be a museum, a designated space, allowing us to take in cultural property and to share cultural property with our sister organizations.

A lot of galleries across Canada that are not in Ottawa, where CCI finds its home, can't access that program and risk not receiving their museum designation.

Some of the challenges are donor dollars, of course. I think you have talked about it a bit, but I can say from real experience with the Canada Council's acquisition fund that matching programs really are attractive to donors. We would love to see a national matching donation program that would allow us to leverage our donor dollars and stretch them even farther.

Accessibility is a long-underserved but now hot topic for museums and galleries. We need to create accessibility on numerous fronts: physical space, digital assets, retraining of staff, and accessible workplaces, which were often put into buildings that have not been built for people, as is the case of our current home, which is an old county courthouse. We need infrastructure support, but we also need capacity-building, not just to be compliant with the law but to become leaders.

Another aspect is indigenous representation. As a member of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization, we are very aware of the steps we need to take to ensure first nations, Inuit, and Métis people are integral to our museums and galleries, and not just at the programmatic level—because I think we're doing quite well there—but in leadership and at the governance level on board and staff. We need incentives to help us get there, but then we also need the government to have some oversight.

In terms of copyright and new digital skills, there is no doubt that the digital world and all of the changing social media platforms are forcing galleries to rethink the skill sets needed for all of their positions, not only in communications but in all aspects. This is putting pressure particularly on art galleries because, of course, we are not the sole copyright owners of the art that we display. In order to promote and engage through social media, we have some real challenges that have a direct correlation to the copyright legislation.

With regard to governance, I have the benefit of saying that the OAG board of directors is strong and reflexive and is adopting a new generative model of board governance for our gallery as we move into a period of great growth and change. However, my reality is rare, and I will say that one of the greatest pressures on not-for-profits is the schism that can occur between professional staff and boards. Therefore, we would love to see some training and some oversight from the federal government.

In my last few minutes I want to talk about the national capital context. Both Robin and I have national experience in other galleries across Canada, notably in Saskatchewan, but the national capital context is very particular, so I would like to take a moment to talk about it. I would say that our reality could be transferred to Winnipeg or Halifax, other municipalities that have national museums.

One area is staffing and competitive wages. It's extremely hard for us to attract and retain staff when we have these great national organizations. Both Robin and I have trained staff, engaged them, and have then had them leave to the National Art Gallery and the Museum of Nature. We're happy for them, but it's tough on us.

Another area is bilingualism. The OAG is the only bilingual gallery of its size, and the pressure to find and retain bilingual staff to translate all of our myriad marketing and social media communications output puts a major financial strain on our organization.

Another is marketing and expectations. Our marketing department and dollars can't compare to the nationals, but we're expected to play at the same level. Although we're nimble and responsive and can do very interesting things that national galleries can't, we're often overshadowed.

I don't want to come off as whiny by any means. I think, as Robin said, we have great relationships with our national organizations, but what we'd love to see is more initiatives like the National Arts Centre scene festival, which engages the local communities' galleries and museums, gives us some funding to do parallel programming, and then wraps us into this larger marketing piece. That's very helpful for us. We've become day two of your trip to Ottawa. You see the nationals on day one, and you come to see that local, on-the-ground element on day two.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have two minutes, Ms. Badzak.

[Alexandra Badzak]

Thank you. I'm very close.

In terms of donor dollars, let's face it: there's a lot of competition here as well in the national capital region. Although our national museums indicate that they have a national membership, a national sponsorship, and national donors, in fact, when you look at their donor walls, it's simply not borne out. A lot of our community leaders and donors who would naturally come to us go to that national level. We're often also overlooked by corporations, which only look at the region, in that they're not making a distinction between local and national institutions. Again, that puts a real strain on what we can do for our own revenue-generating elements.

In closing, I think I can speak on behalf of our sector to say that we're very pleased that the Canadian government sees its museums as key aspects of our cultural identify and embraces the pluralism and the hopes and aspirations of our country. I encourage our government, as Robin indicated, to look at a new national museum strategy and policy in a way that sets the stage for sustainable growth, so that we can truly reflect our demographic changes and regional and global trends. This policy, again as Robin indicated, needs to look at other legislation and policy that in turn affects museum policy. It can't be done in isolation.

To end, I'll quote Max Wyman's wonderful polemic to define imagination. He says:

To maintain a distinctive, pluralistic Canada in which its people's stories are heard and valued, we must nourish the elements that manifest that uniqueness. It is a task the cultural community and government must approach together...

With that, I thank you for beginning the dialogue with us today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now we will go to the question-and-answer round, starting with a seven-minute session. I don't think we'll have time for a second round.

We begin with Ms. Dabrusin for the Liberals. You have seven minutes, please.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you to both of you. It was really interesting to hear about your experiences. I suspect that the Ottawa experience might be quite different from the experience in other cities across the country when you're talking about national museums and small museums.

I wanted to pick up on something. Both of you talked about digitization of what you have in your museums. I wanted to ask you why it is important to digitize what you have in your museums. Is it a marketing piece so that people know what's available, or is there another purpose as well?

[Robin Etherington]

Through you, Madam Chair, that is an excellent question, and I'm thrilled to answer it to the best of my ability.

All our young people are accessing information this way. Therefore, to get our information online, we have to digitize not only the collection records and images but also our services. That does not preclude people coming into the museum. In actual fact, in four years we have doubled attendance and we have doubled revenue. It is not one or the other; they are in tandem.

There are now global research reasons. We now have people in Europe and in Mexico asking us for information about our collection. It has enhanced our reach and our capacity. To do it and to stay competitive with all the other organizations, we have to do the same. We have to digitize our collection and our services.

To your other question, as well as Madam Chair's question two days ago, they actually facilitate our marketing strategy. We put them on Twitter and on Facebook, and that increases our dialogue and our presence not only in our immediate community but also provincially and nationally.

In tandem with that, we have audio tours in six languages. Ottawa Tourism loves us. We've uploaded those onto our website. It's not just digitization of the collections, per se. It again is a suite of strategies and tactics that allows us to be known throughout our community and province and internationally.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

What about the Ontario Art Gallery?

[Alexandra Badzak]

It is the Ottawa Art Gallery.

Yes, I would pick up on what Robin said in terms of dialogue. In particular, yes, for marketing, it is absolutely important, but social media is a dialogue between people, and there is an expectation that this information can flow freely. If that's not possible, if we have to control it, if we have to pay for every time that image is going out there, it is a huge challenge for us.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

That leads me to what my next question, the copyright issue. It's come up a couple of times now. I don't know what your thoughts are. How do we protect the rights of our artists and content producers, yet also allow the shift to a more digitized environment? Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Alexandra Badzak]

I won't claim to be an expert on it. It's something we're certainly struggling with. Obviously, we care deeply about artists and artists' rights to their cultural property. Nonetheless, the expectations in terms of how we move those images around have changed dramatically. I think there has to be an easing off on the institution, whose job it is to promote and present and interpret this work, so that we can get it out on all those platforms in the way that society is demanding. That would be one aspect of it.

You know, I guess we're looking at ways around it. We're having to become much more savvy in the way we, say, take images of installation shots when we're putting up a work. We're not directly showing the work, but we're showing the activity of putting the work up on the wall. We often do interviews with the artists. Again, it is a way of adding to the dialogue and not just using the image of their artwork.

That really changes the type of skill set we're asking our curators to have now. It used to be just research and writing; now we're going to need them to be experts in interviews and videography. It's a challenging landscape ahead.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Do you know from your interactions with museums in other countries and jurisdictions how they are dealing with digitizing their collections and with these copyright issues? Have you seen other jurisdictions deal with this in a better way?

[Alexandra Badzak]

I would love to say that I have, but I think we're all struggling with it.

[Robin Etherington]

On that note, a resource for you is ICOM and ICOM Canada. The new president of ICOM Canada is Audrey Vermette. They are also doing a phenomenal amount of research on this issue and a number of other issues.

I'll go back to Mr. O'Regan's question to my colleagues prior to this presentation. UNESCO and ICOM are where you're going to find the best practices internationally. We keep forgetting about Latin America. It's not just Europe and the United States, and I can speak to that one, but I won't. We also have incredible museums in Latin America, especially Mexico. Their museography is very distinct from ours.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

You've gone there, you've talked about Mexico, so what can we learn from them? You said they have something distinct.

[Robin Etherington]

They have an incredibly deep tradition of museography and museology, which is quite distinct from European and Canadian and American. Their history is a little longer than ours.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

As far as populations go, our history would have, I presume, the same length. Is it the museum part—

[Robin Etherington]

Their museography is distinct.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thanks very much, Ms. Dabrusin.

Now we will go to Mr. Van Loan, for the Conservatives.

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

Ms. Etherington, in your presentation you mentioned the national museum policy and said that it's due for an update. You referred to a full suite of federal programs and things like that. If I were talking to my local museums, I would never hear those phrases come off their tongues. I'm interested in hearing the nuts-and-bolts problems that you face today in running your museum, not in the context of those federal bureaucratic buzzwords but in what your challenges are on a day-to-day basis.

You spoke about digitization, for example, so let's go beyond that one.