Canadian Heritage Committee on March 20th, 2018

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

Let's move on then.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

It is now Mr. Nantel's turn.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you all for your input, which is very helpful.

Ms. Pauzé, the investment you receive from the J. Armand Bombardier Foundation puts you on a fairly solid footing, I would say. It's a wonderful example of what can be achieved when the private sector and a grassroots organization join forces. I think your partnership with the foundation and your accomplishments are a source of pride for all Quebecers.

I'd like to pick up on a topic that my colleague Mr. Van Loan and you, Mr. Wilson, both talked about. I'm referring to endowment funds, a subject that's come up numerous times in recent weeks, in the course of our study. It's something we've discussed in the context of other cultural organizations, and it relates to this situation as well. Essentially, it's an endowment fund where contributions could be matched by the government.

Mr. Wilson, are you aware that the Foundation of Greater Montreal provides those kinds of resources?

Is that what you were referring to?

[Pierre Wilson]

The Foundation of Greater Montreal wasn't created by the government. It's a private foundation that receives donations. The money we've collected thanks to initiatives undertaken through the Mécénat Placements Culture program goes into the Foundation of Greater Montreal fund. It's our endowment fund and it's frozen for 10 years, which means we aren't allowed to use it. Every year, the foundation gives us 3.5% of the money, regardless of the amount collected. If it's 14%, the foundation puts the rest in our endowment fund and gives us 3.5%. If it's 2%, it takes 3.5%.

It's really a risk-based fund, but it's beneficial. We receive $20,000 a year from the fund. Being able to access that definitely has its benefits. However, as I said, conducting a fundraising campaign to collect $100,000 is quite a challenge for a small museum. We did it, but it was no small feat.

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

You have a mandate. Earlier you mentioned the fact that a museum's first mission is to preserve its collections, and you are right. Day in and day out, however, a museum's mandate is to make the public aware of why it exists. Clearly, there are target audiences, and that's why I think what you're doing is absolutely crucial from a cultural mediation standpoint. People who are worried about Quebec's cultural heritage and its survival need to expose new immigrants to that heritage. That is the starting point, right at the centre of everything. In addition to tipping my hat to you, I want to say how much I appreciate your rich and meaningful contribution here today.

Like Ms. Lalonde, you mentioned the Ontario's Museums 2025 report. You joked that, like all good reports, it was shelved. You're right that it's pitiful for subsequent governments to simply cast aside good reports. We've had that same experience here with other reports I won't name.

I flipped through the report when you were speaking. Recommendation number 22 has to do with recognition for regional resource museums. I'm not asking you to know all the resources and recommendations, but the purpose of this study is to support local museums.

The motion adopted by the committee reads as follows: “That the Committee undertake a study to review the state of Canadian museums, with a focus on local and community museums (as opposed to the major national or provincial museums)….” I'd like to know your take on that.

First, though, I have another question.

Given the fact that studies conducted by governments, commissions, and committees like this one are often set aside, should they not, at the very least, be shared between different levels of government?

My sense is that there's a lot of talk. There are recommendations that could be implemented. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.

I'd like to hear what Ms. Lalonde has to say, but Mr. Wilson's comments would certainly be pertinent as well.

Ms. Lalonde, would you care to comment?

[Marie Lalonde]

You raised a number of important points.

When the Ontario Museum Association undertook this broad consultation, reaching out to hundreds of museums, including small local museums whose community members visit and support them, one thing was quite clear: we drew inspiration from the Société des musées québécois, which produced the report on the general state of museums. Then came Mr. Corbo's report. I'm very encouraged by the fact that more and more such efforts are being made and shared, as you mentioned.

I also want to underscore the importance of the work we do with all of our target audiences, be they indigenous people, new Canadians, new immigrants or other groups. Those efforts are essential to museums in every province. Small and large museums alike have to be active on that front. Perhaps programs should have a tiered approach, in the sense that funding would take into account museum size. That's extremely important.

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

Thank you, Ms. Lalonde.

I'd like to hear Mr. Wilson's comments on that.

Mr. Wilson, you have less than a minute.

[Pierre Wilson]

I think it would be a terrific idea to pool all the reports that have already been done and to stop writing new ones. Indeed, there are many. How many times have we heard the comments made by Ms. Lalonde and Ms. Pauzé? We've talked about the importance of museums, the statistics, the number of children who visit museums, the building of our history, and on and on and on. You should know. It makes no sense. Perhaps, then, there is a solution. Perhaps we could go back over all of it and keep the good proposals.

We talked about having a regional resource museum. That might be a good idea, but every museum has to have the opportunity to live and breathe, and be what it is. The resource museum would have somewhat of a special status and serve as a big brother. If it's done right, taking into account the resources at its disposal, it's fine.

In Montreal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts would be the resource museum. When the museum sends me invitations in the mail, I always think that 10 of its invitations are equivalent to one of our museum's publications. The fine arts museum pays $10 a piece to have invitations printed. It's ridiculous. How could its leadership provide assistance to me when I'm reusing paper clips?

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

We saw what you make, and everyone was quite shocked.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

It is now Ms. Dhillon's turn for seven minutes.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Good morning.

Thank you to everyone for being here today, both in person and by video conference.

I'll be splitting my time with my colleague Mr. Di Iorio.

My question is for everyone. It's a general one.

What kind of funding programs would you like?

[Pierre Wilson]

I can go first.

I would like funding programs that help with operating costs. We receive funding from Quebec's ministry of culture and communications, the Montreal arts council, and the borough, but we don't have access to federal funding that would help with operations. I believe the Canada Council for the Arts provides operating funding. However, the last time I tried to get some information, I was told that knowing where we rank would be helpful, but to forget about it because it was already spoken for. In order to receive operating funding on a recurring basis, you have to be accredited and recognized. Once you are recognized, you receive the funding for a number of years. It's for operating purposes, so it has to be recurring. If you could provide greater access to operating funding so that other museums could apply, it would be a welcome measure.

Quebec has 120 recognized museums that receive support and 190 recognized museums. During the last evaluation, the 190 recognized museums were asked to submit applications, but the overall budget wasn't increased. That means that the 190 museums had to share the same overall amount with the other 120 museums. The decision to give funding to a few more organizations caused museums to make cuts. It was serious. Some museums saw their operating funding drop by 50%—which is huge—just so six new museums could receive some funding without having to increase the overall budget. Conversely, we are seeing increases in program budgets.

As I said, it's nice to have programs, which are shaped by your political agenda. We aren't against digital initiatives. They are amazing, of course, but we need to be supported in an effective way so that we can carry on our mission.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Pauzé, Ms. Lalonde, do you have anything to add?

[Carol Pauzé]

I would add that operating funding is indeed crucial. In our case, we are supported by a foundation, and I'm very glad. The museum runs, but the operating budget doesn't change. The museum underwent an expansion. We acquired an additional 1,500 square metres and a few more staff members, but our operating budget stayed the same. We definitely need support in that regard. Of course, operations don't have the same visibility that projects do. It's easier to make a project announcement about a new exhibition or the construction of a new building, for example, than to say that money was given to cover two additional staff members. Operating funding is nevertheless essential.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Di lorio, I'll now turn the floor over to you.

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to my fellow members.

I'd also like to thank Ms. Lalonde, Ms. Pauzé, and Mr. Wilson, not just for their presentations, but also for what they do every day. You provide an invaluable service to the country.

My question is for all three of you. I will start with Mr. Wilson, but I'd also like to hear what Ms. Lalonde and Ms. Pauzé have to say.

Ms. Pauzé said that transportation was one of the challenges. She described the school sector as a cash cow. Mr. Wilson talked about the need for a strong, well-defined and generous policy around operating funding.

I'd like to hear how you think the Web, the Internet, and augmented reality could be leveraged and how the government could help you carry on your mission, as you adapt to the reality of today and tomorrow. I'd like to know what role you think technological innovation could play in all that.

[Pierre Wilson]

That's a good question.

I gather you are asking whether we have the resources to organize virtual visits of the museum for schools, and the like. Is that correct?

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Actually, I was wondering whether you could picture asking the government for funding to support technological innovation, given its reluctance to increase operating funding for all sorts of reasons, which you are more familiar with than I am. That approach would bring in money, while supporting your renewal efforts and helping to attract young people and a more diverse clientele. What are your thoughts on that?

[Pierre Wilson]

Quebec has a program that provides funding annually for virtual exhibits. Funding is available to us through that program. In 2016, we received a tidy sum, $120,000, to develop an interactive project entitled Savoir-faire. We were able to showcase heritage trades that were in decline, such as sash making, which is phenomenal.

For Montreal's 375th anniversary celebrations, we undertook a virtual reality project. We had 165 young actors, from schools throughout the Saint-Laurent borough, participate in a seven-part retelling of the history of Saint-Laurent, beginning with the great peace of Montreal. It was wonderful. The possibility of doing those kinds of projects is always there, but it would no longer pose a challenge if the government were to provide indexed funding for operations.

As things stand, we are forced to pursue initiatives that are in line with the programs. In the meantime, though, our first mission is being undermined. If you give us indexed operating funding, we'll be able to undertake digital initiatives anytime.

To be completely frank, the virtual exhibit program has been around for a long time, and the budget is staggering. I'm not sure, though, that many people actually visit a museum's virtual exhibits. In some cases, those exhibits could be real as opposed to virtual. The money spent on the program could be used elsewhere. There was a time when virtual exhibits were appealing, but today, that is less the case.

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I'd like to give Ms. Lalonde—

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Mr. Di Iorio, your seven minutes are up.

Thank you. That was very interesting.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses. I very much appreciated all of your comments and suggestions. If you have anything else you'd like to tell the committee or additional information to provide, you can send it to the clerk.

Thank you everyone.

We're going to suspend for a couple of minutes while we switch over to our next witnesses.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

We are resuming the meeting.

We will now hear from two other witnesses.

We have, from the Vancouver Art Gallery, Mr. Hank Bull, Trustee, who is joining us by video conference.

We also have Anne Élisabeth Thibault and Louise Pothier, both from Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History.

Why don't we start with the video conference?

If we can start with you, Mr. Bull, you have 10 minutes.

[Hank Bull, Trustee, Vancouver Art Gallery]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members.

Greetings from Vancouver.

My name is Hank Bull, and I am a self-employed artist. I have been involved in contemporary art since the 1970s, especially through the movement of artist-run centres across the country. I have a good deal of experience with major museums in Canada and around the world. For the past four years, I have been on the Vancouver Art Gallery's board of directors.

I have two pieces of good news to share with you today. First, we are ready to build a new museum in Vancouver. Second, more broadly speaking, Canada's museums are at the dawn of a new era with respect to federal government support.

Now I'll say a few words about the Vancouver Art Gallery.

We serve all of Canada with travelling exhibitions, public programs, and publications, which have won international recognition.

We were founded in 1931. It's interesting to note that in 1931 there were five museums in Canada: the National Gallery, le Musée du Québec, le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the Art Gallery of Toronto, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. We might not be one of Canada's official national cultural institutions, but we are surely the next best thing.

Over the past 10 years the Vancouver Art Gallery has experienced extraordinary growth. Its membership has tripled to over 32,000 voting members now. Its annual operating budget has grown from $7 million to now $19 million a year. Its permanent collection has grown by 60% to now over 12,000 works of art.

It has a particularly robust social media footprint, and we're very proud of that. Just yesterday we broke 50,000 Instagram followers. As of this morning, we're at 50,100 followers. That's more than all the other arts groups in British Columbia put together. It's more than any other museum in Canada except the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is in a city five times the size of Vancouver.

Our attendance has gone through the roof in the same period, from 180,000 people a year to, last year, 525,000 people who came through the doors. We are literally bursting at the seams.

The current facility, which is in a former courthouse, is long past its due date. Apart from being overcrowded, it's cramped, it lacks a lecture theatre, it has no education facilities, and it fails to meet even the most basic seismic safety requirements. There are a lot of national treasures in that basement. To give you an example of how bad it is, the larger trucks cannot get into the loading bay, and it is known that large paintings have been seen being walked up the streets of Vancouver in order to get them into the building. It's entirely inadequate. The situation has become urgent.

Now here's the good news. As many of you know, we are planning to build a new gallery. The City of Vancouver has set aside the land, a beautiful block of land in downtown Vancouver. The provincial government has already committed $50 million. It's in the bank. The board has raised over $40 million in private money so far. The architects have been engaged. The design phase is complete. We are shovel-ready. We're ready to go now. We just need the government's participation and to launch our public campaign, which we intend to do very shortly.

It's an ambitious project. It's like building a bridge across a river. It's a massive investment, but it also generates massive short-term and long-term impacts. According to an independent study, it will create 2,973 full-time equivalent jobs in the construction phase. That's more jobs than the Site C dam. It will generate tax revenues of $20 million a year and will add $28 million a year to GDP. Our goal is to raise $300 million to build the building, plus $50 million for an endowment. The federal government of course is a key player, and we're very happy to say that we've heard encouraging noises from the Minister of Canadian Heritage, from the Department of Infrastructure, and from the Prime Minister's Office. We've made a couple of trips to Ottawa already. We're encouraged by the federal response. We're also right now in very close negotiations with the Province of British Columbia, and we are hopeful that we're going to hear word of their recommitment soon to this project.

It's a big gallery. It's a beautiful gallery. The architects, Herzog & de Meuron, are fantastic. They designed the Tate Modern in London. They designed the famous Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing. This will be a very high functioning, beautiful building. It will be really transformative for the local economy and a big historical step forward for Canada when you think back to those five museums.

We ask you, committee members, please, to support this, to talk to your ministers, to join us as we go forward, and we look forward to welcoming you to the opening of this spectacular new facility. That's my first point.

The second point is that it's no secret that the museums of Canada are poorly served by the federal government. The Vancouver Art Gallery, for example, receives no annual funding from the Government of Canada. The Department of Canadian Heritage does give annual grants to film festivals and to music festivals for performing arts, but it does not give any annual grants to museums. This needs to be corrected.

There's the Canada Council. You'll say, “What about the Canada Council?” For its part, the Canada Council gives the Vancouver Art Gallery an annual grant of $300,000. This has not changed for over 10 years, despite its phenomenal growth. By comparison, the Vancouver Symphony, the VSO, receives an annual grant of $1.9 million. That's over six times more for an organization with a considerably smaller budget and a considerably smaller audience.

Similar examples can be found across the country. The Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal receives a grant of $450,000 whereas the Montreal Symphony gets a grant of over $2 million.

Here's the good news. We're not saying that the symphonies should receive less money. The symphonies are magnificent. They deserve every single penny. Now that the Canada Council has been endowed with new monies, there is a great opportunity for this imbalance to be corrected. There's a new competition this fall, and I for one am very optimistic that the Canada Council, in its extraordinary wisdom, will act on this issue. The Canada Council is to be lauded. I'm not here to criticize the council. The council is one of the great organizations in the world of funding.

More germane to this particular committee is Heritage. There should be annual grants. We have access to project monies, but they're very hard to access. It's very complex. It takes years, the decisions are slow, and it's not easy. There really needs to be better support on an ongoing basis from Heritage Canada for the museums of this country.

That concludes my presentation. Thank you very much. I'm happy to take questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you for joining us what's so early in the morning for you. We appreciate that.

We will now move on to Mrs. Thibault and Ms. Pothier, from Pointe-à-Callière.

[Louise Pothier, Chief Curator and Archaeologist, Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History]

Good morning. Thank you for having us today.

For those of you who are familiar with us, it may come as a surprise to hear Pointe-à-Callière described as a local museum. However, we are firmly entrenched in our community, with all the archaeological and historic sites we showcase. For those of you who may not be familiar with us, I'll give a brief overview of our institution.

Pointe-à-Callière, the Montreal archaeology and history complex, is a young museum, established just 25 years ago, in 1992, to showcase the archaeological heritage and birthplace of Montreal. It is located on Montreal's heritage site, Old Montreal. The museum is nationally and internationally renowned for mounting large-scale exhibitions dedicated to history, as well as regional, national, and international heritage, using new technology, and showcasing historic sites and collections.

When it was established, the museum consisted of three structures and sites, but today is made up of seven pavilions and historic sites. Last year, we opened a new pavilion, Fort Ville-Marie, the first French establishment in Montreal, which is also a Canadian national historic site. We also showcase the first collector sewer in Montreal, which visitors can explore. Not only is it a monumental example of urban infrastructure in the 19th century, but it is also the first sewer collector in Canada. Pointe-à-Callière includes the site where Montreal was founded in 1642. It features the vestiges of the beginning of the French occupation and the presence of the first settlers in the Montreal area. It is the site where the great peace treaty of Montreal was signed in 1701, one of the first continental events bringing together important figures in history including Huron-Wendat Chief Kondiaronk and Governor Louis-Hector de Callière. It is also the location of Montreal's first custom house, a historical building built in 1836.

Pointe-à-Callière is continuing to expand. An upcoming phase will focus on the addition of two pavilions and historic sites. The first is the archaeological site of the Sainte-Anne market, which, from 1844 to 1849, served as the Parliament of United Canada. The second is Montreal's old general hospital, a Canadian national historic site, the Frères Charon and Grey Nuns' hospital, dating back to 1693.

The museum showcases important events and sites in Canada's history, including archaeological sites, collections and buildings of symbolic value, making them accessible to the public. We preserve sites that are important to the public and tell the story of Canada's history and democratic beginnings.