Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 4th, 2020

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

It would be wonderful if you could share the things you learned from your experiences with others. It would be good to spread that knowledge around.

I have some questions for Ms. Noble and Mr. Roma.

Ms. Noble, you spoke about our urban spaces, our parks and our outdoor recreational spaces being highly utilized during COVID-19. In Alberta, we have a provincial government that is actually selling off our provincial parks and is threatening to dispose of some of our public spaces, saying that they are underutilized. Can you speak to the information that you have? How do you know that these spaces, in fact, are being used?

[Mike Roma]

Thank you for the question. I'll maybe take this.

They definitely have been utilized more now that they are the only show in town or the only option that people have.

I am familiar with the Province's intentions to do as you mentioned. A lot of the parcels they're talking about are actually provincial park spaces, so they're not necessarily in urban areas. They are park spaces that I would say are less programmed and more related to conservation, environmental stewardship and so on.

That being said, I think the CPRA board and our members are of the mindset that we don't have enough of all recreation spaces, whether they're indoor or outdoor, and that the demand for those types of spaces—whether it's during a pandemic, after a pandemic or before one—is insatiable in a lot of ways.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

One of the things that you spoke about in your comments, Mr. Roma—I'll just keep going with you, if you don't mind—was the emergency recovery fund that you'd like to see. We know that the $31 million that was allocated was not enough.

What would you like to see? Perhaps I missed that, but what amount would be appropriate, in your opinion?

[Mike Roma]

We've articulated an amount in our formal ask for two different streams of funding. One is related to infrastructure, which is similar to the one that you have alluded to and that we alluded to in our speech.

The other one—and it's probably more important—has to do with not necessarily infrastructure, but with helping stop the gap that's growing right now and helping municipalities overcome this period when there's extreme financial pressure on these services. We're only in Alberta. I'm a resident of Alberta as well. I realize that it's different across the country, but right now we're allowed to have 25% capacity in our facilities. That equates to 25% of any of the revenue that was going into municipal budgets, but with a lot of the same, if not enhanced, expenses attached to operating those facilities.

On top of that, ensuring that the users and the public do come back in droves, hopefully, or at least to levels where they were before, is going to require not just opening the doors; it's going to require convincing people that these places are safe and that the benefits of physical activity, recreation, sport—as mentioned by other speakers—and even community events outweigh the potential risks attached to public health concerns.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Wonderful.

My daughter is a swimmer. Her swim club has gone above and beyond to provide training for her and to provide those options, but coaching is very expensive, because it is now required to be one-on-one for those athletes.

The other piece that is shocking and quite stressful for these organizations—in my riding, at least—has been the lack of funding from the municipalities. Many of these organizations received grant funding from their municipalities, which simply cannot afford to do that anymore. For example, the City of Edmonton has stopped some of the granting that goes to these organizations.

Mr. Shoemaker, perhaps you could speak a little bit about the impact that the lack of municipal funding has also had on some of the smaller national sports organizations.

[David Shoemaker]

It's critical that there's funding there to allow clubs and other local facilities to be open. The provincial and territorial organizations in effect depend on a revenue source that's derived from that, which then flows up to the national sports organizations. There's an interconnectivity among all these sports organizations in our federal model that depends on all partners at all levels of government doing their part.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much. Sorry, but I have to leave it at that.

We're now going to go to Mr. Waugh for five minutes, please.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you, Chair. Welcome, everyone, to today's heritage meeting.

I thought I'd start with the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association, and Mike and Cathy.

The City of Saskatoon just announced for SaskTel Centre a deficit of $3.6 million for 2020, and they're facing a $1.6-million deficit for 2021, so you can see the pressure put on cities. We had a big uproar this week in Saskatoon when they said there would be no more nets in outdoor hockey rinks. It has caused a big kerfuffle because the 52 community-owned rinks outdoors are all volunteer-based, and now, all of a sudden, you can't have a net on these ice surfaces until December 17. We're seeing a lot of push-back from the public versus municipal, provincial and federal governments.

Please comment on that, because the pools are semi-shut down, the rinks now are almost shut down, and you can see the adverse effect in the communities that we serve from coast to coast.

[Mike Roma]

I'll start on that. Thank you for the question.

From our perspective, we have to follow the rules. We have to follow the regulations that are set forth for us, and I think our biggest concern is not about following those rules, because we will do that no matter what, but about what happens after the regulations and the restrictions are loosened.

If this kind of harm is happening, not just with relationships between groups in the public and the municipalities that are enforcing some of these regulations, but also the stigma of what's safe, what's not safe, given how beneficial these activities are to our communities and so on, we want to make sure that those recover as quickly as possible.

I can say that recreation and parks are resilient, and I can probably speak for sport and community events as well. We're part of community. We're driven by passion. We're part of what makes Canada what it is. We're not going to lose these services, but we want to make sure that in the future we're not starting from scratch with some of our activities, some of our participant bases and so on.

We're following the rules. We're hoping that the breakdown in relationships doesn't carry forward into the future, and that's part of the request that we have of the federal government and of other levels of government to help us better prepare.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I need to ask a couple of questions.

It's had a trickle-down effect. The Canada summer jobs that each of the MPs sends out every summer were affected, because we had no outdoor soccer, no playgrounds, and so on, and a lot of these organizations were never able to access the wage subsidy from the government. Could you comment on that? When these community organizations and cities could not access the wage subsidy to help out these programs, it had a major effect.

[Cathy Jo Noble]

Sure, I can speak to that. Yes, it's in the tens of thousands of layoffs that happened. One portion of the layoffs was full-time people, but a huge number weren't layoffs. They were hirings that didn't happen, because much of municipal parks and recreation activity takes place in the summer and employs a tremendous number of coaches, lifeguards, park attendants and so forth. Because the employees in our sector are municipal employees, they did not qualify for the wage subsidy, so there were layoffs, and because they didn't get a wage subsidy, many of those people have moved on. When it's time to reopen, it will be a challenge to retrain and rehire.

The other challenge was the number of students who didn't get hired. I want to acknowledge, though, that Employment and Social Development Canada has been a great partner of ours, and we continue to be. We are just signing a contract now for wage subsidies going forward for youth in parks and recreation. I want to acknowledge that they are matching it as a 100% wage subsidy, versus 50% in the past, because they're recognizing that municipalities barely have the dollars to hire back the full-time workers, and students won't necessarily be the priority. I want to acknowledge that.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you. Mr. Shoemaker ran into that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Mr. Waugh—

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I still have a minute left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

No, you had five minutes going in.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Oh, yes, I got five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Waugh.

Mr. Housefather is next.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses.

Ms. Raymond, thank you for your work at the Quebec Winter Carnival.

As my colleagues from Quebec have already asked you questions, I will address the other witnesses.

I have a couple of questions. It is very difficult right now for elite athletes, for age group and masters athletes, and for recreational athletes, because you can't train in most regions of Canada in a team, and even if you're in an individual sport and you train in a team, you can't be together. As a result, we're far behind in preparation. We're way behind the point where everybody wants to be.

My first question is for Mr. Shoemaker. Are there any countries internationally that have done this better than Canada and that have right now prepared their elite athletes for the Olympics in a better way? If so, which countries are they?

[David Shoemaker]

Thank you, Mr. Housefather.

I'm going to interpret your question in a certain way. There's no country in the world that has done it as well as Canada, meaning that Team Canada's athletes in March decided that the important question wasn't whether they could train for the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020 but whether they could do so safely for their families and their communities. They decided “no” and became the first Olympic committee in the world to pull out of the Tokyo Olympic Games. We and they have, then, put the health and safety of them, their teammates, their families and their communities as the top priority.

Now, as we look ahead to the Olympics in 2021 and think about preparation, regrettably most other advanced swimming nations in the world, for example, have spent more days in the pool. Our swimmers have spent 120 days out of the pool this year, but we're rapidly closing the distance. Suffice it to say, however, that we are playing catch-up in most sports for which that level of access is imperative.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you.

This is addressed to the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association.

Having been a mayor, I totally understand the importance of the roles that your association plays and that the municipalities play. I'd like to ask the same type of question. As we know, municipalities are under provincial law. Are there any provinces that have stepped up across the country to which you could point as examples of having provided adequate funding for their municipalities to deal with all of the challenges being faced?

[Cathy Jo Noble]

There's no province or territory that is jumping out at me, to answer your question. I think the provinces and territories are struggling as much as the municipalities.

One thing we're asking for is that federal infrastructure dollars go directly to municipalities, because sometimes when the funding goes through the provinces and territories, it's spent before the communities have been able to identify their needs. They know their needs better than anyone. I think I would leave that as my response.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I agree with you completely. As a Quebec MP, I know that the Quebec government would be adamantly against this, so we're constantly facing challenges. I personally agree with you, though, having faced this challenge as a mayor.

As my next question, in what areas can the federal government help you? Right now, a lot of confusing information comes out about safe reopening. For example, in my own sport, the one I know best, the national swimming federation is giving guidance, and so is each provincial swimming federation, as to how many people can be in a pool, how many people can be in a lane and what can happen.

You guys would be a great national organization, I think, that would be able to provide safe reopening guidelines and work things out so that there's clarity. Have you guys considered applying for monies under Safe Restart or other programs that would allow you to create a website to disseminate information to all of your members across Canada on the best practices for reopening?

[Mike Roma]

Definitely that was and is something that's top of mind for us, especially as it relates to guidelines related to spaces and places where all these activities occur.

Early on in the pandemic, we did strike a committee of a variety of different stakeholders to see if that was a role we should play as a national organization. The conclusion we came to was that since a lot of those regulations are driven at the provincial or territorial level, it wouldn't be relevant for us to necessarily do that from a facility and space perspective, because of the different states of affairs in each of the areas and the different types of expectation levels about the virus and so on.

We did attempt to do that. We do have a national online community where we can share and distribute information, but specific to guidelines and facilities and spaces, we were told by our membership that even though it would be great to have federal leadership in this area, just as you mentioned, it just wasn't something we could necessarily take on.

I wanted to add one last thing to your previous question. I think right now, as it relates to parks and recreation, municipalities are feeling alone as to what to do about the issues at hand, such as whether or not it's okay to close facilities or whether or not we need to fight tooth and nail to keep these services going, and so on. I think what we're hoping to get from both the federal and the provincial governments is an indication that other levels of government see these as important services and maybe instigate municipal decision-making.

We know that at the end of the day, municipalities pay for 90% or 95% of these facilities and spaces. We're not asking to change that, but it would be good to show some signs of support from other levels of government for these services and almost provoke municipal decisions to occur. As a mayor, you'd understand what I mean by that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Roma.

I have to end it there. We're exactly at two o'clock eastern. I want to say thank you to our witnesses for joining us. We appreciate the information you provided and, like us, I hope you look forward to the report that's going to come from it.

Let's suspend for a few minutes to make room for our next witnesses.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Okay, welcome back, everybody. Sorry for the delay. It looks like technically we're up to speed. We'll try to get through this.

We're now of course in the middle of a study on the challenges and issues faced by the arts, culture, heritage and sport sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have three groups with us here. From Fédération culturelle canadienne-française, we have Martin Théberge, president; and Marie-Christine Morin, executive director. We have Dana Peers, president and chairman of the board of the Calgary Stampede. Of course, we have Pitseolak Pfeifer, executive director of Qaggiavuut! Nunavut Performing Arts Society. I will ask you to correct my pronunciation when your time comes.

We're going to start with Martin Théberge and Marie-Christine Morin. You have up to five minutes. Would one of you like to start?