Thank you.
Hello, and greetings from a very snowy Kitchener-Waterloo and Perth—Wellington. I'll begin by quoting the late great actor Charlie Chaplin, who summed up how arts sector workers are feeling around the country at the moment. He once said, “I like to walk in the rain so that no one can see my tears.”
Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for allowing me a few minutes to come in from the rain—or today, the snow—to appear before you, and a special thank you for the support we've received over the past two years from our region's members, Mr. Louis and Mr. Nater.
Drayton Entertainment is an award-winning charitable arts organization that produces professional live theatre as a unique circuit of seven venues throughout Ontario. Prepandemic, we entertained over 250,000 theatregoers annually, with millions in economic impact.
I can probably best summarize the effect of the pandemic on arts and culture, hospitality, tourism, and of course, sports by referring to Greek mythology. Some of you might know the story of Sisyphus. He was banned to Hades and his only job was to push a boulder up a hill. When it got to the top, it would roll down again. He would do that over and over for eternity. In modern-day terms, you could call it Groundhog Day. I have no doubt you all feel this way.
The loss of our programming over the past two years has caused significant hardships not only on us and our arts workers, but also on our municipalities and our tourism and hospitality sector partners who rely on us as a major driver of multiple regional economies. There have been many challenges for our sector, of course.
I will say the government has displayed remarkable leadership in the midst of so many obstacles. Thank you for the recent announcement regarding the performing arts workers resilience fund. I know it was championed by our colleagues at Canadian Actors' Equity Association, IATSE and the Canadian Federation of Musicians, just to name a few. Thank you for including artists in CERB support. Thank you for employer emergency wage subsidies. Thank you for emergency rent support. Thank you for emergency operating support for many arts organizations.
As we move forward to recovery, we've identified four support recommendations for the committee. They include, number one, the extension and expansion of emergency wage support programs. We respectfully request that this program be extended beyond the initial May 7 period, through the summer of 2022 and perhaps beyond. This would allow arts organizations the flexibility we need to bring back more workers and position us for recovery. This would help greatly, as we're losing skilled sector workers to other professions. For some reason, everyone wants to be a real estate agent at the moment.
We would also request that the qualifying criteria for emergency wage support be expanded for our sector to include gig workers. Enabling arts organizations to include these contract workers as employees in emergency wage support claims would reduce financial risk while still navigating a path forward to recovery. As a by-product, this would undoubtedly aid the mental health and well-being of artists and arts workers attempting to sustain their livelihood in this sector.
The second recommendation would be the ability to mitigate fixed costs. The Canada emergency rent subsidy has been a lifeline for those venues we rent; however, there has not been a similar program available for those venues that are owned. In the interest of maintaining equity within the arts sector among renters and venue owners, utilities costs for both should perhaps be considered eligible under a modified cost relief program.
A third recommendation is an arts recovery incentive program. As we look to the future, a matching dollar arts recovery incentive fund would enable arts organizations to tap into the philanthropy of our audiences, knowing their gifts would be matched by the Government of Canada.