Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2022

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Mustakas.

I would now like to move to the Liberals for the second round, and that's going to start with Mr. Louis.

You have two and a half minutes, Mr. Louis.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will be splitting my time with Mr. Bittle.

Just to add to what Mr. Mustakas said, yes, it's the creative class that's going to get us out of this pandemic, and that's why we're here.

I'm really happy to have this extra time.

Mr. Julien, I was hoping that I could ask you to expand on that ticket subsidy idea, that program to make up for the gap in earned revenues.

I've had a number of conversations with theatres. They can't profit at less than full capacity. They can't put on shows at less than full capacity.

Can you explain that? Has this been done in other jurisdictions and in other parts of the world? Can you expand on that idea?

[Frédéric Julien]

Yes, absolutely.

First of all, it's very important to insist on the fact that even in good economic times the performing arts industry is not one that is designed to make loads of profits.

Among not-for-profit performing arts companies, the profit margin from year to year is roughly somewhere between 0.5% and 1.5%, so the moment that those performing arts companies are unable to sell tickets at the same level that they did before, it's impossible for them to make ends meet. Therefore, this has an impact on the number of shows they program and the scale of the shows they program, and that impacts the entire value chain.

The strategic advantage of a ticketing subsidy scheme is that it intervenes where the bulk of earned revenues are made in the performing arts ecosystem, and then, hopefully, flows that money back to all stakeholders in the sector.

As was mentioned today, there is a ticketing subsidy program in Quebec. It is not perfect. It has been said that the money actually doesn't always trickle down to all of the artists and technicians who were supposed to be benefiting from this program. In any new implementation of such a program at a national level, it would be important to make sure that there are guardrails to ensure that the self-employed are compensated, even in instances of cancellations.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

That's great. I appreciate that, and I appreciate all your time.

I'm going to yield the rest of my time to Mr. Bittle.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Louis.

Mr. Mustakas, you talked a bit about encouraging people to come back. I think we're all in agreement that we want people to come back. In the intervening time when we were opening things up again, it was amazing for me to go back and see live performances again. We want to get back there.

I guess I'm struggling with this. What's the message that government can deliver? If it's absent of health and the reality on the ground, will we fall back in terms of confidence? If the virus changes again, as it changed from delta to omicron, we're losing that confidence. Do you have that concern if there is a PR campaign, which I think you suggested that we embark on?

[Dr. Alex Mustakas]

We attempted a couple of projects over the holiday season and we had a mix of half the performances at 50% capacity and half at 100% capacity. The ones at 50% were the ones to sell first. We never went above 50% in the 100% capacities either.

The messaging is really about arts activity. For us in theatre in particular, it's about the communal experience that Zoom can't really recreate. All of us would like to be in the same room right now. The audience is missing out on that communal experience, as I say, an audience that laughs as one and emotes as one. It's been proven that our heartbeats sync together. It's just something that we're missing and you can't really recreate it from your kitchen. That's the message we have to give, that it's time for us to gather, because that's the one thing we've all missed, the ability to be together.

Every one of our audience members says that they can't wait to be back when it's safe to do so. That's the message we have to send out: Follow the protocols; have your vaccination cards, etc., and let's get together. That's what it's really about, and then we will keep our arts workers, actors, singers, dancers and technicians because we do not want to lose them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Mustakas.

I would like to ask the committee if we can stay for another five minutes, because I would like to give Mr. Champoux and Mr. Julian, from the other two political parties, two and a half minutes each to ask questions.

I'm sorry about what happened and that the loss of that time was because of me. Therefore, I would ask if we could make that time up to Mr. Champoux and Mr. Julian.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Okay. Perhaps I could ask Monsieur Champoux to begin.

Go ahead for two and a half minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Chair, I would like to thank you and my colleagues sincerely for this generosity.

Earlier, I started asking Mr. Julien a question about the investments Mr. Roy had mentioned earlier.

Mr. Julien, last year, in your brief, you talked about the Canada arts presentation fund and the building communities through arts and heritage fund. You encouraged the federal government to see these programs as instruments that will help rebuild the performing arts sector.

Mr. Roy spoke earlier about the 2019‑20 budget investments for these programs. He wanted them to be made permanent and enhanced with additional money to make them even more effective.

Do you have any comments on that?

[Frédéric Julien]

Thank you for the question.

According to the evaluations, these programs have proven to be very effective in stimulating the whole touring and broadcasting ecosystem.

There are a lot of performing arts productions that are created only in one city that don't go on tour, but there's also a significant amount of our artistic production that goes across Canada. These two programs are part of a series of programs that create touring circuits. This makes touring economically viable and, in terms of climate, it also reduces the environmental footprint of each of these shows.

These two programs make it possible to have more activity in our communities, which, of course, benefits all performing arts actors. They could certainly benefit from an additional injection of funds, as my colleague Mr. Roy mentioned earlier. There were long‑awaited investments in 2019 that have since been renewed on a piecemeal basis. I think it would be appropriate to reconsider the level of funding for these programs, particularly to increase the diversity of their recipients. At the moment, they have essentially had the same clientele for several years because the lack of funding prevents new clients from accessing it.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I have the impression that the analysts have taken note of your recommendation, Mr. Julien. That could very well be in our report.

Do I have a little time left for one last quick question, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 43 seconds, Mr. Champoux.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Julien, you spoke earlier about the exodus of our technicians, who are leaving the cultural industry because of the current uncertainty. We're losing all that expertise. There's a lot of talk about it.

Do you propose any measures to keep these people, retain them and keep them employed in the cultural sector?

[Frédéric Julien]

I believe that measures such as the performing arts workers resilience fund will definitely have a positive impact on employee retention. I want to reiterate the message I sent earlier: We have to think about this recovery in the long term. Next year, we will still be looking at how much time we have left before the sector has recovered.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Julien.

Now I'll go to the NDP.

Peter Julian, you have two and a half minutes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thanks very much, Madam Chair; and thanks to all members of the committee for their courtesy.

Ms. Hall, I was fascinated by you speaking about the micro grants and the pivot grant.

What are the resources that you would need to do that on an ongoing basis? What I understood from your testimony is that this was a very effective way of providing supports to rising artists.

[Alica Hall]

Thank you, MP Julian.

It was a very effective way and we actually had a number of artists we weren't able to support through the program. We had over 1,000 applications and we were only able to support just over 100 artists with the resources that we had.

I'm hopeful that the new operating fund, the Canada performing arts fund, which recently came out, will be an avenue for us to be able to expand those kinds of resources.

It really comes down to funding. That fund is specifically for performing artists. We did receive applications across disciplines, because we're a multidisciplinary organization, so would need additional resources to do that.

As well, we connected with the Ontario Arts Council, because they were quite keen to see how we had implemented the program and interested in the expedient nature in which we were able to deliver funds in just over a month from the point of application to it closing. Really, it comes down to us being able to secure additional funding to be able to direct that just specifically to artists who are in need.

We're also looking at partnerships to be able to support artists to move through in terms of digital recovery, getting them more supports to build websites, move into e-commerce, and really ensure that we're supporting them in moving forward and building back better in terms of being able to utilize digital supports to move their businesses along.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much for that.

I'll now turn to Mr. Julien.

Mr. Julien, you said that 28,000 jobs have been lost in the sector and proposed several solutions today.

Is there anything else this committee should plan to do to recover these 28,000 jobs in the next few years?

[Frédéric Julien]

I will expand on the answer I was giving to your colleague Mr. Champoux.

We must give ourselves the time needed to complete this recovery. The measures planned for the fiscal year beginning on April 1, 2022, will no doubt need to be extended quickly so that the sector can be supported during a recovery that won't end in 2023. More thought needs to be given to a horizon that would extend into the 2024‑25 fiscal year.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

That brings us to five seconds left. Unless people can speak very quickly, I will thank the witnesses for coming.

I apologize once again for my own failure at understanding what was going on in round two, and I'm hoping that we will get it right the next time around.

Thank you, everyone. I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Chair, I'd like to raise a point of order before the meeting ends.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes. No one has moved to adjourn the meeting, so I will allow you to have a very short point of order, please.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I'll be brief, Madam Chair.

I'd simply like to mention that, as the committee's work has just started again this week, House of Commons interpreters claimed to have suffered health problems as a result of equipment used in parliamentary and committee proceedings.

I think it might be important to make committee members aware of the importance of using the equipment provided by the House of Commons. I think we're going to have stricter regulations next week. We are provided headsets approved by the interpretation service, and we must use them out of respect for the interpreters, who work very hard.