Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 9th, 2022

[Sophie Prégent]

Mr. Champoux, I expect that numerous Francophone cultural institutions in Quebec are going to submit applications. As for us, we are going to go strictly through the Fondation. The UDA has decided not to submit specific applications on behalf of its members, but rather for the entire cultural sector.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Prégent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. That was excellent.

We will now move to Mr. Julian for the New Democratic Party.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks, to all of our witnesses, for your very eloquent presentations today. We certainly hope that you and your families and loved ones are staying safe and healthy through this pandemic.

I'm going to save the question for Madame Prégent for the next round, but I'd like to ask this one to, one after another, Mr. Rubinoff, Ms. Reeves, Erin Benjamin, Ms. Bator and Mr. Stacey. I'd like you to take not more than a minute to tell us what the consequences of not acting would be. You've put forward numerous suggestions that are very important. If the government didn't act and didn't provide these supports, what could we expect from your sector in the course of the coming years?

I'll start with Mr. Rubinoff.

[Michael Rubinoff]

First and foremost, if you look at the downtown cores.... I live in Toronto. I'm very worried about bringing people back to the downtown core. Arts and culture do that.

Second, I'm very worried about people, as my colleagues have said. We have incredible, skilled Canadians who work on stage and off. I'm really worried they're going to other professions. If we lose them, we lose our industry.

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

Thank you very much.

Ms. Reeves.

[Aubrey Reeves]

I very much echo what Michael just said. I'm very concerned about labour market issues. We don't have hard data yet, but there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that there is an exodus happening in the arts sector. People are leaving for more predictable work, reliable work, better paid work.

We need to be able to address those things to retain talent. I'm talking not just about artists but also about the administrators. I'm also really concerned about those who are left behind holding the bag. They now have greater workloads. They are very stressed trying to accomplish everything that they have to in order to do that recovery. People are really stretched. They're very burnt out.

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

Thank you very much.

Erin Benjamin.

[Erin Benjamin]

Thank you.

I think we're all going to be adding on here, so I'll try to add some new things.

A massive contraction of the Canadian live music industry would result in a reduction of billions of dollars in economic activity. The North American concert market was projected to see $5 billion in ticket sales alone in the beginning of 2020. It's a massive, mega-billion dollar industry. All of that money will be gone. We will lose the opportunity to intersect with all of the other businesses we connect with so well—hospitality, travel, tourism, the Uber, the corner store, the parking lot, the public transportation we take to attend these concerts, and the restaurants where we eat when we get to them.

The Canadian brand is incredibly tarnished, immeasurably. Our counterparts around the world consider Canada closed for business. Many of our major tours that were postponed and that can't find time in the calendar are not coming back in 2022. The perception out there now is that we're closed until 2023. We still have time to overcome that, but the loss is immeasurable.

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

You'd expect the closing of facilities as well, right?

[Erin Benjamin]

I would, and then some. There's the exodus of skilled labour from the sector and obviously the inability of artists to continue to create the cultural infrastructure. We've already seen the contraction, the disintegration. It's like chunks of an iceberg falling off into the ocean.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Bator.

[Kendra Bator]

I think we would be looking at the collapse of Canadian commercial theatre production, as opposed to presentation. Already, every day, we're making decisions on whether to import something from the U.K. or the United States, or whether to grow something at home. As that becomes more and more risky, and as other markets have tax credit programs and insurance schemes that lure productions to those states or those countries, we are not competitive and there will be a threshold beyond which we can no longer take the risk.

We've talked about the economic development, the jobs, the mental health, the culture and the education programs. All of that goes away with it and we end up presenting other people's work, instead of nurturing our own.

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

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Stacey.

[Boomer Stacey]

To echo everything my colleagues have said, there would be a collapse of the theatre sector, definitely; there would also be a loss of venues, a loss of companies, a loss of artists, and a huge loss in the diversity of Canadian stories being told. There would also be an increase in mental health crises, both in the professional community, as well as in the public.

We know that the public goes to the arts to boost themselves, and with less art available, we'll see an impact in Canadian society. I truly believe that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute left, Peter.

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

Mr. Stacey, when both you and Ms. Bator were talking about collapse, what does that mean in terms of closing facilities? Would you expect to see a number of theatres, members of your organization, closing forever?

[Boomer Stacey]

Absolutely. We already have members who are on the brink. Omicron pushed people even closer. We can't keep riding that roller coaster.

Companies have survived mainly on the emergency funds that have been available. If and when that ceases, as Aubrey said in her presentation, it will take three to five years to recover. Like the vaccination program, it's not “one and done”; we need a constant influx of boosters into the sector to keep us going and to see us through.

[Kendra Bator]

I can see that happening in the long term in the commercial sector. In the short term, we'd be looking at what those spaces are used for. Throughout the course of the pandemic, movie studios were able to rent our theatres and capture content and broadcast it, but theatre productions were not able to. That it is a separate issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Bator. You can elaborate on that in the next round.

We're moving into the second round of questions. This is a five-minute round.

I would like to begin with Mrs. Rachael Thomas from the Conservative Party for five minutes, please.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

My question is for Mr. Rubinoff and Ms. Bator.

In your submission to the committee, you stated that in the summer of 2021, you had an opportunity to sit down with officials at Heritage. You said that during that meeting, staff from the ministry articulated that the prevailing opinion at Heritage was that commercial theatre did not contribute to Canadian culture. I find that particularly interesting and somewhat troubling.

Can you expand on that a bit, especially in light of the play Come From Away and the dramatic impact that it has had in other countries?

Perhaps you'd care to comment, Mr. Rubinoff.

[Michael Rubinoff]

We hadn't gone to Heritage in the past. We've been independent as a sector. At that moment in time, we needed help, as we've said. We continue to need help. There's a historical practice of not supporting our sector. Potentially, what was explained to us in that one meeting was this lack of contribution.

Yes, as Kendra laid out, some of our shows are written by Canadians. A number of commercial productions have pushed Canadian work, with Come From Away being a prime example. Other shows may not be by Canadian playwrights, but they still engage Canadian actors, Canadian crews and Canadian staff.

We've been engaged in an education process about exactly what we do and our contribution, and we hope this historical narrative will change. This is a moment where we can leverage that to have that change, because two things can happen. The first is that we can get those supports. The second thing that can happen, when we get that support and we have that shift, is we'll have many more Canadian stories being told by Canadians, leveraged at home and around the world.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Rubinoff, I'll follow up on that quickly.

If there was one message that you could send concerning the definition of Canadian content and its support by the heritage minister, what would that one message be?

[Michael Rubinoff]

We have the best storytellers in the world. Canadians have an incredible lens with which to tell stories, and they're able to tell those stories on the commercial stage.

There should not be a delineation between not-for-profit and for profit when we're in crisis. Other English-speaking territories, like the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, made sure that both of those sectors were important and made sure that both of those sectors were supported.

There's no distinction between a Canadian commercial actor and a Canadian not-for-profit actor, or crew member or ticket-taker. These are Canadians. We need to support them, and I hope that Heritage will further explore that and look at it as the greater community and the impact we all can make.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

That's great.

Ms. Bator, I'm just going to reframe the question a little bit for you, if you don't mind.

Every minister receives a mandate letter from the Prime Minister, in other words, a letter of direction. In the letter for the Minister of Canadian Heritage he was directed as follows:

As Minister of Canadian Heritage, your immediate focus will be to ensure artists and cultural industries have the supports they need to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm wondering, given your experience, whether the mandate of this letter is being fulfilled or whether there is much more to do. If there is much more to do, how would you briefly define that?