Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 28th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

I'm sorry to—

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You guys are really pushing it today, aren't you, in terms of time?

We're going to the next round. It's going to begin with Kevin Waugh for the Conservative party for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Man, we had a lot of money that we threw away—right?—to the arts and entertainment, culture and sports. How much was it in the last two years?

I've been adding it up here, and I've lost it. We started with $500 million. Then $149 million went to Telefilm, then $181 million to the performing arts, then $1.3 billion. If we tabulate all the money that Guilbeault and now Rodriguez throws out, how much is that?

[David Dendooven]

I'll start first in terms of going back.

Yes, there was the $500 million that was provided in the emergency support fund. There was also the fall economic statement, and that provided $181 million. The minister also made reference to the insurance backstop that was provided. In budget 2021, there were investments of $1.9 billion that were provided in that budget to help support the arts, culture, heritage and sport sectors.

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

Is it all out now?

[David Dendooven]

We are working very hard to ensure that the money is out the door to support the sectors. As for the money that I referred to in budget 2021, some of that money, of course, was over a number of years. We are obviously working to ensure that this money is provided to stakeholders that are in need.

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

Give me a percentage that is out.

[David Dendooven]

Right now, Madam Chair, we are near the end of the fiscal year, so there are files that are still going through and being evaluated.

In terms of the money that has been allocated for this fiscal year, we're fairly confident that we're going to be spending the money that was allotted to us.

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

Are there any regions that benefited more than others?

[David Dendooven]

I'll give you the example of the emergency support fund, and I'm sure my colleagues can attest to this as well.

As the Department of Canadian Heritage, we support organizations. In some sectors, the organizations tend to be in certain provinces more than others. That is something we are mindful of, but I don't have the information right now in terms of, for example, the breakdown per province.

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

I wonder, Madam Chair, if we could get that breakdown prior to our report that will be coming out in the next week or two. It would be very interesting if we as a committee could get the breakdown from you in time, before we do our final report on this, because I think there are a lot of questions as to where the money went, and which provinces or territories are at the top and which are at the bottom. Would that be possible?

[David Dendooven]

That's something we can provide for the emergency support fund. We're not at the end of the fiscal year at the present time, but we can provide that for the emergency support fund.

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

That would be good.

I think Michael talked about this. We're hearing about this in the precinct of the Ottawa bubble, that the museums in this area gobble up most of the money. When you go to museums wherever, in Kelowna or Peterborough, there is no money for them. The reason is that in the Ottawa area, the five or six big museums suck up all the money.

How much of the money do they take out of the pot that actually goes to museums in this country? Do you have any idea?

[David Dendooven]

I don't have the figures in front of me for the national museums.

What I could do, however, is point you to the emergency support fund, because there was some money that was provided to museums across the country, to small regional museums, museums that normally we don't fund.

The minister made reference to budget 2020-21. As part of that as well there was money that was provided for small museums. I believe it was approximately $40 million. We are in the process of funding those museums across the country.

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

That's good, because the RCMP museum in Regina was once on the chopping block. Do they have enough funding now from the federal government to continue for many years to come?

[David Dendooven]

I don't have the information on that particular museum, but that's something we could provide you.

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

Thank you. I would appreciate that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Kevin. You gave me 17 seconds for free.

Now I'm going to Anthony Housefather for the Liberals.

Anthony, you have five minutes.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for being here today.

My dear friend, Kevin Waugh, in the previous round was using the term “throwing out”. I'm sure he did so inadvertently and didn't mean to say that, but it implied that money was spent frivolously and uselessly during the course of the pandemic in terms of the recovery funds.

Could you assure me that the money was not spent frivolously? You didn't just throw money out the door with no purpose and no rationale, did you?

[David Dendooven]

No. We obviously have our process in the sense that we provided top-ups to organizations that we fund already. We asked stakeholders to submit applications. For example, I'm thinking about the museums. We had an online portal, and we encouraged organizations and museums from across the country to apply.

There is a rigorous process that we have in place to ensure that the applications are vetted in order to determine whether or not there is a need before we send money out the door.

I made reference to the survey that we undertook after the emergency support fund had gone out. We had a response rate of 60%. As the minister noted, approximately 77% of respondents said that the fund—and that was not only for museums, but for sports, arts and culture—helped them stay in operation to a large or moderate extent, and that it helped them weather the effects of the pandemic.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Yes. That was my feeling also, that you have approximately 77% of organizations that responded saying that the monies that were given helped them stay afloat during the course of very difficult times.

Let me come to a question. Have you seen any sectors that have seen partial to significant recovery, for example, job maintenance, business continuity recovery and growth at this point? Can you tell us which sectors are doing better and which sectors are doing worse and need more help now?

[Joëlle Montminy]

Yes. Generally speaking, the recovery is progressing quite well for most of the sectors, except for the live performing arts. One sector, for instance, that is doing extremely well is the audiovisual sector, I would say in great part because of this short-term compensation fund—this insurance that was brought forward early in the pandemic that has allowed productions to continue. We've seen basically a boom in the audiovisual sector. This particular subsector has recovered to prepandemic levels and beyond.

I have some numbers, generally speaking. In terms of culture, the GDP for culture in the second quarter of 2021 had returned to 94% of the prepandemic level. Mind you, this was before omicron, but still, it was on the right track. This is versus the GDP for the live performance sector, which was at only 36%, so that's from 94% for the general culture to 36% for live performance. In jobs, it was the same. Overall in culture, we were back to 89% of prepandemic levels, whereas live performance was at only 50% of prepandemic levels.

If we look at other sectors, like books, they have been doing pretty well, as the minister pointed out, and other sectors have been able to recover earlier than the live performance sector, of course, which has been impacted by all these restrictions.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

From what you're saying, would it be a truthful statement that the Heritage funding supported every part of the cultural values chain?

[Joëlle Montminy]

Yes, I think that would be a fair statement.