Canadian Heritage Committee on May 28th, 2026

[Tatiana Auguste, Liberal, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you very much.

I would like to move on to what you were saying about ticket sales, about dynamic pricing and all that. Like my colleague, I could talk about the young people who want to be able to consume art and culture, especially in French, in a more accessible way.

Could you tell us about the problem of access to art and culture for the new generation that the current ticket-selling situation is causing?

[Patrick Kearney]

North America, meaning the United States and Canada, is probably where ticket prices are highest. Europe still has large companies that can compete among themselves. Going to see a show at the Bell Centre for less than $200 is really very rare. In Europe, it's not so much of a problem.

Let's talk about what is called cultural spending. A kid who pays a lot to see a French artist, perhaps a rapper from France, at MTELUS, will have less money in his wallet to go and see a Quebec artist in a small venue, such as the ones Mr. Weisz's association represents. At some point, there's a limit. The Enquête report showed it clearly. A girl who is a big fan of Paul McCartney had a budget of $500, but she ended up paying $900 for her ticket because of Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing. In the piece, she said quite clearly that she would be going to fewer shows this year. What she means, of course, is that she will be consuming less Canadian and Quebec culture.

So the impact of this major player and its dynamic ticket pricing is so important in the way culture is presented.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I am going to add to the point that my colleague Ms. Auguste raised. It was about the use of heritage buildings for presenting culture. I feel that it's a key factor. However, we must also consider the state of the buildings. Gentlemen, I believe you mentioned that building maintenance is not always a matter for show promoters. They are often tenants of the building. Now, as we frequently hear, the owners of the buildings very often cannot take advantage of grants, for all kinds of reasons. Not to mention the lack of commitment that we were talking about a little earlier.

To what extent can the state of the buildings have an effect on the presentation of various events and shows, or on programming?

Mr. Weisz, I see that you seem to be ready to answer that question. I feel that it's particularly close to your heart. Tell me a little about maintenance in buildings and the inability of producers, in many cases, to fix the problems themselves.

[Jon Weisz]

You are exactly describing one of the reasons for a project we have launched. We are in the process of setting up a real estate company ourselves; it will be able to remove some of the buildings that house performance venues from the speculation market.

Let's be honest; there's not enough public investment. The fact that two-thirds of the venues are rented does not encourage investment from those who operate the spaces. Someone with a five-year commercial lease has no incentive to invest $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000 in a building that may become a microbrewery or a pharmacy when the lease expires.

There is still a lot of work to do to create a kind of permanence, to ensure that these places remain as performance venues. If we do the job properly, it will greatly encourage private investment, with a potential for public investment to follow.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I get the impression that I am not going to have enough time for my question to Mr. Kearney, but I am going to ask it anyway. It may turn out to be more of a comment, which we can come back to in my next round.

What you were saying about the explosion of the ticket prices for major shows was very interesting, I find. It's often enough to drain budgets completely. So people in larger centres cannot travel to the regions in order to attend festivals there and discover new artists that they might not consider discovering in the city on the stages that Mr. Weisz represents.

Mr. Kearney, we can come back to that later, but I would like to hear about festival attendance and the clientele you want to attract. Festival operators may be feeling the impact of what's happening in major centres, like the Ticketmaster situation you described and the increase in prices.

I see that my time is up. So I am not going to ask you to begin an answer just to have you interrupted. We will talk about it again shortly.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Yes, it will be for next time, but it's very interesting.

Mr. Diotte, you have the floor now for five minutes.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I'd like to give Ms. Brewin a chance to talk about the play that was mentioned earlier by my colleague. The performance called Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer was put on for high school students in Regina. It talked about indigenous issues, reclaiming indigenous land and so forth.

I know the play's creator is quite a well-reputed author and playwright. He told CBC the show has “some pretty racy content”. Would you agree this is a fairly racy play?

[Jennifer Brewin]

No. It's a saucy play. It's satire. It's a satire about land claims and land rights, but I wouldn't call it “racy”. I'd call it saucy. I'd call it bratty. I'd call it irreverent. As I said before, it's been produced across the country.

What happened in Regina is twofold. There's a conversation that theatres and artists get to have with schools on what content is appropriate. Other schools did stay. Other schools have seen the show. There's a conversation between schools and theatre companies that needs to happen to make sure we're all aware of what we're going to see.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

One of the—

[Jennifer Brewin]

The saucy part came from Just Bins, a site where people upload trashy, racy and terrible things about the community. When a student inappropriately recorded a scene from the show and uploaded it, misinformation was taken and gathered from that.

The fact this turned into quite a violent response with death threats against the artists.... We had to have police officers in the theatre to protect the artists and the audience from the death threats resulting from a video from a website that should never be quoted. It should never be given any attention, because it is only trash.

There were two things that emerged from that.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

That's fair enough.

A student who was interviewed by the media after the performance said, “it kind of was supposed to focus on like indigenous and like claiming the land back, but I feel like it really lost the plot and was kind of just all about sex”. Would you agree?

[Jennifer Brewin]

First of all, another student who was interviewed by the CBC said there was no big deal. There's a diversity of opinion and responses to it.

In terms of the play, it was a farce. It was about indigenous land claims. The farce and the sauciness in the play were related to those issues that were going on. If that's what they felt, that's fine.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

It's also been reported that the Globe Theatre—I'm not sure if it was you—responded to concerns about the content in the performance. Concerns from parents were expressed. Somebody from the Globe Theatre said the parents were being transphobic and homophobic.

Do you think it's fair that just because they didn't want their children to see fairly lewd behaviour in a play, they're—

[Jennifer Brewin]

There was no lewd behaviour in the play. There was sauciness in the play that is seen in Bridgerton, or in children's and young people's TV shows that are going on right now. I disagree with the premise of the question, but I will say that students' parents have a right to speak up about what they want.

What happened and what drives me nuts is that this conversation didn't get to happen, because Just Bins and the national press came up with misinformation and lied about what was in the play. We could have had a really good conversation.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I have one quick question. We're running out of time. What does a pole-dancing drag queen have to do with teaching about indigenous land claims?

[Jennifer Brewin]

I think you should see the play and find out, or read it.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Do you think this play was appropriate for grade 9 students?

[Jennifer Brewin]

There were no grade 9 students at the show. They were from grades 10, 11 and 12. At Campbell Collegiate, we gave them a warning about the content and what was in the show, and they did not bring their grade 9 students as a result.

That's the kind of misinformation we saw from Just Bins and the National Post—which picked it up from Just Bins, a trashy site—about the show.

Until someone sees the show, reads the content and reads the reviews from across the country about the show from the teachers who did come to see it and the parents who did bring their children to see it.... We could have a big conversation. That was the coolest thing that happened out of this terrible misrepresentation of the story. Really cool conversations could have happened between parents and arts organizations about content.

It actually did happen. More people showed up to the theatre than before. We all spoke to the principals and offered to have reconciliation and conversations with all the schools, because it's an important story. It's an important play written by indigenous artists, and it's funny. There's nothing more in that play than what's been on regular TV at seven o'clock in the evening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Royer, you have the floor now for five minutes.

[Zoe Royer, Liberal, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to centre my questions first on Ms. Benjamin.

I'll give a bit of context. I'm a west coast MP, and I represent four of the 21 metro Vancouver municipalities—Anmore, Belcarra, Port Moody and Coquitlam. That's from smallest to largest. It's 800 people right up to nearly 170,000 people. It's four communities. Of those, Port Moody chose a moniker about 25 years ago. That moniker is “City of the Arts”. Even back when I was a city councillor for 11 years, we were still trying to live up to that moniker. It was very important to our community.

You talked about the cultural ecosystem and the necessary infrastructure. One of the things we would often do for smaller groups looking for performance space, which is also limited in the community.... There are really two main venues. One is in Port Moody, the Inlet Theatre, which has a capacity of about 190 seats, and there's a similar, slightly bigger venue in Coquitlam, the Evergreen Cultural Centre. In Port Moody, council would often grant fee waivers. How that really transpired was that a group could avoid the rental fee, but they would still need to satisfy the other costs, like the cost of the theatre technician. That might result in having to pay about $1,400 a day. That gets really expensive in smaller venues.

With municipalities all over granting fee waivers, it still might not be enough to help these performing groups get their starts, so in your best estimate, what would you suggest? How can the federal government better support municipalities when there may be some existing infrastructure, albeit not enough? What do you imagine we can do?

[Erin Benjamin]

Thank you so much for the question. It's great to see you again.

The federal government can send a signal to all levels of government about the importance of cultural industries, arts, and culture by developing fiscal and cultural policy that incentivizes sustainable growth in the sector and starts treating this industry for the value it represents economically and culturally.

There's a deficit of existing policy. This is what we have an opportunity to address through this committee and other committees like it. We can say that Canadian content matters and Canadian stories matter. Telling those stories, accessing Canadian artists and bringing us together in spaces of all sizes matters, so what kinds of policy tools are we going to develop?

It's not just about funding. Jon said that it's about attracting private sector investment. It's about signalling the importance of community building and city building. What are the elements and aspects that we need in order to renew our downtowns, no matter what size of city? We are all still struggling across this country.

Frankly, I've said this for a very long time. I'm not sure I'm crazy about the term, but it's accurate: This sector is low-hanging fruit. You're talking about non-profit community arts, which are an essential ingredient of what we're all talking about today. The commercial side and the non-profit side work together, but this sector has been historically under-leveraged. Canadian Heritage programs are amazing. They're incredibly important. They should always be addressed in every budget and be renewed to reflect the realities of the sector.

All of us have these arts organizations and commercial entities—small businesses—in our ridings. They intersect with other types of companies. Canada is doing an excellent job at understanding how we can import and export across provincial borders and national borders. We should look at culture and cultural exports and imports the exact same way.

The federal government can lead the conversation. We can learn from other jurisdictions across the country—there are some really amazing places in Canada doing great work—and around the world, not just to understand how to harness the economic and cultural activity, but to understand the intersectionality. When theatre, music, dance or whatever it is thrives, it is more likely to draw tourists. Where we're sitting right now, in the beautiful cities of Ottawa and Gatineau, we understand that better than most. When we leverage cultural content, tourists are likely to spend more and stay longer. We attract talent, like the talent we need to work for our tech companies and our defence primes.

This is a layer that I believe we have misunderstood for a very long. It's why it's so important to have a diversity of elected officials who come from different backgrounds and bring different perspectives to this conversation. We have a moment in this country right now to really harness the activity that all of our witnesses today represent, along with so many others who are doing incredible work.

The municipal piece that you're referencing is so important, because that is where we come together as neighbours. From there, we grow our amazing Canadian artists and voices.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Généreux, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses.

Ms. Benjamin, Mr. Kearney said something important in his opening remarks. He said that the country's cultural sovereignty is under serious threat because Live Nation and Evenko are currently taking up the most space in Canada in terms of selling tickets and producing shows.

On your side in English Canada, do you also feel that Canada's cultural sovereignty is in danger?

[Erin Benjamin]

I would say we have an ecosystem in the live music industry, and it is imperative that we understand that. My previous response was trying to allude to this.

When we think about multinationals in other sectors.... For some reason, in entertainment, we're more preoccupied with the impact. What I've been suggesting all along is that we build policy tools to balance the ecosystem.

When I talk about $11 billion in GDP from the live music sector, this is a range—small, medium and large companies are delivering this. Our multinational companies with a presence in Canada are important to the Canadian economy, to Canadian jobs and to local economies. In fact, the Canada pension plan owns 8.79 million shares of Live Nation. That stake amounts to approximately 3.7% of the company's total outstanding common stock and is valued at roughly $1.39 billion.

We're not talking about big versus little. We need multinational companies in this country to grow our economy. What we need in order to address the concerns of our colleagues from across the country are better policy tools to identify how we build sustainable growth at every rung of the venue ladder, because this ultimately will serve Canadian artists, Canadians and the Canadian economy.