Thank you, Madam Chair.
Members of the committee, thank you for having us today as part of this essential study on the state of creative and performance spaces in Canada.
The Union des artistes represents more than 13,000 professional artists in Quebec and Canada, working in the performing arts, audiovisual and sound recording fields. We represent actors, dancers, singers and variety artists, among others. Our mission is to defend their professional, economic and social interests and to protect their working conditions.
The artists we represent perform across all cultural venues in all regions of the country, from the largest venues to the smallest venues. They are therefore directly dependent on the state of these spaces in order to practise their occupation. It is from this perspective, that of the interpreters, that we wish to contribute to your work.
We have carefully read the report recently tabled by Théâtres associés, “Nos scènes fragilisées, nos arts vivants menacés”. This document, co‑signed by 34 Quebec venues, sheds light, with very concrete figures and examples, on a reality we have been seeing for several years on the ground: our cultural infrastructure is crumbling, and this has a direct impact on the working conditions of our artists.
In performance, rehearsal and creative venues, there are problems with heating, outdated technical equipment and inadequate sanitation facilities. In addition, there are issues specific to certain disciplines, such as the quality of floors for dancers, which is essential to preventing injuries. These conditions are not anecdotal; they are widespread and directly affect the health, safety and dignity of artists at work.
Beyond these immediate issues, the report highlights a much broader systemic problem: operating and maintenance costs for venues are rising much faster than revenues and public support. When work becomes urgent, organizations often have no choice but to dip into production budgets to deal with it. This is where the impact on artists becomes particularly concerning.
In concrete terms, this means: shows put on with fewer artistic means; smaller casts, meaning fewer artists at work; lower fees, despite already very real precarity; less rehearsal time; and, as a result, lower contributions to the social safety net, particularly for group insurance and registered retirement savings plans.
Therefore, maintaining buildings gradually erodes conditions for artistic practice conditions, but also the economic security of artists. This is in addition to other pressures that you've also heard about in your work.
At the Scènes de musique alternatives du Québec, which plays a key role in the development of careers and the discoverability of emerging artists, we see chronic underfunding and significant real estate insecurity, since the majority of these venues are rented and therefore exposed to significant rent increases and real estate speculation.
In general, when budgets stagnate, whether in festivals or venues, it is risk-taking that is set aside. It is often the next generation and artistic diversity that suffers first. Added to this is an increasing concentration of the live performance market in the hands of large integrated groups, such as Live Nation, for example, which control both distribution, ticketing, several venues and a growing part of the ecosystem.
Taken together, all these factors create a vicious circle: venues become more expensive to maintain, art budgets are compressed and artists' conditions deteriorate.
However, the public is there. Venues are filling up, festivals are attracting people and tours are working. In short, the appetite for the performing arts is real. The problem is not a lack of vitality in the sector; it's a structural imbalance in the way we fund and support the infrastructure that makes that vitality possible.
In this context, one of the requests made by venues seems essential to us: the establishment of stable and predictable funding for cultural infrastructure.
A fund like that would ensure that the investments needed to maintain, upgrade and modernize spaces are truly dedicated to these needs and not taken from artistic budgets. We are currently seeing that, when infrastructure is not adequately funded, creators and artists are the ones who pay the price. Salaries decline, work opportunities become scarcer and the very foundations of their social safety net are weakened.
The Canadian government has committed to strengthening the social safety net for artists, but in reality, without adequate support for infrastructure, they are still paying the price. We can't claim to be improving their living conditions while undermining them through building maintenance. This paradox must be remedied.
Providing stand-alone support for creative and performance spaces means protecting much more than buildings. It means preserving the integrity of artistic work and the living conditions of the people who are central to our culture. It also means ensuring that works continue to be created, performed and shared with the public and that artists can make a decent living.
Thank you for your attention.