Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My name's John McAvity. I'm the executive director.
I have a handout, available in both English and French, that would supplement my comments.
We're very pleased to be here today. Thank you very much for the invitation.
As stated in our brief, we have two recommendations for you to consider.
I'd like to start off by saying, right off the top, that we understand the myriad of spending requests that will be coming before this committee in this process, and this at the very time when Canada is just emerging from a recession and is facing a deficit. As a result, our recommendations, which have been scaled back, are, we believe, modest and practical.
We're very often asked why museums cannot be more self-supporting. I'd like to address this right at the beginning. Far from viewing government as a cure-all, museums view government as a foundation upon which to build. Museums are working very hard at becoming more financially self-sufficient. They've been achieving significant results. We have reduced reliance on governments significantly over the past decade.
Today, museums earn about a third of their revenue from earned sources, including entry fees, admissions, memberships, store sales, etc., and we want to continue this trend. Fundraising activities are up 23%. We are also focusing on increased private sector donations. This is a point I'd like to address in a minute.
We have two key recommendations for you, both, again, modest and practical, which will enable Canadian museums to continue to contribute to the economic and social fabric of our communities, large and small, east to west.
Our first recommendation is that the museums assistance program, administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage and currently under review, be updated to reflect the context in which museums operate today with a revised policy and program design, including program administration and an annual budget of $20 million, increased from the current level of $6.7 million.
This program, MAP, supports travelling exhibitions, outreach activities, improvements in museum management, and aboriginal heritage initiatives. The program's budget is $6.7 million per year, which is in fact less than it was when it started in 1972. Funding is primarily available for short-term one-year projects and is often delayed due to heavy administration. It is our view that MAP's budget and overall policy framework have not kept pace with the growth and the success of the Canadian museum sector.
The museums assistance program, as I mentioned, is undergoing a summative evaluation, with the renewed program set to launch in April 2010. We support this comprehensive review and call for a revitalization of the program, including revised and updated objectives, streamlined delivery, access to multi-year support, and an overall increase in its spending authority.
The second recommendation we bring to you is that the federal government invest annually in a five-year initiative, which we call the “Canadians Supporting Their Museums Fund”. The objective is to encourage greater private sector contributions, individual and corporate, to museums. Despite having a healthy tax environment in Canada for philanthropy and despite a reduction in both taxes of individuals and corporations in recent years, museums lag behind other charities when it comes to private support. Currently, museum donations represent only 9% of the museums' operating budgets. In the United States it is closer to 40%. To be sure, the recession is part of this cause, but it has existed beforehand.
Canadians need to be encouraged to become more active supporters of heritage, and a program like the one we're proposing, where private financial donations to museums would be matched dollar for dollar, where $1 effectively becomes $2, is the way to do it. I should mention that the Department of Canadian Heritage does have a similar program for endowments, but it is only available to performing arts companies. Museums are not eligible.
We believe it is time to build a special program for museums that meets their needs and increases their self-reliance. It is important to stress to you that we see this as a short-term program to leverage private donations to help our sector become more self-sufficient.
I'd like to conclude with a word about the recession, the transforming nature of jobs in Canada and around the world, and why the government ought to consider investment in the cultural sector for job retraining and development of new skills.
The Conference Board of Canada pegged the cultural sector's contribution at $84.6 billion per year. This recession has signalled profound changes in the Canadian economy, and as we emerge from it, the jobs of tomorrow are going to look very different from the jobs of today.
Creativity, research, innovation are going to be the drivers of the new economy in Canada, and jobs that emphasize this are going to propel us forward. Jobs in culture offer stimulating opportunities to develop new skills for those in transition. Jobs in culture cultivate creative minds. They are creative incubators for retraining those in the unemployment ranks. We urge the government to invest in such a program.
Thank you very much.