Finance Committee on May 7th, 2020

[Kate Edwards]

At the best of times, Canadian book publishers are incredibly challenged by the structure of our marketplace. The market is dominated by international titles that are imported into the market. Given American media, which Canadians have access to, the bestseller lists often look the same in The New York Times and in The Globe and Mail, at least for the international lists. We have a concentrated marketplace, with one major retail chain in English-speaking Canada and a dominant online bookseller, and the risk for small independent book publishers is that those structural challenges will become more entrenched and more acute.

The companies publishing Canadian writers and communities are right across the country. We have members in all provinces. We have members in Nunavut. It's coast to coast to coast. When that infrastructure erodes or is weakened, the ability to bring those books forward to the public and share them to have a national dialogue, and bring those stories forward internationally, is diminished.

Our concern in the immediate term is maintaining the capacity to see through this period of retail shutdown and slowing that I described in my testimony. In the medium term to long term, if those structural pieces are entrenched and amplified, the uphill battle we were fighting before will become all the more steep.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

Mr. Cumming.

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you to all the witnesses.

Mr. Dalgleish, you have a park that is expanding. It's going to be a fantastic asset for Edmonton.

You're probably aware that the government has just brought out a program to help students with getting over this period, because it's a hard time for them to find work. If that program were tweaked and some of these students were available, how valuable would they be to you to help with your relaunch? They could help with marketing programs and a variety of things that they're very talented at doing. Could you put them to work?

[Darren Dalgleish]

Thank you, Mr. Cumming, for that question.

Absolutely. We have to look at this thing a little differently than just keeping people employed. What this has taught Fort Edmonton Management Company is that.... This pause, due to the pandemic but also to this big construction project under way, has allowed us to reimagine what's possible. To be prepared for a market in 2021 and 2022 really relies on the next generation of leaders, and students fit right in there.

We are looking at various partnerships with the schools here in Edmonton. NAIT, for instance, is working with our culinary department. The Canada summer jobs grant is very valuable to us. Again, we'll take full advantage of that.

I'll just say one last thing. It's not particularly easy to find students to work right now. Many of them are finding themselves receiving a wage benefit and can't work more than a couple of shifts a week. I'm not sure what it would look like, but maybe we need some consideration for how we would employ students and not impact the benefit they're receiving.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

Now we go to the Northwest Territories and Mr. McLeod.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the presenters today.

Like all of you, we expected 2020 to be a big year for festivals and events up in Canada's north. We were very excited for the 50th anniversaries of both the Arctic Winter Games and the Northern Games that were going to be held in Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. Yellowknifers were going to be celebrating the 40th anniversary of Folk on the Rocks and the silver jubilee of the Snowking winter festival. Of course, all of these were cancelled and closed due to the pandemic. It was heartbreaking to see the many athletes and performers, who worked so hard getting into top form, having to go through this news.

As national organizations, have any of your organizations heard from northern or indigenous organizers? What measures should be considered to support these types of festivals and events?

[Darren Dalgleish]

I'll pipe in here for a moment and share with you a really exciting project that all three arms of the government have supported here in Fort Edmonton Park. That's a $50-million world-class indigenous peoples experience. That's led our organization to enter into MOUs with the confederacy and the Métis Nation of Alberta. It has kind of spread our wings a bit, in terms of collaborating with first nations.

There is tremendous opportunity with indigenous tourism. It's the number one sought-after experience by international travellers, and the only way to do it right is to have the indigenous communities tell the story and provide the content, and we just step out of the way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I don't see Paul Manly. Paul, are you there? You're not showing up on my screen.

Okay. We are a couple of minutes over, in any event.

Just for committee members, before we close, next week we will have the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Auditor General, and the minister and finance officials. We won't be on a general list next week, unless we can find room in there somewhere, but I don't think there's room with those three.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank all the witnesses who have come forward. You gave us your testimony, your opinions, your suggestions and your constructive criticism. We appreciate that. We are, as many people say, in unprecedented times. We have to find a way of coming out of this COVID pandemic and strengthening our country at the end of the day.

I thank each and every one of you, and I thank committee members for their endurance for another week.

With that, we will adjourn.