Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Hon. members, ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to speak to you today on behalf of the artists and cultural workers in Canada, as executive director of the Cultural Human Resources Council—that's CHRC.
I'll just point out that Jennifer actually has a very good acronym with “CARS”. We affectionately call ours “CHURCH” from time to time, but I'm not just sure how appropriate that one is.
In the cultural sector, our issue is not so much labour shortages, as several of my colleagues have pointed out; it's more an issue of providing training to cultural workers in a world that is fast-changing. We are very affected by globalization and by new technologies, and that's really where our challenge is. It's not in recruiting members to our sector; it's more in getting the stars out of their eyes, as we like to say. Young people do come to the cultural sector, but the challenges once they're there are quite significant, and they have to be committed.
I would like to begin by providing you with an overview of the sector so that you are able to get a sense of its size. It includes more than half a million cultural workers, in other words, artists, creators, actors, producers, distributors and archivers.
It also includes several subsectors. For example, stage performers, which includes musicians, dancers, actors, visual artists and crafts persons.
The sector also includes the cultural industries. These have a major impact on the economy as they are worth $33 billion. In our jargon, the cultural industries include publishing, sound recording, audio-visual—film and television—and new media.
Heritage is another large subsector which includes libraries, archives, heritage buildings and museums.
Our sector is characterized by a large number of self-employed workers who, for the most part, have an income which is modest and constantly fluctuating; they go through rough times and good.
That is a brief overview of the sector.
The Cultural Human Resources Council has acted as a sector council for over ten years now for this sector. We've been involved in developing career management tools, internship support, labour market research, strategic planning, etc.
To give you a sense of some of the issues that we address with the cultural workers, with the sector, we develop competency charts and profiles. These are done to provide a sense of what the skills needs are in an occupation. They can be used for curriculum developers to develop curriculum in schools, colleges, or universities; they can be used by self-employed workers to assess their own skills; they can be used by employers to write job descriptions, etc.
These charts and profiles have had a very big impact on the sector. An example is in the area of new media three years ago. There's an absolutely booming business now. The creators--we called them basement dwellers--didn't really talk to each other, but they were in front of their computer screens doing wonderful things. By bringing forward the process of developing a competency chart and profile for new media content creators, we brought that community together and gave them a voice and a profile. This multi-billion-dollar industry--which is led by the gaming industry, of course--is being well served by these people, so we were able to make a connection between the artists and the industry in that case.
The self-employment issue is the big feature of the sector that we are having to deal with. As many as 39% of the cultural labour force describe themselves as self-employed; however, a significant number of these pursue secondary employment to earn a living wage. For example, a writer or visual artist may be self-employed for the purposes of creating and selling their work, while at the same time that person may function as an employee teaching at a college, university, or school.
The separation of each distinctive source of income has proven to be challenging when dealing with issues like the ownership of intellectual property, copyright, taxation, and access to social benefits. It is this blend of employment and self-employment combined with low and fluctuating incomes that sets the cultural sector apart from the rest of the Canadian workforce, and that has provided the basis for the three main recommendations that we make to you today. As I make them, I invite you to consider the fact that these will affect Canadians outside the cultural workforce as well. It's been pointed out to me that there is an opposition day in Parliament, I believe, addressing issues around older workers; as I read through these, I'd like you to think about how this would affect the broader workforce as well.
Our first recommendation has to do with social benefits. We're asking the government to consider extending social benefits, including employment insurance, to the self-employed.
One of the most difficult employability issues faced by artists and cultural workers who are self-employed is that in addition to having low and fluctuating incomes, they don't have a social safety net to support them. This includes the access to compassionate leave, parental leave, and sick leave that is enjoyed by most Canadians, as well as access to training programs and, of course, employment insurance.
The second recommendation we would ask you consider is the importance of training and professional development in the sector. We ask that the government continue to support initiatives that, while recognizing provincial jurisdiction for training, take a national approach to training in our sector. That national approach is what sector councils provide, and we feel we fulfill a very important role there.
Third, we ask that you support mentorship programs that are not age-restricted to facilitate career development in succession. It is in this area that we're starting to address the older part of the workforce. The federal government has been very supportive with youth internships, as well as addressing the issue of school dropout, etc., and that bridge between school and work. We're seeing that there is also a very big issue that's being addressed by older workers; if we could extend those youth internship programs to include other ages, you would be able to address succession issues and career transfer issues, transition issues, for older workers as well.
Those are our three major recommendations. I thank you for your time and attention.