Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

I call the meeting to order.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Bonjour à tous. Welcome to our 28th meeting. I'm observing this morning that it's a little bit like a newsroom. I don't know if you've been in a newsroom, but it's all chaos, and then it's five, four, three, and when they get to one, it's all organized. It seemed to be that way just a minute before our committee meeting too, and now it looks so professional.

We're greatly pleased to have the Historica-Dominion Institute with us. We had Mr. Diamond and Mr. Chalifoux here about six months ago. Since then, there's been a grand merger. I know the committee would be willing to hear about any of the good work that you do, but one of the things I should point out from our conversation is that there is clearly some interest in what this merger means for your activities--how it might enhance them, change them, or maybe even give them a different focus. If you want to highlight that, it would be fantastic.

Mr. Cohen, you said you had some opening remarks. I'm not certain how many others do. But I will leave you to go ahead at your own pace and begin, and then we'll go to the regular round of questioning.

[Andrew Cohen, President, Historica-Dominion Institute]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sweet.

We're here together. All of us will make just a few brief opening remarks, and then we'll be in your hands for questions, which we'll be delighted to take.

I'm Andrew Cohen. I'm president of the Historica-Dominion Institute. With me is Linda Brunet, who is managing director with Encounters With Canada; Marc Chalifoux, our executive vice-president; and Jeremy Diamond, who runs our national office.

I'll talk just briefly about who we are. We're here today largely to talk to you about what we do with veterans and in military history. Our background is very brief. We were, at one point, the Dominion Institute, which was founded in 1997 by three young men, including the Honourable Michael Chong, who now sits in the Conservative caucus, Rudyard Griffiths, and Erik Penz, and the Historica Foundation, which was founded in 1999 largely with the support of Charles Bronfman, formerly of Montreal, now of New York.

On September 1, after a long and interesting courtship that went on for, depending on how you count it, one, two, three, or four years.... It was not a marriage in which either party rushed into the arms of the other. Both decided in May, but on September 1 the Historica Foundation and the Dominion Institute merged. The reason that these two bodies came together...and when I say came together, I mean that the organizations were of different age, experience, and culture doing different but complementary things in the realm of history, citizenship, and democracy. At our core, as we went about reimagining ourselves and now go into the new world in which we are not two voices but one, our mandate, our mission, is indeed history, identity, memory, and democracy.

That is what we do. I'll soon pass the mantle to others who will talk about what we do specifically in these fields. We are about a $10-million organization. We run programs across the country. We have offices in Ottawa, Toronto, and Edmonton. We publish the Canadian Encyclopedia, which has between four million and six million hits a year. Linda Brunet will tell you about Encounters With Canada, the country's largest youth forum. We run a project called stories of the Second World War, and the memory project, which Marc and Jeremy will talk to you about, and we do the battlefields.

We have a number of elements in what we do, but at our core is a deep feeling that Canadians don't know enough about their past and they don't know enough about their citizenship. Our mission, our raison d'être, is to increase awareness on both those counts, to promote the idea of an active, engaged citizenry that knows its past and feels comfortable with it. I guess it would be fashionable to say you're all about the future in your organization, but in a sense we're all about the past. We like to think we're about the future of the past.

With that, I'll hand this over to Marc Chalifoux, who will give you a little more detail about what we do.

[Marc Chalifoux, Executive Vice-President, Historica-Dominion Institute]

We're here today to talk about the merger of the Historica Foundation and the Dominion Institute.

I will start off by saying that mergers are extremely rare in the charitable sector in Canada. What we've accomplished between these two organizations actually happens very seldom and is the exception rather than the rule.

The reasons for our merger, as Mr. Cohen indicated, were several months and several years in the making. We were two organizations that operated in a similar space, so there were obvious synergies between our programs—and we'll get back to those. We are also an advocacy organization, advocating for a better understanding and a better appreciation of Canadian history and Canadian citizenship, so the possibility of creating Canada's largest organization devoted to those themes was of great interest to us. And we are not-for-profit organizations. We do not have shareholders, so any reduction in overhead and administration costs that we can realize as a result of this merger is reinvested in our programming. Those would be the main reasons we merged.

I was talking about synergies between our programs. I think there is no area where this is more evident than as it relates to military history and programming related to veterans. From my colleagues Jeremy and Linda you'll be hearing about almost a dozen programs that target different audiences: students, teachers, veterans, and the general public.

The programs take place in different settings: in classrooms across the country, in Ottawa, and on the battlefields of Europe. They take place across different media, such as first-person accounts in classrooms, storytelling over the Internet, on the big screen and on the small screen, and with programs that run anywhere from a 60-second commercial to a one-week Encounters with Canada experience.

Jeremy.

[Jeremy Diamond, Managing Director, National Office, Historica-Dominion Institute]

Once again, thanks for having us here today. It's great to be here.

I'm going to give you a brief overview of some of the core veteran initiatives that we work on daily at the Historica-Dominion Institute. First and foremost is the Memory Project Speakers' Bureau, a program that started in 2001 with about a dozen veterans in Toronto. Over the last eight years, it has grown to about 1,500 veterans who share their experiences with young people in classrooms across the country every year. This fall, we are excited to celebrate the one millionth student that's been reached by the memory project, an amazing milestone for the project and its humble beginnings in 2001.

In this project, we engage everyone from veterans from the Second World War right up to returning soldiers from Afghanistan and everything in-between. Recently we've become the official speakers' bureau of the Royal Canadian Legion, so we have a great relationship with legion branches and Dominion Command as well.

The program has been funded over the years by Veterans Affairs Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage, and recently we've had some excellent, high-profile events with Prime Minister Harper and Minister Thompson, and with some of you on the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs earlier this year.

Our newest large veterans project is called the Memory Project: Stories of the Second World War. It's a really exciting initiative in which we are going to be going out across the country over the next 18 months and recording the stories and digitizing and scanning the artifacts and memorabilia of thousands of World War II veterans. We're going to be creating an archive that will become the definitive account of the Second World War based on the memories and experiences of those who were there.

We all recognize the urgency of the situation with our veterans, who are now about 87 or 88 years old. The next couple of years is going to be key in making sure we create that necessary legacy for our young people. We're going to focus on commemorative anniversaries, such as the 65th anniversary of D-Day, just past, through next year's 65th anniversary of the end of the war and the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Navy.

Generous funding has come from the Department of Canadian Heritage for this project. As I was saying, it will run until March 2011, when we expect to have thousands of profiles up on the website. We've already started that process.

The Canadian Battlefields Study Tour flips our approach to veterans on its head a little bit. Instead of reaching out to students, we reach out to teachers and encourage them to travel to the battlefields of Europe to learn a little more about what the experience was like for soldiers during the Second World War and the First World War. They go to Belgium and France and come back with that knowledge and experience in order to then speak to their students and incorporate this into their curricula and lesson plans.

This is an incredible opportunity for teachers. Military historians such as Terry Copp and Blake Seward run these battlefield tours every year. They tour for 11 days across Europe. This is funded by Veterans Affairs Canada, again, and the Canadian Battlefields Foundation. It's a great opportunity for teachers to inform the kids with intimate knowledge of what it's like to visit those battlefields.

The two final programs that we run are local and focus on the Ontario area. One is called the Ontario Veteran Community Archive, which is funded through the Trillium Foundation. This is an opportunity for us to reach out to the communities and ask if they have stories of veterans who are their friends and family members. Instead of having us travel out there to record those stories, we encourage them to visit a user-friendly website, record the stories on their own, digitize and scan some of their medals, letters, and photos, and then upload them to the website. We're going to create a map of Ontario showing the breadth of the stories we'll be able to capture. The website is online now, and we're hoping and expecting to have hundreds of profiles up by next summer.

Finally, Veteran Appreciation Day is something the institute has worked on since 2006. It's a local initiative. We've visited 21 communities since 2006. We've worked with the mayors, MPs, and MPPs in those communities to proclaim the date as Veteran Appreciation Day. The key to this program is to do it outside of Remembrance Day and thereby have an opportunity to celebrate not only the service and sacrifice of our veterans, but also the contribution they continue to make in the community.

Your chair, Mr. Sweet, was kind enough to attend one of our events a couple of weeks ago in Hamilton. It's a really exciting opportunity to gather together the whole community, shake the hand of a veteran, and thank them for what they've done and for what they continue to do in the community.

[Linda Brunet, Director General, Encounters with Canada, Historica-Dominion Institute]

Good morning.

I am very proud to introduce you to Encounters Canada, which is the largest youth forum in Canada.

It was created in 1982 and was acquired by Historica in 2006.

Our program lasts 26 weeks per year. We run the program like a school. Our program coincides with school calendars, from September to November, then from January to May. I spoke with several of you earlier, about young people who visit you. Every week, youths participate in Encounters with Canada. They phone their members of Parliament and ask to meet with them.

I'm very proud that our kids call most of you and ask to meet with you, because they come from your ridings. Every week we have a mini-Canada representation, so every week we're fortunate enough to have kids invited to come to Parliament, and some of you have come to our office to meet the kids and have lunch with them. I thank you for that.

We're very honoured to have three themes that are sponsored.

One is the Vimy Foundation, which is sponsored by the TD Bank. It is a brand new theme for us that we will have from April 4 to April 10, 2010. It's called “Canada's Coming of Age”. The Vimy Foundation was created in 2006 to raise awareness of the importance of the Battle of Vimy Ridge to Canada's coming of age. The foundation initiatives include sharing the remarkable story of Vimy with youth through the establishment of the prestigious Vimy Prize scholarship for high school students. We already have over 130 kids who have asked to participate in that week. It's in April, so already it's a week that is very well sold throughout Canada.

We also have Canada Remembers week. Since 2002 we have partnered with Veterans Affairs and this week is funded by them. This year it's from November 8 to November 14. I have to admit that this is the week that is the most emotional at the centre. The kids who come for this week are the kids who want to be part of remembrance. We have 138 beds, and already 141 kids have applied. I don't know how I'm going to do this one, but we'll have cots there. It just goes to show how important this week is to the kids of Canada.

The Canada Remembers program of Veterans Affairs welcomes youth to learn more about the sacrifices and achievements of Canada's veterans as well as those who died during service and those on the home front who supported their efforts. Youth are encouraged to become involved in remembrance activities that will help to preserve the legacy for future generations of Canadians.

One way in which the program does this is by providing a variety of learning resources and projects that are designed to support learning activities linked to Canada's military history. The program focuses on a core group of activities, which include developing innovative learning materials, providing commemorative information to the general public, research, and providing and presenting learning opportunities for youth and educators.

The program targets Canadian youth as its primary audience and stresses a quality of excellence in all its activities. In carrying out the effort, the department often partners with Canadian educators, veterans' organizations, community groups, and other interested parties from across the country in the development and delivery of learning resources and projects that may be used in a variety of learning environments.

We also have the peace module. The peace module is done every week for an hour and a half. Major Wayne MacCulloch comes to the Terry Fox Canadian Youth Centre to make a multimedia presentation to Encounters with Canada participants. Afterward they go to the Beechwood Cemetery, where they have a candlelight ceremony and they pass the torch to one another. This is very moving for the kids.

To have 138 kids who are from 14 to 17 years old at the centre makes for a very active centre, but when they come back from this candlelight ceremony at Beechwood Cemetery, you can hear a pin drop in the centre. Not a word is said. We give them time to reflect afterward because that's how moving it is for them to be doing this.

These are the three programs relating to Veterans Affairs and the Vimy Foundation that we present to the kids every year.

Thank you.

[Marc Chalifoux]

The institute also has a media production program. We develop learning tools and learning resources for teachers.

We are responsible for the Canadian Encyclopedia, which contains over 40,000 bilingual articles, all available online, dealing with all aspects of Canadian history and society, including military history. It is a free resource that is subsidized by the Department of Canadian Heritage, which is provided free of charge to classrooms, teachers, and the public at large.

The Heritage Minutes is probably the most well-known program that is run by the Historica-Dominion Institute. The last time the Heritage Minutes were produced was in 2005. The 2005 Military Minutes were made possible through the support of the Department of Veterans Affairs, to mark the Year of the Veteran.

The Historica-Dominion Institute also produces learning tools. In your handout kits, you have our most recent learning tools, which are Korean War education kits. They're based on newspaper articles from the day and they ask students to really interact with Canada's past as it was told during the day. The institute was also involved with the Passchendaele film and helping students, through an education guide and a writing contest, to learn more about Canada's First World War history.

Andrew.

[Andrew Cohen]

Just in conclusion, as we look to the future, we'll continue to look for ways to run our programs better, for synergies. We'll continue to improve existing programs.

We look for new projects. One of our big challenges is using the new tools of social media to reach young people. Young people are very important to what we do, not just in terms of military education, but also voter education. We're very interested, wearing our democracy hat, in the turnout among young people in voting. Their voting turnout, of course, is dropping; it's less than the national average, and it's one of those things we hope to address.

We lead advocacy campaigns related to history and citizenship and to anniversaries. We're very big on anniversaries. We think Canadians should remember. As we all know, there's a very big anniversary coming up next April and May--the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. We will be working in particular with the Dutch embassy here in Ottawa and the government of The Netherlands in celebrating and observing the liberation of Holland by Canadian Forces in 1945.

We'll also be looking beyond that. We'll be looking at the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Navy, which takes place next year. Also, the War of 1812, for those of you who are interested, will be one of our newer projects. That 200th anniversary is coming up in 2012.

So that is the future. We thank you for the opportunity to appear before you and we're now open to questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much.

I'll be interacting with you quite a bit on the Battle of Stoney Creek of 1812, as well as the HMCS Haida in Hamilton. I look forward to that.

Now we'll go to the Liberal Party and Mr. Oliphant for seven minutes.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Congratulations on your marriage. I think it's a wonderful set of possibilities and a synergy that can bring together two very interesting and dynamic groups.

I have about 23 questions, but I'm going to try to limit them.

All congratulations to you. I've read your stuff and everything is good. I'm wondering what the blocks are to furthering your work. The blocks could be a couple of things. They could be resources or they could be attitudinal and cultural. I'm just sort of wondering where your direction needs to go as you develop your new mandate as a merged organization.

What is it that you need to tackle and, then, how we can help you?

[Andrew Cohen]

Well, I think we wouldn't exist if we lived in a country in which everybody knew everything there was to know about this country and its past. We would not have a reason for being here. We would not have a raison d'être.

[An hon. member]

Neither would they.

[Andrew Cohen]

Maybe neither...?

[An hon. member]

Just kidding.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Andrew Cohen]

I keep thinking of Sisyphus, the poor guy in classical Greece who was always pushing the rock up the hill, and it was always rolling back on him. We consider our challenge to be pushing that rock up the hill. We consider it our mission to do what we can to inform and educate Canadians and make them aware of what is a rich and distinctive past.

But that is the challenge, and it is a challenge in a country in which many of our provinces don't teach history. Or, if they do teach history, they don't teach it in a way that really reaches kids. It's social studies or some variation of that; it may not indeed be history. There is a report card that the Dominion Institute published in its life and we will continue to do that. So there is that attitude of living in a society in which what you're saying may be falling on deaf ears. You hope that's not so, but that's the challenge.

Then, of course, there are resources. We're not unrealistic. We know that we're not an essential service in life. We are not the police. We are not the fire service. We're not as sexy, perhaps, as some causes. We're not about cancer. We are history and we are awareness and we hope we can make that case to our very generous donors in the private sector and, of course, the government, which accounts for much of what we do. But that is always a challenge.

Those two things, as we go forward, are what we're conscious of all the time.

Marc may want to add a comment.

[Marc Chalifoux]

I think the point is correct. When you look at the high school level in Canada, you see that only four provinces in Canada require a mandatory course in Canadian history. In every other province and territory you have a course in social studies, which would be your mandatory subject, and really, let's face it, that's a mishmash of a bit of history, a bit of geography, a bit of civics, a bit of economics, and a bit of philosophy, all of which are very good things, but the historical narrative gets lost.

Our work is really to complement and to provide learning tools, learning resources, and learning programs that allow teachers to make the teaching of Canadian history interesting and relevant and really make it come out of the textbook. That would be one challenge.

As for what this committee can do about the teaching of history across the country, that really is a provincial jurisdiction, so it's a constant struggle. That's where our advocacy role comes in and plays a large role.

The other thing I would say is that we live beside a country that is very good at telling its own story and talking about its history and its past. In Canada, we've generally been too timid and too shy to do so. That's where our media program and our production of resources come in, for everything from heritage minutes to the Canadian Encyclopedia and the kind of survey research we do. It really comes in and fills a void, in a sense, or what is too close to a void, in regard to Canadians telling their own stories.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

That's good.

I wanted to ask the tough question first. Now I have a couple of little questions. On veteran appreciation days, I've been through the package. I went through it last week and I've given it to my staff for them to organize a day. It is very much geared at small media market areas, smaller communities, and communities traditionally held by my Conservative opponents.

It's very difficult for me to plan that day in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, or even Halifax, so we're planning a cenotaph day, probably focusing on Sunnybrook. Is there any possibility that you can help us on that issue with the larger cities where we have three million people? I come from Sault Ste. Marie, with its 70,000 people, where it's much easier to do that. How do we do this?

[Jeremy Diamond]

Yes. We've done one in Sault Ste. Marie before now. I think the concept works best with the smaller or mid-sized communities. This past summer, we tried to target communities that would act as hubs. So we'd bring together surrounding communities from London or around Hamilton or around Windsor and incorporate them into the planning of the event. We'd have them go back with some of those details and some of that knowledge and then plan it in their own communities.

It's a bit tougher in some of the larger communities. There are, let's say, a lot more levels of approvals. There's a lot more planning involved. A lot of the larger cities do large Remembrance Day ceremonies and may not see this as an opportunity.

I think that trying to carve out a little space for what's different about this event may be a way of going about it. These events are in the summer and, in a way, it's very easy to get people together outside a cenotaph attached to a local Legion branch and have the reception there. We've already had about five communities that have been to an existing Veteran Appreciation Day over the summer come to us in the last couple of weeks and say they're now holding them in their communities. I think it works best in the smaller to mid-sized communities, but I don't think it's impossible for the larger ones.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Well, I'm offering myself as a model for Metro Toronto--

[Jeremy Diamond]

Great.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

--so we can do that.

[Jeremy Diamond]

Thanks.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I have one other little question. All of our military activity--maybe not in 1812--has been in international partnerships, with allies, NATO, or the UN. Are you developing international partnerships? Can we be of help on that? I understand the liberation of Holland, but I'm talking about something different. I'm talking about that basic concept of global citizenship, global activity, and how we foster that activity in Canada in a larger way without diminishing Canada's role.

[Marc Chalifoux]

The Canadian Forces, particularly as exemplified by our veterans, has really been one of the key instruments through which Canada's role in the world has been exercised. It's really shaped Canada's place in the world.

In the classroom, that is something we really try to bring out. Particularly in social studies classes, that is one of the approaches through which teachers teach and use the Memory Project Speakers' Bureau, for example, particularly when it comes to post-Korean War veterans, so there are peacekeeping veterans, veterans from the Canadian Forces.

Could we build better ties with international organizations and international bodies? Yes. Most of our work has been particularly within Canada. We have excellent ties with some of the embassies, but it's a pan-Canadian program and our largest partner would be, other than Veterans Affairs and the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Royal Canadian Legion. It's an untapped opportunity.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Oliphant. That's the expiration of your time.

On Mr. Oliphant's point, it wasn't a veteran appreciation event but a memory project event that happened in Ottawa. Ottawa isn't as big as Metro Toronto, but I thought the event, just off Elgin at the Legion there, was well attended and served as a pretty good model for a big city.

Monsieur Gaudet, you have seven minutes.