Veterans Affairs Committee on April 28th, 2021

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

I will just warn you that Mr. Davidson, because of his Internet connectivity, has to log off, so we need to give him some time to do that. He'll have to log back on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Fair enough.

Up next is MP Amos for six minutes.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us. We are very grateful.

As Mr. Brassard rightly pointed out, everyone agrees that we need to have great respect for commemoration. We are proud to be doing this work together. I think it will be a non-partisan endeavour, thankfully.

I'd like to come back to Ms. Dromaguet's testimony.

Ms. Dromaguet, thank you very much for being here. The Canadian War Museum is here, in the national capital region, and some of my constituents work there.

What impact has COVID-19 had on your operations? What requests have you made to the federal government to support the museum during this particular period?

Does the federal government's recent budget announcement meet the expectations of the Canadian War Museum?

[Caroline Dromaguet]

Thank you, Mr. Amos, for that excellent question.

Of course, COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the museum, which was closed to the public for most of 2020. In addition to the subsidy we receive from the government, the majority of our revenue comes from visits to the museum, and we've seen that revenue drop by 96%. Seeing no improvement in the coming year, we had to apply to the government for funding to offset the loss of revenue that we would most likely experience. We were granted this funding, and I believe it is in the neighbourhood of $4.9 million. That allows us to continue with the programming and activities that we had planned. However, I should point out that the Canadian War Museum and the Canadian Museum of History are a corporation, and they share the $4.9 million. I should add that the distribution of the money hasn't yet been determined.

We've learned a lot in the past year. Like all cultural organizations, we've had to move to digital platforms. We had already planned to do that, but the current situation has accelerated that shift. By necessity, our planning was often focused on people coming into the museum, physically coming to the site. Now our school and public programs and exhibits are tailored to digital platforms. It's really allowed us to be more consistent with our mandate, which is national. It has allowed us to reach Canadian audiences, and even an audience beyond our borders. We've seen very good results. Our social media presence has increased by 17% in the last year, which is great. It has allowed us to encourage discussion with the Canadian public, which is a very diverse audience.

In terms of the programs we have developed, it has also allowed us to approach military history in a much more modern and current way. For example, the boxes of artifacts that we send free of charge to schools across Canada are accompanied by teaching materials that teachers can use in the classroom. What we found was that more and more, this was generating dialogue with students who were new to Canada, first talking about Canadian military history, and then very spontaneously students from a variety of backgrounds, often from countries that were experiencing conflict, talking about their own experiences. That really allowed us, over the last year, to broaden and reach out to many more Canadians with military history.

There is also the commemoration aspect, of course. With the money that we were very fortunate to receive in the federal budget, we can continue to deliver our programs and expand them in preparation for the very likely renewal of the Canadian War Museum in the years to come.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Dromaguet.

I don't have much time left, so I'll close with a message directly to Mr. Cooper and his team at the Juno Beach Centre Association.

Mr. Cooper, thank you for the work you do. One of my constituents, Meriel Bradford, serves on your board of directors, and we in the Pontiac are proud of her involvement in your organization.

Thank you to you and Ms. Bradford, as well as all the witnesses.

[Don Cooper]

Thank you very much for the compliment. We have a good team across Canada and in France.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Up next is MP Desilets for six minutes, please.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us and sharing their wonderful experience with us. They play a unique role, in a way, in maintaining the social fabric among our veterans.

All members of the committee are very much in favour of maintaining commemoration activities and are even prepared to give them a little more prominence, as Mr. Amos just alluded to. However, it must be recognized that this isn't always supported by the general public. Some people think it's an unnecessary expense.

Mr. Cooper, how do we convince people that commemoration activities are a good thing and a necessity? How do we explain that it's money well spent and that it's a way to remember and thank the people who worked and fought for their country?

[Don Cooper]

May I answer in English?

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Of course. Your comments will be interpreted into French.

[Don Cooper]

It will be a little easier for me.

The message is very strong.

The glue that holds Canada together often is our history. We have to have a shared mutual history for that to be successful. As we all recognize in this room, the military history of Canada is an essential part of that.

Getting that message out to new Canadians is a challenge. I've met many of them. They embrace Canada when they come to Canada, and they embrace our history when you tell it to them. You just have to find the communication paths that get them educated on what our history is and they will relate to it. They will grow with it.

That's the challenge. It's not the million visitors we put through the Juno Beach Centre who are the key. Those visitors are often our stakeholders. You're selling to the already convinced. It's the others who haven't come that basically represent the challenge. I think that's the communication part of today. We have so many opportunities to reach people today. There has never been a better time to be in the position of trying to get that message out. It will resonate. We just have to keep pushing at it.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Cooper.

I'm very much on the same page when it comes to the importance of our history and valuing our heritage.

Ms. Bailey, I'd like to ask you the same question. What arguments do you think could be made to refute these statements that we absolutely disagree with?

[Caitlin Bailey]

Thank you very much for your question, Mr. Desilets.

I'm thinking of the idea already mentioned by Ms. Dromaguet. Even though we are in Canada and many Canadians aren't directly connected to the great wars, the military or veterans, we all have a relationship to war and the experience of war. We all have a way of perceiving war and understanding how it has changed the country we come from.

I think we need to talk about not just the veterans, but also the idea of war as a universal experience and then use that to connect people. We could tell them that the First World War or the Canadian experience of it may be really far away, but their experience of war isn't much different in terms of feelings or past events than people who lived through the First or Second World War.

That's what we're doing with our next project, Vimy: A Living Memorial. We want to make connections between people today or between their experiences of war and Canadian experiences of war.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you for your answer, Ms. Bailey.

During a pandemic, we obviously can't strengthen this social fabric among veterans, since they can't attend any commemoration activities.

Do any of the witnesses have any suggestions for addressing this need for gathering and socializing among veterans?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That's actually your time. I'm going to have to ask for a very brief answer from somebody or we'll have to move on.

[Caroline Dromaguet]

I can answer the question, if I may.

We have participated in a number of Veterans Affairs Canada working groups. The most recent one was made up of Gulf War veterans, related to Kuwait. We've also introduced a tool for communities to celebrate Remembrance Day, because they can't visit the memorials. This first part of the module has been very useful for schools and communities. This year, we are in phase 2, where we will be incorporating many more testimonials from contemporary veterans. Our goal is to provide these tools to bring communities together, because we expect that they will not be able to gather in very large numbers in the near future.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Dromaguet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Up next we have MP Blaney.

I will have to cut you off before your time, but I will make sure that we come back to you with whatever remaining time you have.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, all, for being here today, and thank you for your important work, because really what I see you as doing is keeping that collective memory alive and educating generation after generation so that we don't forget. That's something we all need to keep in our hearts and on our minds that literally this is how we remember collectively what has happened in our history.

I have tons of questions and not enough time, but the first question I have is around technology and how we retell the story to the younger generation that's coming in. What is the work you're doing around that?

Madam Dromaguet, in your presentation, you talked about the 500 oral histories that have been recorded to date, and I'm really curious about how you're sharing those stories. I would love if you could tell us whether there are any women or how many women are involved in that. That would be helpful.

Perhaps I could just leave it with you at that.

[Caroline Dromaguet]

Sure. Thank you very much for that question.

It is something that is really top of mind for us. It's reaching those younger audiences, and of course, via the platforms that are more relevant, and I suppose, accessible to them.

As I was mentioning earlier in answering Mr. Amos's question, many of our educational programs have been adapted through a technical platform. This is not only by necessity of what is going on, but also from hearing back from educators. We adapt what we do, not because we think it's what's working, but because we have great relationships with [Technical difficulty—Editor] Canada and other stakeholders who actually give us that very important feedback.

Very quickly, one example from a school program is that we're able to offer access to some of our expert educators to connect virtually to the classroom, wherever they may be, and also invite veterans sometimes to give their own lived history. It's a very popular program in situ, but it's growing in popularity online as you can imagine.

To your second point about the oral history, this is a project that is somewhat in its infancy, where throughout our recent history, for the last 20 years, I would say, we have accumulated these oral histories as we have collected many other things.

We're very happy to have received a very generous donation just around Christmastime that will allow us to actually create a platform. If I can use the working title for this platform, it will be “In Their Voices”. It's going to be a digital platform where we will migrate these oral histories but grow the program.

In growing that program, of course, we are very concerned and aware of the need for that diversity and those various voices. It won't only be from veterans, but also the experiences of their families, which we think is part of that bigger story of commemoration. As we know, the experiences of our veterans have affected also the experiences of their family, which is a story that is very important to tell.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you for that.

I don't know how much time I have left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

If I could jump in, Rachael, this actually would be a good break. It means that I don't have to interrupt anybody. We've stopped your clock. I will confirm with the clerk how much time you have left, but I know there are those who have to deal with some technical stuff, so we're going to suspend for the vote now.

If you don't have to log off, don't. It will be a lot quicker. If you do have to log off, we'll obviously wait for you to come back.

For witnesses, we will be as quick as we can. We have about 10 more minutes of bells. It is about 11 or 12 minutes to do the vote, and then we'll come back and also record how much time the gap has created, assuming there is no objection to add that to the end of today's meeting.

We have confirmation that we're able to extend. Happy voting. We'll see you shortly. We will suspend, folks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We'll wrap up by six o'clock, if that's okay with everybody.

Rachel, you have three minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you very much, and thank you for everyone's patience here today with that interruption for the vote.

Ms. Bailey, I very much appreciate the work that you do. One thing you talked about in your testimony was how critical maintenance supports are and what concerns you have about other countries.

Could you talk about the specific challenges you see around maintenance of these important parks? What kinds of resources need to be implemented to support those especially, of course, that are in other places but that recognize the Canadian impact internationally?

[Caitlin Bailey]

Thank you so much, Ms. Blaney.

I can speak specifically for our organization, with the Vimy Centennial Park and the Hill 70 Memorial. Both of these are large private sites that exist very close to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.

Both organizations built them with the intention of continuing to maintain them. We are all continuing to maintain them as we have originally vowed to do. However, the major issue for us is thinking about the future, and not so much the future in five years but in 10, 15 or 20 years, and about what happens with these sites.

It is difficult, I think. Because we all work in this environment, we have a sense of who manages what, where it goes and how it's done, but the average Canadian coming in and seeing one of these sites doesn't know who manages it. Their first stop, often, when there are problems and there are things that are in disrepair, is to go to Veterans Affairs, because that's the first place they think of.

We need to think about the sites that are outside of Canada but that continue to mark Canadian events and make sure that they don't remain out of sight, out of mind, because there aren't Canadians going there regularly and saying, “This is in disrepair,” or “This needs to be replaced.”

It's just a matter of not falling into that out of sight, out of mind trap until something terrible happens and people are looking at it and asking, “Why did this happen?” It's taking a proactive stance rather than a reactive stance.

I saw the finger from Mr. May, so I'm going to stop here. This, however, would be my first thought on that question.