I welcome everyone to our meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
There are a couple of things I'd like to bring to your attention before we speak to Mr. Sirman. First of all, I remind the committee that the Honourable Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, has confirmed that she will appear before the committee on Thursday, June 1, from 3:30 to 4:30.
Today we are pleased to welcome Mr. Robert Sirman to review his certificate of nomination to the position of director of the Canada Council for the Arts. I'd like to remind the committee of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, which outlines the range of the committee's review:
The scope of a committee’s examination of Order-in-Council appointees or nominees is strictly limited to the qualifications and competence to perform the duties of the post. Questioning by members of the committee may be interrupted by the Chair, if it attempts to deal with matters considered irrelevant to the committee’s inquiry.... Any question may be permitted if it can be shown that it relates directly to the appointee’s or nominee’s ability to do the job.
We'll be following the order of questions adopted during our second meeting. As such, I will call upon Mr. Sirman to make a 10-minute opening statement, if he chooses.
Welcome to the committee, sir.
Mr. Chairman, members of the standing committee,
[Translation]
may I begin by expressing my sincere thanks for allowing me to delay my appearance before you until today. You will know that I was originally asked to appear before this Committee two weeks ago, but as fate would have it, I was already scheduled on that day to host over 200 senior donors and government funders at an opening gala at the National Ballet School. It would have been impossible for me to be in Ottawa without compromising my responsibilities to my employer, and I am grateful that my appearance could be rescheduled.
[English]
I am greatly honoured to be nominated as director of the Canada Council for the Arts. The Canada Council, without doubt, is the most important single instrument for stimulating and strengthening the creation, production, and dissemination of the arts in Canada.
Despite the profile of my recent work at the National Ballet School, the majority of my working life has been spent in the public service. For five of those years, I worked as a senior advisor in Ontario's first ministry of culture, and for 10 years I held management positions in the Ontario Arts Council.
[Translation]
During this time, I had the opportunity to work very closely with counterparts in other jurisdictions across Canada, including Quebec.
[English]
I have long had a special interest in arts funding. In 1986 I was fortunate enough to undertake an independent study tour of England and Wales under the auspices of the British Council. The purpose of this tour was to study the funding practices of the Arts Council of Great Britain, the organization upon which the Canada Council was modelled when it was established in 1957.
[Translation]
In 1989 and 1990, I spent five months in France, including three months as an intern in the French Ministry of Culture and Communications in Paris. I was specifically stationed in the Ministry's research department, where I had the privilege of studying the latest research on the relationship between funding and cultural practices in both France and the other nations of the European Union.
In 1991, I took what I expected to be a short break from public service and joined Canada's National Ballet School. I was not trained in dance--my formal education was in the social sciences--but I was intrigued by the challenge the School presented, being at the time in very serious financial difficulty. The School's professional attraction proved greater than I anticipated, and I have been there now for over 15 years.
After stabilizing the School's finances--in large part by reinforcing its national identity and diversifying its revenues--I turned my attention to the deplorable state of its facilities. The result was a 100 million dollar capital expansion program called Projet Grand Jeté.
[English]
As of today, we surpassed the 90% mark on both fundraising and construction, and the new facilities have been met with both popular and critical acclaim. The project won an architectural excellence award at the Ontario Association of Architects annual conference held two weeks ago in Ottawa. Also, on June 5, I will receive a national leadership award from the Canadian Urban Institute for my work in using the project to build community.
For some time now, I have made a conscious effort to broaden community involvement beyond my immediate employer. For many years, I chaired the boards of a small dance company in Toronto and a social service agency in the neighbourhood in which the National Ballet School is located. I have also served for many years on the advisory council for the Co-operative Program in Arts Management at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.
Not surprisingly, I have served on many juries for national, provincial, and municipal grant-giving programs.
In recent years, I have also acted as a mentor and facilitator for a number of arts groups, including a national aboriginal theatre school, a dance action committee in British Columbia, a Calgary dance company, and a cooperative venture by the Canadian Dance Assembly and the Regroupement québécois de la danse in Montreal. I am also on the board of a public foundation, the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation, which funds the performing arts, community development, and the environment.
It is this combination of both breadth and depth of experience that I presented to the selection committee for the position of director of the Canada Council for the Arts, and which I present to you today.
[Translation]
As you well know, the Canada Council's mandate is to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. As it approaches its 50th anniversary, it is only natural that the Canada Council turn its attention to the future, to considering what the role of the arts will be in the lives of Canadians for the next 50 years, and how public funding can invigorate and energize that future.
[English]
The circumstances facing artists in Canada today are very different from those in 1957. So too are the challenges facing public funding bodies. I am convinced that the Canada Council for the Arts can play a significant role in shaping Canadian culture for the next 50 years, as it has in the past, but it cannot do this alone. It will need to work closely with politicians, other funding bodies, the private sector, provincial and municipal levels of government, the arts sector, and of course the citizenry that makes up Canada itself. I am excited by the prospect of helping to lead and inspire this historic process of collaborative transition, and today I respectfully present to you my candidacy for the position of director of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Thank you. Merci.
:
In the fall of 2005 I was approached by an HR firm--what we call “headhunting” firms, in my business--asking me if I would be prepared to compete in a competition for director of the Canada Council for the Arts. It was awkward timing for me, because I was about to open the new National Ballet School in Toronto, but I did go through an interview. I did not actually submit my full curriculum vitae until December.
In December I was told by the outside firm that I was one of a series of candidates that the selection committee wished to interview. The selection committee--when I actually went--was made up of four board members of the Canada Council for the Arts, plus an outside member, former Auditor General of Canada Denis Desautels. I was introduced to these people in my first interview, the first week of January, in Ottawa.
A day or two later I got a telephone call that the pool had shrunk, but there was still a pool and I was still in it. I was told that I would be called for a subsequent follow-up interview. That interview took place the last week of January, in Toronto. My understanding is that they were meeting other people in Toronto and possibly other parts of the country, although I don't know that.
I was subsequently contacted and told that I was the candidate that the selection committee wished to present to the board of the Canada Council for their consideration. From that moment--and I was not an insider in that process, but this is from what I understand--it had to go to the board, and the board in turn had to recommend it to the Department of Canadian Heritage.
The process went on until...it's here.
:
Again, these are very telling questions, because it's impossible at this moment for me to know whether there will be a change of direction.
I think I was trying to indicate to Mr. Angus that there is not any specific part of the Canada Council's work that I see requiring, at this moment, a reorientation or a redistribution of resources. However, I don't believe this is an issue of policy. I believe this is an issue of philosophy, so I'm prepared to stick my neck out here.
I believe that the world today is different from the world of 50 years ago, when the Canada Council was founded. If the Canada Council and the policies of public funding in the arts are to succeed for the next 50 years, we will probably have to evolve and shift priorities going forward. This suggests to me that we are not going to just toe the line and hold the course endlessly year over year.
My dilemma and my challenge is to figure out exactly what that evolution will look like and who the players should be in helping to shape the direction for the future. I believe that the next 50 years of the Canada Council should be as significant as the past 50 years. But they will not be if the Canada Council just does more of the same.
:
Well, I definitely can speak to my experience at the National Ballet School. At the National Ballet School, when I joined the organization, we were far more dependent and reliant on government funding than we are today. The interesting thing, though, is that the government funding has actually increased. The quantum has increased, but the percentage of the organization's budget has decreased.
I think what's happening is that the artistic milieu is getting larger and larger--the number of people who are in the sector, the number of organizations--and they are having to reach out to new partners beyond the traditional funders.
In my organization, the National Ballet School--the one I've been most familiar with for the last 15 years--this meant launching business ventures, for example. This meant taking more seriously the establishment of a foundation, a private foundation, which I established as a parallel foundation to the organization, to hold endowed funds. It meant seriously considering the earned revenues of the organization, not just passively looking at them but actually trying to analyze what other sources of revenue there might be to leverage the public funding I was receiving, which was growing, and make it a smaller percentage of the overall budget. I could actually grow faster than my government funding.
This is an example of the kind of leveraging activity that I believe is happening in society as a whole. No single funder is forcing it on the scene, but organizations in the community are recognizing the need to explore broadening--if I can use this word without being pejorative--the business base of running an arts organization in this country.
I don't use it as a big-B business case. But making sure that these organizations are run responsibly, have balanced budgets, can meet their artistic mandates, make connections with the communities they're trying to serve, do actual audience development--by trying to expand to new markets, for example--and orienting the organizations towards the changing demographics of Canadian society are strategies to allow the public funding to leverage more activity without itself being the sole determinant of the future course of the organization.
:
Maybe you could use them as an example; I don't know.
But I'll get to the gist of it, which is basically that the problem we have in smaller communities is a lack of capital funding available through private means, we'll say. The problem becomes not so much the money to help generate a particular project to get it off the ground, but the operational money that is involved.
I personally think there is a way for the government to get more involved than it has been with the arts community. The example I speak of is this. There is a town called English Harbour. There is a church in the small fishing village, which is pretty much a ghost town, given that the fishing industry has gone downhill. Two artists from Toronto bought this church, over 110 years old, refurbished it, and are turning it into a school for artists. It's a fantastic idea.
Where do you see the role of the council in helping provide some operational money for this type of operation—not for that specific example, but for an example like that in a smaller community?
:
I am going to try to speak to two issues.
There is the example you've used. The Canada Council wouldn't primarily be engaged in a training environment, as I understand it. However, the Canada Council is very present in smaller communities in Canada. You probably know that the grants last year were distributed in more than 560 communities in Canada. My understanding is that the Public Lending Right Commission actually distributes cheques to writers in more than 1,500 communities in Canada.
So the Canada Council is definitely present wherever professional arts activity is going on. The Canada Council does not discriminate between small communities and large communities. What it's trying to track is the evolution of professional arts practice in the country.
Beyond that, I am drawn into a debate about the Canada Council's practices, which I am really not in a position to defend or explain. But I do know that the criterion is not the size of the community; it is the presence of professional activity that has an audience, that has a community it's relating to, that is providing value in that community.
:
I will try to answer your question.
Technology has really changed the circumstances in which artists create and communicate with present day society. An artist today does not face the same challenges as those he or she might have faced in 1957. The various challenges have indeed changed. I cannot say exactly if relations between the government and artists have changed, but the circumstances in which these relations have developed have most certainly changed.
[English]
It would be impossible for me to pretend that I understand where it's going for the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, but it is not the same, and it is not going in the same direction that it went in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
In particular, this was one of the strongest findings when I was in the research division of the French Ministry of Culture and Communications in 1990. It was absolutely clear that no one in the 1980s had predicted the enormous impact on cultural consumption practices in Europe that the new technologies had introduced. No one was prepared for it, and it had a radical change in the way that people consumed art or the way that audiences chose, through their discretionary spending, the arts they wished to attend or consume.
:
I have not formally studied the leadership styles of my predecessors, but I am familiar with my predecessors and I have a sense of how they led and how they contributed to the evolution and development and success of the Canada Council for the past 50 years.
I believe my own skills and my own predisposition from a leadership perspective is very much one that favours what I call non-directive leadership. It is often more time-consuming as a leadership style, but it does contribute to progressive, inclusive responses to changing circumstances.
As opposed to trying to pull the organization as a leader, I hope I can invest in the organization and the organization will help to push me, as a leader, forward. It's a push-and-pull analogy here.
I am the kind of leader who believes strongly in investing in teams, who believes strongly in encouraging, rewarding, and stimulating the highest possible performance in the people around me. This is a style in which you are trying constantly to recruit people better than you, and this is a style that, because of that, requires a certain suppression of ego and a certain confidence in the bigger vision or the bigger challenge that you're trying to help the organization to address going forward.
:
Thank you very much for coming in today. I appreciate the time. Do you feel the heat? It's not only outside, but it's inside.
A voice: Yes, we brought the heat in.
Mr. Chris Warkentin: I'm a younger person, and I do have a concern about the arts going forward. I want to ensure that Canadian culture is maintained and that we have sovereignty within our cultural endeavours in this country, because I think it will be important for my children and my children's children.
I know it's very tough to speculate as to how things might turn out 50 years from now, but I would suggest that we are at a very important time in history. There's an increased influence from globalization. The technology that's being put forward is going to change the way--and you talked about this a little earlier--we consume culture and intermingle with culture.
I'm just wondering if you would comment briefly on issues that you'll have to deal with at the Canada Council within the next number of years with regard to some of these impacts we see being placed on us from outside forces.
:
If I can make a distinction between policy and philosophy, I'm very happy to speak on the philosophy side of the equation, but I can't speak on the policy side.
Philosophically, I believe it's the arts and culture that unite people into a collectivity. I was trained in the social sciences, and my first specialization was in anthropology. It was absolutely clear to me as a student, and it is absolutely clear to me as an adult today, that it is not genetics or politics that unite people, it's culture.
If Canada wishes to maintain its sovereignty as a separate nation in the world, it will have to invest in ensuring that the Canadian people share a common culture. The arts are an important part of that culture, and they are undoubtedly bombarded by the transborder power of present-day technologies, which expose us increasingly--not decreasingly, but increasingly--to outside cultural voices.
I am not sure what role the Canada Council will play for the next 50 years in that debate, that struggle, that challenge, but there's no question that it will have to play a critical role. There's no question that if government and the council do not see culture as a critical component in the sovereignty of the people of Canada, we will not be able to protect our independence as a nation in the long run.
:
Thank you, Mr. Angus, and thank you, Mr. Sirman.
Now, as chair, I have a minute or two.
I must say that I've been very intrigued with some of your answers today. I come from a small rural area, but with quite a theatrical presence. I live just outside of Stratford, Ontario, which last night had its 54th opening night. They started out very small, and I can tell you how important the arts are to Perth county, to Stratford...not only to Ontario, but to Canada and to the world. We have world-renowned artists who have trained there and have gone forward, and I know that the Canada Council has been very, very instrumental in what has gone on there.
I hear at various times that sometimes people from other countries help us with our arts, and I don't know if everyone understands this. Sometimes they even help secure some of the funding that might be provided here. I know that with the endowment fund at the Stratford Festival, they set a goal a number of years ago of some $50 million. I was talking to the chair in charge of that endowment fund last night, who had just presented $1.3 million to the festival for working capital. I do know that there was a couple from Chicago who donated $5 million to the Stratford Festival foundation that helped with that. It was matched I think through the Canada Council, or by someone through Canada Council.
I met last year with the Canada Council people. I would like to address something that was said earlier about you and the ballet, and primarily from that side. Karen Kain from the ballet...I had arts people, I had writers, I had everyone come to my office. And then I met with Minister Oda, who was our critic at that particular time, with a bigger group, so I know how important it is.
I must say that I congratulate all the members of the committee, and you, sir, for this great meeting that we've had this afternoon.
While you are still here, sir, I would like to have someone move the motion, as follows:
That the Committee report to the House that it has examined the qualifications and competence of Robert Sirman and finds him competent to perform the duties of the position of Director of the Canada Council for the Arts.
:
Mr. Chair, first of all, I don't know how many of the full complement of members will want to go. That's an imponderable that could be rendered ponderable in knowing, but as it is, it's imponderable.
I do not have the figures in front of me, but if I've just heard right, for $50,000—which is half of what we originally proposed, and that is in accordance with the wishes of the committee—the entire committee can go. For $34,000, four plus one can go. Is that it?
A voice: Plus the staff; it's nine.
Hon. Mauril Bélanger: Fine. I'd have a problem with the second proposal. If we have accepted, after fairly significant discussion, the importance of participating at this event—and I think our research officer has distributed a document that attests to that, and the fact that the minister is going to be there in the afternoon of Sunday making an important speech, I gather, attests to it as well—I would argue that only sending a few members of committee would not be helpful, in the sense that the idea was that we all might be brought up to speed and to the same level, so that we can function better as we embark upon a fairly extensive round of discussions and considerations of broadcasting regulations, of CBC mandate review, terms of reference, and so on. For just a few members to have the opportunity for discussion with the representatives of every group involved in the production and broadcasting of television—and cinema, in this case—and not others would I think be counterproductive.
That's why I'm wondering at the sagacity of sending only five members rather than all of those who may wish to go.
I have many more, Jim.
The Chair: Mr. Angus.
:
Mr. Chair, I have to be careful, because I haven't had a chance to speak with my other members, who didn't come today, regarding whether they'll be left behind.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Charlie Angus: But I would say, on the principle that my tardy colleagues who didn't come.... Well, I won't ask them to come to Banff now.
On a more serious note, the only thing I would suggest is that perhaps we could do this in a more collegial manner. I recognize we may not need to have everybody there, but there are people from each of the parties who have played a role in the past, and who continue to play a role, who would otherwise not get the opportunity. It's not to say four people or twelve; it's to ask whether there are people who really feel they want to be there. Let's count up how many that makes.
:
I just wanted to put that on the record.
Again, I will restate my reasons for voting against sending a delegation at this time.
It's not that at some date in the future I wouldn't find this to be quite helpful for myself and for the committee, but I'm just in the process of completing reading through the Lincoln report. It's exceedingly helpful, and as I mentioned in my response to Mr. Bélanger's motion today, there are a number of recommendations that I support in that report.
I find that particular study, which is 800 pages long, comprehensive. It provides us with much of the information that we would base our decisions on, and given the fact that there may be a motion going to the minister referring that report to her for a response within 120 days, this trip, in my opinion, is premature. It's not that I oppose it in principle; I just oppose it at this point in time.
:
I realize I'm getting things a little mixed up, but I'd just like to respond as well, seeing as we're talking about getting reports back, on the new report on feature film policy. I've written down a couple of things so I'd have my thoughts straight, and if you don't mind I'll just share them with you.
The government is presently considering the two studies. It has done a series of proposed adjustments it would like to make to the policy to improve effectiveness. It's important that stakeholders in the industry have their chance to comment on these proposed adjustments to maximize their impact before they're made and before a government response to the standing committee report is made. The Department of Canadian Heritage must be allowed to complete its process with a final consultation with industry stakeholders this summer. A discussion paper will be released that will present the proposed adjustments to the policy and call for comments.
After this process, the department will be able to provide an enlightened government response to the standing committee's report. A revised Canadian feature film policy would then be ready in early 2007, bearing in mind that I'm suggesting that the first part--that is, something that would be enlightened by further response from the industry, being able to speak to the stakeholders over the summer--would be a more conclusive thing for the committee to consider.
If instead this committee is going to say, “Give us a response to this study that has been done, boom, that's it”, then we'll get that. But it won't be nearly as complete as it would be if the department has an opportunity to take more input from the stakeholders.
So this would really slow things down tremendously and complicate things and serve no useful purpose, in my judgment.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I had understood from the word go that what this committee wanted was a response from this government to both of those reports--the Lincoln report and the one on the film policy. And if this committee tables those two reports from the 38th Parliament in this 39th Parliament--as it is allowed to do and capable of doing under the rules--and asks for a government response, the government, according to the rules of the House, must respond within five months. If I follow Mr. Abbott's timeline, five months takes us to somewhere in October, and that's after the summer and after the department has had the time to do all the consultation he was talking about. If the government has not totally finished, it can respond at the time, perhaps seek from the committee a delay--or not--file a report, and then file an addendum later on, or a policy.
With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, I'm not concerned that much right now about bogging down the department. They can handle these requests from Parliament to committee. It is their duty to respond to these reports if the committee so requests it.
So if the department has a difficulty in responding to legitimate requests from the Parliament of Canada, that's entirely another matter, which we can deal with. But that should not be what's driving our desire to obtain responses from the current government.
:
Well, Mr. Chair, having come onto the committee after the Lincoln report was done, I can say there was a sense out there that all this work had been done, and now we're in a new government, a new Parliament, and all that work is put by the side. We had reintroduced that in the last Parliament because we felt it did deserve a response from the government, because it laid out a plan, a road map. And it was very important for us to hear from the minister where she saw the Lincoln report fitting into government strategy.
I think at the end of the day we still felt we never did get a really comprehensive commitment on the Lincoln report that was worth the work that had gone into it.
I certainly don't think, from my experience in the 38th Parliament, that making that request ground down the heritage bureaucrats to the level that they couldn't function any more. My God, we'd be in a pretty sad state of affairs if asking the heritage ministry to respond to a document that everyone is very familiar with and asking this government where they're going, how they see the Lincoln report, how they see the feature film study is going to throw all the consultation out the window. I can't see that happening, quite frankly.
Consultations are ongoing. Direction is being taken. I think what we're asking is how do these reports, which involved a great deal of work and effort, fit into that broad picture? That's what we're asking for, and I think it's a fairly straightforward, reasonable request.
:
Mr. Chair, I want the committee members to be clear on what they're asking for. If it's the wish of the committee, clearly the committee has the ability to do that.
If the committee decides to retable the scripts, screens, and audience report, the ministry will then develop a response to the report as tabled—period, full stop, end of statement.
Alternatively, if the committee does not ask for this, there will be further consultations with the stakeholders over the summer months. Those consultations, along with the process, will then be able to be tabled. It will not be the response to the scripts, screens, and audiences. It will be a combination of that, together with the consultations with the stakeholders.
So if I may, and I apologize if this sounds a bit harsh, but what we're basically saying is: here is a document; report on it, and by the way, don't bother with the further consultations over the summer.
I am making a statement that this will happen, which doesn't make any sense to me.
:
It seems to me that we've had a very interesting debate in Parliament today, the initial interchange between Mr. Bélanger and me over the UNESCO agreement.
As I indicated to him in a previous incarnation when we were in opposition, I was representing the official opposition at that time and was fully supportive of that UNESCO agreement. I was fully supportive of the minister's efforts. I don't think anybody on the committee will have heard the current heritage minister say anything to the contrary.
The Prime Minister, having taken specific action with respect to the place of Quebec at the UNESCO table...I can't imagine there's any question about the fact that our government is completely, utterly, and fully, in every conceivable and possible way, committed to treating culture as culture and is very sensitive to it within the general agreement on trade in services.
The situation at GATS right at the moment, as I understand it, is that the whole thing is bogged down. The Doha round is all bogged down as a result of discussions over agriculture. We have no idea if the nations are going to see themselves as successful when coming out at the other side.
However, I am having a little difficulty understanding the necessity or value in this motion, which is to presume that foreign ownership restrictions will be stripped. To quote the motion, “could strip domestic content quotas”, and so on and so forth.
I don't really understand what the value of this motion is, but I do understand that in negotiating, if I were a negotiator, I would be very interested in reading the transcripts of any of these hearings at this committee, should the committee decide to do it. We would do a very good job of washing our domestic laundry and weakening the position of the Canadian negotiators.
We know where the Canadian government is coming from on this issue, as stated. I am therefore not really sure what the value of washing our domestic laundry would be in handing those Hansard copies from our committee hearings and our testimony to the other countries as they negotiate against us.
Yes, Doha is grinding down and there are two schools of thought. One is that they're going to declare victory and walk away from whatever little they get. The other is there is going to be a greater impetus to try to cobble something together. But regardless, GATS goes on. GATS is a separate round. And it is an important issue. I don't think it is the issue of airing our dirty laundry, because having been on the agriculture file, the agriculture sector continually asks the questions: where are we going at Doha and where is our position? And we got very clear responses from the present government in terms of supply management. We will defend supply management. We will defend these rights internationally. Those commitments came because questions were asked and it gave people confidence.
I'm open to the suggestion that we begin with officials at the level of Heritage and Industry, because traditionally there has been a divide between Heritage and Industry on a lot of these issues, and we know that. Will the Heritage officials come forward and say, do not worry, we know where we stand in terms of cultural product? That could end the discussion right then and there.
My concern is that we know that Canada is a requester nation at the GATS right now on the telecom, and telecom has been an Industry file, but because of convergence and because of the implications for broadcast, what steps has the ministry taken? What steps are they looking to take to ensure that our broadcast policies are still intact if GATS goes ahead? As well, we are on the receiving end of the GATS request on audiovisual, and those raise all the fundamental issues. Whether it's the Lincoln report, the film industry--anything we've talked about around this table is being discussed at Geneva.
I think it would be incumbent upon us to hear from those officials. I don't believe we need to hear from those officials in camera. I think if there is something that is raised that they want to give us a further briefing on, or a separate briefing, and we would go in camera, I'm fine about it. But I think an initial briefing is to get a sense of where we're going. I would defer on the issue of the negotiators at this point if we can hear from ministry officials.