CHER Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, February 10, 1998

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.): I would like to call the meeting to order.

[Translation]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee is considering the Canadian Culture Study.

First, I would like to apologize to our witnesses and committee members for this 15-minute delay resulting from an extension of the previous committee's meeting.

[English]

I apologize for the delay caused by scheduling.

[Translation]

We are pleased to welcome today Ms. Michèle Martin, Professor at the School of Journalism and Communications, Carleton University.

[English]

As an individual, we have Mr. Terry Cheney, consultant. Mr. Conrad Winn, the chief executive officer of COMPAS Inc., has not arrived as yet, but I suggest that we start.

[Translation]

Ms. Martin, would you like to begin?

Ms. Michèle Martin (Professor, School of Journalism and Communications, Carleton University): Certainly, I am here today to share with you my view of a cultural policy as a sociologist researching the history of communications and culture. I would like to propose to you my view of a federal cultural policy, which is in fact a global one. In today's society, it would seem to me to be difficult not to think in global terms.

I do not have a written brief, but I did send to you a list of the subjects I intend to address.

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First and foremost, I believe that before talking about cultural policy, we must decide on a definition of culture or Canadian identity. I think there was an omission in the document you sent as a discussion guide and I was in fact very surprised by that. What kind of Canadian culture do we want? Do we still want bilingualism or not? Do we want a kind of melting pot as in the United States? It is very important that such questions be discussed first. But also, as a culture different from that of the United States, I believe that our cultural policy must be focussed on the concept of social justice which really distinguishes us from the United States, where there is more of a focus on individualism.

Such a concept of social justice does in fact take into account cultural pluralism, regionalism, class and gender equality, and other factors. In this context, we obviously have enormous responsibilities in determining the relationship between culture, technology and social issues. Such an approach should be contextual rather than technologically focussed, as I felt the document which I mentioned earlier was, since it talks about technology influencing certain issues, impacting on certain issues, and such like.

I think that we should talk rather about people taking control of technology and using it in particularly ways, thus reversing the relationship between technology and the individual. This will be very important if we are to develop cultural policies which are fair for all social groups.

In my research, I have gone back to the end of the 19th century and I found that traditionally policies were unfortunately developed on a case-by-case basis. We were perhaps obliged to develop such a defensive or reactive approach to policy making because of our proximity to the United States and the invasion of American culture starting in the 19th century and even probably before that. There were therefore many case-by-case policies, and many examples of a reactive policy. A few were proactive, but not many. There were obviously policies on quotas, which I would agree were absolutely necessary. Certain policies on the percentage of foreign investment in various cultural areas were also very important.

I believe that in today's society, we need a more global approach, and that is what I would like to propose to you here; rather than a reactive policy, a global and proactive one which would of course take into account federal-provincial relations. Thus, it will not infringe on the various areas of provincial responsibility, but will also take into account globalization, a term often used in different ways.

If I may, I would just like to mention that I am organizing a conference for the end of May at Carleton University on international communication and globalization. It is a pity that this committee meeting did not take place after the conference; I would no doubt have been able to provide you with a broader viewpoint on the issue. At the conference, we will at least try to agree on a definition of globalization and international communication. I believe this is important when developing a Canadian cultural policy. Unfortunately, not everyone necessarily sees the importance of this question. It is very difficult to obtain funding. If you have any ideas, I'd be grateful if you could discuss them with me after today's meeting.

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It is important that the development of culture in Canada not be left just to the private sector. We have to avoid this kind of consumer-based development, and work rather to develop a culture which will be positive and fair for all social groups, as I stated earlier. To me, that means a culture which is also essentially linked to education. These two areas are absolutely inseparable and, in my view, this is the most important point when dealing with global culture. If we are not to abandon culture to industry, it has to be integrated in some way or at least linked to the education system, but without infringing on areas of provincial responsibility, as I pointed out earlier, because that is important.

I believe that in this regard federal strategies can be developed to create a knowledge-based infrastructure at the national level, which will take into account regional, cultural and other differences in Canada, and help people to acquire knowledge so that they can not only assess issues in an informed and objective way, but also develop a broad understanding of the world which will enable them to appreciate that Canadian culture is different from other cultures.

I often asked my students what Canadian culture is. They can only answer in a negative way. That worries me very much. I believe that there are positive answers to such a question. But these are things which are not innate and have to be developed. I believe that such an infrastructure system would help people to become aware of their own culture.

Obviously, we need financial resources to use existing human resources which are available because of cuts in various areas, such as culture and education. In the paper given to us, we were asked how that is related to the labour market. I would answer that it could certainly create jobs in those areas.

As Canadian society is unfortunately getting older and given the ambulatory system, senior citizens who will be increasing living at home could be among the groups using this system. They will need programs not just for entertainment, but also to attain their vitality, not necessarily in educational terms, but for information purposes. Such an infrastructure system could certainly be helpful for this group of Canadians.

I support your proposal to create a national institute for culture, a distance-learning campus covering the whole of the country. Its services could be available through correspondence, on television, and why not on the Net? I'm not here to discuss the details of such a proposal, but I do believe it could play an important role in developing Canadian culture. Computer networks could also be made available to various social interest groups, which could also cover religious groups.

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You can offer people networks to help them appreciate that Canadian society is—I dare not say distinct—different from the United States. Such networks or infrastructures could include various cultural components, such as drama, literature, music and others.

For legal reasons, political consistency must of course be ensured. A very important part of implementing such development is marketing strategy. We must develop and offer Canadian-content products to Canadians. But if they are not aware of them or don't know how good they are, they will simply not consult them. Marketing strategy in this kind of global cultural policy is very important. And why would that not be the case? We live in an industrial consumer society where everyone advertises their products and claims they are the best in the world. Why would we not do the same thing as part of a cultural strategy? This obviously requires cultural and educational funding. I don't have time to develop on that for the moment, but I could talk about it briefly a little later if you wish.

The purpose of all these measures is in fact to develop a Canadian social conscience and a critical civic sense with respect to our society.

In fact, what I am proposing to you is to some small degree a Canadian quiet revolution for the year 2000, that is something offering us a global program which obviously would include culture, but also education, which would stimulate people and help them realize that they are all members of the same society.

Developing such a program obviously requires a dynamic team with a vision. And, why not say so, the team must also be a little bit daring. If you are to have a vision, you have to be a little bit daring.

That concludes what I wanted to propose to you this morning. My colleague may perhaps give you more specific details about the policy involved in my Canada culture development strategies. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, professor Martin.

Mr. Cheney.

[English]

Mr. Terry Cheney (Individual Presentation): What I'm going to talk about I think is quite different. I'm going to look at a couple of fairly specific facts and go at some of their implications for what cultural policy might want to focus on in the next five or ten years. I'm briefly going to review some of the facets of social change as kind of the context we're working in, including some of the broader environmental issues that affect social change and cultural policy. I'm going to look at what some of the key aspects of demographics say about who participates in culture, what trends have been in the last ten or twenty years, and where opportunities and demands may be in the next ten or twenty years.

In terms of the demographics, I'm really going to focus on one feature that I think is the most important aspect of society affecting cultural use. That's not the baby booming age; it's the education composition of the Canadian population. That's looking at culture and the Canadian public, looking at how it affects cultural demand. I'm also going to touch briefly on the implications of demographics on the people who create culture or the culture workforce.

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To try to make this a bit simpler, I'm going to hand out some wonderful art, and then I'll talk about this for a few minutes.

Before moving on to the art, I just want to set the environment in terms of social change. Looking at the question of social change and cultural policy, as you have already heard, talking about culture is a rather difficult—

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski—Mitis, BQ): Please wait until I have the document in front of me.

[English]

Mr. Terry Cheney: The documents will be in the second phase, so it's not critical just yet as background.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Good.

[English]

Mr. Terry Cheney: It's hard to know what cultural policy should be and what culture is about, and it's also hard to know what social change is. I've just listed a few ideas on the notes I provided on what social change might be.

It's also important, in terms of looking at social change, to realize that a lot of the factors in demographic analyses aren't all that prescriptive. They take place in a very complex environment. Perhaps this is more complex now than in previous ages, although I think that's debatable. Technology, computers, communications, the globalization of markets and labour forces, the changing role of government, the state of the economy, and shifts in tourism and in the value of the Canadian dollar all impact on the cultural sector. So looking at social change is only one component of that.

In terms of social change in Canada, what are some of the things that are going on? I think how you see social change depends on where you're from. If you're in day care, social change is women returning to the workforce. If you're in health care, it's people getting older and making more demands on services. Social change has a lot of different facets.

In terms of the cultural sector, as for some of the changes in day-to-day life in Canada—this is my reading of social change as opposed to macro issues—the most important, as I mentioned, is the highly educated population.

The second thing would be things that change the family structure or environment, such as the way families behave, the way you learn about life, women entering the workforce, and people having fewer children at later ages.

One of the most interesting graphs I've seen was the number of cousins people have had over the last hundred years. A hundred years ago, you had 50 cousins, then you had 25 cousins, and then you had 10 cousins. Now you're lucky to have 5 cousins. These have been the people you learned from in the past, much more so than from social institutions. Nowadays, if you have cousins, they are probably in Vancouver because of another factor: mobility.

Urbanization is really a big factor in terms of access. There's the economic polarization of society into haves and have-nots. People are taking early retirement. There's divorce, which is part of the family issue.

There are changing immigration patterns. It's probably not proportional; there were probably more immigrants in Canada a hundred years ago than there are now as a proportion of the population, but consider the type of immigration you're seeing.

There are changes in day-to-day life, the pragmatics of the education system, more unemployment, and commuting to work or not commuting to work.

A lot of these things affects, first, disposable income, which influences what you do. But what it really affects is leisure time. In the 1960s and 1970s, people foresaw an age of culture and one of leisure, and they wrote books about that. The ages of culture and leisure didn't come about in the 1970s or 1980s. In fact, data have shown that leisure time use has probably been declining for about 75 years in terms of the time available to people. All these factors affect what may be going on in the cultural sector.

One other aspect of social change that you might forget about is that social change isn't going on just in Canada, it's going on around the world. How social change is taking place in other countries will also affect seriously the environment you have.

One of the fixations in Canada at the moment is the baby boom. But this isn't a global phenomenon; this is a Canadian phenomenon. The U.S. did not have a crisis with the baby boom; Canada has a crisis with the baby boom.

Moving on from that as a context, I'm going to go into some very nitty-gritty aspects of demographics and cultural participation, without bothering to worry about what the definition of culture is and whether the Quebec film Les Boys, which massively outdrew Mon Oncle Antoine last week, is part of culture or not.

First, I'm going to focus on the audience for culture, about which I'll talk the most. Generally, setting the context is the size and scale. People tend to think of culture as being elite, but in fact when you think that culture is public libraries, the museums you take your kids to, reading a book or a magazine, let alone watching TV or going to a movie, in a sense it's in every community across the country and it touches everybody's life. Large percentages of Canadians do these things. For example, 50% of people go to a museum at some point over a year.

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In terms of who goes, who are we talking about in terms of cultural policy? The data suggest that everybody goes. It's a very democratic audience. The audience for the arts in particular, or perhaps museums, tends to be stereotyped as a white-haired white lady with a degree in fine arts, but if you pluck a person from a museum floor, it's very unlikely they'll fit that description. Males are equally likely to go as females. The degree you'll find will probably be an MBA, as opposed to an MFA, and the person you pick out probably will not have graduated from high school. The audience is much more pluralistic than what people see it as, and probably even more than what culture managers see it as.

The past evidence of trends—the strongest factor relating to participation in cultural activities is education above and beyond any other factor—shows that Canada's population has become much more educated since 1960. The baby boom has meant that there are more people, so you expect, in a sense, a flourishing marketplace.

To try to get some concrete impression as to what that is, I've given you a couple of graphs. What I would like you to take away from this are two graphs.

The first graph is a box—in this case it's a rectangle—combined with a triangle leading up against it. The ones I've given you are divided into lines. This is the Canadian population. This is the most important demographic graph in terms of social policy. This is the Canadian population broken up into 10-year age bands. People at the top are over 75. People at the bottom are 15 to 24. As for whether or not they have completed high school, the people in the box have not completed high school, while the people in the triangle have completed high school and have gone off to college and university.

The interesting thing about this is that as the population rolls up through the ages, the population keeps getting bigger and bigger. If you're selling something to 45- and 55-year-olds, in ten years, you're going to have a bigger market. All the growth will be due to people who have a post-secondary education. At some point, as the population rolls along, half your market will have some kind of post-secondary education. It dramatizes the effect of education on the population as it grows older.

The second graph is a trick question because you have to turn it sideways so the arrow points down. This is also the Canadian population and where it's going.

I brought a small prop along. If there are any Americans present, this is not from Havana.

Pretend the Canadian population is in this box. As the Canadian population gets more education, they move to the right of this. As they get older, they move down.

Where is the Canadian population going? Into the bottom corner. They're already more educated, and they're slowly getting older. Their hair is going, and it's going gray. Their stomachs are going. Their kids are going. Their mortgages are going.

The population is going here. Any activity in this corner of the population is going to yield stronger market potential. Anybody up here is going to have weaker market potential.

The next question, of course, is, where are cultural activities in terms of the flow of the population? We summarized the general trend in the following two graphs.

They were much prettier in the original; they don't photocopy very well. These are a little hard to see, so I've given you black and white photocopies.

Take a quick read of where cultural activities are in terms of social change, demographic changes. Just for comparison, look at the top box, which is exercise. Is exercise more important or less important for these people? The dark box is more important. Exercise is related to increasing age as you go to the right, but it's also predominated by being young. The fact that people are growing older and more educated means you're still in an age where exercise is important, but as the baby boom gets older, it'll become less and less important.

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An interesting example is that reading is purely a triangle. Where the population is going is right into the heart of where reading is the most important in terms of people's participation and activities. A thing like sound recording is basically a youth activity; it's independent of education. If you're young you listen to records and if you're old you tend not to listen to records, as a global observation. For people who are older and more educated, television is not as an important activity as it is if you're older and less educated.

Of more interest to the cultural activities is the final page, which looks at specific things you can do. Just to show how this can be read, rather than doing some of the culture, one starts with games and going to sports events. What this suggests is that going to a sports event is independent of education. If you're young or less than middle-aged you go. The link there is obviously what's known as family life cycle. If you're young you go to sports events. If you have young kids you take them to sports events. As you get older you don't go to sports events any more.

Look at some of the cultural activities. Going to movies is primarily a youth culture activity. There's some effect due to education; where the population is going, going to the movies is still an above average cultural participation activity. As people get older it will become less important.

For things like libraries, art galleries, and museums the predominant effect is strictly education. Once people become educated they tend to go there more than the average and they stay that way for the rest of their lives. So the audiences for libraries, art galleries, and museums grew in the 1970s and will stay strong.

With things like performing arts events, theatre, and classical music, there's a fairly strong effect due to age. As you get older, if you're educated you tend to use these things more. In a sense the market for theatre and the market for classical music should have been fairly weak in the 1960s and 1970s but should be getting stronger in the 1980s and the 1990s.

From those characteristics on who participates in cultural activities and where the population is going, as a rule of thumb you can get some idea of what's going to become more popular, who's doing it, and what's going to become less popular. This is some kind of beacon or guide in terms of where you should be going, where you should be concentrating efforts and resources.

It's obvious that certain activities have more potential in the coming years, such as the performing arts, which should have been somewhat in the doldrums for a while. Books and magazines have a stronger base. Some things you can expect to see backing off are attendance at sports events and attendance at movies.

Just as a footnote, it's important to recognize that these are projections of what might be; they're not prescriptions of what's going to be. Movie audiences have been projected to be declining for 20 years and in fact they have, but revenues from movies has constantly been going up. Baby shampoo sales should be going down because there's no longer a baby boom, but you reposition baby shampoo and you sell it to adults as being gentle and good for your hair. The projections are something to plan from; they're not a railway track you're glued to.

What those broad demographic shifts mean is that cultural activities should become increasingly important in Canadian society as the educated baby boomers slowly become older. It also means you still have that box of people who have less than high school education and their numbers aren't diminishing. So you have a fairly complex audience you have to deal with as the baby boom gets older.

Just before closing I want to look at the cultural labour force for a second. In terms of gathering statistics on culture, it's much easier to find an institution, go to it, and ask what their budget is like, because you can collect those numbers and you can process them. It's much harder to find out what the average Canadian does in his evenings.

It's also quite difficult to study what is known as the culture labour force, because they tend to be self-employed. You can't go to an institution and survey a payroll. It's very hard to find these people. Institutions tend to have been well studied, but the audience for culture and the people who create culture tend to have been less well studied and, coincidentally, less well served in terms of research and policy, I think.

What are some of the distinctive features of the culture labour force? As you may have heard, it is in fact surprisingly large. Even if you define it fairly narrowly it's about 1.5% of the labour force, which is probably still bigger than the famous fishing, mining, and forestry activities. It gets much bigger depending on how you want to extend your definition.

Who are they? They tend to be self-employed, as I mentioned, and they also tend to be more educated. Because the population has become more educated, you have more people working in cultural occupations. Data have shown that from 1971 on it's been one of the fastest-growing occupations in the Canadian economy.

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Because people are self-employed they have special needs. They can't apply to government programs. Unemployment insurance doesn't apply if you were never employed but were simply self-employed. If you need training on new technology, you don't have management who is spotting training courses and paying you to go and take them. You can't even find out about them if you're self-employed. These are quite distinct features.

In terms of the demographics, the shift at the moment is that because the baby boom is aging, you have the same feature any labour force has. A lot of the senior managers are in their 50s and are about to retire. There were no promotions for 15 years, so there is no layer of people coming behind them to replace them. So you're about to find a labour force crunch in terms of expertise.

The other stat that's coming out is from the 1991 census. The rapid rate of growth that the cultural labour force had for 20 years has in fact started to decline. You're getting to a point where people are going to be leaving the culture labour force, and not as many people are interested in culture careers as they used to be.

Overall, in terms of social change in those data, in cultural participation and cultural audiences, they give one a better sense, I think, of the role of culture in Canadian life and if it's getting bigger or smaller in the next 10 or 20 years. It gives a sense of some kind of fine tuning—if you're going to develop cultural policies, where are some of the areas likely to need it more and some that are going to need it less in the next five or ten years?

In terms of issues, I'd agree partially with the previous statement. In a sense, marketing, promotion, and education around culture are really quite critical for a whole variety of reasons. One problem you can see on the horizon is that the labour force may start to get weaker just at the time you need the labour force to be stronger.

Thanks.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Winn has advised us that due to an emergency he's going to be late, so I suggest we start with questions with Mr. Cheney and Professor Martin.

Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay—Columbia, Ref.): Thank you. I found both of your presentations exceptionally interesting, and I thank you for coming.

While I've been listening to you, and I have been listening to every word, I've also been taking in the pictures or the depictions of people around this room. The reason I mention that is because it's very germane to your presentation. I suspect that most of these drawings would have been done probably in the era of 1910 to 1920—at least they appear to have been—and I believe they represent the Canadian culture of that time. They obviously don't show any computer screens. They don't show people at desks or beside photocopiers. They do show people, in the far corner there, bundled up as you would not be if the country of Canada was on the equator. It shows an agrarian life. It shows labour.

Our society has changed since then, but I suggest to you that these pictures are a reflection of the culture in Canada in the 1910s and 1920s and yet they don't have anything to do with cultural policy.

Another observation. Before being silly enough to get into politics, I had the good fortune to work at different times in my life for two very large multinational Japanese corporations. I discovered that within the Japanese culture there is no such thing as sarcasm. It simply does not exist within their culture. For example, as you can see, I'm relatively bald, and in Canada people might say that I'm follically challenged, which is a form of sarcasm. I would not expect that from anybody Japanese, because it's not part of their culture. Or somebody might suggest that I would make a good hairbrush salesman, and again, this is sarcasm, which is part of our culture.

What I'm trying to drive at is this. An event currently under way in Ottawa is Winterfest, which is a pot-pourri of events, some of it with government money, but with an awful lot of corporate sponsorship, and things that Canadians choose to go to.

In Calgary you have the Stampede, complete with its hats and jeans and line dancing. Perhaps the Stampede is a better example of what I think of as quintessentially western Canadian culture, and yet it doesn't have government intervention.

I wrote down a phrase: “the role of culture in Canadian life”. What I'm trying to drive at is the level of government intervention to try to create Canadian culture. Is there a role for government intervention to try to create Canadian culture, in the face of the examples I've just given? Is the government responsible for getting the Calgary Stampede to get everybody to wear red hats instead of white hats? In your judgment, where does the government fit in to the whole role of creating Canadian culture? “Consumption of culture” was another term that one of you used. Who participates in culture? “The audience for culture”. Those terms, with the greatest respect, I don't think happen to fit together with the Calgary Stampede, with Winterfest, or with these pictures.

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In your judgment, should the government be involved in trying to create Canadian culture, or should we be encouraging and reflective of where Canadians across the board want to be going and not stand in their way? There's a difference.

The Chairman: Are you asking that question of both witnesses?

Mr. Jim Abbott: Yes.

The Chairman: Ms. Martin.

[Translation]

Ms. Michèle Martin: Personally, I don't think that the government should be directly involved in creating Canadian culture. If that is the impression I gave, it is incorrect. That wasn't my intention at all.

I believe that the government should be involved in creating infrastructures to enable people to create Canadian culture, such infrastructures would enable Canadians to develop cultural products. We should give them the technological means, establish networks, or as I suggested earlier, national institutions. In addition to such technical means, Canadians should also be given financial support which, according to their culture or region, could be used to develop the cultural products they wish to create. I didn't intend to suggest that the government should become involved in cultural creation as such.

However, I did talk about developing a Canadian identity. I believe that it is important, at least in general terms, that we know who we are and where we are going. In that regard, I believe that the government has a role, but that doesn't cost any money. That has already been shown. We increasingly forget that. It could be simply something to remind us of what Canadians are and of what this country is. That's all.

[English]

Mr. Terry Cheney: The question really comes at some of the big enigmas of trying to do culture policy and the questions of what culture is, what its effect is on society or individuals, and what the role of government is in that. I don't think you're asking a research question, but that's not going to stop me from trying to answer it.

I think the key thing in a government role in culture is deciding what the legitimate goals are and what role you can play in them. I alluded earlier to whether there is a legitimate role to produce any film whatsoever because it creates jobs. Porky's, of the 1970s or 1980s, was the example I gave. Or is the role to produce only a certain kind of film such as that which the NFB might have done?

You need to know what you are trying to achieve and then what as a government you do.

Specifying the goals would be the first thing you would have to do. What do you expect to have out there? Do you want a museum in every city? Do you want one museum for the entire country? What is the role of government in that? I assume that as a government you would not want “to create culture”, to use your phrasing.

You might want government to nurture, support, encourage, promote, provide infrastructure, affect the education system, heaven forbid put in place some distribution channels, make people aware of culture having a role in life, and give it some exposure. Not too many Canadians, I would conjecture, actually see these pictures and have the time to sit back and wonder what they tell them about life in Canada.

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There are huge, huge questions of identity and unity. The obvious example is that if you've got a sense of identity, you probably don't have a sense of unity with 30 million other Canadians. What is the goal of culture there?

I would say there clearly is a role for government in culture, which might be to suppress it—you can choose the goals—nurture it, or actively promote it. There are a number of contexts in terms of being, in a sense, in government.

As a bit of an extreme statement, civilizations are usually remembered for their cultural accomplishments—the Library of Alexandria, Shakespeare's works. The Canada Council I don't think helped Shakespeare; Shakespeare did it on his own. The Library of Alexandria was built probably because somebody said it would be good for their civilization to have it.

I think there is a role for government in trying to do some of those things that make life consciously worth living, but you want goals and you want to choose the mechanism. It's certainly not, I don't think, heavy-handed; that simply wouldn't work. The people who were trying to create culture would go someplace else and do it on their own anyway.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Madam Tremblay, please.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Thank you for your presentation and for appearing here. Since we in the Bloc Québécois have been here in Ottawa, we have worked very hard to defend Canadian culture, while never losing sight of our sovereignist philosophy. There are good reasons for that. One of them is that it is because we want Canada to be made up of Canadians, not Americans, and to define itself in positive terms.

We also asked Canadians: “What does it mean to be a Canadian, as opposed to be an American?” The answer often given was: “In Canada we have Francophones.” We were often told that in Canada there are Quebeckers.

Therefore, in asking our questions today, our viewpoint is that Canada should develop a strong culture, because we want a neighbour with a strong identity.

But when you talk about developing Canadian cultural policy, what should our definition of culture be? Should it be normative or anthropological? How should we differentiate culture and propaganda?

As there was no Department of Culture, the government created the Department of Canadian Heritage, and in the last few years we have seen a confusion between culture and propaganda. They imagine that by spending money on flags, they are going to give Canadians an identity, by talking about identity and culture, they are going to impose unity. Before we can clarify this issue, and decide on what is to be included in Canadian culture, I believe that a number of vague concepts must first be defined more clearly. I don't know hat your view on this is.

[English]

Mr. Terry Cheney: That's a fair list of questions. I think there is a lot of—landmines is the wrong image—quicksand in delving into culture.

Culture is certainly one of the slipperiest words in the English language, and it gets used for a lot of things. Arts tend to get equated with culture. “Arts” is typically used, in terms of federal culture property, for non-profit performing arts groups, which becomes arts and then becomes culture and you've got billions of dollars of economic impact.

Culture is slippery for a lot of reasons. This probably comes back to the issue of goals. Is it anthropological? That is partially what you were talking about. Is it a sense of value, right and wrong? “The good society” was the phrase I stole from Galbraith's book. Is it propaganda? It tends I think to easily slip and be used as propaganda.

It seems to me that culture grows by itself. If the state casts a culture and gives it to Canadians so that they can feel Canadian, it isn't going to work. What government can do is supply seeding, nurturing support, to help people to grow. In a sense cultural policy doesn't create art; it helps people to interact with and appreciate art and culture, to form their own sense of identity, which might take six months or 600 years. I don't think you can ram it through all that quickly.

Again, those are big questions. Are you talking about something anthropological? Hockey Night in Canada is probably the most distinctive part of Canadian culture, or at least it used to be. Is it still on the CBC? Just what are the cultural policy goals? Are they a sense of identity? Are they anthropological? Are they a sense of social good? Are they economic? We haven't talked about that at all here yet.

• 1200

[Translation]

Ms. Michèle Martin: I would just add that I fully agree with my colleague here. It is a fact that culture develops from our behaviour, from our activities and actions, from our ideologies. That is why I said initially that there is at least one thing which distinguishes us from the United States, mainly the basis of social justice. I believe that it still exists in Canada. For how long? I don't know, but I believe that it is an important feature of our culture.

There was also mention of bilingualism, but, here again, I'm not sure how long it will last. These are two specific points. The rest is somewhat vague, as you said, because we are in a multicultural environment. As my colleague indicated, we should not impose one single culture on everyone. We should allow cultural innovation to develop from our different groups, from our different regions.

You referred to the difference between culture and propaganda and I think this is an important point. Indeed, if the federal government would begin to create culture, then we could perhaps talk about propaganda. That's why I, together with my colleague, would stress that it is important for the government to become involved in developing infrastructures, institutions and such like, and leave people with the opportunity to create culture.

Nor does that mean that I think that all culture should be created by those methods. Obviously, there will always be some culture created by the private sector. It would be idiotic not to use that, and that won't happen either.

Therefore, we have to be careful, because if culture were to be left completely to the government, I think that in that case it would be bordering on propaganda. Obviously, we want to avoid that at any cost.

As I indicated, I would like to see a cultural policy developed from the grassroot's level, not from above. If it is in fact developed by the people themselves, I think that in itself would avoid the danger of it becoming propaganda.

[English]

The Chairman: Ms. Hardy, do you have a question?

Ms. Louise Hardy (Yukon, NDP): I have a couple of comments to make.

I'm from the Yukon, and I think the north has a really strong cultural identity. I just sat here and added up all the festivals and events we have, all of which are generated in a very poor part of the country.

There are winter music festivals, day festivals, and an international storytelling festival. There's Sourdough Rendezvous and dog sled racing. It's a combination, I think, of vision, business, and volunteers, and it fills a huge niche in a community in which we go through boom-and-bust cycles all the time.

The volunteers come out of the community. They don't have work, but they put their effort into an international storytelling festival, which in turn is funded each year to a certain extent by government grants. The Yukon offers arts grants to artists so they can go out, improve their skills, come back, teach choirs locally, and travel through the north.

This has led to really cohesive communities. You have to work together, for one thing, and it pulls all kinds of people together to celebrate the first nations' stories.

The Gwich'in people, I think, have the oldest cultural event every year. They have the circumpolar gathering of Gwich'in people, at which they have their traditional games.

I find it really exciting that the culture is interwoven throughout the society and peoples' daily lives. You go to work and then you volunteer: you're in a play, you're coordinating children. It really does build a strong community.

I don't have a question, but I'd like your thoughts on that.

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[Translation]

Ms. Michèle Martin: So you have various players involved: the government through funding provided to artists; and also the private sector, through people who become voluntarily involved and develop a very deep sense of community and community identity.

But if you had a system, networks and infrastructures to help you, not only to have those cultural activities in the North, but also to show people what is going on in our region, it seems to me that would be to the benefit of Canadians as a whole.

[English]

Mr. Terry Cheney: I was at the storytelling festival last year; it was quite neat.

I think you raised two important points. One is that the real significance of this kind of activity is the social community interaction it represents. People can probably hear better music on TV or listen to a better sound on their stereo, but people want to go out and meet other people in their community, talk to them, see what's going on, and exchange ideas. As an obvious highway or route to social communication, these kinds of things are quite important, regardless of whether they're great art or not.

I think the idea that the activity should grow out of fairly natural roots raises the interesting question of at what point you say this is getting good and needs to be managed. Then it possibly becomes over-managed. The trade-off in terms of government policy is that you don't want to over-manage it and make it all process and system as opposed to what it originally was.

The Chairman: Mr. Bélanger.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa—Vanier, Lib.): I too listened to both presentations and some of the questions. I wanted to correct my colleague Mr. Abbott and thank him for the publicity, but let's get the name right: it's Winterlude. But thanks for the publicity. I hope you'll be partaking of some of those events, especially the one on the Hill. We saw those sculptures representing the provinces and the territories starting to take shape today. It should be interesting.

I wanted to say that this notion of government supporting cultural policy, or the expansion and flourishing of culture, can be seen I suppose as the old half-empty, half-full glass...by some as intervention and by others as support. On that, we'll possibly have to agree to disagree.

Mr. Cheney, I don't have any difficulty with the tendencies you illustrated through demographics and where things are going. I think it can be fairly easily ascertained that indeed as the population ages and as the education level of this population increases, there will more than likely be a tendency towards certain activities as opposed to others. I think most people would accept that.

This brings me to a question directed to Madam Martin, and to you perhaps.

[Translation]

Ms. Martin said that a cultural policy should be active rather than passive, and that we should stop addressing certain situations on a case-by-case basis. My question is as follows: If, given Canada's population projections, we can see already that certain cultural activities or areas will be more popular and attract more people, should the country's cultural policy seek to support that trend or rather to address potential shortcomings or projective weaknesses?

If we can already foresee when the baby boomers reach retirement age, Canadian society will be faced with serious gaps in other age groups, should the government focus rather on these groups, supporting them through the establishment of a legislative, regulatory or incentive framework? Or should we be trying to do everything, which is not always easy?

Therefore, if we can project future trends, should we follow that direction and try to provide help where there is some chance of success, or should we move in a different direction?

• 1210

Essentially, that is the question I am asking myself and I would like to have your views on it. Thank you.

Ms. Michèle Martin: First, I would like to correct one small point; I didn't say that we should stop working on a case-by-case basis, but rather that we should not do just that. What I was proposing is that we develop a comprehensive federal cultural policy covering all areas and, as you pointed out, that we try to identity of where there are strengths and weaknesses.

I believe—and you will say that I want everything—that we should not just put money where there are shortcomings or even where we are strong so as to make more money in those areas. I think that a comprehensive cultural policy could help us to strike a balance between money allocated to weak areas and that given to strong sectors. Demographic studies, like those conducted by my colleague, would be of great assistance in helping us to identify our strong points. We have to continue to act where we are strong. We have to continue to invest money where we are strong.

I believe that the government should really encourage what we already have and those areas which are strong. But, and I'd like to come back to this because I believe it is so important, I also think that government support should be based on groups and not be interventionist in nature. The member for Yukon gave an example of this earlier. In the North, there are groups able to get organized and determine what they need. If they need research for their purposes, then research should be done. People would have to be hired to do that work, and that's what creates jobs.

I believe it is important to have a real vision of how culture should develop, and not limit oneself to a case-by-case approach. When I talk about a proactive policy, I mean encouraging new developments while continuing to support those areas which are already going very well.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Terry Cheney: Thank you.

It's an interesting question. One of the projects I worked on was the Bovey task force and funding of the arts. My whimsical characterization of that is you're in an impossible situation because you're trying to get business and government working on the same project. For business you've got to go and say you've got a great success and ask them to invest. In government you tend to go and say you've got something that's failing and ask them to help. It's hard to get people together on this same theme.

I would agree completely that if you're talking about what you are doing you need an overall map or strategy. I assume a cultural policy is the strategy. It's the goals and the means and your decision on how to do it. That strategy wouldn't allow you to distinguish between strengths and weaknesses, because you would know what you are trying to do. Just because something is, say, on the decline now, it doesn't mean it will be on the decline in 20 years. You as a government have to be thinking 20 years ahead.

The data in the 1970s, for example, showed movie attendance declining and museum attendance sky-rocketing. Now if you had said choose one of them and go with it, let's support film because it's having trouble and the museums are optimistic...well, museum attendance didn't grow an inch in the decade of the 1980s. Movies did just fine. Even though you might want to make a choice as to which one ought we to be involved with, that doesn't mean a lot of other factors aren't going to completely swamp your predictions. The answer is you can't ignore either of them.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Muise, do you have a question before we go on to round two?

Mr. Mark Muise (West Nova, PC): Yes, if I could, Mr. Chairman. I also apologize for having been absent for a few minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to first thank our witnesses today and our guests. They've been very informative, even though I've missed a short portion it.

• 1215

I have one question that for me is very important, and I think it's more general than specific. This concerns me a little bit because it's so vast. In order to be very effective, a cultural policy covers a wide range of different topics and subjects, and I'm wondering if it's your belief that we could truly have a comprehensive cultural federal policy. Secondly, what principles and objectives could be included in such a policy?

Mr. Terry Cheney: I'll go first and give you some time to think.

In terms of a cultural policy, I think in the past it's tended to be patchwork reactive, as has been brought out. If you're going to do it well, you do need a comprehensive cultural policy. The question is how detailed you are going to get. I think the detail becomes much more flexible, but you should know about the goals, the overall strategy. You should know all the characters in play. You should know all the factors that might influence them. Then when something specific comes up you're in a much better position to judge how we can act and whether we should act in this case.

I think you need a plan or a map or a strategy more so than a battleship full of all kinds of programs trying to cover up every square inch of the landscape.

Ms. Michèle Martin: I agree with my colleague here. You were talking about principles. I think one of the most important principles that should be included in a cultural policy would be public interest before industry or private interests. To a certain degree culture is not negotiable. I think these are two very important principles I could see in such a general policy.

The Chairman: Very briefly, Mr. Muise.

Mr. Mark Muise: I guess this is more of a comment. I believe there has to be a cultural policy. I am just somewhat concerned or am of the opinion that it's really so difficult to do that we might not be able to do it quite as well as we should, but I hope I'm wrong.

The Chairman: I hope you are wrong too. That's what we are trying to do. We do our best.

I have a request for a second line of questions.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Ms. Martin said that there were two important principles, but I heard only one. Could she please repeat them?

The Chairman: Ms. Martin.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: You just indicated that...

Ms. Michèle Martin: The first is that culture is in the public interest, and the second is that culture should not be negotiable.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.): I have two questions for Mr. Cheney. The first has to do with television and the second has to do with the cultural labour force.

The first is inspired by an article I read by the American political scientist Robert Putnam, called “The Strange Death of Civic America”, in which he tries to understand why civic institutions have died in the United States to the extent that they have. He comes up with a thesis that it's because of television, what he calls the 850-pound gorilla of leisure time. He talks about the amount of viewing, which has increased over the years in the United States.

If you apply that principle to your little boxes, it seems to me that what you have.... By far the most interesting statistic is the one on television, because if you were to render it the size of the viewership so to speak, or the amount of leisure time it takes up among Canadians, it would be a huge box and the other box would be little.

The first question is the displacement question. That is to say, if it's true that older, more educated people are watching less television, will that be to a sufficient degree that you could predict dramatic consequences for the other boxes, as you couldn't in the 1970s about film viewership and museum attendance, or is it just a marginal effect?

The second question is about the cultural workers. In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts has just produced a study of the evolving art situation there for the last 30 years called “The American Canvas Report”, and it also says what you say. There's sort of a decline in many cases of the arts, which you can start to document in the 1990s in the United States for a set of reasons, some of which are American-specific.

• 1220

But one thing that might be a constant is the fact that one of the reasons for the boom was that there was a group of young people who were willing to work for peanuts in the arts and sacrifice everything, and in a sense subsidize it through their youth, through their not caring. But as they get to be older and more professional and have families and greater expectations, they have to be paid properly, so you can't count on that inner subsidy.

Do you think that's true for the Canadian arts scene as well? Certainly you talked about an aging labour force.

So, two questions.

Mr. Terry Cheney: The scale-of-impact question is the other side of proportions and participation rates. If you're managing the sector you want to know the scale of impacts—absolutely. Even in terms of the proportion or the rate of change, as I mentioned earlier, there are 97 factors affecting this, of which social change or demographics is one, and I've gone with the most prominent one, which is education. This is something you'd bear in the back of your mind when making a decision. You would not try to quantify and prescribe change. And certainly, as in the illustration I gave before, just because you predict something doesn't mean it's going to happen at all.

When you look at the scale of participation and activities, the battleship example comes back. It's moving it very slowly. Nothing cataclysmic is going to happen overnight. It will be a slow change. It will be affected by a lot of other factors, and probably what your friends do is going to affect it more than anything.

The scale of impact, which is interesting in terms of the television example, is probably the reading one. People do go to museums—keeners go five times a year, and everybody else takes relatives in town once a year, so there's some impact there. If you have children you may go five times a year, so there's massive exposure to children. But reading is something people do every day if they are readers, so in terms of scales of activities, reading is probably going to have much more social or cultural impact than going to symphonies. You might see more marked changed in terms of going to symphonies, but in terms of scale of impact, reading is going to swamp it.

The scale question is quite big. There's going to be a slow rate of change. Scale is important and scale will influence where you think it's most important to act. My quick answer to that would be go to reading as opposed to going to symphonies.

In terms of the cultural labour force, there are a few interesting comments. It seemed to me that a conjecture from 1971 to 1981, for example, when the arts occupations were growing quite radically, was that the baby boom had just graduated from school. If you're 24 and unemployed, it's much nicer to say you're a writer or a painter or an actor than it is to say you're unemployed. The people in a sense opted into occupations that required no certification to get them. The fact that the data stayed fairly strong suggests that wasn't the only reason why the numbers of people wanting to be an artist or a musician or whatever went up.

I think two things in terms of retention in the cultural labour force. One is that if you are highly educated and you look around at what other people are apparently making if they're highly educated, you're going to be discouraged about your economic benefits from your job. And if you look at the 1980s, which had been fairly depressing in terms of the economy in general and public policy attitudes to culture, your psychological benefits and rewards are perhaps going down as well. So there's probably been an impetus to leave these careers if you had the chance.

In terms of youth, the interesting quote that came out of the cultural labour force studies, which comes back to the role of government or anybody is, “We don't need to train the cultural labour force. We have freelancers.” This really comes down to your student question. Somebody else out there is training and will work for free, so why do we have to accept any responsibility for this? I think it does in fact remain an issue. The fact that the baby boom has gone through and some of those people who are there are leaving means it will be an issue.

The Chairman: Mr. Obhrai.

Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, Ref.): Thank you.

I'm extremely pleased to hear your views on this. What seems to come out of this is that culture has its own way of evolving with the least government intervention. That's what I've been hearing from you. I hope that on the government side they'll take note of that.

In your presentation you did make some comments that piqued my interest, and I would like you to discuss this. Your demographics in your little box over there, which indicate that the Canadian population is becoming educated and at the same time becoming older, combined with Madame's comment that in her class she's getting negative feeling from students about Canadian culture.... Do you see? There is the new generation having negative feelings over the Canadian culture and yet there is this older generation where the Canadian population is going towards this thing. I don't know whether this is really good for us or whether it's going to create serious difficulties in the future.

• 1225

You also mentioned that the baby boom crisis is unique to Canada per se and not to the global part of the world as well. Again coming back to the same thing, this means that in due course of time, if it's unique to Canada and not overseas, our entry into the overseas market would be missing. We'd be missing reaching out to this new cultural thing happening overseas with the younger generation, yet we are of the older generation here and getting out there.

These kinds of claims that you have indicated are quite worrisome. What would your comment be?

The Chairman: I take it your question was directed to Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Deepak Obhrai: Both can answer because they both alluded to this little demographics difficulty at one time or another.

Mr. Terry Cheney: I'll try first. In terms of what I took as sarcasm almost, that Canadian students have nothing to define Canada except for negatives—we're not American, we're not this, we're not that—that's almost a caricature, although it's kind of the archetype, which is the common myth. I think the two things that reflect on that....

Canadian culture and Canadian cultural policy, I would sense, are really quite important in the kind of life you offer Canadians, but you can't be mistaken as to how important it is when someone gets up in the morning.

One of the projects I worked on recently was the environment, the global warming. What's the attitude of Canadians to global warming? It's hardly on the scale. Deficit, unemployment, health care, and education come first, and eventually you hit the environment. You're not likely to hit culture until you get to the third page of the questionnaire. It may be important and it's important that you act on it, but don't expect it to occupy the CBC's debate for 19 hours a day.

The second thing is in terms of youth. The attitude of youth to the environment was almost non-existent. They're worried about pimples and things; they're not worried about the environment, and I don't think they're worried about culture. So I would see the read on youth as being fairly natural, not problematic like the read on old age, for example.

I think it's important in terms of a cultural policy to know where you fit in and not to mistake the signs from out there. One of the things that I think is fairly important in terms of a cultural policy is to know what a realistic expectation is and whether you're doing well against those expectations. Don't expect to have 100% of all film screens showing Canadian films; you're going to be disappointed. What do you want? What are you going to try to achieve? Know what the reality is out there and focus yourself in correspondingly.

The Chairman: Madame Martin.

[Translation]

Ms. Michèle Martin: I agree with my colleague. I would just add that in the final analysis, if young people are less concerned about Canadian culture and less aware of Canadian culture and identity than the baby boomers generation was, their reaction may be directly linked to the economic situation. They have very little hope of finding the kind of job they want. They think about economic considerations before anything else. They go to university to get a degree, and not unfortunately to develop an overall view of society, a broader and more critical understanding of society. They just want to get a degree so that they can... I understand them. This is not a criticism. I understand them, because they are in a far more difficult situation than we were at the same age.

So, that is very much on their minds when you ask them what is the Canadian identity, what is Canadian culture. As my colleague was saying earlier, they don't really have time to think about it. Between trying to acquire the skills needed in order to find a job and doing all those other things that young people are interested in, Canadian culture is far from being a major concern.

What they are interested in, however, and I think that we could have a cultural policy aimed at that, are modern cultural products, Canadian cultural products that reflect Canada as a modern country, if I may say so.

• 1230

That is something that comes back again and again in discussions with young people. They are forever telling us, for instance, that it's all very well to have Canadian cultural products, but they've had just about enough of historical figures, horses, etc. That they believe there is a modern Canadian culture that should be depicted in film and theatre.

That is an aspect of culture that they are interested in. I think they would like to see the universal dimension of Canadian culture in our products.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Bonwick.

Mr. Paul Bonwick (Simcoe—Grey, Lib.): Thank you.

My notepad is getting to be a mess again. Every time we have a panel of guests, I seem to change my feelings or certainly my opinions on Canadian culture and its importance. I think that is good. I hope that continues for many years because it means I'm learning every time a guest panel comes in and speaks and gives their opinions and views on it. That's very important.

We've wrestled with this over many meetings and it keeps coming back to every group of panellists that comes forward. People are asking for a clear definition of what Canadian culture is. I've been pleased throughout that nobody is offering so much a clear definition, but they are offering a description of what it is or what its importance is.

With regard to Madame Martin's comments on diversity and how distinct it is, I wholeheartedly agree. To me it is as diverse as one's DNA. It's not the U.S., it's not France, it's not Great Britain; it's Canada. I think it's important that we as a committee understand that. We're dealing with simply Canadian culture. We're not comparing it to the U.S. and we're not comparing it to Britain or France; it's simply Canadian culture.

With respect to Mr. Cheney's comments on class orientation, again I think it's important that we as a committee understand that it is not class oriented either. To me, experiencing culture is as simple as a parent standing out in front of the Parliament buildings or in front of an ice sculpture and spending a couple of minutes describing that sculpture to the child. To me that's as simple as what culture can be.

I do have some concerns over some of the economic impacts or some of the graphs you've shown and some of the explanations you've given. That concern is with regard to your comment that because in the industry in general they're self-employed in a lot of cases, there seems to be a lack of ability to access information on programs, training, etc.

That flies right in the face of your earlier comment that the people in the industry tend to be more highly educated. If in fact they're more highly educated, then they do have access to the information. I'm not saying the programs and the training support are there or that there's enough of it, but they certainly have access to the information of what is available, either through libraries or through their universities or whatever the case might be.

I take exception to one comment that was made by Mr. Abbott, and that is with regard to creating Canadian culture. Should government be creating culture? It's not something that's produced in a factory. We as a government don't produce it. I think there is an enormous role for a government to play in supporting it.

I've just made a couple of short comments on how I think it can be simple. I don't think we have to make it overly complicated when we're defining or describing it. I have one paragraph that I wrote to the chair back in early December on what culture was to me. I think it has to be very broad and somehow a living definition, because it will change today and it will change tomorrow. It's changed since I started.

Canadian culture is what is relative or significant to one. It's one person; it's one group; it's one province; it's one country. It's that simple to me. I think that allows the broadness that whatever is important to Caroline may not be important to me, but it's important to our culture.

I've identified in three steps how I think this committee could be very effective. First—

• 1235

The Chairman: Mr. Bonwick, the problem is you have to make it short because we have three more requests for questions and time is flying. We have barely 20 minutes left.

Mr. Jacques Saada (Brossard—La Prairie, Lib.): I have a point of order, Mr. Chairman. Since Paul has a degree in language, I'm prepared to give up my time to continue listening to what he has to say.

The Chairman: All right.

Mr. Paul Bonwick: I'll keep it short.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Liberals aren't used to that.

Mr. Paul Bonwick: I apologize, but I hope you can appreciate that it's something I have a certain passion for and it's hard to say everything you want in four minutes.

I've done this in three steps and I would like your comments on this afterward. To head it off, I think the mission statement is to maintain and enhance Canadian culture. I worked on this formula using the KISS theory.

The number one step is understanding its importance. I've just briefly touched on some of the things that are important to me. Understanding is part of our character, it's part of what guides our children, it's going to be part of what guides ours and future governments in Canada, and it's also an enormous part of our economy. I think if we as a committee and as a country can understand that, that will be the first big step.

The second thing is to identify specific ways to enhance it. As some have already suggested, that is either to support a film or tax relief for volunteers or reading programs or literacy programs or investment and infrastructure, whether it be arenas, libraries, or museums. If you have further recommendations on specific strategies we should be focusing on, I'd like you to put them down on paper and submit them as well.

Third, encourage the government to agree with one and two and thereby move it up on the priority scale. The only way government is going to better address the situation on Canadian culture is for us to realize the significance and show them a strategy for how they can enhance or maintain Canadian culture, understanding that the pay-offs are short term as well, but are in fact very long term. I'm talking generational.

One of the last things I would like to recommend is that everybody here maybe take time and try to get a book called Castles in Spain and Other Screeds. I don't know if the panellists have had an opportunity to read it, but it speaks on building for tomorrow and not today. By that they're referring to future generations and investment in future generations and they don't mean just buildings.

I would like your comments on my three-point strategy.

The Chairman: I'll tell you what I would suggest, Mr. Bonwick, in the interests of time and to be fair to the two questioners who are left. I understand Mr. Saada has given his time. I would ask the two panellists if they would bear in mind what was said by Mr. Bonwick, and when they respond finally to the two questioners, maybe they could summarize their various points.

Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one question, but first I hope our colleagues from the Reform Party have noted that, if I heard correctly, the witnesses have mentioned at least twice that it's very important to develop a Canadian cultural policy. That point has been made at least twice and I've sensed a little reluctance on some parts of the committee as to just how important that is. I don't share that reluctance.

I'd like to introduce a couple of words to the discussion that I haven't heard, the promotion of culture and the protection of culture. There was an analogy drawn earlier to the west so let me also draw an analogy with the Canadian west.

It was the proactive governments of Macdonald and Laurier who secured the Canadian west and protected the lands themselves from a serious threat of a U.S. takeover. I believe there is a role for the Canadian government not in creating culture—I do share that concern—but in promoting and protecting Canadian culture. I believe there's a role for government just as the Canadian governments of Macdonald and Laurier proactively protected the Canadian west so that it is part of this nation today.

Do you feel there is a role in the promotion and protection of Canadian culture in that we live next to the gargantuan nation that we live next to?

The Chairman: Perhaps the two panellists could pick up these two questions and then I'll turn it over to Madam St-Hilaire.

• 1240

It's 12.40 p.m, and we have to break about 12.55 p.m., because we have a brief item of business to do.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Mr. Chairman, I'd even settle for yes or no.

[Translation]

Ms. Michèle Martin: First of all, I would like to mention the three levels involved in developing a cultural policy as was suggested and I would also like to say that I agree with all of that.

When you were talking about what is important and significant for someone, I do hope that you were talking about someone living in Canada. You said "important and significant to one". I suppose you mean by that "one Canadian." Is that right?

I think the first two levels are very important. You asked if we had any other ideas. For my part, I would add at the second level of the strategic plan I outlined in my presentation, the establishment of a national institute for culture. I wasn't joking, I was quite serious. This could be an area where, at the domestic level, cultural exchanges could be adapted to each of the regions. I believe that this might be something that would be very interesting at the federal level.

I will now go on to the second point. In that regard also, I included in my presentation a marketing strategy which would encompass—that goes without saying—promoting Canadian culture. That is what I meant by promoting culture.

But you must be careful. I would go back to Ms. Tremblay's comment: culture must not turn into propaganda. It is simply a matter of promoting those cultural products that are there, what people are doing, the cultural events they are involved in. I think this type of marketing in the cultural area could, to some extent, change the choices people make when they decide to watch TV, visit a museum, or go and listen to a concert.

I think you are absolutely right. I think all of that comes into play in designing strategies supporting a comprehensive cultural policy. As for protecting cultural products, that is usually done on a case-by-case basis. But I have already said what I think about that.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Terry Cheney: For the easy part of the answer, in terms of whether the cultural labour force is educated and knows about this, there's a fair amount of nitty-gritty in research that usually bores people. What you have in terms of the cultural labour force is people who are highly educated but they're also extremely highly specialized. In fact the study on the needs of the cultural labour force said they need to know basic management skills, basic communication skills. They know how to do their art really, really well, but they don't know how to survive very well, in terms of a career. That's not inconsistent. That exactly fits in with the labour force.

In terms of the bigger question of how you define culture, the first thing you do in culture statistics is try to head up all the different definitions of culture. You wouldn't end that task. So how you are going to define culture is going to be quite difficult. It's probably almost a religious or visionary thing, as opposed to a definition.

In terms of specific programs, there are suggestions of in a sense trying to maximize impact, and I'd come back to the earlier comment. You can't kind of lay any area aside, but there are certain kinds of things that I've called nodal or bridging activities.

One example is theatre. People who go to the symphony go to theatre. People who go to theatre go to museums. But people who go to museums may not go to symphonies. You can pick certain activities that kind of bridge and overlap, and you can find some priority areas where you might want to in a sense start and stimulate things. But in terms overall of the role of government, I think the question of promotion and protection is a rather good one.

The definition of culture I'm using at the moment is everything up till now. You want to protect it, you want to promote it, and in a sense you recreate it and you build for the future.

I think under roles for government are services to encourage and enhance that, which might include things like a culture institute and which clearly include research, marketing, finding out where things are going, and the impacts of technology, so that you can do your strategy, get your antenna up, and plan things.

Leadership is really an important role that a government can play, which is kind of promotion, and probably cost-free, although I haven't checked it. Those kinds of things I think government can do, and promotion, protection, studying.... A key element for action is quite conceivable if you have the plan and the definition and you know what you're going to talk about. It's hard to promote something if you can't explain what it is.

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The Chairman: Madam St-Hilaire.

[Translation]

Ms. Caroline St-Hilaire (Longueil, BQ): First of all, I would like to thank both presenters. However, I must say that you have raised doubts and question marks in my mind. I will ask two short questions, since I do not have much time.

First of all, when you spoke about young people, you mentioned that they are not as interested in culture. But earlier, in your presentation, if I understood you correctly, you seemed to be saying that, with the current social changes, the more educated people are, the more interested they are in culture. It's not very clear in my mind. I was under the impression that we were producing more and consuming more, that the demand for art was growing. So, I wonder if you could clarify this for me.

As for you, Ms. Martin, you spoke of a national institute for culture. It is probably because I did not understand very well your suggestion that I have a problem with it. Would your institute set national standards for artists? How would that institute help artists or at least support them?

That is all. Thank you.

[English]

Mr. Terry Cheney: I'll try to do the research on the apparent contradiction that young people are less interested, better educated people are more interested, but young people are now better educated, so why aren't they more interested? The key word is probably “less”. It's not that young people aren't interested; it's that the interest in certain kinds of cultural activities being monitored, such as reading and going to museums, tends to increase as you get older.

As the graph showed, just getting educated raises the interest. But as as you get older it tends to become more of a preoccupation; it plays a more important role. So it's not a contradiction, it's just a movement in that direction.

It's probably quite important in cultural policy to pay some attention to youth. For a variety of the reasons we've talked about, you can't expect the average 15-year-old Canadian to be all that keen about culture. It does raise some interesting questions, though, and the important touchstone is the image culture has. I don't think it has an image that is well understood, well appreciated, even for the man in the street, young people, and politicians.

One of the biggest problems the cultural sector has is how it's perceived and how it talks about itself, so image is quite a big issue. Young people are going to be the audiences of tomorrow, and they're also going to be the creators of tomorrow. You need a better sense of how they are seeing the culture.

I'm assuming, partially through the issues they have on their minds, it's not critical if they're not articulate about culture when they're 15 or 20, but it's also probably the age range at which people are becoming interested in culture as a career. They're probably away from but will go back to cultural participation as they have children of their own and grow older.

What exactly is the attitude of youth to culture? It might be a big issue to try to consider what it is and whether it is through the formal education system, which it may not be. How do you do something about it? Then the question of promotion and image indirectly supporting culture is more important than directly imposing it.

Anyway, that's de facto.

[Translation]

Ms. Michèle Martin: I would add to this that Canadian youth are not interested in Canadian culture as a heritage. Canadian culture does not interest them. On the other hand, they want to buy Canadian products and see Canadian products inasmuch as those Canadian products reflect what they believe to be a culture. But most often, this concern of theirs fits in more with popular culture than with official culture. Personally, I do not believe that these two aspects of culture, as far as youth is concerned, are contradictory.

As for the institute that I spoke of, as vision of Canadian culture should certainly not be forced upon people. What I had in mind was more an infrastructure that would first allow people to gather some information in order to better understand how to create a product and how to make it known. This institute would naturally have branches in each one of the regions but also most probably in different cities, somewhat on the model of the Université du Québec. Its presence could vary from region to region according to where the institute would be developed. It seems obvious to me that it is impossible to force the same vision of culture upon all Canadians, whether they come from the west or from the east. It would be totally irrational and unrealistic.

• 1250

[English]

The Chairman: Just before we close, Mr. Muise wanted to correct a statement he made. He wanted a brief moment.

Mr. Muise.

Mr. Mark Muise: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just for the record and for the benefit of my colleagues, I didn't want in any way for my comment earlier to be understood that I didn't support the idea of a cultural policy. I'm totally for a cultural policy.

I'm just echoing Mr. Bonwick's comments and Madam St-Hilaire's comments that every time I hear something else it seems to stir the pot again and realign my way of thinking. I support cultural policy absolutely.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Muise.

At this point

[Translation]

I would like to thank professor Martin for being here.

[English]

Mr. Cheney, I think it's been a really interesting experience for all of us. Obviously, as Mr. Bonwick so well said, every time we hear new panellists it opens up our minds and brings more questions, but that's what we are about. We eventually have to sort out the various findings and arrive at a conclusion.

I really appreciate your contribution today.

[Translation]

This meeting has been most interesting for all of us. Thank you all for coming here.

[English]

Thanks very much on behalf of all of us.

Just before we close,

[Translation]

I have to flag to members of the committee two issues. First, I would like Mr. Bélanger to explain to us in what context he made his request to invite representatives of the CRTC to appear.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Mr. Chairman, there are many things that are going on which involve the CRTC. It has been a while since we've met with its representatives and, with the agreement of the committee, it might be wise to invite them again. I would like myself to discuss with them a few subjects, among other things Canadian francophonie, implementation of the Official Languages Act and more particularly section 41 of the Act.

If the committee could find some time during this session to meet with the CRTC, I would appreciate it. Other members of the committee might even want to discuss with the CRTC other issues.

The Chairman: Ms. Martin and Mr. Cheney, you may be excused, thank you very much. You are not obliged to stay.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: But if you wish to, you are welcome.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott: It's very nice to find myself in agreement with Mr. Bélanger. I would suggest that the number of issues with the CRTC—the recent decision relative to a third national Canadian television network, their efforts with respect to Canadian content in broadcasting.... There are a tremendous number of issues. It would be very, very enlightening for this committee and for Canadians to understand where they're coming from and why. I would even go as far—and this is not mischievous; I'm absolutely serious—

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: We'll be the judge of that.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Okay, you be the judge of that.

I would even go as far as to suggest that we might want to sit quickly and as conveniently as possible and take a look at the number of topics. Perhaps we can even go to two sessions. I think the impact the CRTC is attempting to achieve within Canadian broadcasting policy is important enough to do that.

The Chairman: Mr. Godfrey, please.

Mr. John Godfrey: First, I agree with the idea of having the CRTC. Second, the only question I have is whether the specific subject matter, which of course we can discuss, might also not or better be discussed by the committee on official languages. I'm open to discussion with my colleague, but I do think there is another committee that thinks about these things.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Ms. Tremblay.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I fear the CRTC is a problem. Ever since I arrived in Ottawa, it has been a concern.

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The CRTC is supposed to serve Canadians and to protect the interest of Canadians; however, the CRTC is now serving the interests of corporations. All Canadians have to know this fact. I have even come to wonder if we should not simply abolish the CRTC.

We have to hold the CRTC accountable. Personally, I am very worried about what the CRTC is doing these days, about the decisions that it makes and about the deregulations that it imposes. I am convinced that these decisions will signal the decline of Canadian culture.

The Chairman: I have two questions for the committee. The Canadian Conference of the Arts was supposed to appear before us next Tuesday, February 17, within the framework of a study on culture, but it had to cancel its appearance since two of its representatives must go to UNESCO in Paris.

Therefore next Tuesday is a free day. I have two suggestions to submit to you. One is from Mr. Godfrey, who suggests that we have another meeting on the MAI.

[English]

MAI, multilateral accord on investment, to round it up. There's a suggestion of seeing the CRTC, and it seems there is a consensus to have the CRTC here.

I don't know if within the delay of just a few days we can get the top people at the CRTC to come. There are two suggestions; one date is open. I would like to have your views as to which one you would like to use first so that the clerk can—

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I would prefer that we notify the CRTC that we would want to ask them some questions but we should give them sufficient notice in order for them to be prepared. I wonder if the other members of the committee are of the same mind but there are two or three of us who are concerned about the CRTC. If there is a majority who is concerned along with us, I think we should clearly state that we are wondering about the usefulness of the Commission and that we intend to put questions to them.

The Chairman: They will know since this is a public meeting.

Mr. Muise.

Mr. Mark Muise: Mr. Chairman, I would say that there are more than two or three members of the committee who are concerned about the CRTC. I will had that, in my opinion it would be useful if we had one or two weeks in order to prepare for our meeting with them.

The Chairman: Of course. The CRTC will be notified that there was a general request that they appear before the committee and that we are giving them one or two weeks' notice so that everyone can come prepared. This is what you wish, isn't it?

I would also like to mention that the estimates will be ready at the end of February. We will then have the opportunity to hear all federal institutions. If you wish that certain meetings be dedicated to that, you will have to let the clerk know.

[English]

so that we can organize a schedule, if you want to go beyond the CRTC and question other institutions of government.

On Tuesday of next week, I don't know what time.... We will let you know if anything has been set up or whether, because the Conference of the Arts has postponed their appearance, we have a session or not.

I remind you that on Thursday, February 19, there is a tour of the CBC facilities, which I mentioned last week. The president will be there with the executive of the CBC. They really want to give us all their time, and I think it's an excellent opportunity for all of us to ask questions in an informal setting. We can question them on the concerns we have about the CBC and Radio-Canada. I would really hope that most of the members, if not all of us, can attend.

• 1300

[Translation]

Mr. Bélanger, you had questions concerning the list of witnesses. You have the floor.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Mr. Chairman, you will recall that

[English]

when we initially spoke—this was in the previous legislature—about attempting to look at the cultural policy and we wanted to travel, to go across the country and listen....

[Translation]

I had indicated at that time that perhaps it might be a good idea to go outside the traditional venues so that we could meet different witnesses, other than the ones we usually meet. I wish we could go in the smallest communities so that we can hear from people who not only are producers but consumers as well.

I do not want to disparage the people whose name is on the list that was circulated but we find here more or less the cultural aristocrats. I say this without malice but I would like us to go beyond that list. I do not know how we would go about it but I notice that the people on the list are the ones who deal daily in this specific cultural area. I am not critical here but I think that we should try and see the other side of the coin and that we should hear from people who have no vested interests in the matter and who will not offer great theories but in fact who are the ones this committee is trying to reach.

Once again, I do not know how we would go about it but I would like the other members of the committee to understand that we should not restrict ourselves to listening to the cultural aristocrats.

The Chairman: I would like to remind you that our hearings were specifically intended to hear from the cultural experts.

As far as our travelling budget is concerned, this morning I attended a meeting of committees' chairs, and we noticed that the funds allocated until March 31st were practically all gone. For the next fiscal year, in phase 2, we can foresee some travelling between Easter and the month of June. If, because of votes in the House and our responsibilities here, we do not have the time to go on the road ourselves, we should think of inviting the groups and individuals who are most representative. In any case, I totally agree with you.

Ms. Tremblay.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I also agree with Mr. Bélanger. Admittedly, it is perhaps less stimulating for us because we have heard time and again from the same people and we have considered all the issues. Various committees do travel and I think that with better planning parliamentarians could reach out to people where they are. It matters that we should be able to hear from people we never had the opportunity to meet before.

I think we will need to show some creativity. If in the end we know exactly what people expect from us, what their wishes are— because our role is not to force anything on them—we will be dealing with the issues that concern them.

In the subcommittee on sports, we talked about rodeos the other day but people who wanted to talk about it almost felt like they had to have permission. Of course rodeos are not very popular in Rimouski but in certain communities elsewhere, that is part of the culture and people are certainly entitled to talk about it with as much pride as people talk about a corn roast everywhere else.

I think we have to go off the beaten track. When looking at the reports produced over the past 20 years, we can see that the same people are always consulted. Granted that they have helped us a lot and that they could still help us, but I think we should seek out different points of view.

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This is why I find appealing the idea of a phase 2. If we hurry and ask for travelling expenses in our next budget, we might get it over other committees who have travelled every year for the past six years.

The Chairman: I think that what you just said is shared by everyone here. Many members of the committee are new to the committee and that is why we thought that those hearings would be useful, especially for members who do not have as much experience in the area. I think that during phase 2, after Easter, we will try with the help of the clerk to draft an itinerary so that we can go and meet people on site and do the work that you and Mr. Bélanger are suggesting. We will work on that.

[English]

Thank you very much. The session is adjourned.