CHER Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, October 27, 1998

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[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Ted McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.)): In the absence of the president—he is on his way over, he has been held up by parliamentary business—I declare the meeting open. We'll proceed immediately.

There is the threat of a vote in the House imminently. The bells may ring, in which case we'll depart. We also have votes in this committee, but I'll leave that until the chairman arrives. I think we may try to have those early.

If I may, I'll open and immediately ask the first witness to open her presentation. This is Ms. Sarah Iley, president and CEO of the Council for Business and the Arts in Canada.

[Translation]

The committee is very pleased to welcome you today. You may proceed with your presentation. Thank you very much.

[English]

Thank you for coming and giving us the benefit of your wisdom.

Ms. Sarah J.E. Iley (President and CEO, Council for Business and the Arts in Canada): Thank you very much, and my thanks to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for asking me to appear before you today.

The Council for Business and the Arts in Canada was founded in 1974. Believing that the arts should be supported strongly by both the public and the private sector, our mission has been to increase private sector support of the arts. And over the past two decades we've been pretty successful. Private sector support of the arts in Canada this year was 22% of the total revenues for the performing arts. That's the highest percentage it has ever been, and in fact private sector support has doubled over the past decade.

What this also tells you is that the role of government has decreased, and the role of the federal government in particular in support of the not-for-profit arts organizations has decreased as a proportion of those arts organizations' revenue. That's of concern to the arts organizations and I think it's also of concern to the patrons, donors and volunteers who make up the Council for Business and the Arts in Canada.

We're concerned primarily with ensuring that the arts and heritage sector remain a primary source of cultural expression. And if we look back at the founding of the Canada Council only 41 years ago, there were only 26 professional performing arts organizations in this country. At last count, when Statistics Canada did its survey of the performing arts, the number was 493. That's what they consider to be the universe, not a sample but the universe, of performing arts organizations across this country. This is a tremendous amount of growth that has occurred over a relatively short period of time. The question can be asked: is that driven entirely through government support, has that been driven by the market or by what? I would submit that it's driven by both.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Ted McWhinney): Your organization has a very intriguing title. I wonder if you could give us a two-minute resumé of the nature of your organization and its backers and composition.

Ms. Sarah Iley: Certainly. The Council for Business and the Arts in Canada is an association of businesses, business corporations, that support the arts through their own donations and sponsorship programs. We have approximately 70 members across the country. It is a national organization, and so primarily our members are major national corporations, corporations that have head offices in one city or another and regional presences throughout the country.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Ted McWhinney): They're not necessarily organizations in the arts themselves?

Ms. Sarah Iley: No. In fact none of them is in the arts themselves.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Ted McWhinney): None of them is.

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Ms. Sarah Iley: In fact, this is the only national association of donors and patrons of the arts. I make that distinction because, although the council is made up of corporate members, many of those corporate members, of course, are made up themselves of significant individual donors, volunteers, volunteer board members, and people who serve as trustees of museums and galleries across the country.

In fact, when we were revisiting our corporate identity a couple of years ago, we decided it would be much simpler to call ourselves Business for the Arts, because that's really what we are. We are business people, business corporations, who believe that the arts are very important to Canadian society.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Ted McWhinney): Thank you so much. I didn't want to interrupt you, but I thought that was very valuable information to have.

Ms. Sarah Iley: Yes, and it does help to clarify, I'm sure.

So I think our perspective is perhaps quite different from that of others you have met with in the course of your discussions. Our perspective is that our members believe very strongly in both the performing arts and art galleries and museums. They provide time, service, and their own donations to keep these institutions going, and so they have a very clear view of what they think is required to sustain the arts and heritage sectors.

I want to emphasize the second half of this. In your question, when you said you were concerned with a number of different issues, one of the things you said is that you want to ensure that the arts and heritage sectors remain a primary source of cultural expression.

I want to really emphasize the fact that when you ask people across this country if they believe in the arts, if they care about the arts, they will immediately say to you, yes, they're very involved with the arts. The translation will be, “I'm very involved with my local symphony orchestra”, or “I'm very involved with my local theatre”, or “I go my local gallery frequently”. They don't think in terms of national arts; they think in terms of local arts first. In fact, the national is, in many ways, a coming together of their local experience across the country.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Ted McWhinney): I have to interrupt you to pass over to the chairman. I am advised the bells have rung in the House, but it's a half-hour bell, and the suggestion is we leave at 11.40 a.m., which would be probably enough time to get your first presentation in, and the questions.

The Chairman (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.)): I apologize.

Ms. Sarah Iley: So I'll continue.

I think an indication of the level of support of individual Canadians is important to know—and I have brought for you copies of our survey, but I think it's probably not useful to be looking at them at this moment.

We survey all the performing arts organizations across the country, and we also survey art galleries and museums across the country each year. We ask them what their sources of revenue are. It is interesting that last year $100 million came from the private sector in support of performing arts and art galleries and museums across the country.

Canadians provided 95% more volunteer service to those organizations than they did a decade ago, according to the latest survey, which has been released by Statistics Canada and the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, which surveys caring Canadians. There has been a huge increase in the amount of support that individual Canadians have given to their arts organizations.

I want to underline that, because my own sense when I read through the committee's mandate and the issues you're dealing with is that to some extent the cultural industries are dominating much of the discussion. My view is that the individual arts organizations, the not-for-profit charitable arts organizations, are tremendously important to the health and the development of Canadian artistic expression in this country, and I would be very disappointed if the federal government were to lose sight of that fact. I think it is demonstrated by the fact of the support of donors, patrons and volunteers across this country.

When you look at what the Department of Canadian Heritage spends annually on culture, it spends approximately $2 billion, and only a very small fraction of that is allocated to the not-for-profit live performing arts through the Canada Council. Over the years, in fact, the proportion that has been provided has decreased significantly.

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In 1975, Canada Council's grants accounted for 23% of the total operating revenues of arts organizations. Last year it was down to 9%. That means the federal government's presence or involvement with these organizations is dramatically down. I think the federal government should be looking very carefully at how it wants its support of the arts, its support of artistic expression of Canadian identity, to be seen.

When you contrast the actual dollars, the Canada Council provided $28 million while the Canadian corporate sector, by which I mean corporations whose business is not the arts—corporations involving railways, communications and banking—provided $24.5 million. To me that's a significant reminder of the place that has been lost by the federal government in its support of the arts.

In terms of heritage, one thing is really clear, and you'll see this in the survey analysis that's been passed around of the public museums. I'll turn your attention to page 4, where you'll see what's happened to federal funding of museums in the last 10 years. Again, this is what the museums tell us has happened. The federal government accounted for 29% of the total operating revenues of museums across this country 10 years ago. It now accounts for 5%. Yet there was a national museums policy in 1972 that encouraged the democratization and decentralization of Canadian heritage through the creation of museums and galleries across this country. This encouragement was warmly welcomed by volunteers and donors across this country, who now support over 2,000 museums. So we've grown the physical plant and now starved the way of keeping it afloat.

At the same time, we've built some rather magnificent and beautiful galleries and museums here in Ottawa. But I submit to you that those important institutions do not reach the rest of the country. There has been a significant decrease in touring exhibit funding. There is no way for Canadians to feel connected to the national museums through these institutions in Ottawa.

The national museums themselves have had their budgets reduced and their maintenance budgets shifted from public works to their own operating budgets. It begs the question, what exactly is the federal government's stance on heritage? What is it trying to accomplish? If it's trying to focus everything in Ottawa, those museums would argue they need even more funding. If it wants to ensure it balances Ottawa's needs with the rest of the country, there has to be very careful thought given to how best the federal government can do that through the museum assistance program and matching the support of museum friends groups and other donors throughout the country.

The National Arts Centre receives $20 million. The Canada Council receives $114 million to distribute to all other performing arts organizations across the country. In fact, they also have to include literary media arts as well as the visual arts. Again, if you ask Canadians whether the National Arts Centre represents their expression of Canadian live performing arts, I don't think you would get a positive response. Live performing arts to Canadians occurs in their communities across this country. If the investment for performing arts is going to remain in one place, $20 million is a very heavy investment for the federal government to make to one organization.

The federal government must take seriously the role of the not-for-profit arts and the heritage sectors as a primary source of cultural expression. For Canadian audiences and patrons, support of the arts starts with arts organizations within their communities. For that reason, CBAC believes the federal government should base its support of arts organizations to some degree on the support they garner in their own communities.

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As the private sector is the fastest-growing source of support for the arts in this country, the federal government should examine strategies to increase leverage and to match that support. While tax incentives are very helpful, and we welcome the finance minister's decision to decrease capital gains tax on gifts of appreciated securities, we believe there are additional incentive programs that can have tremendous impact if the federal government does want to leverage private sector support and its own support to build a stronger partnership in support of the arts across the country.

One of the examples I wanted to bring forward to this committee is one that has worked extremely successfully in Britain. Our counterpart there, the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts, works with the Department of National Heritage in Britain, and together they manage a scheme called the pairing scheme, by which the federal government in Britain matches new donors and sponsors of the arts. It's a great way to bring people in, it's a great way to increase the level of private sector support, and it's a great way also to put a federal face on support of the arts. It has worked extremely well, and it has brought something like £110 million worth of new money to the table for the arts in the United Kingdom. So we would put it forth as just one solution you might look at.

That's my opening statement, Mr. Chairman, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

The Chairman: Ms. Iley, considering that we have a vote very shortly, what I would suggest is that we hear from Mr. Franklin after the vote. Meanwhile, maybe we would have time for two or three question.

Mr. Mark.

Mr. Inky Mark (Dauphin—Swan River, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Again, thank you for coming before the committee. Those are very interesting statistics, and as well this has been very educational for me as the chief critic on the opposite side of the House.

You've mentioned that we need to use other vehicles that are maybe a little more imaginative and creative than straight subsidies to the arts community. Do you see a day when the arts community will be completely sustainable and when it will not have to receive government funding directly?

Ms. Sarah Iley: The arts area that I know best is the not-for-profit arts community. Those organizations are beyond not for profit, they're actually charitable entities, and that is because they are seen to be of service and of benefit to the community. My sense is that there has been a tremendous amount of revenue development, if we just talk about the performing arts for a minute. The performing arts already get about 50% of their revenues at the box office, and they have certainly increased the level of donations and sponsorships considerably over the past years, as I mentioned.

I don't think our members would want not-for-profit charitable entities to possess that status, primarily because they have a very important role to play in the community as a kind of research and development end of the arts, the area where we enable organizations to experiment and to create work that is particularly relevant to their own communities. I don't think our members would be looking for them to turn into profitable entities. In fact, they would then lose that 22% of support that comes from donors and patrons.

I think what we would want to see is that the level of subsidy is matched by the level of private sector support, that the involvement of the federal government is as important as that of the provincial governments and the municipal governments. One of the things you'll see on page 2 of the performing arts statistics is that in fact provincial governments are outpacing the federal government in their support of these organizations. But if we talk about a national identity, we may want a stronger role for the federal government in support of these organizations.

Mr. Inky Mark: You indicated that there needs to be more emphasis, as you just said, on local museums, and that they need more assistance. Having come to Ottawa as a newcomer in this job, I realize the national museums need as much work as the local ones, so where is the fine balance in terms of the federal government? Where should it be?

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Ms. Sarah Iley: I think this is one of the problems. Everybody wanted national museums, and our organization was certainly among those that wanted Canada's national heritage to be properly displayed in decent museums instead of leaking old office buildings, which is what we had before.

But what is the balance? I'm not sure I know the answer, but I know the solution being used now is not good enough for the national museums or the country. The rest of the museums across the country feel a sense of loss of the ability to be able to tour exhibitions, access national touring programs, and be expressions of national cultural heritage, not just their own little local heritage.

We've also built these magnificent institutions, and if we want them to maintain their relevance and just their own physical fabric, we will have to have to invest in them.

Mr. Inky Mark: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Mrs. Iley, time is running out and we have to go for a vote. I suggest the members come back after and we'll finish the questioning and then hear Mr. Franklin. We'll go with Mr. Muise, Mr. McWhinney and Mr. Bélanger next. We'll be out for about 15 to 20 minutes.

We are adjourned.