CHER Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, October 29, 1998

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.)): I'd like to call to order the meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, le Comité permanent du patrimoine canadien. The order of the day, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), is consideration of a Canadian cultural policy.

As witnesses today we have: from the Business for the Arts, Les affaires pour les arts, Ms. Sarah Iley, president and CEO; and from the Heritage Canada Foundation, Mr. Brian Anthony.

I would like to express our apologies to Mr. Franklin and Ms. Iley for last week. We had two votes in succession, which came—the second one, certainly—as a surprise to us. Unfortunately we had to suspend the session, which we very much regret. Unfortunately, in Parliament it happens that way.

Today we have debates going on now, especially the debate on Bill C-55, which is a magazine publication bill. The parliamentary secretary is tied up, as well as several other members of the opposition who are speaking on the bill in the House. They are tied up in the House now and have to wait for their turn.

So we very much regret the small attendance today. In fact, it's going to get sparser as it goes along, because of this.

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.): May I make the point, though, that the quality will remain? It's only the riff-raff who are leaving.

Voices: Oh, oh.

The Chairman: That is understood. Looking at you, I'm sure that is the case.

Ms. Iley, you had finished your presentation. You had started to answer questions. Mr. Muise of the Progressive Conservative Party has asked me to apologize, because he had a function in his riding, and he couldn't be here. He was going to question you at the time.

I think the Bloc had its turn that day.

We'll start with Mr. McWhinney and then Mr. Bonwick.

Mr. Ted McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): Ms. Iley, as you may remember, I had asked you to make clear the intriguing title of “Business and the Arts,” and the connection there. You did so.

I'd be very interested in any comments you could make about persuading or encouraging or facilitating the arts people getting into the business or marketing side of their products. I'm very impressed, for example, with the Vancouver Art Gallery, which put on an exhibition of Munch, the Norwegian artist. It's been an enormous success commercially. I think one of the startling things about the National Gallery in Ottawa is its worldwide reputation for putting on very successful commercial operations, from Picasso to Monet, a whole succession.

It's one of the delights of living in Ottawa. There have to be delights to live here.

I've seen it also done with symphony orchestras.

Is your organization in a position to develop skills in management or directors of arts organizations, symphony orchestras, opera companies, art galleries? Have you any special expertise you can offer here?

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Ms. Sarah J. E. Iley (President and CEO, Council for Business and the Arts in Canada): Our primary mandate is to increase private sector support of the arts, so we are particularly concerned with the development of skills primarily on the boards of directors of arts organizations.

That being said, our work really is to increase the effectiveness of partnerships between business and the arts and we have done a fair amount of work both in terms of manuals and programs and particular training that has been aimed at increasing arts organizations' awareness that in fact they have a tremendously valuable commodity, as you've pointed out.

Many of the instances, in fact, that you've pointed out, where we've had great success at reaching a wider public, have in fact involved those partnerships. Think, for instance, of the National Gallery's exhibits that have reached tremendous audiences. They have had major corporate sponsors.

Much of what we do is to encourage not only the flow of money but also the matching of expertise. Together, the marketing expertise of companies working with the marketing expertise within these organizations is particularly effective.

I guess the short answer, though, is that this is not central to our mission. There are organizations, such as the Centre for Cultural Management at the University of Waterloo, that specifically look at educating the management side of the arts. This is something we've been very concerned with.

One of the things we've just taken an initiative with on in the past year is bringing together the leadership triumvirate, as it were—the artistic directorship, the general manager, and the board chair—of the largest not-for-profit performing and visual arts organizations in Canada so that they can share best practices and start to develop some benchmarks in this whole area.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: The wording that struck me here was the idea that art is not an esoteric venture for a particular elite, that it's good fun, and you can bring young people into it. I think this is a remarkable feature of the National Art Gallery's achievement, and the Vancouver Art Gallery and others, and some of the symphonies and opera companies, to bring young people in and to encourage them. Many cultures in Vancouver are selling opera, basically a western derivation, to Chinese-Canadian and Indo-Canadian communities in really large numbers, and successfully.

So I would encourage your organization to continue with its efforts here. I think the success to date is remarkable. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. McWhinney.

Mr. Bonwick.

Mr. Paul Bonwick (Simcoe—Grey, Lib.): First of all, I would certainly like to thank you for your presentation last week, and for the opportunity now to ask you some questions. You've spurred some thought on my part. I agree with some of your comments with regard to government and how government should play perhaps a more important role financially in the arts.

One of the things that I think is worth noting, before I ask some questions, is that even though attendance, because of the reasons outlined by the chair, is sparse, your presentations and your answers on the questions will be equally as valuable to those in attendance as those not, because it will be read into the record. All the members of the committee will have an opportunity to review and digest the information you provide. So it's not as though anybody will be missing out on it.

You provided some information to us with respect to federal funding versus private sector funding, and the scales being tipped constantly downward for government and upward for private sector. One of the numbers I wrote down, if I'm correct, was approximately 22% for private sector funding. You said, “based on the information available”; I think that's how you translated that to us.

Do you have any information on how this compares with other countries internationally, perhaps more developed countries, the G-7, how that private sector funding as opposed to the total GDP of the arts and entertainment business equates?

Ms. Sarah Iley: That's a very interesting and important question. Our association, the Council for Business and the Arts in Canada, is the second-oldest association of its kind in the world. The oldest one is the Business Committee for the Arts, which was founded by David Rockefeller in New York in 1967. They celebrated their 30th anniversary last year.

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There are now 19 such organizations around the world. The newest one is Business Arts South Africa. So this notion of getting business involved in the arts is really a worldwide movement.

We have an international network of those associations. One of the things we would like to be able to do is compare apples to apples. The reality is that this is quite difficult to do, because the tax system is quite different, and yet I think I can give you not a statistically based but perhaps more general idea of how we compare.

In the United States, the investment of the federal government to the National Endowment of the Arts is very much smaller than the investment of the Canadian federal government to the Canada Council in the not-for-profit performing arts and visual arts. Therefore, the private sector portion is much higher than it is here.

Recognize, though, that in the United States, the 25-largest funders of the arts in the United States are private foundations, most of which came into being before the creation of income tax. So you have foundations such as the Ford Foundation, which gives away $400 million a year. That's just the interest on the endowment. The presence of these enormous foundations in the States is quite different from any other jurisdiction all over the world.

In Europe the balance is the other way. There is a much stronger, much larger investment of government support, certainly in France and in Italy. In Britain they have been trying to shift that balance, and they have been very successful in bringing new players to the table in terms of private sector support. But they don't have the same tax system, so they don't actually consider them charitable donations. They're actually encouraging people to support the arts as a business expense.

Mr. Paul Bonwick: Certainly the United States tends to be somewhat of an anomaly unto itself in respect to—quote unquote—“culture”, and how it supports that versus Canada and countries in Europe. I guess what I was looking for, more specifically—and it's a question the clerk can certainly find out for us through the parliamentary research library—is how we compare, how we stack up from the 22% private versus 26% federal, I think you said.

Ms. Sarah Iley: No, sorry, 26% “government”. The federal is not the largest piece. The provinces are.

Mr. Paul Bonwick: Okay. So it's government versus some comparatives in Europe. Norm will get that for us.

You also touched on the fact that Canadians have taken a greatly increased role on the ground level in supporting the arts business. I think that's a very good thing, and it should be congratulated and encouraged, because that certainly strengthens the industry.

You also touched on a point with regard to the decrease in funding from the federal government to museums. You said, “information collected from the museums”. Not that I'm skeptical of information provided, but it's important that if information is provided to the committee of the whole it's substantiated and it's accurate.

I'm just wondering, have you accessed any information from the Department of Canadian Heritage on whether those numbers are similar, or whether they agree with them?

Ms. Sarah Iley: I should give you some background on our surveys.

The CBAC annual surveys were begun twenty years ago, ostensibly because we wanted to be able to give our members some idea of the fundraising needs of arts organizations. The fact is, over the twenty years we are now at the stage where the Department of Canadian Heritage actually contracts with us for that data, because we're able to turn it around much quicker than Statistics Canada.

We work with Statistics Canada to ensure that we are asking similar questions. The difference between their surveys and our surveys is that they only release the aggregate numbers, whereas our surveys—and I've brought copies for the research staff—actually show each individual company across the country.

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Just to give you an idea of the accuracy and the importance of these statistics, we are now the only ones who have a timeline going back 20 years, because Statistics Canada went to a biennial format. I know Statistics Canada carefully looks at what they receive, and they measure it against what we receive. We know we are within 1% all the way.

The fact is, the arts organizations consider these so important themselves, because they want to know how they're doing comparatively with each other, that it is in their interest to provide us with the same information they would provide Statistics Canada.

Mr. Paul Bonwick: Do I have time for one more?

The Chairman: Just briefly, Mr. Bonwick.

Mr. Paul Bonwick: I've stated this before in front of witnesses, and I think this falls in line with your presentation: The federal government needs to assess its priorities. That's simply it. Does it consider culture and arts a significant priority or not? That's certainly a message I've tried to drum home on a regular basis.

I liked the quote from Winston Churchill, used quite some time ago at committee, when he was doing his presentation of the budget in the House in Britain during World War II. The only budget he didn't touch was culture. As he said, if for anything else, what are we fighting for than the respect of our past?

I thought that was quite appropriate, and something we could learn from.

Do you have any further suggestions on how the committee might be able to investigate, or recommendations we could assist in bringing forward to support it, other than some you've touched on? The obvious is increased funding, but more specifically, whether it be through education, using whatever mechanisms we have in place to encourage and foster growth—and funding through the Canada Council is sort of a no-brainer—are there other opportunities that might be available for us to make recommendations on?

Ms. Sarah Iley: Certainly. In your discussion paper one of the questions you ask is, what role should the federal government play? Should it be patron of the arts, funding partner, regulator, etc.? Probably there is a place for all of those different things in different ways.

Our view is that a really effective way to leverage federal funds and to make sure they go as far as they can is to be a funding partner and to provide a way of increasing private sector support of the arts by partnering that. I think that's important in terms of what you just quoted Mr. Churchill as saying, because I think it's really important that the federal government be seen to be a supporter of culture right across the country.

I think the federal government has made tremendous investment in the capital costs of building things such as the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Roy Thomson Hall—facilities across the country. I think what we need to do is sustain some operating funding to those organizations, to be seen to be there beyond the building and construction. I know it is with Charlottetown, but I'm not convinced it is with other venues.

I think the other piece here, again, in partnership, is that probably one of the cheapest and easiest things to do is to reinstate some of the touring budgets, both for travelling exhibitions and Canada Council. It's really important when you look at the audience for the arts. The audience for the arts—and again, that's in the statistics I gave you—has gone down, but when you look at where it's gone down, it's gone down in touring. The audiences are coming back at home. They have the income they lost in the early 1990s, and they're coming back very strongly, but that touring audience has been dissipated because there just is not the opportunity to see the work.

Again, if we want to bind the country together, it's a really important piece to be able to see the stories that people tell.

I think the other thing I'm concerned about—and when I say “I”, I'm really talking on behalf of the membership, which has, of course, participated in the creation of this brief—is that when the federal government is looking at all of the different things it could do, it needs to focus much more on the creation and distribution rather than any other aspect. If we want to provide access for Canadians to their art, then we need to first make sure the content is there and then provide access in the best possible way.

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Again, I would say in terms of content there are other ways that we would certainly be very interested in talking to you about, ways that we might encourage investment, for instance, in the cultural industries as well as investment, donations and sponsorship in the not-for-profit performing and visual arts.

Mr. Paul Bonwick: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Bonwick. Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: Thanks again for coming back so frequently. It's been déjà vu all over again; better make this a steady thing.

As you alluded, we are attempting, in this extraordinary exercise, which has gone through many parliaments and many committees and so on, to now try to give it some shape and focus, this study on cultural policy. As you know, we've always had three major themes we're trying to integrate into our understanding of how cultural policy is going to have to evolve in the future—the response to technological change, to demographic change, and to globalization.

We tend to view “globalization” as a long word for “market forces”, because we think globalization really impinges mostly on the market part of the cultural scene. Globalization doesn't really affect your local museum very much from the competitive point of view.

I guess beyond the suggestions you've made for things like touring, which continue to make sense, and more funding, which is fairly traditional, and more ingenious ways of leveraging money from the private sector, I was wondering if you could help us with these themes we've taken on.

I should add this other element, which is that I think we've come to a conclusion that if we're going to be effective, we can't simply issue general nostrums about the arts, and Canadian spaces for Canadian faces, or something we could have written right off the top, not even bothering to have hearings for. The thing that seems to make sense to us increasingly is to look at different systems that may be grouped together—in other words, to look at the sound recording industry, or to look at television, the Internet and movies as a kind of cluster, and to look at the publishing business. Because until you understand the dynamics of each of those systems, it's hard to make policy recommendations. One size doesn't fit all.

You've made allusions to, for example, distribution, but I didn't know whether that was film distribution, book distribution and so on.

Long preamble, short question: Are you able, because of your mandate, to get into some specific thoughts on specific sectors that are going to be influenced by these three changes, and where we might position some of our recommendations, and indeed which sectors are the hot ones, that we really ought to be focusing on above others? Because we can't do it all.

Ms. Sarah Iley: I think there is a kind of fascination with the industrial side of things. I think there's a kind of glamour with the industrial side of things. Quite frankly, I don't think it warrants the fascination and the glamour.

I think it's interesting that you lump Internet technology in with broadcasting and film, because the reality is that a writer's going to be able to publish their book, an individual writer. An individual artist is going to be able to put their own work out. A composer is going to be able to put their own work out on the Net. They're not going to wait for some industrial strategy to deal with them. Individual artists are going to create and they're going to distribute, and they're going to use the mechanism that works for them.

At the same time, there is a very strong need for people to see live work, and there is, I think, the combination of technological innovation, which has brought work to a wider population, considering the size of the country.

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For instance, one of our members, Rogers, has started an innovative project where they have brought I think 14 galleries on-line so that people can go and visit exhibitions on-line through the Internet.

The reality, for any of us who ever took art history, as I did, at university, is that every picture looks the same size on a screen. You don't understand the texture. You don't know what you're missing in the experience. I think when most people go and see the Mona Lisa they say, gee, is she ever small.

The reality is that we need to combine people's needs for live attendance and live experience of the arts with the information technology that enables us to get it to a broader group of people across the country.

So understanding your issues of technology and demographics, again, the country is getting older, generally, and much more diverse. One of the things we need to be really clear on is that we want to ensure that people who want to create all kinds of art are enabled to do that, which is why, again, I think the funding partner role is a very important one. I think it's very difficult to stay in one place, with one mindset, and create a policy that's one-size-fits-all.

So I think a partnership enables that.

Mr. John Godfrey: I guess what I'm trying to get at is that we think, maybe wrongly, we have to disaggregate these sectors, if you like, or these cultural ecosystems, because if we just try to agglomerate them, it's not going to work.

We think the impact of the various forces falls differently on different sectors. The most technological challenge may be television because of the Internet and everything else; who knows? I guess what I'm asking is whether that's the way you view the world, because if that's the way we're going to be making our recommendations, to sort of try to focus on the most crucial bits of cultural policy, where the change is going to be the greatest, where the impact of technology and/or globalization will fall the hardest, you may say, gee...

What I would gather from what you're saying is that if we make a distinction between the market and the non-market, you guys are on the non-market side, because you're raising money to help the not-for-profit sector.

Ms. Sarah Iley: Right.

Mr. John Godfrey: If I say, okay, that's fair, and we're going to now deal with that bit of the cultural landscape that is the non-market side, then within that, should we be more concerned about the fate of symphonic music, ballet, books? Where is the greatest crisis? Which systems are under the greatest pressure?

The Chairman: Before you answer, Ms. Iley, could I make a suggestion?

We have some committee business to do toward the end of the meeting, which will take about 10 to 15 minutes. It's now 11.40 a.m., and we have yet to hear your colleagues. What I would suggest, then, is that after you answer Mr. Godfrey, Mr. Mark has asked me for some time.

[Translation]

Mr. Dumas, do you have any questions to ask?

Mr. Maurice Dumas (Argenteuil—Papineau, BQ): A brief question maybe.

The Chairman: We might be able to finish

[English]

in another 10 minutes max, say. Can you be guided accordingly?

Ms. Sarah Iley: Okay.

This isn't the answer you're looking for, but I think the reality is that an artist doesn't care whether he's dealing with a dealer or a museum curator. He's creating art. An actor doesn't care whether he's getting a gig with Canadian Stage, Theatre Passe Muraille, Buddies in Bad Times, the CBC, or Atlantis Films. So to some extent, I think, your separation is false.

I think within the artists' community they work within the for-profit and the not-for-profit. Our concern is, how do we best sustain the artist? I know to some extent that people have said this for some time, but I'm still not convinced that people really believe it: The not-for-profit side is, in fact, the research and development side. That needs a different kind of investment and a different kind thought than the for-profit side.

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So when you ask “What are the crises?”, if one is to ignore the not-for-profit side, thinking that perhaps their issues aren't as great or aren't as important, you've in fact cut the ground out from under the for-profits as well.

The flip side of that is, what are the crises in the not-for-profit arts? Primarily, the recession hit them very hard in the 1990s. It hit audiences coming. It certainly made a huge impact in the amount of funding they received from government. But I think one of the really clear messages that these statistics point to and dramatize is the fact that Canadians in this country who care about the arts rose to the occasion, and the donations went up extraordinarily over that period of time.

For arts organizations, I think the question is obviously not just money but also relevance within the community, and understanding of their role within the community and an increasing sense that what they do is terribly important. It's important for society at large. It's a benefit to the community.

That's the reason they have charitable status. They need to be perceived as an important development end of Canadian society.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Ted McWhinney): Thank you, Mr. Godfrey, and thank you, Ms. Iley.

Mr. Mark, I think you have the next question.

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

Again, thank you for your patience in coming back here several days later.

There are two areas I'd like to explore. One is fundraising and the other one is the whole tourism industry, how it relates to your organization.

All arts and museum initiatives are non-profit. If it wasn't for the non-profit aspect of this, they wouldn't exist. In small communities, they're very successful because of the people themselves. They're the ones who want to continue the exercise and enjoyment of both arts and the museums.

The problem on the fundraising point is that the same people are asked for funds from all the other different organizations as well, so there's always a limitation in terms of how much money we can raise from the people in the local community or in the local region. There are always inventories to be developed, and ideas to be developed, at the community level.

Having been personally involved in many of these projects—I was a mayor of a small community—probably the biggest challenge is where you find the money.

So the first question is, do you have any ideas for municipal governments in terms of leveraging dollars from the next two levels of government?

The second question relates to tourism and development. We hear today that heritage tourism is the next area to be developed. We know that, because people are travelling more and people are more interested in history. There's no shortage of things to see and do on both the arts side and the museum side.

The question I want to ask is, what kind of work has your organization been involved with, or has done, in terms of that sector, this area of tourism development?

Ms. Sarah Iley: I'll start with the first one. I think you've raised an extremely good point. One of the things that I find really interesting is that when you look at who supports galleries and museums across the country, once you take out the provincial museum and the federal museum, essentially the municipalities are carrying a lot of the weight. They're tremendously important to the museums and galleries.

One of the things we are able to do, obviously, is survey not only the art galleries, museums and performing arts organizations but also business. One of the somewhat depressing findings we made is that when we surveyed our members along with the Conference Board, we looked at what the givers said they gave and then we looked at what the getters said they got. Of the givers we surveyed, 146 companies provided 64% of what the getters got, which is extraordinary when you consider the ability of the rest of corporate Canada.

I don't just mean “big C” corporate Canada; I mean small business, big business, to support the arts, which is why we really think a funding partnership with the federal government would lever more money.

We know this has worked very well in provinces where they have brought matching dollars to the table to lever funds out of those other businesses that might not otherwise come to the table. A little bit of incentive is often very useful.

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In regard to your question about heritage tourism, we haven't, to be perfectly honest, done a whole lot of work on this, although I'm a member of the Canadian Tourism Commission's round table on cultural heritage tourism. We're just sort of getting started. The Canadian Tourism Commission has done round tables across the country, and it's now looking at a national round table that will bring some of these ideas to the fore.

One of the most critical things we've learned is that the tourism industry and the cultural sector don't speak the same language at all. They don't understand what each other is talking about. In fact, it was really difficult to get arts and cultural people to the table to even talk about this, because in many cases they don't even understand their own value and their own impact in the community.

One of the things we're going to be looking at is how do we increase their knowledge and their understanding of the value they are bringing to communities. Because as you say, people are very interested in the whole cultural-heritage tourism piece.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Dumas, do you have a question?

Mr. Maurice Dumas: Yes. I'm sorry, but I could only have a look at your documents just now, since I'm here replacing Mrs. Tremblay.

In your analysis of the survey, I notice that music is the sector with the biggest deficit. Is that right? How can it be explained?

Some fifty years ago, there were two large symphony orchestras that people talked a lot about; there was the Montreal Symphony, under the direction of Wilfrid Pelletier, and the Toronto Symphony, under the direction of Sir Ernest MacMillan. Today, there is a symphony orchestra in almost every city.

There are quality orchestras in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver. It's the same thing in the smaller towns in the province of Quebec. Even Saint-Jérôme recently established a small orchestra, and there is certainly one in Joliette. I'd like to have an explanation.

When you talk about music, are you referring to classical music only or also to other types of music? What's the explanation? Is it the reason why there is a higher deficit in the music sector than in other sectors?

[English]

The Chairman: Can you please be brief?

Ms. Sarah Iley: Yes.

Nearly half of the total accumulated deficit referred to in this survey was held by three organizations—the Montreal Symphony, the Toronto Symphony and the National Ballet. So the reality is that the very large symphony orchestras, the earliest symphony orchestras, are carrying the greatest debt. By far the largest is the Montreal Symphony, at this point.

The survey refers to all forms of classical music. It would also refer in some cases to music festivals—contempory music, contempory serious music, as it is known, but certainly not rock or popular music.

[Translation]

Mr. Maurice Dumas: Therefore, this would mean that, following the strike which took place in Montreal this fall, the deficit should increase since the fact is that funds have been requested from the provincial and the federal governments.

[English]

Ms. Sarah Iley: Yes. Without getting into a lot of detail, one of the issues with regard to the Montreal Symphony—and you can have a copy of this survey, which will show you the details—is that it has not been as successful in raising funds from the private sector. It's actually done fairly well in terms of provincial government support and Canada Council support, but its deficit is I think $5.5 million and growing at this point. It's in a real state of emergency at this point.

The Chairman: Ms. Lill has asked me for a brief question. Perhaps we could confine our time, both questions and answers, to give a chance to Mr. Anthony.

Go ahead, Ms. Lill.

Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): Thank you.

Thank you for coming. I must admit, I missed your last presentation and I missed the one today. I was in the House right now, speaking to Bill C-55

I did read your presentation, however, and I found it really interesting. I found some of the facts in it very interesting.

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For instance, we have 2,000 museums out there right now that have been more or less starved for funds for many years. I'm actually going to speak at a meeting tonight about our own particular one, the regional municipality museum in Halifax, which is in really dire straits right now.

On the question about bringing in private money into places that have had a lot of federal and government support, there's always the question about who then controls the content of the artistic work or the mandate of the museum. I want you to address that concern for me.

How do we protect the artistic freedom and the cultural authenticity of these institutions when we are now going to be bringing in a much larger percentage, in your estimation, of private money?

Ms. Sarah Iley: I think we would argue, as we always have, for a mixed revenue base. You need that mix. The whole point of private sector support is that there is a multiplicity of donors. You don't have a single dominant donor, usually. You don't have a single dominant sponsor, and nor should you have a single dominant funder from the government side. I think the mix is what's really important, and getting the balance in the mix is very important.

It is in that way that you have the greatest sense of freedom. I am not under any illusions that governments don't create their own constraints and their own policies in terms of how one uses funding. So I think the best answer is a mix.

Secondarily, we have to recognize that although government has been a tremendously strong and forceful partner in helping to develop these organizations, not one of them was created by government. Every single arts organization across this country was created by citizens, people in the community who wanted to make them happen.

So when we talk about the private sector, we're talking about those committed volunteers who become donors and active supporters. Although I understand the fear of a domination of a single donor, we would not espouse that. Our whole point is to look for a very good balance between private and public sector and all ranges of funding.

Ms. Wendy Lill: One more?

The Chairman: No, in fairness to the other witnesses.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Okay.

The Chairman: If you have any questions touching on the same theme, perhaps you can give them a chance. We have about 15 minutes of business to do at the end of the meeting.

The Chair:

Thank you very much, Ms. Iley. We really appreciate your presence, again, and your extremely valuable and interesting information.

I would like to turn the meeting over the Heritage Canada Foundation and ask Mr. Anthony to address us.

Mr. Anthony, we have all received your brief, which is pretty extensive. Perhaps you could summarize it so that we can give members a chance to ask as many questions as possible. I think we've looked at the thrust of it. We've had it in front of us. We've been able to read it. Could you summarize it for us?

Thank you.

Mr. Brian Anthony (Executive Director, Heritage Canada Foundation): Thank you.

[Translation]

Thank you very much Mr. Chairman and members of the standing committee. First of all, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to play a part in your important study.

[English]

The Heritage Canada brief, as the chairman mentioned, was originally submitted to you in March of this year. I say this modestly, but I believe it speaks for itself.

Because of the limits of time, I'll keep my opening remarks brief and try to get down to the nub of the points we're making in the brief.

The Heritage Canada Foundation, better known as Heritage Canada, was created in 1973 to promote the preservation of the built heritage of Canada. That's the area of the heritage of the country that we specialize in.

Created by the federal government as a national not-for-profit charitable organization, Heritage Canada was granted an endowment in order that it be politically, financially and bureaucratically independent from government, but it was also given the status of trustee of the Crown in order that it can act on behalf of government in certain circumstances.

It's a membership-based organization, governed by a board of 12 representatives, one from each province and territory, elected by the members in the province or territory in question.

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In our brief we make some general recommendations about the need for a coherent and comprehensive federal culture policy based on a holistic understanding of and commitment to the full range of activities to be found on the cultural continuum, from creation, production, through distribution, consumption, or use, to preservation.

Perhaps I can expand on this particular view of the cultural universe when we get to the detailed questioning, Mr. Chairman. I know I've probably bored to tedium some members of this committee on my particular view of how one ought to look at the cultural sector. But that's it in a nut shell.

We also make some general observations and specific recommendations about the heritage component of the larger cultural field, which we feel is largely neglected. Within that context, when people do think about heritage it's most often in institutionally based ways of looking at things—museums, archives and libraries and so on—but not outside of that institutional context, where we do much of our work.

I was, Mr. Chairman, going to recapitulate the particular recommendations we made, but I believe you all have the brief, and in the interests of time perhaps that would be perhaps a bit much. So let me try to summarize our recommendations.

We believe the cultural sector has to be looked at as a whole and as a continuum. Within that context, the heritage end of things, the part of the continuum that is devoted to the preservation of that which is created and produced and distributed, needs much greater understanding and attention.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I believe you and your committee colleagues have a unique opportunity to take the mandate given to you and to build upon all that has gone before. In our brief I remind you of some of the things that have gone before.

Going back to June 21, 1944, a committee of the Senate was looking at the issue of post-war reconstruction and re-establishment. On June 21, 1944, the day I was busy being born, a group of artists got off at Union Station, walked across the street to the parliament buildings, and delivered themselves of the artists' brief. That was the origin of the Canadian Conference of the Arts.

If I do the math here, let's see, that's 29 years ago.

As you know, the Massey-Lévesque report, delivered in 1951, was a very intensive review of the cultural needs of the country at that time, as was the Applebaum-Hébert report and the Ties that Bind report of this committee of some years ago, which is fond in memory.

I think you have a unique opportunity to take all the work that has gone on before, to update it through these consultative processes, to put it in the kind of form and content that will make it a compelling report and one that I hope will bear fruit. If there's anything we can do in helping you shape that report, Mr. Chairman and your committee colleagues, after the release of the report, in making sure it does bear fruit, you have our full cooperation.

Thank you very much.

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

Mr. Mark.

Mr. Inky Mark: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming to the committee and for your patience in waiting to deliver your presentation.

I certainly agree with you that heritage properties need protection. Implementing legislation is not enough. I can relate an experience regarding the heritage railroad station legislation the government put forth in 1996, I think, or prior to that.

At that time I was trying to get title to the railroad station for the municipality. When I looked into it, I found out that the legislation had no teeth, absolutely no teeth whatsoever. In fact, it created a market for the people who'd purchased these stations previous to the legislation. Communities that wanted to recover and take these back to develop into museums had a difficult problem. On the other hand, the legislation basically doesn't say anything about the inside of the structure.

The first problem is that the government didn't know what stations were out there to begin with. In other words, they didn't have an idea of what they were looking at and what should have been designated and what shouldn't have been designated. Therefore, a lot of these stations were bulldozed and gotten rid of—not by the private sector but by the public sector, like Via Rail.

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The irony, going through this, is that I thought our station was owned by CNR, but lo and behold, after a lot of research we found out that lots of stations were turned over to VIA without CN even realizing they had done that. VIA didn't know they owned these stations. It really was confusing.

You bring up a very good point—and I do agree with you—that federal buildings should be protected. At least there should be some sort of evaluation to determine whether they should remain as heritage sites.

Do you think we should create new legislation to make sure this kind of approach takes place, or how do we go about protecting federal property?

Mr. Brian Anthony: I may ask my colleague, Mr. Franklin, to speak to the protection of railway stations. It was, as I understand it, a private member's bill, not a government initiative. Doug spent a lot of time trying to shape the private member's bill so that it would have at least as much protective capacity as possible.

But you are right; much of the protective fabric in this country has moral force only. It doesn't have any real legal binding force.

If somebody who is determined wishes to go through a process and demolish a building, whether it has a plaque on it and all sorts of other protective measures that in theory should ensure the ongoing preservation of the building, and that someone has deep enough pockets to afford all the lawyers you need to make it happen, they can do it.

I've been with the organization for three years, and we've seen instances where buildings that have been designated by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board, and have plaques on those buildings to provide what most people believe to be some sort of protection, have gone down to the wrecker's ball.

So there is a real need for us to look at putting teeth into not just federal, your major concern, but also provincial, territorial and municipal protective powers. We have to look at not just one particular form of building but at all forms of significant buildings—railway stations, post offices, churches.

I think there is a range of ways in which we can do that. As I mentioned in our brief, these may not necessarily involve more money but simply adapting existing programs for those specific purposes.

Let me cite you an example. In the case of the infrastructure program, which in Ontario cannot be used for preservation of buildings—that's the way Ontario wanted it—in Quebec, where there is a great deal of build heritage, the infrastructure program was altered so that historic churches and places of worship could be restored. If you go through Quebec—and I was in Montreal the other day—a lot of work is going on in churches, which are, once again, community-defining, landmark buildings.

We have to have a look at all of these kinds of buildings and a full range of measures, such as direct forms of expenditure, and indirect, such as tax leverage, to provide meaningful protection that we do not have at the moment.

Doug, perhaps you would like to speak about the railways in particular.

Mr. Douglas Franklin (Officer, Heritage Canada Foundation): I'll just say a brief word about that.

That was a very good comment about the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act, which is now in its tenth year. It was passed in 1988 and proclaimed in 1990, so it's had about eight years of administration. While it wasn't perfect, the fact of the matter is, it was all that could be obtained at the time.

Actually, the federal government since 1970 has created a databank on historic buildings in Canada, called the Canadian Inventory of Historic Buildings. Since 1970 the federal government has collected data on more than 220,000 buildings across the country, many of which qualify as historic buildings. It was on the basis of that compendium of buildings that we isolated railway stations as being a particular class that wasn't being protected.

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So we saw them falling, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, like tenpins, and there was absolutely no way they could be protected by municipalities or by provincial governments. It in fact required a special act of this Parliament to protect these buildings.

We would like to see that kind of protection extended to many different forms of buildings, as Mr. Anthony suggested, such as buildings owned by the federal government, regulated by the federal government, and affected by the federal government. This would provide a more seamless connection between the federal policy and what the provinces and municipalities can now do, and in fact are doing. So that continuum is necessary.

People in their community, for instance, look at their post office, and in many communities, arguably, the post office is the most important heritage building. It may define a landmark. It may, in fact, give the presence of the federal government in that particular community to the people. We say these buildings should be eligible for protection the same way as a provincial courthouse may be protected or now the railway stations and other buildings.

That's why we feel very strongly, as Mr. Anthony has suggested, that we need full and comprehensive legislation at the federal level.

Mr. Inky Mark: I have just a short comment on your statement regarding the railway stations. The problem is, the process of getting them designated, or getting it through, is still cumbersome. One, the municipalities still have to take ownership, and two, it has to come back to the federal level to get approval through the House and through the Senate. So it's still a very cumbersome process.

The other thing is that protection only comes if it's voluntarily done at the local level. In other words, in the federal system, if you have a list and inventory, it still doesn't mean those particular buildings are going to get protection.

The Chairman: Do you want to comment, Mr. Anthony?

Mr. Brian Anthony: Just very briefly, Mr. Chairman.

One of our concerns is about the scope of the Federal Heritage Buildings Review Office. First of all, we would like to have greater protective powers but we would also like it to have a greater range. At the moment, it can only deal with those buildings that are owned by the federal government through its departments, but crown corporations are outside; they can voluntarily ask FHBRO to designate buildings that those crown corporations own, but they're unlikely to do that, because...

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Dumas, do you have any questions?

Mr. Maurice Dumas: Yes. Mr. Anthony, I read here, where you give an history of your foundation, that you have a mandate to encourage the preservation and demonstration of the historic, architectural, natural and scenic heritage. Under what category do you classify the aviation museums? I can tell you that there are aviation museums throughout Canada. I am told there is a very beautiful one in Hamilton which was granted some twelve million dollars recently. On the other hand, we do not have any such museum in Quebec, which is rather strange, especially since Quebec is the cradle of aviation in Canada.

I know that, in Saint-Hubert, a group of people was authorized to use some hangars. They have lots of aircrafts there. Have you already received enquiries from that group regarding the establishment of an aviation museum?

Mr. Brian Anthony: It is probably not linked directly to our mandate, but I'm interested in that area because my father worked on the famous Avro Arrow project. I'm a child of the Canadian air industry and I'm very interested in aviation museums, including the national museum in Ottawa.

The Canadian Museums Association looks probably after the protection of our aviation heritage more than we do. If you're trying to support the people involved in that project, you may suggest to them that they get in touch with me or directly with the association, here, in Ottawa. Their project may be met with some interest and they may get some support.

Mr. Maurice Dumas: Thank you.

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[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: First of all, I want to congratulate you for this extraordinarily beautiful publication. Even when I don't come to committee, you seem to send it, which is great. It certainly looks a lot nicer than The National Post.

Voices: Oh, oh.

Mr. John Godfrey: Moving on from the aesthetic considerations here, I want to move back to this notion of a kind of dynamic cultural ecosystem. If I would take your part of the heritage world, one of the ways of looking at things is to say, okay, what was the situation in book publishing or visual arts or whatever 30 years ago, say—1967 or 1968—as compared with where are we today? Would you say that overall—and here's the question—in your area, given a greater interest in cities, whether it's Saint John, New Brunswick, or wherever else, the gains exceed the losses in terms of awareness, in terms of a greater attention through legislation or through moral suasion or through changing mentality to the heritage field? If the story is a positive one, can you sort out the part that policy played versus the part that taste, say, or market forces or whatever else played?

Mr. Brian Anthony: From a built heritage perspective, and with regard to the gains and losses in the timeframe you mentioned, I guess I would have to say that we've probably had more losses than gains in actual building terms.

In terms of the public and political profile of these issues, I would say the same. Whatever progress we have enjoyed, or whatever demolition we have avoided, is due largely to the devoted work of those volunteers, in the main, across the country, who regularly make a pain in the butt of themselves—chain themselves to fences, never let go of issues.

They're an aging population now. My concern is that we don't have a whole lot of young people embracing heritage conservation in the same way these people did in 1967, when they were perhaps my age or a bit younger.

The conservation of the environment has certainly attracted a lot of young people. I have two teenagers who are constantly reminding me that I occasionally do things that are environmentally damaging, but they have not made the leap to the fact that the preservation of heritage buildings is a similar environmental concern.

The challenge for us, I guess, is to find ways by which we can take the energy and the devotion that has been shown by people in my age group and older, who were sort of the first wave of heritage activists, and translate that into a language and a mission in life that will appeal to children my kids' age.

I haven't figured that one out yet. I think we're fighting what is in many ways a losing battle. Fundamentally, it's an attitudinal one. We live in a society where everything is disposable, including buildings. And our buildings, our built heritage, are the most visible and tangible aspects of our culture.

In this morning's newspapers, whether it was in The National Post or The Globe and Mail, you probably saw the emergence from the waters of remnants from Alexandria, which are fantastic. At the rate we're going, we're not going to have anything 2,000 years from now to emerge from the mud.

But it's an attitudinal battle we're up against, and it's institutionalized. In this country, if you build a building you can write it off at 5% a year, as if it were a disposable good that had no appreciative value over time, when those of us who own houses, apart from occasional meltdown in the market, know that over time our houses will gain in value. But we built into our tax structure this kind of dismissive approach to our built environment. It's hard to make much of a dent.

That's probably going way over the top in terms of what you asked me.

Mr. John Godfrey: No, that's great.

Let me ask you this one. First of all, of course, one can always make the argument that there is an environmental case to keep the preserved heritage because of the embedded energy and all that. It's fascinating, though; here's a case where you might say the demographics are kicking in, because the population that seems to be most supportive is, along with the buildings, aging.

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Is this a phenomenon that would be replicated in the United States, say, or Britain or France? What does your international experience tell you? Is there anything special to us or are we just part of a worldwide trend of ignoring the built heritage?

Mr. Brian Anthony: I think perhaps in the States there may be more sensitivity to these matters than here in Canada, because, well, Americans are Americans, and anything that had to do with their history has to be good, and worth keeping. If we were Americans—and there are many reasons why one ought to be happy that we're not—we would have huge marble mausolea. The children would pay $10 to go and see the remnants of things that we consider unimportant, including buildings.

In Europe, people take it for granted that you conserve the past, that it's an important part of your life. I've lived in Rome, and I've seen it. It makes for a city that is not always workable in contemporary terms, but it is if you take the long view of society and culture.

I was in Germany a few years ago as a guest of the German government. I went to Dresden shortly after the fall of the wall and the unification of the two Germanies. I saw the devastation that had been caused by the fire bombing of that city by the Allies. In the middle of the city there was a church that had been flattened, the Frauenkirche. When I was there, they were rebuilding it. There had been a huge debate as to whether it should have been left a pile of rubble, as the Soviets had left it, as a monument to the follies of war, or whether it should be rebuilt.

This public debate raged on for a year or two. The general view was that Napoleon had been through Dresden in the early 1800s, and had cannonaded the church. They had rebuilt it. The Prussians had marched through Dresden in the late 1800s and had cannonaded the church. They had rebuilt it. The Allies bombed it flat, and they were going to rebuild it again. They had raised the money in the private sector—from private donations and corporate donations—to rebuild the church. Not a cent of public money was going into it.

The debate here wouldn't happen. It would be a K Mart.

Mr. John Godfrey: Well, in Halifax, they just rebuilt the round church.

Mr. Brian Anthony: Yes, with our help, and with the help of a lot of volunteers, but we don't have that kind of great debate about preserving built heritage of Canada, whether it should lie in remnants or whether it should be reconstituted. We've seen many churches in this country be burned and be happily torn down—Lord, I hope I'm not going to be struck by lightning for saying this—by the custodial churches so they can build something that looks like a suburban bungalow, which is easier to heat.

The Chairman: Mr. Franklin.

Mr. Douglas Franklin: Perhaps I can add a quick word about this.

Picking up on what you said, Mr. Godfrey, about the difficulties moving from one generation to another, we are, very frankly, alarmed at the Heritage Canada Foundation. Our members continue to be very concerned about this.

Last year, when the Dominion Institute report showed that only 34% of Canadian youth between the ages of 18 and 24 could pass a basic history exam, we were astonished. This is absolutely scary. It really is scary, because these are the custodians. These are the future stewards of our heritage. If they can't recognize simple facts about Canadian history, how can we ever expect them to get into the area of the many disciplines of heritage—and culture, for that matter? They won't recognize that part of their identity as citizens relates to the past and this need for a continuum.

At one time—for instance, when history was a mandatory subject in schools—this was perhaps less of a problem. Now, of course, we have a different system, but to us, the relationship between the knowledge people have in everyday society about their history and the physical surrounding—what they choose to preserve, the frame of mind of the elected officials they empower to protect these buildings—is a very essential part of citizenship.

In the citizenship exam, which we ask newcomers to Canada eventually to go through, one of the hallmarks of citizenship is knowing history and recognizing heritage. That, we feel, must be elevated right to the very top of the agenda in our country today so that we can understand and perhaps appreciate more our citizenship and our common identity.

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The Chairman: Ms. Bulte.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte (Parkdale—High Park, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I was going to voice exactly the concerns you voiced, because that was something Adrienne Clarkson came and spoke to us about quite eloquently on—the lack of knowledge, not just among our youth but among people in general, about the history of Canada, the lack of history books, documentary books about history. It's just frightening.

So I think the problem is even deeper than you've stated. We never will get into a debate about preserving because we don't know what to preserve. I mean, that I think is the core thing. We do not have the knowledge, and have put nothing in place to ensure that we have the knowledge, not just for new immigrants who come in who have to write citizenship but beyond that.

I mean, where is that solution? Ms. Clarkson didn't have a solution.

I wanted to go back to another point you had made. You stated a greater scope and a greater range was needed, but you said that would never happen. Could you expand on that? Why wouldn't it happen, and why shouldn't it happen?

Mr. Brian Anthony: I didn't mean to sound despairing. I think when I was talking about a greater range I meant a greater range of protective powers and the program capacity to support those powers. In fact, I believe it will happen—I don't want to sound depressive—but it will probably happen in spite of current public attitudes or awareness with regard to history and heritage matters.

As you pointed out, and as Douglas alluded to, because history is now no longer a required subject in school, for the most part, we are now graduating generation upon generation of people who don't understand where they've come from. We're turning them loose, like amnesiacs, to wander across the landscape. It's terrible. How can they value anything, whether it's part of a built heritage or whether it's art and artefacts that belong to our past that shape our cultural identity?

It wouldn't be the first time, but there have been inspired initiatives by governments, federal and others, that almost fly in the face of public attitudes, that go well beyond public awareness or support on particular issues. I think we will see that happening here.

Now, that's not to say that if you speak to most Canadians about their own particular history and heritage there isn't an interest there, but because we are not providing opportunities in the school to know more about our country and our fellow country persons as a whole, it's hard to take that interest and translate it into a much broader awareness.

I'm confident—and I'm turning to this group for support—that with the kind of recommendations emanating from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in the cultural policy context, with the kind of support we've been getting from the Standing Committee on Finance with regard to some of our tax concerns, that we will perhaps soon see some of the kinds of changes we would like to see.

As I say, I think it will take an enlightened act of faith on the part of the initiators of that. It won't have broad public resonance, necessarily.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte: Okay.

I've gone through your recommendations. They tend to be more general. Aside from the tax concerns you have, do you have some specific initiatives that you feel the federal government could or should play a role in?

Mr. Brian Anthony: I think they're more or less summarized there, albeit in general terms. I think we make the point that there is a need for certainly enhanced protective powers at the federal level. I believe, from our discussions with the Department of Canadian Heritage, that message has been taken on board, but what we really need is a national system. Because of the jurisdictional question, we need provinces to play a mirror image role. With the increasing burden being placed on local government, with downloading or offloading and amalgamation and all of those pressures, we need to find a way to encourage municipal governments to do their share.

In some instances, this is happening. Mr. Godfrey was pointing to the example of the recent magazine in which is included a piece on a tax program created by the City of Victoria, which is exemplary in terms of its enlightenment and its impact.

• 1225

Over and above the specific recommendations we made, though, I guess our plea is for a greater understanding of, and concern for, the ongoing preservation of that which is created through federal government largesse.

Mr. Godfrey was referring to 1967. I was thinking this morning, as I was getting ready to go to work, that I have somewhere in a box in the basement a first edition of Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers, and somewhere in probably the same box a first edition of Michael Ondaatje's Billy the Kid.

I'd be very surprised if there were a whole lot of people who had first edition copies of those things because of the fate of books. We spend a fair bit of time encouraging creation, a lot of money encouraging the production of that which is created, but we don't have much of a care for the ongoing preservation of that which is created. Thirty years, more or less, after those two books were published I'll bet very few examples of them exist. They probably were not created on acid-free paper, so those that do exist are creating a great burden on the archivists and librarians, in whose care those few remaining copies are.

Unless and until we make sure we place the right emphasis in terms of our intervention along the continuum, from creation to preservation, we're going to be faced with the problem of not being able to guarantee for future generations of Canadians the ongoing existence of that which we're creating today, whether it's art, artefacts or architecture.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte: Thank you very much.

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

Ms. Wendy Lill: I just want to tell you that I have a copy of the original Rat Jelly poster from Coach House Press.

As well, with a spokesperson like you out there promoting heritage, with the imagery you use, I think you'll go far. I think there probably needs to be a lot more of you.

Listening to what you're saying about how far behind we are in this issue, I think about how a mother will say to her child, after they've watched television for ten hours, to turn the television off. And now they're going to read; you know, their child is going to sit down and suddenly become a reflective, readerly child. Well, it doesn't happen.

It's like the little erratic acts we take to boost heritage. You know, we're going to have a little program here or there, and now we're going to try to redress all of the wave of media that's been coming over us.

We've had many people come before us. We've had the people from the National Library, the National Archives. Specifically those two groups have just terrified me with the kinds of statistics they've told me about, such as the 2 million books sitting in warehouses over in Hull with water dripping on them. That image really does scare me, as does the image of 800,000 copies that are about to de-oxify, literally turn into ash, because they haven't had the process done that will preserve them.

You know, you can turn the TV off, but you're not going to get your kid to read if you don't look after all of these very major infrastructure problems. The roof is caving in on us.

So I'm agreeing with you. I'm very glad you're here, and I'm glad you're speaking out.

Very specifically, I'm wondering if there are any situations that you would say are facing us right now in which the federal government is taking part in threatening heritage buildings, and what we can do about it—what our committee, and what I as a member, can start to fight for.

Mr. Brian Anthony: I'm glad you raised that question.

Thank you, by the way, for the comments about the threatened books and so on, and turning off the television. It's a fight I have with my 13-year-old son. But there is an opportunity there, I think, to get more programming on television through the History Channel and others. We have been having these discussions with them. Even if your children do not prove to be readerly, thoughtful, reflective individuals, at least they get some of that from the television they spend so much time watching.

With regard to heritage buildings on the federal inventory, yes, there are some problems. There are some great examples—one of which I'd like to quote to you—but there are some other problems that I guess to some extent have always been there but have really been accentuated by the fact that the federal tide is receding, and has been receding for the last decade.

• 1230

Much property, whether it's of natural heritage value or built heritage value, has been left high and dry. The net result is that it's sort of deemed surplus to requirements, and often disposed of in such a way as to place this property at risk.

For example, the closure of military bases has placed at risk a lot of buildings. The Peterborough armoury, for example, which is a lovely old building and has much history associated with it, was under threat. Some work is now being done there, I should point out. The Cartier Square drill hall here was in bad shape. It has been restored, but this costs a lot of money.

The Department of National Defence is not a heritage department, and is not there to preserve the built environment. It should not therefore necessarily be expected to carry the burden for that.

So there has to be some way by which we can help custodial departments who have deemed certain bits of their property to be surplus. There has to be some way by which we can help them dispose of the property, or if they want the property to remain on inventory, to restore it, to make it usable on a continuing basis, in order to make sure that these properties are no longer placed in jeopardy.

Another example is lighthouses, now I guess in the stewardship of the Department of Transport or...?

Mr. Douglas Franklin: The coast guard.

Mr. Brian Anthony: We're in many ways a maritime nation. With the automation issue, lighthouses are being placed at risk, and yet in many communities across the country, both in saltwater communities and freshwater communities, lighthouses form one of the distinguishing characteristics of that community. It's on every postcard and it's on every fridge magnet, and yet they'll only be existing on fridge magnets and postcards in the future unless something is done to help the custodial department in question find a workable solution to save those distinctive buildings.

We feel there is a way we could play a useful role. There are two things that should happen. First of all, the Department of Public Works, which is generally government services, which is generally obliged to dispose of surplus properties, should be encouraged to do so in such a way that does not place those heritage properties at risk. At the moment, they dispose of them as if they were any kind of property, and these properties do have unique distinguishing characteristics that have a great deal of community value, and should not be just dealt with as if they were a surplus truck.

We feel there is an opportunity for us to play a bridging role, absent Government Works and Public Services' interest in doing this. Because we're a trustee of the Crown, we could absorb these properties and hold them until we found a local solution, found a new use, a new user, perhaps create a local trust or body or foundation to take on the ownership and operation of a lighthouse, a grain elevator, or a stone building that was part of an original military base that is now closed.

But that would mean sitting down with the government and having a serious discussion about reinforcing our mandate and means in order to do so, because that would be a fairly major undertaking. It's one we would welcome, because we would like to see an end put to the thoughtless disposal of buildings that have a heritage value.

I think it's in the interest of the federal government to do this, because as the federal tide recedes, as Doug said earlier, in many instances the only thing upon which the flag of Canada flies is the post office, or what used to be the post office. Unless those things are protected, those things that have had community relevance, that have been the witnesses of the community's history, that in many cases were one of the first buildings to go into the community and define that community, then the federal government will not have the kind of support and approval and level of interest it ought to have if we are to have indeed a government of Canada that speaks to all Canadians.

The Chairman: Mr. Mark, briefly.

Mr. Inky Mark: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We talked briefly about history and how important history is in terms of our past and our future, and certainly from a heritage perspective, and yet I believe the federal government needs to take a greater leadership role in acknowledging our own history in this country.

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That's one thing I can't understand, that at the federal level, this and previous governments have ignored heroes of this country. I guess as Canadians we don't like the word “hero”, but we can call them...well, they are heroes. That's a fact of life. There are the people like William Barker.

In fact, it took a trip to Taiwan, on my part, with a parliamentary delegation, to discover a great Canadian, George MacKay, a Presbyterian minister from Durham County, I believe, who basically created the educational and agricultural system in Taiwan.

These people are heroes, and they need to be acknowledged. You had time periods like the Ukrainian internment period, 1914-1920, and the Exclusion Act of 1923, and yet federally, we ignore them, or just forget about them. I don't think we can do that. I think this government and previous governments should have dealt with this. If they want the people of this country to cherish our history and learn from our history, and recognize and acknowledge them, we have to do that.

Do you think governments have to take a leading role federally?

Mr. Brian Anthony: I think there are a number of things the federal government can do in that regard. Given the sensitive jurisdictional issue as regards education in particular, which I think is where we have to place more and more emphasis, it's probably best for the federal government not to get directly involved in that. However, there are, I believe, opportunities for the federal government to support those organizations that do have access to the educational system. We are one.

Every Heritage Day—and you'll be getting posters and teachers' guide soon for Heritage Day 1999—for the last 24 years, we have been distributing teachers' guides and posters on a different theme into the school system. This year, we will be distributing more because we have the support of the Canada Post Corporation, which recently issued a series of stamps on the built heritage theme, to celebrate our 25th anniversary. We're converting that research and those images into our school material. It will bind in a poster in all 66,000 copies that it distributes for the school system primarily.

We do this on a shoestring. With a bit more support, the quality and quantity of our work, which I think is already fairly impressive, could be expanded, but there are lots of other groups that could similarly be providing that. It would not have all of the trappings of federal government and would be therefore, at the provincial level in the educational authorities, more welcome than it would otherwise be.

As well, I think we can do it cheaper. We're in the business of programming. We do it on a shoestring. When we deal with printers and so on, we get the not-for-profit sector rate. When the federal government decides to do something, you start seeing these zeros being added on to the bids. So I think that's an area.

We have a lot of heritage institutions that exist presumably for that purpose. I know I have defended the arm's-length relationship of the federal cultural agencies from government—presumably, that's why we have the CBC, to produce the kind of radio and television programming that would speak to some of the concerns you've raised. That's why we have our museums.

We have all of the apparatus there. It's just a matter of perhaps focusing it somewhat. I believe there is a hunger, a thirst, on the part of Canadians to know more about themselves and their country. I just don't think we're responding to that.

With your indulgence, Mr. Chairman, I'd say that a couple of years ago, when the specialty licences were being considered by the CRTC, and a whole lot of would-be specialty channel operators were polling—and the polling industry made a gazillion that year, because a horse channel was going to be created, and they wanted to know if Canadians wanted a horse channel, another bass fishing channel, another all-news channel—Canadians, being the polite people we are, said, yes, we would love to have another bass fishing channel, very much, but first, please, could we have a history or heritage channel.

These people couldn't believe it, that they actually got polling results that said, yes, you can go to the CRTC and say Canadians want another horse channel or another instant shopping channel, but they all want a history or heritage channel.

They couldn't believe it. It's there. It's all documented—with their own money, thank goodness. When we went before the CRTC to make the point that we needed one of these beasts, at least we had the research that had been done by others, although it yielded results they weren't expecting.

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So I believe there is a hunger out there. I believe there is a thirst to know more. I think we have to find a way to tap the existing institutions and the existing resources and opportunities to feed that hunger.

The Chairman: Thank you.

I wish we had more time, because this has been a fascinating session, as was the last one, which was interrupted.

We have some business to attend to. Before that, I'd like to ask a couple of brief questions for the sake of our researcher here.

Ms. Iley, in the private donations sector, how big a part does the tobacco industry play? With the new law coming up, do you see the replacement of it within due time as being easily feasible or with great difficulty?

Ms. Sarah Iley: It is a problem on a number of different levels. The tobacco industry plays a significant role. I should also add that in the not-for-profit performing arts, when we look at donations and sponsorships, the only tobacco money that would be there primarily would be from du Maurier Council for the Arts.

A lot of the funding that tobacco companies have poured into arts and sports, etc., has been directed to particular events and festivals. Neither us nor Statistics Canada has found an appropriate way to really gather data on festivals—for instance, the jazz festivals nationwide, the film festivals nationwide, which the tobacco industry has been very supportive of. In fact, it instigated the creation of the du Maurier Jazz Festival in Toronto, for instance. Those do not appear at all in our figures.

So when you're looking at these donations figures, they would incorporate more the things like the new music festival, which is a part of the Winnipeg symphony's productions each year.

How problematic is that? It's problematic on a bunch of different levels. The first level, of course, is the obvious lack of money.

The Chairman: Excuse me, but what I wanted to know is, are you addressing it now? Is your organization addressing this?

Ms. Sarah Iley: Yes, we have been addressing this for a couple of years. The really critical piece is that if industry sees this as the beginning of government intrusion into other kinds of industries' involvement with the not-for-profit sector, there will be a chill effect. It isn't just about tobacco; it's about every other industry that makes partnerships with not-for-profit organizations that have boards of directors that govern them.

Once those relationships have been built, there is a real, strong fear on the part of my membership: What right has government to interfere in those relationships that have been developed between those two parties?

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Anthony, I'd like to put two suggestions and just bounce them off you. Following the discussion that took place here, first of all, your thoughts about preservation were really interesting, which some members picked up on. We had Ms. Macdonald of the National Film Board here, telling us how they were trying to put out a program, I think on CBC, showing all the famous films that the NFB has produced over the years. When they went to locate the films, they couldn't even find some of it. They had to go to private people to try to piece them together. It was a real mess. She addressed very much the same question about preservation.

I was wondering, in that regard, if it would be worthwhile for us to follow up a suggestion regarding Public Works and Government Services, that before heritage buildings are put on the market, you should be advised. It would seem to me that it should be simple to advise you. If they were forced to advise you, then they wouldn't go ahead and just sell them right away.

The second thing I wanted to mention is to pick up on what Mr. Godfrey was saying, that unfortunately we have this terrible bent of separating environment from heritage from economy, when all these things are connected.

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I was thinking about the Victoria process you described in your magazine, where there's a tax incentive for preserving the heritage. Right now the government is putting a lot of money—$150 million—into climate change. I imagine a lot of this stuff will follow into energy for buildings. Heritage buildings are not well structured for the modern world.

If you could tie these two together, you know, there's more reason for a tax incentive, again, where we could link up a lot of these things—preservation of heritage through infrastructure, through climate change, through environment. There are so many good reasons we could invoke for both commercial and residential buildings.

I wanted to get your sense of it, if it's worthwhile, because we hope to put some practical recommendations in.

Mr. Brian Anthony: I would certainly welcome, Mr. Chairman, having Government Works and Public Services involve us and inform us of any decisions that relate to declaring and selling off surplus heritage buildings. We are, I guess, “QUNGO”—quasi-NGO; as non-governmental as we feel we want to be on any given occasion, but where they want to be governmental, we can also do that—and we could certainly enter into an agreement with them.

The thing is, we have the links across the country to the heritage community and to the municipal governments and the town planners and the heritage consultants and so on. If in a particular community a heritage building had been deemed surplus by a custodial department, and Public Works and Government Services was about to take it to market, we could provide the bridge to that community and involve all of the interested parties to make that transition from a government-owned building to a privately owned building a smooth one that did not place at risk the building in question.

Second, in terms of the links between environmental and heritage conservation issues, they're very strong ones. I will make sure your researchers have a copy of our discussion paper, which we put together a couple of years ago, called “Natural Partners”, which we circulated to environmental groups.

Fully one-third of all landfill sites in this country are filled with the rubble of demolished buildings. Right there is one reason to recycle and reuse older buildings rather than demolish them and fill a vanishing resource, which is space.

Second, there are issues around all the stored energy, human and industrial, that a building comprises. That has to be taken into consideration.

There was a third thing I had in my mind, but it's rapidly slipping away.

As Douglas says, many people like older buildings...but I know the point I was trying to make. The adapted reuse of an older building requires much more highly developed skills and is more labour intensive than the construction of new buildings, with new building techniques and so on. So there is an economic and an employment factor.

The Chairman: Could you be kind enough to send the paper to the clerk of the committee so that he can follow through?

Mr. Brian Anthony: Certainly.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for appearing today. Again, our apologies for last week. Thank you very much for coming. We really appreciate it.

The committee is not adjourned. We have some items of business to take care of.

First of all, we have Bill C-55 before the House. The vote hasn't been taken on second reading as yet.

I present this to you as a suggestion. You don't have to accept it, but it's been done before, and it's perfectly in order under Standing Order 108(2). What I need is a decision, yea or nay.

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What I would suggest is that next Tuesday we meet and have a technical briefing on Bill C-55 by the people from the ministry, regardless of whether the bill is voted on or not. That's up to you to do it. But it would certainly make the process easier.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte: Absolutely. That would be a great idea.

The Chairman: Secondly, the subcommittee on sports has notified me of a motion to travel to Toronto. We can't take it now, because we don't have a quorum. I'm just giving you notice. The motion will be circulated to you for a vote on Tuesday.

Three, Ms. Lill, you have notified us that you have a notice of motion. Do proceed.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Mr. Chairman, I would like to give a notice of motion for a future meeting to invite the representatives from the board of the National Arts Centre to come before the heritage committee.

The Chairman: You have to give us 24 hours. Do you want it to be dealt with on Tuesday?

Ms. Wendy Lill: I would prefer it would be dealt with possibly on Thursday. The sooner the better, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to be here on Tuesday, so I would prefer Thursday.

The Chairman: Is it the NAC as a structure or specifically the board or...?

Ms. Wendy Lill: I would like to have representatives from the board of the National Arts Centre to come before the heritage committee. It's specifically to answer questions regarding the dismissal of the executive director.

The Chairman: Do members have any comments or remarks to make?

Mr. John Godfrey: Mr. Chairman, we don't have a written document before us, but I would just put on notice that when I saw it, I thought perhaps an amendment might be made to make sure we had as wide a representation as witnesses as would allow us to have a fair discussion about the subject. But I'll hold that back until I actually see the written document.

The Chairman: Are you going to produce one?

Ms. Wendy Lill: Yes, we will be producing a written document shortly, and we'll circulate it, yes.

The Chairman: Ms. Lill, by all means, please, have a written motion. I would strongly suggest that to you—to try to help, not to try to hinder, for sure, because I'm all for an open committee, as you know. Make sure you liaise with the clerk and the people in the House before you produce the motion so that the phraseology of it can help us to make it much more relevant.

But I don't know; I can't say right now, before looking at the wording, whether we should be looking at a particular person's dismissal at committee, and whether this is the authority of the committee. Then we will have every possible government organization appear before us to discuss the dismissal of somebody within the institution.

Certainly we have full authority to convene any agency of the Crown. There is no problem there. I'm just suggesting to you that you'd better just check it carefully so that when it comes here it makes everybody's task much easier.

Mr. Godfrey, if, when the wording is circulated, you have any thoughts about amendments and so forth, then it can be brought up then.

And you would like this to be discussed on Thursday?

Ms. Wendy Lill: That would be excellent.

I'm just thinking that we could get a copy to you before we circulate it, if that would help. Would you like that?

Mr. John Godfrey: Sure, that would be great. Thanks.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Okay, then.

Thank you for your comments.

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The Chairman: Are there any other points to discuss?

If not, the meeting is adjourned.