CHER Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Monday, February 22, 1999

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[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark (Dauphin—Swan River, Ref.)): I'd like to bring this meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to order and welcome everyone here today to attend this round table discussion.

First I would like your local member of Parliament to bring greetings.

Mr. Power.

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Mr. Charlie Power (St. John's West, PC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's good to be here.

As you know, for those of you who are here with the heritage committee, Newfoundland probably has the longest heritage in Canada, and it has a fabulous cultural community that seems to get better and better every day. It's too bad you're only staying in Newfoundland for a short period of time; you could experience some more of that culture. I'm just delighted to see so many participants here from the area who can give you their viewpoints on what's happening in this industry. Thanks for being here.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): There are distinguished guests and members of the public seated in the audience. I certainly recognize Dr. Pratt, a distinguished and famous Canadian from Newfoundland.

I would like to thank all of you very much for joining the committee to participate in what we hope will be a dynamic and stimulating exchange of opinions and ideas. Assembling Canadians before a committee is an exciting opportunity, and we are truly honoured you have taken the time away from your busy schedules to be with us here today.

Those of you who are familiar with our usual proceedings will notice we have abandoned the traditional seating arrangements and intermingled our members of Parliament with our guests. By doing so we hope to stress a less formal atmosphere and invite a freer flow of discussion.

In a few moments I will ask each of you around the table to introduce yourself and state your name and who you represent in a brief manner. First I would like to open this session by describing what the committee is trying to achieve through our study in general and these round table discussions in particular.

The heritage committee decided in the fall of 1997 to examine what the federal government was doing to support the arts and cultural industries and our cultural heritage. We wanted to look at the types of support measures already in place, such as content and ownership rules, direct grants to artists, and tax incentives, to name only a few, to determine whether these measures will stand up to the challenges the next century will present.

There are three challenges in particular heralding the new millennium that we wanted to focus on to determine how they will influence Canadian culture and in turn how they may affect the way the federal government supports the cultural sector. These three challenges are new technologies, globalization and international trade agreements, and the changing demographics of our society.

These three challenges raise an enormous number of complex issues, several of which may be hard to answer without the aid of a crystal ball. For example, what will be the impact of the Internet on communications in Canada and around the world? Will it be even more profound than the sea change introduced by Gutenberg's printing press?

Will the multilateral agreement on investment mean death or new life to our cultural industries? Will the aging baby boom generation have a positive or negative effect on museums and feeder attendance figures. What about Generation Xers? What kind of cultural consumers will they be over their adult life cycles?

Finally, after we identify the major changes the technological trade and social development will introduce, we will want to consider whether the federal government should remodel or reaffirm the role it has been playing to support the arts and cultural industries and the preservation of our heritage.

To help the committee grapple with these issues, in recent months we have received briefings from officials of the Department of Canadian Heritage, International Trade and Industry, as well as some expert witnesses on the effect international trade, new technology, and social change may have on federal cultural policies and support measures. We have also heard from representatives of our federal cultural industries.

This week the committee is travelling across the country to speak with artists, emerging cultural entrepreneurs, and consumers of cultural products in their own communities to explore their views on culture and the federal government's role in supporting it. The committee has also hosted a series of round table discussions to explore the issues with established and successful professionals from the arts, heritage, publishing, film and video, broadcasting, and sound recording fields.

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On a note about the round tables, having set one of the committee's general plans of action, let me now zero in on today's proceedings. Our guests today are the people who see and feel the impact, whether good or bad, of the federal government's support measures. Also they witness first-hand the effects new technologies, international trade agreements, and changing demographics are having in their fields.

To focus our discussion today, I will be inviting everyone around the table to address five key questions. For your information, you will find a copy of these five questions on the last page of the program. Everyone may not wish to tackle every question. In fact, time constraints may not allow everyone at the table to comment on every issue that is raised. We simply ask that when you wish to contribute to the discussion, you indicate this to me. For the sake of the interpreters, I can only recognize one speaker at a time.

My job as chairman-moderator will be to try to ensure that everyone who wants to express their own thoughts has the opportunity to do so within the time available for the discussions. The people in the audience are also invited to participate, so once we go through one round of the participants at the table, we'll invite the audience to participate through the use of the mike at the back.

Now I will invite our table guests to introduce themselves.

Mr. Gaston Blais (Committee Researcher): My name is Gaston Blais. I'm the researcher for the committee.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): My name is Inky Mark, member of Parliament for Dauphin—Swan River.

The Clerk of the Committee: My name is Norm Radford. I'm the clerk of the committee.

Mr. Denis Parker (Executive Director, Music Industry Association of Newfoundland and Labrador): My name is Denis Parker and I represent the Music Industry Association of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.): My name is Joe Jordan and I'm the member of Parliament for Leeds—Grenville in southeastern Ontario.

Ms. Patricia Grattan (Director, Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador): My name is Patricia Grattan. I'm director of the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, and until quite recently I was also a member of the Canada Council.

Ms. Karen Dawe (Managing Editor, The Newfoundland Herald): I'm Karen Dawe, managing editor for The Newfoundland Herald, a magazine here in the province, and I'm speaking on publishing.

Ms. Anne Manuel (Executive Director, Newfoundland and Labrador Crafts Development Association): My name is Anne Manuel. I'm the executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Crafts Development Association.

Mr. Keith Soper (Sales Manager, Newfoundland Broadcasting Company): Hi. My name is Keith Soper. I'm the general manager at OZ-FM Radio, as well as sales manager for NTV television.

Mr. Carman V. Carroll (Coordinator, Cain Initiative, Canadian Council of Archives): My name is Carman Carroll and I'm here representing the Canadian Council of Archives.

Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): My name is Wendy Lill. I'm the member of Parliament for Dartmouth and the critic for culture and heritage for the New Democratic Party.

Mr. Larry Dohey (Representative, Association of Newfoundland and Labrador Archives): My name is Larry Dohey and I'm representing the Association of Newfoundland and Labrador Archives.

Ms. Shelley M. Smith (Provincial Archivist, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador): My name is Shelley Smith and I'm the provincial archivist for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Charlie Power: I'm Charlie Power, the member of Parliament for St. John's West.

Mr. Harry Connors (Director of Communications, NewTel Group of Companies): I'm Harry Connors, director of communications, NewTel Enterprises.

Ms. Penny Houlden (Chief Curator, Newfoundland Museum, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation): I'm Penny Houlden, chief curator of the Newfoundland Museum.

Mr. Hilary Montbourquette (President, Atlantic Association of Broadcasters): Hello. My name is Hilary Montbourquette. I'm the president of the Atlantic Association of Broadcasters, which comprises 60 radio stations and five television stations in the region.

Mr. Randy Follett (Executive Director, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council): My name is Randy Follett and I'm the executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski—Mitis, BQ): My name is Suzanne Tremblay and I am a member of the Bloc Québécois. I represent the riding of Rimouski—Mitis and I am the spokesperson of the Bloc Québécois for Canadian Heritage.

[English]

Mr. Bruce Porter (Managing Editor, TickleAce Magazine; Interim President, Association of Cultural Industries of Newfoundland and Labrador): My name is Bruce Porter. I'm the editor of the literary magazine TickleAce and also the interim president of the Association of Cultural Industries of Newfoundland and Labrador, which is a newly formed association representing the four main disciplines of the arts.

Ms. Mary Pratt (Individual Presentation): Hi. I'm Mary Pratt. I'm really here because I'm co-chair of a committee that isn't exactly formed yet, but nevertheless is in the process of being formed, to look after the new Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador and to concern ourselves with the archives, the museum, and various other historic buildings in the city. This is all a bit amorphous, but I felt my presence might be useful here today, if anybody has questions...which I'm not going to be able to answer. Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much.

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As you know, we have about twenty minutes per question. We have five questions to respond to. This is really a round table discussion, more so than a presentation of your position representing your organization.

I would ask that we begin with question one, which states, from the range of federal cultural support measures currently in place or used in the past, which one works well in your sector or industry? Which one does not?

Anyone can respond to it. You can either address the question or perhaps respond to the comments that other people make, and we'll try to keep tab on the total time. Go ahead.

Mr. Carman Carroll: As I indicated, I am here representing the Canadian Council of Archives, specifically as coordinator of its new initiative, the Canadian Archival Information Network.

The Canadian Council of Archives was established in 1985 and has offered substantial programs to the Canadian archival community since that time. Its funding comes from the Department of Canadian Heritage, now down to about $2.3 million per year.

I want to speak in support of the funding that the Department of Canadian Heritage has given to the Canadian archival community, because it has been, frankly, critical to the development of the Canadian archival system. Archives are the holders of the Canadian documentary heritage, and in order to make that heritage available to a growing number of Canadians, it's imperative that we use new technology to bring the correspondence, documents, diaries, photographs, maps, architectural plans, videos, and the like to a larger range of Canadians. So I'm simply stating my support and the support of the Canadian Council of Archives for infrastructure support for organizations like the Canadian Council of Archives.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Mr. Hilary Montbourquette: In response to the question, we feel that the television members have benefited from the simulcast or the simultaneous substitutions technology, and we feel this has been good for the industry because it protects program rights and allows us to be competitive. We don't feel the government is making enough funding available for production to the private sector, though. We feel the private sector should have access to funds and incentives that are similar to that of the independent production industry.

On the radio side of things, we feel that the 30% Cancon rule has been great for our industry and for the music industry. We feel it's the MAPL system that is flawed, that needs review. When you consider that a song by Frank Sinatra, My Way, can be considered Cancon, and a song from Céline Dion, the theme from Titanic is not... We feel that the MAPL system needs some attention and perhaps an overhaul.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Ms. Anne Manuel: Although I work with the Newfoundland and Labrador Crafts Development Association, I would like to make my first comment on behalf of another organization, the Canadian Crafts Federation.

The Canadian Crafts Council, a one-time national organization that worked on behalf of craftspeople across the country, did receive funding from the one-time Department of Communications—I'm talking about 1996, I believe. In that year that funding ended, and the organization was maintained by a small group of volunteers. It has recently been reformed and revitalized under this new name, the Canadian Crafts Federation.

It's really important to craft councils like ourselves across the country that there is a national body that can speak for us, that can help us understand what happens on a national front and the actions we should take, and that will also serve as a catalyst for joint projects and interprovincial communications.

While craft councils can support a national organization to some extent, there's no way we can jointly support a national organization entirely, and I think it's necessary that the Department of Canadian Heritage reinstate funding to the Canadian Crafts Federation as a new organization that has the full support of all the provincial craft councils.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Keith.

Mr. Keith Soper: I would like to speak on the same issue with regard to radio, but from a couple of different angles.

I echo the feelings Mr. Montbourquette noted on the Canadian content regulations. I think they've worked very well. It is scary, though, when Frank Sinatra can be regarded as a Canadian and Céline Dion cannot, and it's a little less obvious than it seems on the surface, but it's the MAPL system. It might be time to revisit that. Canadian radio now has to play 35% Canadian content and we're not sure that it's going to stop there. This is really not an issue of is there enough Canadian content or Canadian music to support that. Personally I think it is, and professionally I think there is, but I think we need to look at redefining that system. By simplifying the MAPL system I think the 35% will be a lot easier to work with. I think we have to be very conscious that more is not necessarily better.

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From the television side of things, the Canadian television fund, without a doubt, is the single most important initiative for Canadian television, for all Canadians. I think the challenge is not only to preserve that fund but certainly to enhance it. This becomes a funding issue, of course. Where do you get the funds? It's troublesome, but I think it's vital that the U.S. specialty services make some form of a contribution to that. They draw a lot out of the system and they don't put a lot into it. Certainly viewers like U.S. specialty channels...but I don't think they're putting anything into the Canadian television fund right now.

Broadcasters do that. I know that broadcast development undertakings like cable companies contribute to that fund. I think there was a dangerous precedent set, or there may be a dangerous precedent set, in that there are some applications now, I believe, before the CRTC where some cable companies are looking to direct their funding away from the Canadian television fund and into local community channels. That can set a dangerous precedent in the sense that there might be a hole for a local community cable channel, but that usually turns out to be a hockey game or something of that effect.

The Canadian television fund is something for all Canadians, and I think we should be very conscious of preserving and enhancing that fund, because Canadian television programming has to compete on a global level; it has to make business sense, and funding is required for that.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Would any of our other guests like to speak?

Mr. Denis Parker: I would like to say that over the last five or six years the support for the cultural industry here in the province by the Department of Canadian Heritage has been tremendous. We do not have anything up and running right now, but it's been very effective in the past. I think we should support the measures that have gone past and put in place a new agreement.

Also, through the Department of Canadian Heritage the work that's been with FACTOR on the national level... I'm on the national board of FACTOR, and although the moneys have been increased recently through the report that was done on the Canadian music industry there in 1997, I know the FACTOR programs are coming up for review under the SRDP program. I would like to urge that the money stay in place and also that the administration be continued under FACTOR in Toronto.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you. If there are any other comments from guests, go ahead.

Ms. Penny Houlden: I want to remind you that the federal government has been a very important player in supporting the work of museums across the country through a number of programs: the museum assistance program, the Canadian Conservation Institute, and the Canadian Heritage Information Network. All of those programs and services have been vital in developing and professionalizing the museum. All of those programs have experienced some problems, some cuts, in the last number of years, and all of this creates uncertainty and difficulties for planning when museums are under a lot of strain to grow, to respond to new audiences, and to work in different media. I would encourage you to continue your support for those programs, and also employment programs, which are vital to the operation of many museums, particularly Young Canada Works in heritage institutions, which was established a number of years ago. It's been a very important player.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

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Mr. Larry Dohey: I would like to endorse Penny's sentiments. Most of the archives in the province, and there are 56 active archives, get their funding through the Canadian Council of Archives. This year under one component something like $65,706 was allotted for one component. Here in the province, of those 56 archives they wanted $80,000 of that $56,000. We're always having to put good projects on the back burner.

So I commend the government for the moneys they have supplied, but I think we should be careful and cautious and encourage further funding.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Pat, would you like to go first, and then Karen.

Ms. Patricia Grattan: I would like first to support the funding that the government has given for many years to the Canada Council for the Arts, and I hope you'll hear from other people around the table that it's been tremendously instrumental in developing the arts right across the country. It's been extremely important to the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, which is largely a contemporary institution. Most recently they've developed operations funding for public art galleries, which has frankly saved our bacon in the last year.

So I would like to acknowledge the government's new support fairly recently for the Canada Council, $25 million a year in new money for a five-year period. I hope the government will find a way to maintain that level of funding.

I would also like to comment, following on Penny, on the museum assistance program, which the Department of Canadian Heritage operates. That was part of an absolutely visionary museum policy that was developed in the early seventies. Quite frankly, the funding level of that is now such that it's growing increasingly irrelevant I think to museums around the country. It's far below what it once was and far below the needs of the institutions.

If you look at galleries and museums across the country, even though they've made tremendous strides in becoming more self-supporting, there is only—and I now speak from personal experience at our gallery—so much that we can do in our own institutions. Public sector funding remains a very important part of the mix.

Thirdly, I'd like to follow on from Denis in saying that the federal-provincial agreements that have operated in this province on the cultural side of things have been extremely effective, and I think they've been effective because they have been targeted to the cultural sector. They haven't been part of a broader agreement, and I certainly would endorse a renewal of that kind of agreement.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Karen.

Ms. Karen Dawe: Obviously everyone has a lot of things they are very thankful to the government for when it comes to cultural support—even though it's not nearly enough; it never is.

In my case, one thing I'm particularly pleased that we are able to avail ourselves of is the publications assistance program. This is a little bit of a misnomer. When you say publications assistance program it makes it sound like publications are getting a benefit out of it. Actually it's the readers who are getting a benefit out of it because it reduces the amount we have to pay for sending the publications out through Canada Post.

Essentially, for a magazine like The Newfoundland Herald, an entertainment publication heavily focusing on the arts, the writing community, the music community, and the craft community here in Newfoundland, to get this out to rural Newfoundlanders...if we had to send it by Canada Post doing its standard mailing process, it would be $2. That would just be the mailing of it. The magazine itself is $2, including tax now, so that would effectively double the price of the magazine, and of course we'd have to pass that on to the consumers. We'd have to ask the readers to pay that for the magazine. So instead of just paying the $2, they'd be paying $2 on top of that, and it would be very difficult for them to learn about some of the wonderful things that are happening in this province culturally, through music, through the museums, through the crafts, through arts, and through the readers.

It's very difficult to get it across that all of these different assistance programs, things like the Canada Council, FACTOR, the museum assistance program, are incredibly beneficial to a province like Newfoundland, which is very culturally based. We have a massive history when it comes to our heritage, our culture. About the only person here who would really know an awful lot about that would be Suzanne Tremblay, because she has been fighting for that through her party as well.

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In Quebec, they have a very strong culture, a very strong heritage. We do here too, and we're very proud of that. The Newfoundland Herald is very proud to be able to provide that, but it's only through government support of such things as FACTOR, the museum assistance program, and of course the publications distribution assistance program that we're able to continue to make sure Newfoundlanders all around the province know about that.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Bruce Porter.

Mr. Bruce Porter: I guess I'll begin by echoing Karen's comments on the merits of the publishers assistance program, of which my small magazine avails itself. I'm also a member of the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association, so I know the program is considered a wonderful asset. As she points out, it is not of any particular gain to publishers as such. It's the readers who are gaining, because, as you say, it cuts the price in half.

I want to echo Pat's and Denis's comments on the particular federal-provincial agreements that we've had here for approximately five years. There were two particular agreements, with the federal support coming through Canadian Heritage. They have been extremely beneficial, particularly because they've been focused and have had the involvement of the cultural community. We're hoping we can get something comparable in place ASAP.

I guess I would be remiss if I didn't say that the Canada Council, of course, is a godsend for a country like Canada. I can't imagine the country surviving if we don't maintain the Canada Council support, and in fact increase it. There are areas where it certainly could be rejigged and increased.

Perhaps I can add one brief comment. As a member of the magazine community, I just want to very briefly say that we're pleased the government is bringing in Bill C-55 to support the magazine industry.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Dr. Pratt.

Ms. Mary Pratt: Thank you.

Although I basically spend all my time painting in my studio, every once in awhile I have to come out to do this public thing. I find myself in an awkward situation because this is never quite where I'm at.

I would certainly like to support all of those people who support the government initiatives when it comes to maintaining, number one, the Canadian magazine thingy. I'm very supportive of that. For a little while, I was on a SAGIT that had to do with culture. With Applebaum-Hébert and so on, it was very obvious that unless a country or an area keeps its own voice, its own language, it loses that. The Americans are very aware of that. For a long time, they wouldn't even publish work unless they owned the copyright to it down there. They know what they're doing. They want the whole basket, and it's very necessary for us to do that very kind of flag-waving when it comes to magazines. I really hate to say that because I loathe being that way, but I really think it's necessary for Canada.

As far as the archives, the museum, and the gallery are concerned, we are the oldest section in Canada. We are the oldest inhabited province—we were a country; we almost think we still are a country—yet our archives, our museum, and certainly our art gallery are in terrible peril simply because we are not a wealthy part of the country. We depend very greatly on federal support, all these federal-provincial alliances and so on.

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Frankly, I would like to see not only federal-provincial alliances, but alliances with wealthy Canadians, along with improved tax breaks for them. I think there's an awful lot of support for the arts among the wealthy in Canada. You can see that as evident with the big initiative taken by the former lieutenant-governor of Ontario when he gave so much money to the humanities at the University of Toronto. This kind of thing can be prosperous, I think, and it should be encouraged.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Randy, and then I'll ask members of Parliament for comments.

Mr. Randy Follett: I guess I'll just echo what everyone has been saying about the Canada Council and the federal-provincial agreements. I want to point out what I think is one of the major successes. I think the agreements were successful because we had program officers on the ground in the province who worked with those programs and helped the community immensely. With the agreements, it was very difficult at the beginning for everybody in the arts community to learn how to access those programs. That became very important, and I think there is something to be learned there for the Canada Council as well.

Having received very strong increases over the past few years, with others coming up for the next couple of years as well, the Canada Council needs to find some way to allow the regions of the province to have more accessibility to their programs. Right now, these programs are created and information is sent out to us at the local council, for instance. Well, it's very difficult for us to take responsibility for getting the information on the various Canada Council programs out to individuals. We find people coming through our doors all the time who aren't aware of various programs at the Canada Council. So I think some way has to be found to provide that awareness. Perhaps that means using local organizations to become the delivery agents for the various programs or to pass out information on the various programs.

Because it hasn't come up yet, the other organization I want to mention is the Cultural Human Resources Council. This will be more important perhaps when we talk about the technology initiatives. It was created by the federal government and it was a fantastic move, but the organization is struggling these days. It hasn't been able to get the kind of funding it needs to launch into its initiatives. It has done some excellent studies, it knows what direction it wants to go in, but it hasn't had the appropriate funding to head in that direction. Right now, the CHRC is probably the main source for the arts community to gain access to technology and to gain training on technology. So I would encourage further support for that organization.

I also want to put in a plug for the Canadian Conference of the Arts, which I know works hard for everybody. In particular, two documents that are very relevant are the Arts in Transition report, parts one and two, which I'm sure you're well familiar with.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Would you like to continue?

Mr. Harry Connors: Our involvement with the arts is mainly as a funder of arts organizations and cultural organizations, both in association with the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, and directly with groups such as the MIA, the ACI, individual artists, theatre troops, and so on.

I consider myself pretty unqualified to comment on cultural policy, on what works and what doesn't from a federal point of view. What I would encourage is to build on Mary Pratt's comments. I think the federal agencies can play a useful role in encouraging greater private sector funding of the arts, and I add the caveat not to replace federal government funding but to increase the total amount of funding available to arts and artists.

There was a wonderful budget presented—at least, I happen to think so—with a strong technology tone. The government quite proudly and quite rightly put forward its program on developing new technologies. I would hope to see a budget that equally presents federal government increased funding for the arts and for arts organizations across Canada. I think there always has to be a balance in life, and for companies that are trying to attract employees and attract qualified workers, part of their focus is on the quality of life in their community. So there has to be a strong artistic and cultural life in that community. I think the federal government should be as equally interested in that area as it rightly is in technology.

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The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much. I will now ask our members of Parliament if they would like make comments or ask questions. Suzanne, do you want to start?

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: First I would like to thank all the persons and groups who responded to our invitation to come and express their views before the committee regarding Canadian cultural policy. The important thing for us is to get some very concrete ideas from you.

For instance, during the plane trip, I was reading an article published in a French-language newspaper. It said that if technology continues to advance at the current pace, within five years, there would no longer be any records, CDs and other things like that, because everything would be broadcast over the Internet.

I would like you to give us some very concrete suggestions regarding the industry or regarding the sector you represent. What are the biggest technological innovations that you expect and how are they going to affect you? What could we do in advance, so as to ensure the continued development of cultural industries?

You know that many jobs can be created in this sector. Job creation in the cultural field is less costly and very profitable for society at large. Many jobs can be easily created this way. With $20,000, a job can be created in the cultural sector, whereas in the manufacturing sector, it costs $200,000 on the average. Thus, money could be invested in this now that we have a surplus. In my opinion, at least 1% of the national budget should be dedicated to culture.

I would really like you to suggest a solution or make some very concrete suggestions so that we can make recommendations to the government.

Wonderful things have been done. We are told that the government is doing fine, that it is doing good work and we're asking it for more money, but if we get more money and then it amounts to nothing because of the tricks that technology can play on us, where will we be then?

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Would any of our guests like to respond to the question? Mr. Carroll.

Mr. Carman Carroll: I would just like to say that I believe technology has a strong role to play in the archival community in disseminating information about the holdings of over 850 Canadian archives. What I would like to stress, however, is that in the quarters I have visited looking for federal funding for the Canadian Archival Information Network, or CAIN, to support getting information out to all Canadians and indeed people outside of this country, the emphasis right now is on technology and supporting technology, or, as they say in Ottawa, “the pipes and wires”. It took me awhile to get used to that one from here.

I think it's important to support Canadian content, and certainly archives have Canadian content. What we want to do is get information about archives to more Canadians. It's just not those Canadians who can go to the provincial archives or to the Roman Catholic archives in St. John's here, but Canadians throughout this country can get access to that information from wherever they are via the Internet.

What we don't have now is funding; there is no funding strategy within Canadian Heritage that I'm aware of that provides funding to develop and disseminate the Canadian content, the description of archival holdings. Through Industry Canada, CANARIE, CFI, and other programs, there is money there to build the technology, but if we just have the technology without the content, then what have we at the end of it?

Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you. Anyone else?

Mr. Harry Connors: Yes, I wanted to respond to the question.

One of the programs we've established is called a cultural innovation fund. Our interest primarily has been to allow the artists to have some freedom through a granting program, which is artist-reviewed in advance, to develop skills in new technology to begin to apply their work in new media and so on. I want to put the emphasis on the fact that we were more interested in seeing what the artists would do with the new technology than in what the technology would do to the artists.

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We want to leave the artists free to explore how their particular discipline can be developed using these new media, and I would concur with the comments just made that one of the gaps we do see is training for artists and cultural workers, in terms of using this technology to create the kind of databases and so on that they need.

We've been involved with MIA, for example, in using web casting technology for their conventions and so on, and it's proved a tremendous boon to allow young songwriters to participate from various parts of the province in a learning program together.

These are the kinds of things that I think we can give some attention to, and again, I would encourage the government to encourage the private sector, to work with the private sector, to increase their opportunities working with the artists and funding the artists in these areas.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Okay, would anyone else like to respond? Go ahead, Mr. Soper.

Mr. Keith Soper: With new media, it's so difficult to be specific, because it's both a threat and an opportunity to both television and radio broadcasters almost daily.

We try to come to grips with how to address the advent of new technologies, and what we have to do is embrace that. We have to fund a flexible regulatory framework within which to operate and allow us as broadcasters to adapt.

It is revolutionary. Compact discs—I thought they just started a few weeks ago, that's how quickly this has happened. And you're absolutely right. It's going to be downloaded off the Internet. It's not a good time to get into the record store business because those things are going to change.

I guess on behalf of broadcasters...sometimes regulations can put us at a competitive disadvantage, and I'm not saying we have to operate in an environment that does not have regulations, but they must have flexibility to allow us to adapt almost instantaneously, and that's an ongoing challenge. It's very difficult to be specific because it changes almost as soon as one speaks about it.

To summarize, a flexible or more flexible regulatory environment would allow us to adapt and embrace the new media.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

We have slipped into the second question by talking about technology, started out by Madame Tremblay. I would invite you to be a little looser and just kind of jump into the discussion. This is a round table discussion. I realize it's not a norm for federal government travelling shows. We can't just sit back and expect to receive some information.

Wendy.

Ms. Wendy Lill: I'm very interested in what everyone is saying here about the importance of such things as the Canada Council, FACTOR, the museum assistance program, and the PAP. I'm not sure how much we all really know about those things. I'm not asking for everybody to give me a big description of them, but I am, for example, interested in what Canada Council funding really means for, say, the people in Newfoundland. What does it really do?

If someone could try to describe that to our committee, it might be very useful to understand exactly the benefits of a Canada Council grant in terms of this culturally based province, which you eloquently talk about. We have a very flourishing cultural environment here, and everybody here unabashedly says part of it has to do with the Canada Council and this continuing support of the Canada Council. That's a great thing to say, but I just need to know, how does that work?

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Go ahead, Pat.

Ms. Patricia Grattan: I can start, I guess, from the point of view of the art gallery, on two grounds. One, of course a major part of what we do is to provide exhibitions for public access. Much of the work we actually display—most of our in-house shows are of Newfoundland material, and many of those artists have received Canada Council grants that allow them to work on a body of art. We are able to, in part, support the production of those shows with Canada Council money or to publish catalogues that allow the artist then to document their work. A record of their work is also something they can use to promote their work as they try to get shows elsewhere.

• 1600

In recent years, Canada Council has been allowing us to develop audiences with the expanded money. With current money, I am paying a part-time educator, and I will be paying a part-time curator, to again provide better public access.

We also have used the money to tour Newfoundland exhibitions across the country, and it has allowed us to establish an artist-in-the-schools program as well as a series of artists in residence, who are not only here in St. John's but are elsewhere in the province. From our experience, that's the kind of thing we do.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Is there anyone else who'd like to respond to Wendy?

Go ahead, Dr. Pratt:

Ms. Mary Pratt: I don't know how many of you have seen this article by George Jonas. It was on February 13, I think, in the National Post. It does go to some extent to indicate the problems with the Canada Council. In almost every case I would agree with him. I was on the council for six years, and I could find myself saying, yes, yes, yes all the time to this terrible article—it's very right wing.

Nevertheless, if you could remember—and not many of you here can, but I can—what it was like to be an artist in the early 1950s, when only A.Y. Jackson was making a living by being just a painter and everybody else had to have a job as a teacher, a professor, and look forward to a pension and so on in order to paint at all... The whole scene has just absolutely exploded since the Canada Council offered money to promising people.

Now I think that some of the ways they offer it are questionable, and I was a critic of the council when I was there. I've often felt that just throwing names into the hat and blindfoldedly picking a name out might be just as useful when it came to individual grants. That's not true when it comes to institutions such as art galleries, and even the ballet and things like this that in a way are institutions. When it comes to single grants I've often been somewhat critical.

There's just no comparison between the 1940s—I suppose, for refrigerators and all kinds of things—and now, but certainly the landscape of the arts in Canada... Even if you never apply for a grant—and I've never applied for a grant personally—the enthusiasm it gives you just to see so many people trying to accomplish and accomplishing...and they wouldn't even bother to try if they didn't have this enthusiasm and support coming from government.

The Canada Council has made a huge, huge difference. I think we should all be very grateful that Canada has that kind of generosity.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

I'll take one more and then we'll go to Mr. Power.

Mr. Hilary Montbourquette: I just want to make note that our association represents 17 radio stations in New Brunswick, 22 in Nova Scotia, 4 in Prince Edward Island, and 17 here in Newfoundland. As an industry, we recognize that we have a vital role in reflecting the cultural identity of the communities we serve, specifically in our region in general terms and of course our nation as a whole.

Our industry also recognizes that there is a huge increase in radio and television choice, which makes it even harder to compete as the choices expand. Evolving technology has impacted on broadcasters to provide quality programming choices that are homemade, with wide competitive appeal, in order to maintain market share and success in business.

So while we're focused on staying competitive, we're also focused on meeting our cultural obligations. We recognize the need to enhance our cultural identity in our programming, but we have to be careful that it's not at the expense of our business. In other words, we have to provide quality, distinctly Canadian programming that doesn't negatively impact on our bottom lines.

As a regional association, we support the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' submission to this committee and to the CRTC and its recommendations for television strategies, which include a flexible, regulatory framework and a consistent government policy and funding support.

• 1605

In answer to Madame Tremblay's question on what's the important technology facing our industry, for radio it's the digital audio technology. This is the hope to resurrect our industry's finances because this technology enables us to avail ourselves of new revenue streams and services that weren't available in the past, such as paging services, travel help, retail opportunities, selecting advertising choices for your part of town, etc. We hope Ottawa will continue to support the DAT technology and make it easier for our signals to be heard. Right now it's available in major markets. The down side is that they're not mass producing digital audio receivers right now, and we hope Ottawa will help the manufacturing sector make it more easily available to consumers so that our technology can be heard on a more mass appeal level.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Charlie.

Mr. Charlie Power: I have a query about federal and provincial funding for cultural measures.

Are you happy as a group? I'm always amazed at how many agencies, organizations, and groups there are when it comes to any given industry. Our office gets so many queries from individuals, groups, and organizations that sometimes it really does get confusing.

I know the premier recently made an announcement about some money for the cultural industry. I think it was for the visual arts sector or perhaps the film industry.

I just wonder if someone could tell me if there is reasonable coordination between the federal government programs and provincial government programs. Is the money being well spent or best spent among the different agencies and groups in Newfoundland? Is there a continual fight between the urban and rural parts of the province? Is there a fight between visual arts and performing arts? Do you feel that the money that's available is getting well spent? Perhaps somebody can answer that.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Denis Parker.

Mr. Denis Parker: I could probably answer a little bit to that. Certainly, through the programs the music industry deals with, such as FACTOR, in reply to Wendy's question, there's a vision for the whole country. It's the same for the Canada Council, as Randy was saying, that is, the information has to get through to the people. Part of what the MIA does is get that information out to its members, who are located right around the province, both on the island and in Labrador. We've seen an increased application rate and acceptance rate through different programs under the FACTOR umbrella for recording, touring, attending industry conferences, and that kind of thing, and I think it is working. I think we need more of that and more support. Also, I think the programs have to be looked at on a regular basis to make sure they fit the people they apply to.

I can't really speak for the Canada Council, but, as Randy said earlier, I'd say that probably a great deal of the members of our association are in the dark as to what the Canada Council actually does and actually supports. Certainly, the musicians know they support touring within the country and taking certain select music genres to festivals and that type of thing. But the rest of it is kind of a dark secret, I think.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Ms. Houlden.

Ms. Penny Houlden: Most of the programs that people around this table have been referring to are ones that are specifically focused on the individual cultural sectors. So I speak about the museum assistance program, Pat would speak about the Canada Council, and so on. I think those programs do work very well, because they do receive input from the sectors.

Where I think there are difficulties is with other kinds of programming that are really critical to our well-being, in particular the employment programs. I think that particularly in rural Newfoundland, where those programs are very important, and for community museums, when you're looking for employment for students or other people, those programs are often not based on professional standards.

So the work we can do is not necessarily best facilitated through those programs. You need additional support so that you can build in the professional resources to make sure the money you spend is spent to best advantage and that the products you produce are ones that contribute to the long-term viability of the institutions sponsoring them and produce long-term results for the institution and for the province.

• 1610

For example, it's easy to get employment programs that could help you build a new museum, but it's much harder to get the resources to hire a curator or professional exhibit designer so that you can do a really good piece of work that would then be able to serve both the community and the tourism industry well.

Mr. Charlie Power: Are you saying that if we politicians who sit around a table and approve these grants for some of our museums approve six students for Heritage House in Mount Pearl, it might be better to approve four students and one curator who could actually give them direction so that they can do something that's significant or meaningful?

Ms. Penny Houlden: That's an excellent idea.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Go ahead.

Mr. Randy Follett: If I understand the question around the programs, with regard to the various sectors there will always be a competition for whatever funds become available. But in terms of the province here, I think one thing all of the sectors in Newfoundland agree on—and it's pretty hard to get agreement from all of the sectors in Newfoundland—is that the provincial arts council, which I represent, is terribly underfunded. Just to put it in perspective, we receive less than $500,000 a year for the job we're asked to do, while the budget of the department of tourism and culture alone is in the $20 million range. I think that says something about a percentage that might be reserved for that.

The one thing I want to say about programs that are created for any sector is that if government is to create a program, you also have to enable that program to exist. It's really pointless to create a program and then underfund it so that it struggles for a long time and eventually collapses under its own weight.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): This is a good time to invite our audience to participate, certainly when the question refers to provincial issues. If you would like to stand up and identify yourself, you're welcome to do so.

Mr. George Chalker (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much. My name is George Chalker and I'm the executive secretary of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. Ours is the only organization that is mandated in the province to deal with the built heritage of the province. A paper has been submitted to your committee from Shane O'Dea, the Newfoundland governor of Heritage Canada and the present vice-chair of that organization, together with George Courage, the Newfoundland president of the Newfoundland Historic Trust, and Victoria Collins, chair of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

I regret that I cannot join in the accolades of my fellow people around here, because the built heritage in Newfoundland has never had a program directed toward preserving it. I envy those who complain about a lack of funding, as we've never had any. I envy you. You're lucky. The sad thing is that the programs the federal government has provided have had a negative impact on the built heritage of this province. It's very easy to get money to recreate something that has long since disappeared. In other words, we recreate a building that has long since disappeared. We can find money for that. Sadly, there is no money directed toward the built heritage that now survives in the province.

There was a program dealing with housing, and that was the RRAP program. As an organization, we have found that to be the largest negative input of federal money when it comes to the preservation of the built heritage. The money was earmarked for creating living standards in older properties, but it did not take into account the built heritage. In other words, out went the lovely old windows and in came those lovely sliders; out went the lovely wooden clapboard and in came that lovely vinyl siding. Every bit of architectural detail was removed. Sadly, in our case there has been no program that says this is the built heritage program and it's earmarked for the buildings that still stand and represent our past.

There is funding that is used, but I feel this is social funding that is being used under the disguise of heritage. I applaud that there is a social program to assist the rural areas in Newfoundland where people have been displaced from their traditional livelihood roles. But when we now use these programs as a heritage grant to restore an old building, sadly what that causes is those people who've decided to make a profession, be it as a trained university archeologist or they want to take a heritage carpentry course...these people who have the training cannot avail themselves of these programs. They cannot do so because they do not come from that work sector of the marketplace; they do not come from that region; they have not been displaced from a job. Sadly, they don't even get a chance to get a job here. The other aspect is they haven't been out of work, which would mean they had the requirements under EI to apply for this program.

• 1615

Sadly, we have professionals in our field—and there have been people who have said heritage isn't a professional field. I beg to differ. All you have to do is look at a restoration ongoing at the present time in Halifax, and that's St. George's Church. The elements and the variety of specialist that you require for that is untold.

Once again, I would like to emphasize that when there have been programs brought in here for the cultural sector of Newfoundland, they've been pegged to the arts community, they've been pegged to the museum community, they've been pegged to the archives. Even the most recent one, the cooperation agreement—I won't say we were written out, but we were never written in. We were not party to that.

What I would like to see is not only a program by which the federal government could cooperate with our province that would deal particularly with built heritage, but I would like to request that the federal government look at its funding level for the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. There is no money in that particular organization. We do not have the equivalent of the Canada Council when it comes to the built heritage of either Canada or Newfoundland. Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

I would invite other members of the audience to make comments or ask questions.

Mr. Paul Bowdring (Individual Presentation): My name is Paul Bowdring, and I'm president of the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland.

I'd first like to note the large number of corporate and institutional representatives on the panel and the almost complete absence of working artists, with the exception of Mary Pratt, at least in the original list of invitees.

With regard to Wendy Lill's question, what does the Canada Council mean to Newfoundland and to artists generally, because of the makeup of the panel we didn't really have any answers to that question, at least no answers from working artists. As a writer who has published two novels, I'd like to offer an answer to it, based on my own personal experience.

Generally, to begin with, I'd have to say it is practically impossible for a writer to make a living in Canada based on royalties from your books, so the Canada Council is extremely important to working writers. The last time I served on a Canada Council jury—the only time I served on a Canada Council jury—we awarded 15 grants out of a total of, I think, 105 applicants. This is the norm. At that time, there were two granting sessions, spring and fall. Out of just over a hundred applicants, 15 were awarded grants.

There is very little money—there was at that time and there still is—for grants to working artists, working writers. I'm thinking particularly of writers. So the Canada Council is extremely important. More funds should be given to the Canada Council.

• 1620

The public lending right program, for example, which is now administered by the Canada Council, is an amazing program. As a matter of fact, I've received more income from the public lending right program than I've received in direct royalties for my books.

The Canada Council's support of our publishers is extremely important. I'm wondering why there's no book publisher on our panel today. Some of you may know that the provincial publishers assistance program has been eliminated in Newfoundland. We have no assistance for publishers in Newfoundland. It was eliminated two, two and a half years ago. More federal assistance for our publishers is needed through the Canada Council.

Writers in Newfoundland and across Canada are very worried about the monopolization of Canadian culture that is taking place. Large book chains like Chapters are taking over the book retailing industry in Canada. This is bad news for writers. The more independent booksellers there are in Canada, the better for Canadian writers, because they are more inclined to stock titles from small presses. If 60% of the book retail market is controlled by a single publisher and they decide not to stock a title by a particular writer, you're in trouble.

Diversification, in my opinion, is much, much better for Canadian writers. This applies as well to the publishing industry. Takeovers recently of Canadian publishers by foreign publishers are again bad news for Canadian writers. The more independent publishers there are in Canada, the better it is for Canadian writers, because they are much more inclined to publish works by new writers. Large commercial publishers are mainly interested in mainstream commercial books. The writing community here and across Canada is very concerned about monopolization of the book industry, the publishing industry, the book retail industry, etc.

I would like to make one point outside of my own particular field of interest, which is writing. If the members of the committee had a chance to read our only daily newspaper, The Evening Telegram, yesterday or today, you may have noted, if you looked at the list of films that are being shown in St. John's at the present time, that there are 13 films showing and all of them are American. None of them is Canadian, at least when I looked at the list today.

There's something wrong, there's something seriously wrong, when a Canadian cannot see a Canadian film in his own country. Something is seriously wrong, and I don't see why the Canadian government cannot act as a regulator and why they cannot have some kind of Canadian content regulations in film and in Canadian bookstores. If it's been such a boon to the music industry, why can't it be extended to the publishing industry and to the film industry? Why can't the government act as a regulator? Why are we so afraid of the Americans?

There are many other things I would like to say, but I won't take up any more of your time. Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much for your comments. I'll ask Norm for a response to your question as to why you weren't invited.

You weren't invited because the participants basically expressed an interest to come before the committee. So I guess the question I have is, how did they find out?

Mr. Bruce Porter: I would like to comment on this. I found there was some confusion over the organization of this. I didn't know it was on. I responded to the invitation two or three weeks ago. Then I heard it was cancelled altogether. Then I heard it was coming again. I didn't realize it would be in this format.

• 1625

I agree with Paul that there are several people omitted here. I don't think it's because of their lack of interest; I think there were some mixed communications.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Norm is going to comment.

The Clerk: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm just involved with procedure in the middle of this round table, but I think I should clarify that we—the persons who put this together—sent several news releases to about 10 organizations such as the Conference of the Arts, the Canada Council, Heritage Canada, Telefilm, the National Film Board, and Canada Newswire. So we think we reached a large segment. We have over 250 organizations or groups across the country, with 50 in Montreal, 40-something in Toronto, and 30 in Halifax. So they're pretty cross-based.

Also, we did not select anybody. Everybody who wrote in was logged in. Everybody was phoned and faxed. I admit there were a lot of faxes out there, but they were not coming from us; unfortunately, they were coming from people trying to help, saying who had cancelled and who hadn't cancelled. We never did that. It's unfortunate that happened, but it was beyond our control.

At one point we weren't sure about St. John's, but as I said, we never issued a news release saying St. John's was cancelled. It is possible some organizations trying to organize this and provide assistance to us may have sent such information to their members. In essence, when you organize these round tables, regardless of the topic, you unfortunately cannot reach everybody. If you did, it would cost massive amounts of dollars.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Hilary Montbourquette: If I could just make a comment on more regulation for movies and bookstores—Mr. Parker could probably address this more specifically from the music industry—while the music industry may have benefited from radio sales, it's important to note that while last year we played 30% Canadian content, 11% to 14% of music sales in Canada were actually Canadian titles. If you take away sales of music by Céline Dion, Shania Twain, and Alanis Morissette, it drops to around 7% of all sales in Canada. So regulation doesn't necessarily always translate into revenue.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Perhaps you could continue discussion on the remark both our speakers from the audience made.

Mr. Bruce Porter: Would you allow me one brief comment in response to that last comment?

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Sure, go ahead Bruce.

Mr. Bruce Porter: I think the point of Mr. Bowdring's remark was not so much about the revenue as about the cultural impact of being able to see our own films.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Would any other guests care to comment? Poor Joe's been waiting here for the last hour trying to speak.

Mr. Joe Jordan: As sort of the lone representative of the government, I really appreciate the last two interventions, because part of what I was hearing was that the infrastructure, institutions, and cultural policies are good; the pipe just isn't big enough. I'm not sure if that's the message you want me to carry back to the Liberal caucus.

I'm just interested in a couple of fundamental points here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of the things that happened with the fiscal landscape and realities of the early part of this decade was the arts and cultural industries in Canada experienced a certain level of funding, and then that tap was slowly turned down. The role of those in the cultural industry shifted a little from being creators of cultural products to fundraisers, almost to the point of pitting one organization against another. I really have to question the value in that, because we're developing capacities in these organizations that were maybe unintended.

I want to ask a couple of fundamental questions here. I think solutions become more apparent if we can agree on the problem. Is there a problem in Canada—taxpayers phone their MPs when something is bugging them—in that people in this country don't value culture? Is that one of the problems? Are we trying to force this on people who don't want it or don't understand its value? I think that's fundamental to where we go next or what our strategy is. Should our strategy be to try to develop more of a sense of the value of this, and then the money and programs follow, or are we trying to put in place the infrastructures and people that will, through osmosis, decide it's a good thing? To me I guess that's the starting point.

• 1630

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): That really leads us right to our last question, which we have probably the next 35 or 40 minutes to deal with, and that's really the meat of the matter. The question is about Canadian culture. What is it, and what should the role of the federal government be in terms of—

Mr. Joe Jordan: Mr. Chairman, could I just make one other point? If people feel they haven't had a chance to participate, they could certainly answer the questions in written form and submit them to the committee. If you look at the quantity of presentations we're going to hear, at the end of the day I think there is an opportunity to get your points across. And I'd reference back to the two members of the audience. I think they were very important interventions, and it would be nice if we had those kinds of interventions documented somehow.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): We can certainly continue interventions from the audience as we discuss this big question, what is Canadian culture? That's primarily the reason we're here in St. John's, to find out what Canadian culture is.

Madame.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Mr. Chairman, I think that we're beginning to get down to the main question that this committee is dealing with, and the reason we have travelled here.

You remember that from the start, we asked to meet with ordinary people as much as possible, ordinary Canadians with whom we can exchange views regarding Canadian culture. During the first committee hearings, we heard a witness who had done research where he asked youth how they defined Canadian culture. They were unable to do it. They defined Canadian culture by what it is not, namely that they are Canadians because they are not Americans. And that's about as far as it went. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but not that much.

You know that our identity is defined by our culture. And this is why, in Quebec, a great deal of importance is given to culture and we do not want the federal government to invade this sector any more than necessary.

It can make agreements with provinces so that they can spend the money as they see fit. There are organizations, like Telefilm Canada, that have objective criteria. People can enter competitions to get funds to make movies. They will make the movies that they choose, so that we can have both a Quebec movie industry and a Canadian movie industry, as well as a Quebec theatre culture and a Canadian theatre culture.

The gentleman, as a writer, raises a very important question. We, in the opposition, supported the government on Bill C-55 because, frankly, we are fed up with American bulldozing.

If we cannot view Canadian films in a Newfoundland movie theatre, it is because Americans are running the movie sector here. We are not running it, they are. They are the ones who distribute films, even the ones that we produce, etc.. They control nearly 95% of the industry.

We must gain more control over it. Some time ago, Canada let its cultural interests slide. There was no Department of Canadian Heritage, and there was a time when culture was merely regarded as a distraction, or as entertainment, as the Americans regard it. However, as we realize the extent of the threat, we can begin to react.

This is my fourth trip to Newfoundland. I even spent a month here on vacation, in 1996, to discover Newfoundland; I visited the province from one end to the other; I even went as far as Labrador. I really enjoyed my stay here. I met many people, and quite a few told me that they could understand why Quebeckers feel that way, because they, too, feel that they are Newfoundlanders more than Canadians, or Newfoundlanders first.

Thus, if you ask Canada for large sums of money, if you induce Canada to invest more and more money in your region, aren't you afraid that it will want to control everything and that you will lose your Newfoundland cultural roots? Aren't you afraid of becoming something that is defined by what it is not, where you would say that you belong to Canadian culture because you are not Americans?

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[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Following on Madame Tremblay's comments, again I reiterate the question, what should the federal government be doing in terms of Canadian culture? It's the latter part of question 5: what should it do and how should it do it? As a legislator, as a regulator, owner-operator of national institutions, funding partner, patron of the arts, business developer, and promoter? These are the kinds of data we're looking for.

Ms. Shelley Smith: We've heard a lot of talk about the different technologies and the challenges and the opportunities, and as an administrator of an archive that is a government archive, which is also the primary guardian of the corporate memory of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as an archive for the private sector and private papers and business records, which covers all media, our challenge is to be among those who preserve whatever it is we ultimately define as our culture.

That challenge has always been there for us as archivists, for the preservation involving temperature and humidity and proper facilities and the kinds of things that Mary's going to learn all about in her committee. But the new technologies add a whole new layer to that. What they add is a challenge to spread the scarce resources even further, but also a challenge to preserve those technologies, because more and more the valuable records that need to be maintained by archives are in electronic form, and the electronic form is changing. As you say, the CD has changed. We can all remember 5 1/4-inch floppy computer disks, but how many of us could read one of those in our computers now? Those are the kinds of things that archivists have to deal with.

The other thing, and related to the comments about CAIN, is the challenges, as well as the opportunities, presented by the Internet for archives to disseminate the rich documentary heritage we have. There are many documents and records in archives that, given where technology is today, cannot be digitized, cannot be turned into electronic format.

We have, in the provincial archives here, for example, court records that date back to the 1750s that are handwritten. There's no way at this point that we can make those readily available, readily accessible, to people via the Internet. So we can't just say we're going to digitize everything in archives and make it readily available. There's a lot of work that needs to go into doing that. My challenge as an archives administrator is to balance the demands of an ever more sophisticated user group with the need to preserve the records and the costs of preserving the records that are created by the new technology. So there's a balancing act that goes on.

One other point on that, because we have a lot of groups around the table representing broadcasters and radio and television. The audiovisual heritage of the country is in particular jeopardy because the medium it's stored on is even more volatile.

Could I just take one second to quote from a federal government task force on audiovisual heritage, which in 1995 produced a document called Fading Away. In that document they said:

Audio-visual materials are among the most threatened components of Canada's cultural heritage. Our society has become increasingly reliant on sound, film and video as recording technologies for public affairs, education, entertainment, commercial advertising, artistic expression and mementoes of our daily lives. But, despite the prevalence and relatively recent appearance of these media, our preservation and access systems are facing a crisis. Irretrievable losses of milestones in our audio-visual heritage have already been suffered, and much of today's recording stands little chance of surviving for future generations.

The audiovisual materials, because of the medium they're stored on, are particularly volatile. This is something the archives and producers and the CBC and others across the country have been concerned about, in this province in particular. In terms of federal government support and involvement in the preservation of culture, many of the media that are created by archives are in real danger.

• 1640

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): That same message was brought to the committee by Ms. McDonald from the National Film Board.

Did you want another intervention? Go ahead.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I would ask the witness to give either to the committee or to the clerk a specific reference for the quote that she just made. Otherwise, we'll have to search all over the place to find its source, etc.. So, it would be important for us to know exactly where you found that quotation, because unfortunately, we missed a large part of it.

I would like to rephrase my question. First I would like to know whether we can agree on the following statement. In the arts sector, it seems to me that there are four important stages. There is the stage of creativity, the stage of production, the stage of promotion, and then the stage of distribution. I will repeat: there is creation, production, promotion and distribution.

Of course, creation is the realm of creative people, but what role could the federal government play in each of these four stages? Do you think that we should give money directly to creative artists, or that we should spend more on promotion? The total sum that we spend on the film industry does not even come near the amount spent on promoting one American film. For instance, $200 million were spent merely to promote the last American film that came out this year. In Canada, $200 million represents the total budget for cable distribution for one year. We're not working on the same scale at all. Where should we invest the money? How can we help you? How will this work? I would like to have concrete answers to these questions. It seems to me that this is of the highest importance for the work that we're doing and for the report that we will produce.

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Mr. Connors, go ahead.

Mr. Harry Connors: I wanted to go back a little bit and respond to Joe's nice, simple, direct question, which was, do Canadians care about this? We really started to get involved with the arts over the last three or four years. We have been involved for a long time, but particularly over the last three or four years we probably invested about $1 million every 18 months or so. And our customers, if I can use that phrase, vote strongly with their business. They don't simply like it, they actually expect it.

We see in market surveys a very strong feeling about the fact that we're involved in funding the arts. They believe the arts and cultural sector is something that deserves support, that local voices need to be heard. The feedback is pretty intense. It's very strong. I don't think I'm overstating it at all. It's very strong and I think it's the kind of feedback that you don't necessarily read in most of the national journals right now. You tend to read quite other sorts of opinions.

I really believe the ordinary individual feels a tremendous pride and a tremendous pleasure when they hear and see local artists having the opportunity to step forward. From a straight business point of view, it's been tremendous in business for us. We don't hide that fact. But it's very interesting to see how the ordinary citizen votes with their business to say, yes, you should do that and so should the government.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Joe, do you want to go ahead?

Mr. Joe Jordan: I have a couple of points. This touches a little bit on the technology thing. There's a reason I asked the first question, because I'm wondering if the Internet isn't the great equalizer, if the Internet and people having appropriate bandwidth into their homes allows them to access virtually any cultural product out there independent of existing channels of distribution, which right now favour American films because they own the chain. But if the Internet is going to make this the most democratic market in the world, are Canadians going to be drawn to their own cultural products? Do we have that inherent sense of value that if I can go on the Internet and watch Going Down the Road or Titanic, am I going to pick the Canadian one? Is that there or is that something we need to look at?

• 1645

Mr. Harry Connors: Mr. Vice-Chair, let me just say that I would regard the skills of the artist and the cultural worker as longer-term skills and higher-level skills in actual fact. It's really the same as the medical worker or the educator, when we talk about distance medicine and distance education. I think we have to be a bit cautious with ourselves because we're tending to allow fear of the technology to overtake us. Technologies will continue to change and they'll present challenges all the time. There are actually longer-term skills, both in terms of creation, as Madame Tremblay so eloquently stated it, in terms of putting this thing forward, that actually have more to do with our value as a society... The particular technologies are applications, and I think the artists, the cultural workers, the institutions, and the bodies need support and assistance both from the private and public sector with that kind of skill development. I think the higher-level and longer-term skills are actually possessed by the artists and cultural workers, and I think we should value that.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Mary Pratt?

Ms. Mary Pratt: There is an area of importance when it comes to the culture of Canada, the very being of Canada, that I sometimes think legislators, people elected to Parliament and so on, don't quite understand. This is that Canada offers a kind of generous liberalism that the country to the south of us doesn't really understand. I think as Canadians we have an obligation to retain that liberality. I'm a Tory, so I'm not speaking as a “small l” liberal.

I am talking about our requirements, for instance, for a health system that is universal, our generosity to allow a CBC and a Canada Council. The Americans, for all their PBS and the fact that we love it and so on, are really showing English programs. These are the programs we watch coming from PBS. They don't produce very much of any value. The CBC does produce stuff of value, whether they're doing it with other people or not.

As a country, we have a responsibility to be proud of our liberality and our generosity.

When it comes vacation time and we see our legislators rushing to Florida, I personally absolutely shudder. Why are they not going to the Yukon? Why are they not coming to Newfoundland? Why are they going to Florida? I cannot understand this. Why don't legislators be as proud as Canada as the cultural community is? And what's it all about anyway? I just don't understand.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Do you want to respond to that question?

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: No. I simply mean that not all legislators go to Florida.

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Yes, very few.

Ms. Anne Manuel: I'm sorry, this may take a little bit of time because every time someone else speaks there's something else I want to comment on.

There have been an awful lot of very important points raised right now. What does government need to do? I think one of the main things that have come out of it, for me at least, is to recognize that the government needs to re-investigate the funding programs it currently has in place. We're not saying there's not enough money—we'll always say there's not enough money—but the money that is presently available does need to be re-investigated. You do need to make sure that if programs like MAPL are being supported by the government, you need to check and make sure that songs like Céline Dion's theme from Titanic do get that allocation, that it is considered a Canadian song. That protects our culture.

• 1650

You do need to check out the employment issue and make sure that if you're employing certain people in museums, you're making sure the people who are employed are capable of doing those jobs, making sure they are the right people for the jobs, not simply someone we can afford based on how much money government has allocated to that particular position. You do need to investigate things like the heritage buildings and make sure that if there is a program that helps develop heritage buildings, it's a program that is for the heritage, that it supports the buildings we currently have in place.

Can government help there? I think so. I think that's one of the main things I'm getting out of this, at least. Government needs to check out all of these, every single source of funding. Go through them with a fine-tooth comb. Make sure it is something that benefits those you're really trying to benefit.

For funding culture, Suzanne's question, I firmly agree it has to be a regional support, but we do need some federal support as well, things like Bill C-55. I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with this. Bill C-55 is called the Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act. Basically what it is to do, if everything works as planned, is prevent split-run magazines. Currently there are magazines like Sports Illustrated coming out of the United States that have set sizes for their advertising so that when they send the magazine into Canada, all they do is approach an advertiser and say, hey, we've got a half-page ad here, let's slip that Canadian ad right in there. They've already paid for the material to the freelance writer. They've already paid the managing editors and the editors to make sure the article looks perfect, and the photographer to make sure the photo looks perfect. They've already done all that, so all the bills are paid. Then they approach Canadian advertisers and they say, well, let's slip that Canadian ad right in there and make Canadians think this is a Canadian magazine. That's cheating, and that's not helping culture in Canada.

That's the sort of thing that really does need federal support, desperately. We need the federal government to jump in and say that the Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act is a good thing. That's where I really support it.

To say that Canadians don't support culture brought to mind something the Canadian Press did just very recently. For years they had a long-standing policy of following the shorter American spellings on words like “colour”. For years, they'd spell it “color”. It sounds kind of minor; it's no big deal. But it's a big enough deal that this year they changed their mind. They're back to “colour”, the Canadian spelling. That's something that's national, even though in its application it's local. The Newfoundland Herald has been doing that for years. So have a lot of other smaller publications that don't have the big-name support. They've been doing it for years because it is Canadian and because it is Newfoundland.

To answer Joe's question, do Canadians care about culture financially, there are a lot out there who don't. There are a lot of people out there, as Hilary came up with... The statistics are that if you take out the Alanis Morissettes and the Céline Dions, there really isn't a lot of fine Canadian music.

A lot of that has to do with ourselves. We're not supporting it. When you leave here, go home and check out your video cabinet and see how many Canadian movies you have at home. How many Canadian CDs do you have in your CD cabinet at home? Do you have Juno's best in there, or do you have the Grammy's best in there? That would be a pretty big clue.

But to say we're not supporting Canadian culture is a complete misnomer. That's absolutely, completely false.

Art, like that of Mary Pratt, can be found in American homes just as easily as it can be found in Canadian homes. Canadians do love it, but it's also a national-international success story. Music like that of Great Big Sea...I have friends and family living in the States who are begging me to send them CDs of Great Big Sea. Books like The Shipping News—it looks like John Travolta is going to be starring in the movie adaptation of it. If an international star like John Travolta likes it, hey, it has to be a damn good book, right?

Well, we've got an awful lot of other really good books here. Paul Bowdring's book? It's a really good book. There's an awful lot of them here and we need to support them more.

The finances need to be looked at. We really do have to have governments take a look at what you're giving us—not necessarily us, but us as a whole. Look at it all; check it out. Find out if there are things like that heritage buildings code that just don't work. You're ruining heritage buildings when we could be improving them.

• 1655

Help out the private broadcasters, the private publications, and those who are really trying to support the local culture—locally as well as nationally—and I think you will have a really good mix.

Thanks.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you for your comments. Bruce.

Mr. Bruce Porter: I just want to make a general comment in answer to Joe's question. That's a very tough question. I may think about it a bit more and get something to you in writing because I think it's crucial.

It seems to me we will have no Canada if the federal government doesn't at least continue its level of support in all of those roles you have listed there, really. One of the main reasons for that—and I'm referring primarily to English-speaking Canada—is because we are the mouse next to the elephant. It's not that we're afraid to compete in general; we are if there's any kind of level playing field. But when you have that gigantic disproportion in population and resources it is not a level playing field, so you have to tilt it a little in order to have any kind of competition. In some areas competition doesn't apply. You don't export magazines—the U.S. is the only country in the world. You usually share those things among yourselves.

Just to tie it in with the globalization move, it's not so much globalization as Americanization. They do not have any department of culture. They refuse to accept that concept. Some of my best friends are Americans, as we say, but it's simply a fact that in their view of the world they are the best things since God created the planet. They say “What do you mean culture? There's only us.” They are determined, come hell or high water, to push that around the world. We have to join forces with countries like France and Sweden and so on and say, listen, there's room for everybody.

So in answer to the question, I don't have time to get the details on this, but surely we have to do those kinds of things—legislation, funding, support, and so on. Otherwise there will be no Canada at all.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Most people realize governments need to support the culture industry. Following Joe's question, the question is, what is the right balance? As we know today, we spend about $31.2 million annually in the publishing business, so what is the right balance? Do we need to spend more, spend less, or be more definitive in how we spend it?

Mr. Bruce Porter: Again, since I didn't realize this function was happening until the last minute, I haven't had a chance to look at those questions in detail and prepare anything specific on any of them. In general, it seems to me there is certainly room for greater expenditure in almost every area of the culture. I would agree there is no point in just putting money in for the sake of it, but in general I don't think we're overdoing it yet in any sector.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Joe.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Bruce, you just on touched something that deals a little with question 3, but I just want to make a point. With our proximity to the U.S. and the kind of sheer scale of economy that society has in its favour, how do we protect and enhance what we have in the wake of that size disadvantage?

• 1700

You hit on one of the issues. When we approach domestic policy in response to that, you have to keep in mind—and I say this from somebody who was educated in the U.S.—that they don't see themselves as having any culture; they just see that as being perfectly normal. They would argue, “You don't need to carve out culture, because clearly you don't understand that what we're providing is better than what you have.” That may be an overly cynical approach, but I think that theme is there. But I can guarantee you, if they ever recognized what they see as normal as being their culture and saw it under threat, they would be so quick to react with whatever tools they had at their disposal.

Look at the Helms-Burton Act. They pretend to be great traders, but if the shoe were on the other foot they would put up protective walls or carve out their industry so quickly you wouldn't be able to fathom it.

So we very definitely have to define what we're trying to protect and then defend it rigorously. I think it's under siege and we have to put these policies and regulations in place.

Mr. Bruce Porter: Very briefly, I couldn't have said it any better myself.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Anne and then Wendy.

Ms. Anne Manuel: Thank you.

I'd like to respond to Suzanne's question about the funding. As far as the actual makers of crafts and art go, there are young people just coming in and there are senior citizens who have been around for a long time and have established themselves. It's the government's role to support the new, the young, the untried, the inexperienced, and those who need to get solid ground under their feet before they can actually support themselves.

As for organizations like the Crafts Development Association that offer a wide range of services to their members and to the sector in this province, they range from marketing services such as retail craft fairs and shops that should and do support themselves and return funds back to the association, to services like clay classes for children in schools and galleries that do not support themselves. The areas that are not revenue-generating but contribute to the development of the sector overall are the areas the government should be supporting. That's the kind of dividing line that should be drawn between what should be supported and what should be left to support itself.

In response to the question Mr. Power asked earlier about the way funds are spent, there's been federal-provincial support to the craft industry for a long time in this province, and in recent years the Newfoundland and Labrador Crafts Development Association, which is recognized as the industry association, has been a third partner with the federal government and the provincial government in actually administering that funding.

That's made a really big difference in how the funding has been distributed. It hasn't changed the amount of funding at all, just how it's directed and the emphasis that's given to certain areas. The association knows far better than the government what the immediate needs of the individual makers are and what kind of support will make a big difference between where they are now, where they want to be, and where they could be. That participation on our part makes a really big difference and should be involved in other sectors, as well.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Ms. Lill.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Thank you.

It's wonderful hearing the comments here. I'm interested in this whole business of support for the arts because, as you know, we have moved into an era where the word “support” is bad; it means weakness, that there's something sort of second-rate about things that need support. Instead, it's better to be stand-alone, individualistic and competitive, and if you can't be that, then you don't deserve to be out in the ring. There are all these analogies—level playing field—of sport and competition all over the place.

I like what Mary Pratt had to say about the sense of generosity that this country has operated under in certain ways—certainly not all, we know that—the idea that support is for people who are growing, who are learning new things and are becoming things.

• 1705

We support people in the arts who are becoming playwrights, singers, film makers. We do that, and we made a pact many years ago to have such publicly funded institutions as the Canada Council, the National Film Board, the CBC, a public broadcaster, and to have national galleries and national institutes, which we saw as testing grounds and growing and nurturing places.

I find it very frustrating now to hear the argument, well, you know, Céline Dion didn't need the Canada Council and neither did Bryan Adams, so if they're really good then they'll make it in the global economy. It just defies the fact there are hundreds of playwrights, film makers, and painters who are making it in the global world now and creating and sending forth an amazing Canadian voice, who in fact did need those things at the beginning. They needed a Canada Council grant, they needed to get on George Jordan's afternoon show, or to have their first little radio play done at the CBC; they needed those environments.

I think we should be very proud of the fact that we're a country that supports our emerging artists and creators, and I think it speaks very well for us as a society and as a citizenry. I think that's the starting point and almost the ending point. I don't see that we are overfunding the arts; I personally don't see at all that we're overfunding the arts.

I don't like to get into the whole arts industry, cultural industry thing, but if we want to take it down that road, it's an incredibly job-intensive form of industry. If we want to throw more money at the arts, we're going to be creating a whole lot more jobs, so there's that side of it. But I'm not talking about that side of it, I'm talking about the cultural side. The cultural side just speaks volumes, and tremendously positive volumes, about us as a society that nurtures our artists and our artists' voices.

That was more of a rant as opposed to a question, but that's kind of what I'm hearing. Here in Newfoundland, certainly, we've heard around this table, and we've heard from the one artist who is here—and we're glad you are here—the importance of our collective support for the arts.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

This would be a good time to invite our audience to comment about the federal role, or what you consider Canadian culture to be.

Mr. Paul Bowdridge: I'll just say one final thing, and that is that I think the role of the federal government should be to create a climate in Canada in which a working artist can live and work and not have to scrimp to actually live.

Our primary producers, our writers, film makers, composers, presumably are the people who are producing the actual cultural products, or what we're now calling cultural products; these are the people who need support. We can say a lot of things about how much we value them, but if they cannot actually survive while they're doing their work, if they cannot actually live and make a living writing, composing, etc., then there's no point.

I think it's time the federal government marshalled some courage to stand up to the globalization steamroller that's approaching, if it hasn't already arrived. I think we're at a very crucial time in Canadian culture, and right now the Canadian government needs to help establish a climate through regulation, or whatever means, in which writers and composers and other Canadian artists can make a living, can live and work in this country.

Thank you.

• 1710

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much.

It's 5.10 p.m., and we can certainly carry this discussion further if it's the wish of the guests and the people at the table here. Are there any further comments? Go ahead.

Mr. Carman Carroll: I'd like to make just a brief comment.

I agree with the four areas Madame Tremblay mentioned, that is, creation, production, promotion, and dissemination. But I must add a final plug for la conservation or saving of the appropriate parts of Canadian culture that require long-term survival, because if we don't add that, then we are going to suffer cultural amnesia. I think it's important to consider that culture does not mean just today's culture, because we do learn from the culture of our past. It's critical that we save our Canadian culture certainly through the archival side and obviously through museums and so on.

In defining what Canadian culture is, let's not be very exclusive, because to me trying to define Canadian culture is like the proverbial trying to nail jelly to the wall. For everyone who was watching the final testimonial to Maple Leaf Gardens a couple of weeks ago and looking at old film footage, did they know they were having an archival experience? I think 99.9% of Canadians never even thought of the archives. When they read a historical novel, these people are being impacted by culture, but they don't define it in any way as being culture.

So let's be very general and broad when we look at Canadian culture. Let's save Canadian national organizations and institutions in the sector I represent, the National Archives of Canada, and let's save the Canadian funding programs. These are not just federal handouts. In most instances these are matching programs, and frankly, it puts pressure on the provinces and the territories to also ante up their share.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Denis.

Mr. Denis Parker: In closing, I'd like to mention that I came to Canada 27 years ago, in 1971, and there wasn't a music industry in Canada then. Various visits to Toronto and Montreal proved to me that there were a few offices that were satellites of American companies. Since that time, through the support from commercial broadcasters and certainly the CBC and the federal government, I think that has changed.

I think the infrastructure is building, and I think that relates to sales not only in Canada but also around the world for groups such as the local group Great Big Sea, which was mentioned. Bryan Adams tapped into FACTOR funding during the early stage of his career. He doesn't need it now, of course, but he certainly did go to the well. Also, the Bare Naked Ladies is a group that was supported heavily not only by the government but also through commercial radio, CBC, which helped to put them on the map, and now they're selling in excess of 2 million or 3 million copies in the States.

I think this is the beginning. I think we should continue the way things are going, but I think we need to assess it as we go along and put the money where it best helps not only the artists but also the infrastructure that is needed to get the artists around the globe.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you, Denis.

Keith.

Mr. Keith Soper: Thank you.

One of the things we were asked to do at today's round table was to espouse local reality. As a private broadcaster, it's vital that we understand, and I want to pick up on a couple of points Madame Tremblay noted.

As private broadcasters we rely almost exclusively on advertising to make ends meet. There's a reality that's happening with globalization and consolidation. Advertising agencies across the country and across the world are consolidating. There's a retail trend towards the big box stores, such as Wal-Mart, and these kinds of things. That continues to be a challenge for private broadcasters. That's something we're going to struggle with for a while yet. Then there's the influx of Canadian and United States speciality channels that continue to fragment audiences. That's another reality we face.

• 1715

In the meantime, new media roll right along in a non-regulated environment, and it's a reality we have to come to grips with. We need a flexible regulatory environment to allow us as broadcasters and as distribution points for Canadian cultural programs to be able to react to this reality.

Another reality we face here in Newfoundland, probably more pronounced than in most other markets, is the tremendous subsidy of our lone competitor, if you will, on the local level, that being the CBC. It directly affects our ability to maximize revenue. I understand why CBC is there and I agree it needs to be there. It's just a reality that their advertising rates are reflective of a subsidized company or business. NTV has no such subsidy with which to operate. That's an ongoing challenge for us.

As a station or stations, we wish to make a cultural contribution. We certainly want to make a community contribution. We do that by putting tremendous resources into our newscasts. We have to think global but act local, and reflecting local happenings in our newscasts is a sound business practice and it works for us.

In Newfoundland there's a huge geographic area to cover. The Canada Winter Games are on in Corner Brook now, and it's really challenging for us to get out there and cover that. We are there. We are doing it. We can do it on a local news level.

As for looking towards finding some form of a mechanism, I think it was, or promotion and dissemination of Canadian films in particular, I will speak on a national basis for a moment. Maybe a mechanism that could be considered would be to find a means of getting extra credit to Canadian broadcasters for airing Canadian television programs, and films in particular, in prime time. That's where the audiences are for the most part. I think there's a lot of merit in that particular strategy.

That's pretty much it. Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Go ahead, Suzanne.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I have a question for Keith because I want to be sure that I have understood the matter.

You said that the CBC broadcasts subsidized advertising. Do you mean that because the CBC is subsidized, it can dump advertising, as regards the price of advertising? Is that what you really meant? I didn't really understand that part.

[English]

Mr. Keith Soper: Subsidizing publicity? No. What I was commenting on was being the only private broadcaster in the market. If we had, for example, another private broadcaster—I'm not suggesting that there is room for it at the moment, but if there were, from a competitive perspective...we have to work in an environment in which we have to have an acceptable return on investment for our shareholder or shareholders. Getting that through local and national advertising is the only way in which we operate.

Sometimes it makes it really difficult, because, to quote the sports analogy, it's not always a level playing field. We don't have another private broadcaster to help keep the rates at the level we need to have an acceptable return on investment.

Sorry, with the confusion, there was no mention of any announcers or anything like that.

Mrs. Suzanne Tremblay: Okay.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): I'll recognize the gentleman from the audience. Go ahead.

Mr. Ron Crocker (Individual Presentation): I'm Ron Crocker and I'm with the CBC in Newfoundland.

I want to make the comment that the hobby horse about subsidized advertising has been around for a long time in this market. The CRTC, to the best of my knowledge, has never really accepted the argument that's been put forward quite commonly by private broadcasters in Newfoundland that there's anything unfair about how CBC sets its advertising rates in this province. That's my first point.

My second point is that the other reality is that the CBC's commercially generated revenue goes overwhelmingly, indeed almost exclusively, into the production of Canadian programming.

• 1720

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you for your comments.

Go ahead.

Mr. Hilary Montbourquette: I'd just like to take off my AAB hat and make a comment as a regular citizen, a taxpayer, about Joe Jordan's comment.

I think the federal government is trying to accomplish a lot in the cultural community, much like a shotgun approach. You're trying to solve all the cultural problems of the country by trying to get some consensus. We're as distinct here in Newfoundland as the Quebeckers are in Quebec, as the people in the Northwest Territories are—as they are in each region.

At every election we talk about regionalization. I think if the federal government would stop trying to be the great provider of the solution to this cultural debate we're having and allow the local communities or the local region to determine what is the strongest cultural answer we're looking for...

I think the federal government has an obligation to preserve the National Archives. I think the federal government has an obligation to make sure the provincial archives are preserved. I think you also have an obligation to support events like the East Coast Music Awards, which are... It's a culmination of the best musical talent in Atlantic Canada. I think by allowing us in each region to preserve our cultural identity, the country as a whole will have a stronger cultural presence. Writers, artists, and performers will ultimately benefit. You can then take that and create some kind of a vision, which is really incorporated in the coat of arms, and communicate that globally.

You don't go anywhere in the world...if you're outside the country, you tell everybody how proud you are to be Canadian, and when you're in the country, you tell everybody how proud you are to be a Newfoundlander first and a Canadian afterwards.

So you have an obligation to protect cultural identity, but I think you have to transfer some of that control to the regions and let them... We know in Atlantic Canada who we are a lot better than we know who the people in the prairies are, and vice versa.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Further interventions? Pat.

Ms. Patricia Grattan: I have some comments that bear on a number that have been made before. I guess what strikes me as an important role for the federal government is in diffusion, in supporting the development of audiences around the country, because I think in the end that will create the most favourable climate for the individual creator. I'd certainly like to see attention given to any means by which that is done, whether it's touring of productions and exhibitions across the country...

I heard the founder of the Groupe de la Place Royale talking about being able to perform in Belgium but not in Moose Jaw, and for me this is wrong. If we feel that Canadians aren't supporting our culture sufficiently in some cases, I think it's because they don't have access to it.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Joe.

Mr. Joe Jordan: To pick up on that, and I'm enjoying the discussion, I just want to put my pragmatism into some kind of perspective, because I don't want you to think I was simply counting the beans on this issue.

In 1993 I left for a teaching assignment in Hungary for three years, and I was a person who got my culture exclusively from yogurt. I arrived in eastern Europe in a society that was immersed in culture. I saw children walking down the street with violins, not Gameboys. Churches were full of chamber music at night. I had eight-year-olds explaining opera to me. I thought we were missing something as a society. Now I'm sort of like a reformed smoker. I'm the worst person you want to be around when you talk about this.

Somebody once said that public policy is a lot like hotdogs. You may like them, but you don't want to see them made. If what you're telling me is that we have enough money, we just have to spend it better and stop implementing policies that are hurting, in the case of building heritage... I don't think you're saying that. What you're saying to me is that we need more money, and if we want more money, we're going to have to start to quantify and we're going to have to start to put this in economic terms.

I'm also on the environment committee, and I have this same predicament there. Money doesn't talk; it swears. If you want to get into a room with people and say these things have value and our country will be better off if we support these things in an increased way, we had better be able to finish the sentence. I think that's the reason for my pragmatism. I'm wondering how that sentence ends. I'm more than willing to make it, but we have to start.

• 1725

Wendy, you made some excellent points when you talked about how support is a condition that's necessary for nurturing and growing. But that is a good argument. And to make the economic argument I don't think is getting your hands dirty; I think it's essential. I think we have to start framing it in those terms so that we can go in and fight this on an economic level. If we don't, we're going to set ourselves up for ramming our heads against the wall. That's the sense I have, and I think we have the ammunition. I think the ammunition is clearly here. We just have to put it in the shell and frame it the right way. Unfortunately, I think that's just a reality of how public policy is made.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you, Joe.

I'll recognize Harry, and then that will bring us pretty well to 5.30 p.m.

Mr. Harry Connors: Once again Joe has stimulated some thought in me. I think there are probably things that can be done, and you'll be well familiar with them. I've offered you a few suggestions. Certainly we've had tremendous experience, and I think maybe this is an area where we can play a role together to figure that out.

I look at people like Donna Button of the Trinity Festival. That started as a cultural activity. But there's no question Donna employs people in stage craft, as actors, and as arts administrators. We have a wonderful group of young administrators coming up through the system now in Newfoundland and Labrador. I look at people like Denis Parker, and I look at the music industry. I look at the number of small studios that exist now around Newfoundland, high-quality studios, high-quality work being done, at young artists and artisans, if I can use that term, getting involved in learning whole new sets of skills. So I think we can quantify those. I'm very confident that if we put our minds to it we can quantify those.

Art and culture is as much a basis of business as it is of anything. What do the entrepreneurs do? They think of something, try to figure out how to create that thing and bring it to the marketplace. Artists create something, they think of something, they put it together, and they bring it out to the marketplace. I can't think of anything more entrepreneurial in fact than art. What a risk you take!

I have always been grateful to a friend of mine who said that to be creative is to be generous with your ideas, and the artists are the most generous people on earth because they are generous with their ideas. They give us something quite fundamental.

I wanted to make a brief comment on the media. Certainly there are different points of view. I'm a person who values both the private and public sector media. They each make a contribution in their own way. But they each have an impact in their own way, too.

Let me share with you a story about why NewTel really got involved with the arts. It goes back to 1979. We were celebrating our 60th anniversary, and we were trying to figure out ways to do it. We'd been involved in fairly conventional sorts of art support like the NSO, the symphony orchestra, and so on, and Chris Brookes walked in off the street one day and started talking to us about this mummers' tour.

At the same time, we happened to be talking to a group of our engineers, because we were doing some work up in Labrador extending the telephone system at the time. We began to understand that when we brought that system into a community it opened up not just telephony but television and radio; it had a tremendous impact in terms of connecting them to the world of communications. But it also destroyed communications. It destroyed kitchen table conversation. It destroyed the ordinary kinds of oral traditions that we would have had, the music and so on, because people said, “Now I'm going to watch TV. I want to be like them. I want to do those things.” Denis and I went through that phase ourselves in our lives. And we began to understand that we had a responsibility.

I'm not just putting on a corporate PR hat here. It was a fundamental responsibility in the same way AS we're encouraged to be environmentally sound as an organization. We have to reclaim communications for our people as an organization. That's what the reinvestment in the arts is all about. We recognize that the kinds of technologies we represent do have an impact.

• 1730

My comment on the media is that the media do have an impact as well. Sometimes I feel the people in the media sit back with the opinion that they're just carrying the stuff out to their audiences. Well, they aren't just doing that; they're having an impact on the minds and hearts out there. So rather than having a donnybrook over a small piece of territory, I'd rather see us figure out ways to work together to get those messages out there, to get the cultural content out there.

I would really encourage more and more funding for the arts. I just believe it's so fundamental to a healthy society.

I'm rambling a bit, but I just came back from Corner Brook.

As a final comment, I think a lot of you saw a Ged Blackmore show, From Discovery to Awakening. In our company, it has always struck us that no matter what the activity is, whether it's a sporting event or a bunch of talking heads like the ones at the upcoming Canada conference or at the Cabot 500 celebrations held a couple of years ago, it seems that both the national organizers and the local organizers came to the conclusion that there must be an artistic component in that event. How interesting it is that one cannot say one has been to Newfoundland and Labrador unless one has been to its art. Unless you've experienced it, you have not actually visited, and you'd feel poorer if you left without having experienced it in some way.

So I think we really recognize these things in our behaviour. Maybe we try to rationalize and jell in words and get the measuring sticks out and see how many dollars it generates. I understand what you're saying; I think we have to do that stuff. But I think in our very behaviour, every single day of our lives, we recognize how important this stuff is, and I think we should act consonant with our principles.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much.

We'll have Suzanne and Wendy, and then I'll close with Charlie.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: One question that we haven't raised seems to be taking on a higher profile here in Newfoundland. Recently I was told that last year, nearly 30,000 persons had left the island to move to other parts of the country. These were mainly young people looking for work. Do you find that such a sparse and scattered population makes things difficult? What kind of impact could this have on culture? This was the fourth question that we had put to you. Here in Newfoundland, demographics do not seem to be on the rise. What kind of impact could it have on your area? Could anyone give us a quick comment on this question?

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): I'll ask Mary to respond to that.

Ms. Mary Pratt: Well, it certainly has a wonderful impact on the rest of the country.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Ms. Mary Pratt: Of course it has always been necessary for Newfoundlanders to leave. In fact I have a girl who works for me—she's related to me by marriage, actually—who comes from an outport. She said to me, “You know, it's been years since I heard somebody saying they're going to the Labrador to work for the season, they're going to Goose Bay to work for the season.” When I first came to Newfoundland, Newfoundlanders went from place to place within the province itself—within the country itself—to find employment. The nature of our resources and our infrastructure made it necessary to always move around, but our resources are gone. We can't go to the Labrador to fish any more, because there are no fish there and they won't let us hunt the seals.

A lot of things have been taken from us, from that point of view, and we are sad about that. There are many mothers who aren't going to see their children grow up as adults, really, and they won't see their grandchildren. Fortunately, my kids all stayed here. Every one of them stayed, even the lawyer, and he has a column in the paper. Anyway, because they're in the arts, they could stay here. I do see my ten grandchildren, but I'm very fortunate.

• 1735

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Would anyone else like to respond to Madame Tremblay's question? Go ahead, Charlie.

Mr. Charlie Power: Obviously, everyone in this room would happily give you a speech or a tirade about what the out-migration has done to Newfoundland and Labrador. I'll just keep it really simple by saying that I think when it comes to cultural things, what Mary has said is exactly true. Thirty thousand Newfoundlanders spread across Canada means there's a lot of accordion playing, a lot of music and a lot of song in a lot of parts of Canada where it might not have otherwise been. So in one sense, it helps Canada improve its cultural appreciation.

On a second point, I think losing so many young people—and I think this is where our cultural community sometimes is so important—has caused our cultural community to say that we are going to survive. You have a lot of people who are doing it in many different ways. It can be Alan Doyle, from Great Big Sea. He's a friend of mine from Petty Harbour, where three fish plants closed. It can be Con O'Brien and the Irish Descendants, a group from Bay Bulls, where they used to have a fish plant with 600 workers but now they do not have a fish plant at all.

I think it's just, somehow or other, self-preservation. This out-migration is teaching us that we have so much to preserve. There may be fewer of us to do it, but we are determined that we will survive as a group.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Wendy.

Ms. Wendy Lill: That's really an eloquent statement, and I guess we put it against this idea of public policy. What is our public policy going to be around the arts and around culture? I must say that it has to be about more than simply money.

I don't believe, surely, that public policy is about money. Surely public policy is about such things as what the two of you were just talking about. It has to be about preserving the things that we care about. It's not the company of Canada, it's the country of Canada. We've decided that we have values and that we have value. We want to preserve those things, so we make policy around things like immigration and public broadcasting and galleries.

I guess what you're saying, Charlie, is that come hell or high water, you're going to preserve something that matters to you, and it doesn't have to do with money. Money is good, don't get me wrong, but somehow these things are going to have to survive in a lot of ways without money. I guess we, as a group, as a nation, have to decide on what we're going to give money to and how we can help these things that matter survive.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Joe, and then I will have an intervention from the audience.

Mr. Joe Jordan: I absolutely agree, Wendy. I think part of the challenge we face is that we have to argue costs with people who have a narrow definition of what that means. If we can get them to see the costs associated with not doing something...the way things move and the way things happen, I think we have to try to approach it from that angle. We have to get them to think of costs in a very much broader sense, to think of what the associated costs are of not having a good, healthy society that has prosperous cultural industries in it. There are very real costs that we pay, and maybe it's the next generation that pays them. I think we just have to frame it in a way that's going to get someone who is thinking economically to act on it.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): We'll have an intervention from the audience. Go ahead.

Mr. Ron Crocker: Yes, I would like to make one comment about commercial revenues and so on, but it's not a combative one.

One of the thoughts I would like to leave with this committee is that whatever the support mechanisms are that are encouraged and promoted for the arts in any of their aspects, they really should be highly sensitive to regional and even provincial imperatives in the country. I don't think they always are. I think there is a kind of Canadian terror or an ongoing Canadian worry about fragmentation in the country. That seems to conspire against active promotion of arts and cultural product generation at a provincial or regional level.

• 1740

It's not an accident that audiences for indigenous television programming in Quebec are very high—obviously there's a language imperative related to it there—but it's also not an accident that they're extremely high in Newfoundland. It's a phenomenon in Newfoundland that almost anything we produce in the CBC, in either radio or television, will achieve larger regional Newfoundland audiences than almost anything that's produced anywhere else. It's not because Newfoundlanders are not interested in what's produced in other parts of Canada, or even other parts of the world. But it is a fact, I think, that everybody from William Faulkner to James Joyce to even Norman Spector in the Globe and Mail recently—God help us all—has underscored the point that culture is regional and local in its seeds and in its roots.

The comments are general, but to give you a specific example of how this would apply in a place like Newfoundland, it is very difficult for local television production companies or independent companies to access the federal funds that are now available for the making of television programs. That's a function of the fact that, with a population of 500,000 people, we're simply never going to have the kind of evolved production, or the rate of evolution of production and production companies, that will exist in British Columbia, Ontario, or even Nova Scotia, where those companies are very strong.

I think there has to be less fear—and I think “fear” is probably not too strong a word—about active generation and promotion at the regional level. And I obviously don't think of “regional” in geographical terms here; I think of it in cultural terms and in terms of the characteristics of people who are easy to identify in Newfoundland, easy to identify in some provinces, but less easy to identify in others.

In terms of the notion that the total cultural artistic product of the country, of Canada, is probably best viewed and best defined as the aggregate of a number of hot cells of production that really grow out of people's own cultural and, to some extent, their own racial experiences, that notion should not be feared. I think it should be promoted and encouraged. I don't think it's a factor contributing to fragmentation or distancing of either geographical or even linguistic or cultural corners of the community. I think it's a factor that in fact has a blending or unifying force about it.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much.

We'll leave the last word to your local member of Parliament, Charlie Power.

Mr. Charlie Power: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just a couple of very simple things to say.

First of all, let me thank all the participants here from Newfoundland. I assure you, Mr. Chairman, that if the notices had gone out in a more efficient manner, this room would be filled and we'd need some significant time to discuss all the issues.

Second of all, let me thank my colleagues for taking time out to come to Newfoundland. For those of you who may not be aware of it, this is a week when the House of Commons does not sit. As politicians, most of us want to be home in our own constituencies to do our own political things. We appreciate that the committee has taken the time to travel all across the country in the week when they're off from the House of Commons. We thank you for coming to St. John's.

Relating to my first point, I'll just say that when I look at your schedule for the next few days, I see that you have six hours in Halifax, five hours in Toronto. Maybe the next time you schedule your meetings, you'll realize that there may be a need for a switch-around, and that you'll need more time for culture and heritage in Newfoundland than in most other places in Canada.

Thank you very much for being here.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you for your kind comments.

On behalf of the heritage committee, I'd like to thank our table guests and our audience for their contributions and participation in this first meeting of the committee. We all know we have a great culture in this country. We're just looking at ways of enhancing it to make sure there will always be a great Canadian culture.

Thank you again. I declare this portion of the meeting adjourned.

• 1745

• 1802

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): We will resume the meeting on behalf of the heritage committee. I'd like to welcome our three guests and say I look forward to open discussion on this whole issue of heritage in Newfoundland. Perhaps you can introduce yourselves and we could do likewise.

Ms. Elizabeth M. Batstone (Assistant Deputy Minister, Culture and Heritage, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador): My cultural duties embrace the full range of the arts, cultural industries, archives, built heritage—the whole gamut. On the natural side it embraces parks and wilderness areas and ecological reserves. I feel that's a very good marriage because it's part of our culture as well. In fact, Madame Tremblay and I were discussing it in the washroom, and the thing that draws Newfoundlanders and Quebeckers closer together culturally is that none of us has to ask what culture is, because everything is.

Mr. Michael Clair (Acting Director, Culture and Heritage, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador): I report to Liz and I'm responsible for the museums, historic sites, performing arts, and those kinds of things.

Ms. Shelley Smith: I'm Shelley Smith and I'm the director of the provincial archives or the provincial archivists. I go by both titles.

Ms. Penny Houlden: I'm Penny Houlden and I'm the chief curator for the Newfoundland museum, which is the provincial museum.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you. Now I'll ask madame to introduce herself.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Hello, I'm Suzanne Tremblay, MP from Rimouski—Mitis and spokesperson for Canadian heritage for the Bloc Québécois.

Mr. Joe Jordan: I'm Joe Jordan. I'm a Liberal MP from Leeds—Grenville in southeastern Ontario.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): My name is Inky Mark. I'm a Reform MP from Dauphin—Swan River. I'm the chief critic for Canadian heritage.

Ms. Wendy Lill: I'm Wendy Lill, and I'm the member of Parliament from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. I'm the critic for the New Democratic Party for heritage and culture.

• 1805

[Translation]

Mr. Gaston Blais: My name is Gaston Blais and am I research assistant for this committee.

The clerk: My name is Norm Radford and I am the clerk of the committee.

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much. The floor is yours.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Thank you.

We thought it might be best, in terms of presentation to the committee, for Michael and I not to actively participate in the public forum. That is merely because it is a forum we feel more specifically belongs to the artists and arts organizations, cultural and heritage people, and broadcasters. Therefore, Shelley and Penny are sitting at the table because of their specific responsibilities.

But in terms of our—hopefully we can keep it brief—opportunity with the committee, we felt it might also be useful to have an opportunity to speak more on a government-to-government basis about how our province and the federal government might more effectively go forward to produce a better result in terms of how funding and programs for culture and heritage might specifically be addressed in the future.

I'd like to reiterate what a number of people have said in the public forum. The support of the federal government in addressing the issues of culture and heritage is greatly appreciated, and I hope it will not only continue but be increased.

The province is concerned that in going forward with the same amount of money or more money there is a great need to address the existing programs, the criteria and objectives of such programs, how the analysis of the effectiveness of the programs might be better analysed,; and a more collaborative method of making the decisions around those programs to ensure that the effectiveness of that money in Newfoundland and Labrador can be brought about.

I don't think there is any possibility that the program needs in Newfoundland and Labrador would be the same as those in Ontario, Quebec or Saskatchewan. To take a one-size-fits-all approach will always end up with less than effective results for all concerned. If the taxpayers' money is going to be most effectively used, I think we have to address that.

I will get my colleagues to be a little more specific in terms of their own areas, but before passing that over, I would just like to make some general comments that have come out of some of the things that were said here today. One is around the economic issues of culture and heritage.

The question of economics or cost-benefit analysis is potentially a smokescreen that could effectively cause us to not be able to see what we are looking at. If an economic measuring stick is going to be used, we have to ask a number of questions and agree on the answers before we will be able to make any sense of it. If an economic measuring stick is “Here's a dollar; where's the dollar coming back?” that is one kind of economic measuring stick. Immediate return versus long-term return is another measuring stick.

• 1810

The economic measuring stick that should be applied to it is “What are the long-term economic benefits of having a society that knows itself and appreciates what individual and collective self-worth is about, and what can that kind of society do for itself that it can't do for itself if that is not present?” That is no different in society than it is in an individual.

If you know who you are and have self-respect, you have dignity and a sense of where you fit into your place in society. If you have confidence in the knowledge that you belong, chances are you are not a person who is easily defeated. If you do not know yourself or understand where you fit, do not have confidence in your abilities and have never been nurtured to feel that way about yourself, you will be easily knocked over and kept down. That is no less so in society.

This society we live in is a society of the culture and heritage of Newfoundland and Labrador, and we belong to a national family of diverse cultures. Our government's job and the national government's job should be to ensure that the cultural and heritage values, individually and in diversity, are brought to bear on producing a society that cannot be defeated. That will bring economic gains. If it does not, then our history has been in vain.

I would like to approach our discussion here this afternoon using the economic indicator and measuring stick in those broad terms, because if we narrow them we will lose total sight of what it is to have a society that knows and understands itself. Culture and heritage reflect that; they reflect it back and enable us to give it out.

I was born and raised in the outports of Newfoundland, on a small island on the northeast coast. Arts and culture are not terms the people of the outports of Newfoundland would have known. If you had asked whether they were involved in the arts or had a cultural life, they wouldn't have understood the question. But in these outports, and in St. John's as well, people created. They created for fun and cohesiveness of their society, and that outpouring of creation enabled them to survive.

There was an old saying in the community where I grew up about somebody who was really good at solving problems: “She could put a new arse in the cat without a pattern”. Basically it meant if you had a problem, you had to solve it. That came from a creative outlook, and we need to find a way in our society today to encourage people to not be passive consumers of somebody else's culture or entertainment but to make our society more creative, to be able to see themselves as creators in every facet of their lives. In that way we'll have a better chance to have a strong economic climate, and we'll have a society that understands its place in the world.

I realize that's all airy-fairy stuff. But in terms of how the federal government and the provincial government work together to design programs and funding arrangements and move that agenda forward, I think it has to be on the basis of understanding that culture is more than a product, and programs are, at their hearts, most importantly done by the people who have to live with them.

• 1815

Now I'll pass it over to Penny, who has first-hand experience with some of the heritage programs and has a few comments on that aspect.

Ms. Penny Houlden: I'll be a little impromptu here, so please, if you have any questions or responses, I'd love to hear them.

Reflecting on what Liz has just said, I think we in Newfoundland live in an environment that is experiencing all the change that is talked about so much. All of the themes that are part of your five questions are fundamental to our experience.

Because of the cod moratorium and the significant decline in our fisheries, we're experiencing significant out-migration. So there is an incredible sense that we're losing our culture and our communities. From that point of view, there is an incredible movement among ordinary people to preserve that history by establishing community museums.

At the same time, there's a real need for us to establish alternate forms of economy, and tourism is a sector that's being given great prominence. So from another point of view, museums are again being seen as saviours for our circumstances, and by getting involved in heritage tours we will be able to breathe new life into communities that are now declining.

We are now seeing incredible growth in the sector, coming from people's desire to move in this direction, and, fortunately, support from both the federal and provincial governments that has allowed these people, who are largely volunteers, to realize their dreams.

At the same time, we are responding to new audiences. Heritage tours are known for their sophistication and level of expectation, so in order to serve them well we need to be able to offer them a quality product. We also need to be able to respond to the opportunities that are presented to us by the new technology, so our culture can be present on the Internet and we can be sure that memory is shared with people and we can let people know about our work and use that as a marketing tool. So we're in a strange environment here, where we are losing our economy and sense of place, but at the same time, we are trying very much to build on that.

We've seen some very successful models of development through federal-provincial agreements, and I really hope that from your discussions we might be able to see new programs emerge that are tailored to our local needs but work in collaboration with both levels of government.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: I don't know if you want to do this in terms of questions or a short statement like that.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Make a short statement first, and then we'll have the members ask questions.

Ms. Shelley Smith: Maybe I'll start by saying something that in a larger audience might be considered provocative. Liz mentioned that when she was growing up in an outport in Newfoundland, people wouldn't have defined what they did as culture. That is primarily because the concept of Newfoundland culture was invented by a group of academics from outside the province, who came to Memorial University in the 1960s as folklorists. They created a folklore department at Memorial University and began to recognize that there was something that needed to be recorded and preserved. What they started continues as very vibrant folklore archives at Memorial University, which is considered to be one of the best folklore archives in North America.

• 1820

The provincial archives actually started out on the Memorial University campus as well, but it started out very much as a collection of government records that had survived from colonial times and that historians needed for their research. So the provincial archives did not come about here as a result of people having a sense that there was a culture and a heritage that needed to be preserved; it was only after this group of people, academics from outside the province, invented our culture for us.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Discovered it.

Ms. Shelley Smith: Well, they invented it as culture; it was just our way of life. As I have said to a couple of people, when I hear all the angst about what Canadian culture is and the time that gets spent trying to define something and put it in a box and be able to put some sort of container around it, I think about this, and that what we have is a whole variety of cultures.

Again, as Liz said, those cultures mean that federal government programs, whether they're cultural programs, health programs or education programs, cannot be delivered in exactly the same fashion in every single province in the country. It has a lot more to do with the way they're delivered, the consultative mechanisms, the demographics in the provinces, than it does with funding formulas, which is what it always seems to come down to.

Right now, from an archival point of view, our demographics are such that we have people who are displaced from the fishery who want to work in museums and archives. There's a place for some of those people, but again, as Penny mentioned in her presentation earlier in the round table, we find that in some cases we're forced to take people in because they're the only bodies we have available to us, but they're not necessarily the bodies that are trained in the way we need them to be trained. But they need the work, and I think this probably happens much more in our community archives and museums than it does with the ones in the city.

So there has to be an understanding that doing the round peg in the square hole doesn't always necessarily work, and when you have a societal shift, as is happening right now in this province, you really need to examine the way all programs are being operated, not just levels of funding.

The other thing I would say, to pick up on a point Joe made earlier about the Internet being the great leveller, is that I think that's true and I don't know that it's a good thing.

I think what happens is that there's a great fear among people in my sector that, as the American archives—or particularly the American archives, but some of the bigger archives as opposed to the smaller archives—are able to get their records and their product, if we want to call it that, out there on the Internet, it creates an expectation then that every single archives in the country or every single museum is going to be able to do this. It diverts resources that are needed to support core programs, like the arrangement and description, like the preservation, into getting a web site done because everybody else has a web site and so I have to have a web site.

I think that can create a great deal of damage, and so when initiatives like the Cain initiative come along—which is a very valuable initiative and which needs and deserves to be funded in order for archives to increase the Canadian presence on the Internet... There's a fear as well that goes along with that, that what the federal government might say is, okay, we'll divert the funds we have given you to do other things into doing this initiative, because now you're telling us this initiative is most important.

What I would say, reflecting on behalf of the archives in this province, is that Canadian Council of Archives funding has been core funding for a lot of the smaller archives and will continue to be, and they may not be ready for another five, six, seven or ten years to take advantage of the Internet fully. There has to be an understanding that it isn't an all-or-nothing sort of situation.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Michael.

Mr. Michael Clair: I'd like to thank you for the opportunity for us to talk to you.

When we saw the e-mails and faxes that came earlier, we weren't quite sure what this session was about, so we were a bit leery about expressing some opinions in public, and we appreciate your taking the extra time to meet with us.

• 1825

I'd like to make a couple of general statements, then I have five specific comments I want to make.

One is that to really understand the culture and heritage in Newfoundland—and we've had several eloquent statements here—I think in your mind you should think of it as like Quebec's. If you understand how important culture is in Quebec, it's the same thing here. Where their isolation was due to language, our isolation was due to geography. We've had 500 years of developing a culture that has its own English dictionary, for example, and a number of very specific peculiarities.

We should also say that there's not one Newfoundland culture; there's the aboriginal culture, there's the francophone culture, there's the culture of Notre Dame Bay, and the culture of Fortune Bay. But for us as a people, I think there has been a shared history over 500 years and I think that's what we're talking about here.

Here's something I don't understand. We're a rich province. We brought a lot of riches to Canada. We brought offshore oil, we brought mineral resources, we brought fish, and we brought hydro-electricity. And yet we're a have-not province. I wish I knew how that happened but I don't, and that's the situation we have to live in.

I think part of the problem is that there is a relatively weak federal presence in this province. There are no major military bases as there would be in Halifax. There's no aerospace industry as there is in Montreal. There's no DEVCO as there is in Cape Breton. The federal presence in this province is relatively minor compared to other provinces.

Another thing is that the federal cultural presence in this province is also minimal. We've lost the NFB office. There's a regional office for Canadian Heritage, but there's not a really strong cultural presence by the federal government in this province. There's no Canada Council office, etc.

So I think we're saying on the one hand that culture is extremely important to us, but it's not being reflected in the resources applied to it. To be very frank here, I don't think the provincial government is providing the kind of support that it should be, but that's something we're working on internally. Speaking to you as the federal representatives, we feel there should be a much stronger presence in this province.

We feel we have a comparative advantage in culture. Saskatchewan has a comparative advantage in wheat. It's a lot cheaper for them to produce wheat than it is for, say, Newfoundland. In Newfoundland it's cheaper to produce culture, because we have the stories, the talent, the basic stuff that you need. You have good soil in Saskatchewan. You have good soil for culture in this province. We don't have the resources to transform that wheat into bread and to be able to sell it on the international market. We don't have the infrastructure, the television studios, that you have in Quebec. We don't have the recording studios. We don't have basic infrastructure.

I think what's missing is an understanding of how important culture is here. I think if the federal government understood it, maybe they would say they have a comparative advantage here, that by giving a dollar to culture in Newfoundland we actually get more than by giving a dollar to—excuse me here—Saskatchewan or whoever. So I think that's something we would like the federal government to recognize.

As I said earlier, inside the province we are trying to create... In the evolution of thought in this province, as Liz said earlier, culture was just accepted as the way it is. The last animal that would think of water is the fish. So in the evolution of things, we're starting to think that maybe culture is something that needs to be protected here. While we're late coming to the game, we are looking at Quebec as a really important model to us, because we feel they have a certain penchant. So we're looking at your institutions. We're looking at the way you do things in Quebec and we're trying to apply them here. We deal with the provincial colleagues, so we have a good discussion there.

So that's the opening statement I would like to make. At some point I'd also like to bring up five specific items.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much. Perhaps we can begin by asking our members if they have comments and questions.

Madame Tremblay, would you like to start?

• 1830

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Mr. Clair, you made a very heartfelt presentation. I even found your presentation rather moving. I must tell my colleagues that I just spent a week with senators Cook and Doody, who are from Newfoundland. I only found out on Thursday that I was to come here, because we traded East and West. During the whole week we spoke a great deal about Newfoundland and Canada. I was very curious regarding Newfoundland. I felt, after my previous visits here, that Quebec and Newfoundland had many things in common, and you expressed this in a rather stirring matter this afternoon.

Would you prefer that the federal government recognize that culture is a provincial matter and sign formal agreements with the provinces to have most of the programs administered locally? We want to preserve institutions like Telefilm, the National Film Board and the CBC, we don't intend to change that, but some programs could be administered locally. For instance, I am thinking of the artists we could help, the orchestras we could fund, of those who will receive grants for music. Would you be prepared to go that far as regards the federal role?

I mentioned four points and I will add a fifth one, namely conservation. This is a very important dimension that I had forgotten. What is your opinion on that?

[English]

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: I think it's fair to say that we would welcome a far greater involvement in the decision-making process of all the federal cultural programs.

There is no doubt in my mind, and in the mind of the people I work with in our department, that the delivery of cultural programs needs to be examined, analysed, and compared against objectives that were put into place when they were originally conceived, and that this analysis has to have at its heart the provincial specifics.

That ideally would take place within the jurisdiction of the province in our view, but it could be done even without that, just by having, say, the criteria and the objectives for the museum assistance program specifically designed for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and that in Nova Scotia, in Quebec, in Ontario, wherever, their needs and their specifics will be put into place.

But, yes, I think that ideally cultural and heritage programs would be delivered by the province, with the province's own needs and criteria as the basis for the delivery.

Mr. Michael Clair: Liz, if I may add to your comments as well, there's a price that have-not provinces pay. I almost want to say indignity, in the sense that while have provinces can pay for their cultural programs out of their own funds, have-not provinces receive, in many cases, funding from the federal government but then have to spend the money with the federal government. It's a discrepancy between provinces.

Certainly in this province we would like to administer our cultural programs ourselves, in the same way as the have provinces—Ontario, Alberta and B.C.—do. I think we have the competencies to do it. It's a cumbersome way of delivering programs.

• 1835

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: I would like to add, however, that the level of cooperation and understanding that exists with the Department of Canadian Heritage here in this province is outstanding, and we certainly in no way would want our comments to be a reflection against them, because that's not so. However, they still have to deliver the federal programs according to the guidelines and criteria that exist, and they do their best to make that as flexible as possible and to adapt it as well as possible to the circumstances in our province. But it is still not the same as our having a direct decision-making role in how the programs will be designed and how they will be delivered, which is the ideal.

In the federal-provincial agreements on cultural industries that we've had in the last few years, we have designed those programs jointly, and we have delivered them jointly. And even though the funding has been 70-30, the decision-making has been equal, and I think that the compliments the artistic community delivered today about the federal-provincial agreement speak directly to the fact that this was designed on the ground, with provincial input equal to that of the federal government.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Madame Tremblay, go ahead.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I have a very brief question for you. I mentioned this briefly awhile ago, in private, but I would like to come back to it for the record. Could you elaborate on the co- operation going on between national and provincial museums in exchanging artifacts, etc.?

[English]

Ms. Penny Houlden: I was mentioning to Madame Tremblay a situation that I just learned of the other day, and which really focused for me a concern that perhaps the national institutions have a different vision of their roles from what we in the regions may have of them.

I know that the Canadian Museum of Civilization is under significant financial difficulties and that it's very important for them to have to generate revenues through admissions and other sources in order to ensure that they can offer the best experience they can in Ottawa. But I was rather surprised the other day to learn that they... We in fact are going through an exchange of artifacts. We are requesting a loan of artifacts for a new exhibit we are developing, and as it happens, they at the same time are requesting artifacts from us that they require for an exhibit they are developing. They have just advised us of the fee structure relative to the loan we are requesting, and I was enormously surprised to receive that, because I think for us it would be considered a normal professional courtesy to offer the artifacts to them for display in Ottawa.

We are very delighted to be able to share our history with them in that way. We would similarly expect them to reciprocate that offer. I think we would see the artifacts in Ottawa as our shared heritage, and not one that we would then have to pay for in order to experience.

I wanted to raise that for your attention, because I do feel that perhaps under the pressure of trying to balance budgets the national museum may be losing sight of its mandate, as I perceive it. It's not one I've seen written down, but as a Canadian citizen I perceive that their role is to make our culture accessible to us.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Might I say as well that this is a very interesting fact when you consider that the museums in Scandinavia that are lending their artifacts to this exhibit, which is a Viking Skraeling exhibit for the millennium, are offering theirs without charge.

• 1840

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Joe.

Mr. Joe Jordan: It's a pretty sad commentary on this whole cost recovery stuff, and we see it in other sectors as well.

I'm starting to pick up now a little bit. When I tried to force the debate towards economics, I did hit a raw nerve of which I wasn't aware. But it's a very valid point, and I think it's something that needs to be looked at very seriously. You can't reduce it to a commodity. It doesn't do it justice. It's the wrong way to go.

You commented about a little bit of surprise or maybe frustration with this search for culture and the angst about culture. I think you have to keep in mind, though, that in some parts of this country we are culturally sterile, and people who are asking that are people who don't see a blade of grass or hear live music in the course of a month—they paved over it for whatever reason.

So really, there are parts of this country that don't enjoy those or have lost those. There's a complete disconnection to those things.

To pick up a little bit on something Madame Tremblay said—and I don't want to get into jurisdictional jealousies, but the discussion we're having has shed some new light on this—I do believe provinces really are cultural boundaries, if you look at the history of the country. To say it's a provincial jurisdiction, you open the door to an argument, but I think if you frame it more like: This the way in which our country evolved...

Not only are they cultural boundaries, but sometimes the geography led to cultural development, as in the case of Newfoundland.

So I think there is a strong and valid argument that would say that respecting the provincial boundary is actually respecting the cultural boundaries.

But having said that, I don't think it's a 100% transfer. You talk about equal input. I think there's a Canadian culture that's more than the aggregate. There are synergies, and somebody has to nurture that as well. So there has to be some balance.

As one last point, then, about the Internet, I came from an academic world, and you're absolutely right that we cannot lose sight of the fact that it's a tool; it's not going to build the house. In the education business, people saw it as a way to replace the teacher. People saw it as a way to do things more cheaply. You really have to resist that thinking. People look at it, and they think, well, we don't need museums; we can have virtual museums. So we lose sight of what we're trying to do.

You're absolutely right; I think your fears are grounded in fact there.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: I'd like to make a comment on a couple of those things, because I think you've touched on part of what we probably should be discussing here in this session; that is, that there is a valid role for federal programs and that what we've probably done is perpetuate programs and attitudes towards programs that perhaps evolved two or three decades ago, when Canada, Newfoundland, and the world looked very different from today.

What do we need to look at in this country for the federal and the national presence? We need to make sure that the people in parts of Canada who, for whatever reason, as you say, are living in apartment complexes and the only blade of grass they ever see is something in a window box, if they're lucky...

How do the person in the Newfoundland outport and that person, and the person in Saskatchewan and B.C. and the Yukon connect? That's the federal nation-building that isn't being addressed. We have to have ways of ensuring that in Newfoundlanders and Labradorians connecting to Quebeckers or to Yukon residents, it does not diminish us—far from it. It expands us. It provides us with a complexity in our fabric and our growth that is similar to being part of a large family. If you're part of a large family, you like some, you don't like others; you get along with some, you don't get along with others. But you benefit from having that kind of fabric around you that is part of you.

• 1845

Maybe we need to be spending far more time discussing the federal programs—not how they're delivered to artists or museums; let that be more of a provincial or a cultural boundary. Let's concentrate on the ways in which the cultural diversities of this nation can be introduced to each other. It wasn't any more than a couple of decades ago that there were large funding programs that enabled people to travel to different parts of the country to live, spend time, and share experiences with other people, and as soon as the cuts came about, those programs disappeared.

Mr. Joe Jordan: We're starting to make too much sense.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Time to give it up when that happens.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Are there any more questions? Okay. Wendy.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Well, I really like this conversation. It's quite nurturing.

I agree with you in terms of...well, you think of things like Katimavik, things that brought people across the country in waves, young people, idealistic people, who actually got stuff done and carried that on through their lives with their families—just jolts of realities.

Then we also have the idea of a public broadcasting system, which, as you know, has been starved for money and is now. It was very much a place where you could hear Newfoundland humour, you could hear a little bit of Nova Scotia humour and Orangeville, Ontario drama, all across the country—unique, perverse, little blasts from different regions. I say perverse; some of them were perverse. You don't hear them nearly as much any more, and I think that's a tragedy. I continue to say one of the nation-building methods we have is that public broadcasting system, and we can't starve it.

I want to ask a question, because I have you here and you're provincial legislators. I want to know about the idea of jobs, the CHRC—the Cultural Human Resources Council—and the money they had. I think there was $8 million last year. I have trouble following this money, but I know a huge amount of it disappeared, and clearly it was because jobs were being moved into the provincial sector. These are cultural jobs moving to the provincial sector. And I don't understand what the hell happened there. I just know that a whole lot of people... Do you know what I'm talking about?

Mr. Joe Jordan: Are you talking about the transfer?

Ms. Wendy Lill: I'm talking about the CHRC, the Cultural Human Resources Council, and Jean-Philippe Tabet. When I was lobbying—

Mr. Joe Jordan: Is that part of the labour market agreement?

Ms. Wendy Lill: Yes. So somehow there—

[Editor's Note: Inaudible]

Mr. Joe Jordan: —

Ms. Wendy Lill: Well, the money was there, because many artists pay into the EI fund through all sorts of different jobs they do. But they never collect, because they get that money through waitressing or whatever, and then they never have enough hours. So in recognition of the fact that there are people paying into these funds, cultural workers who do not get to access them as unemployment insurance, money was put in this fund. And it seems there was supposed to be $7 million last year and it ended up being $2 million. The reason had something to do with it going to the provinces.

I think there's this thing that happens—we're always devolving to the provinces, and then it's gone. So where is it? Where is the money that went to the provinces?

You're a province. So enlighten me. Do you know what I'm talking about in this respect?

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Only barely.

Ms. Shelley Smith: It didn't find its way to our department.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: I expect what you're referring to is an amount of money that was put in through the Human Resources Development Council, which I think went into the labour market transition fund, and that's administered in a different department from ours. I do have to confess I'm not familiar with how that program evolved.

It certainly didn't translate itself directly into cultural activity in the realms that we are dealing with, but it did produce a lot of...well, I was going to say “questionable”, but I don't know if I could say that, because I'm not sure I know enough about it. I'll say it produced training of one kind or another in what is a broad definition of the cultural sector.

• 1850

Mr. Joe Jordan: Wendy, some of the agreements are in place and some of them aren't. Ontario's isn't, so that $7 million to $2 million may be a reflection that the federal government is still doing it in some provinces and not in others. It's a real hodgepodge.

Ms. Wendy Lill: We're all talking about something we don't know enough about.

What kind of model do you want to see in terms of training for artists and cultural workers? I know that was mentioned by you several times, the idea of getting people working in apprenticeship-like—I don't necessarily really what to use the word “apprenticeship”—jobs in the arts, getting people working in theatres and learning the ropes in terms of how to do lights, getting cultural workers to be more technologically adept so that they can actually work further into their medium.

We have the feds here and we have the province here. Let's just follow an artist who wanted to get some money. What's the best way of doing it?

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: It's a very complex path that an artist or an arts organization has to follow. One of the things that should be looked at, and should be looked at very carefully, is the diffusion of programs and funding possibilities that are in place, particularly in a province like Newfoundland, where the downturn in the resource-based economy now has Newfoundlanders and Labradorians flocking to what they hope will be a new salvation, cultural tourism. There are several pitfalls there, though.

One of those pitfalls, of course, is that not everybody is going to be able to make a go of tourism or cultural tourism. The other thing is that most people don't recognize what it is. Therefore, when there are federal programs through such things as Human Resources Development Canada or through all kinds of new programs that come in, and then there are all of the funding departmental agencies provincially, it is nothing short of a maze for somebody who wants to do something that they think fits the definition of culture, and who then creates a project and goes shopping with it. This is what happens.

Look at the intervention by George Chalker about the built heritage. We're fighting on every front projects that are being developed for cultural tourism but have to do with building something. In the case of one community, they want to build an old Newfoundland outport in a place just down the area from their community that already is an old Newfoundland outport—

Mr. Michael Clair: Whose buildings are deteriorating.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Yes, the original buildings, with the original architecture, are falling down around their ears. But because they've been to places in other parts of Canada and the United States where all kinds of new, nifty things are put together and are presented to the tourists, they think, “That's what we'll do. We'll build a Newfoundland outport and we'll get people to come to it.” They're leaving the Newfoundland outport that is falling down. Trying to convince them—I'm getting to a point with this, believe it or not—that a better way to go is to actually see their own community as what needs to be rebuilt is a very difficult sell.

Now, here's the point: there are federal programs available under a lot of agreements that will give them money to do that. We won't.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Let me just follow up. Is there any money, federal or provincial, to give them the money to rebuild their own community?

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Not nearly as much.

Ms. Wendy Lill: You would get more money with a new thing?

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Yes.

Mr. Michael Clair: As George Chalker mentioned about the built heritage, you get more money demolishing. If I own a building, under the tax laws it's more advantageous to me to tear down that old building and build a new one. It's also more advantageous, under the grants program, to not fix up my buildings that are falling apart but build replicas down the street. It's illogical.

• 1855

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: It's never pointed out to people that restoring their buildings doesn't mean you have to live in uncomfortable or less than modern circumstances. A lot of people will make the argument that they want to put in modern sliding windows and all of those things, and they don't want to live in an uncomfortable house.

We need to be able to explain to people in a logical fashion—and provide the financial incentive—that they can make their houses as comfortable, modern and up-to-date in all the amenities as they want and still not destroy the architectural integrity of their buildings. We can take as much blame on the provincial level. There has been little done provincially and federally to make an all-out frontal attack on this issue in terms of raising awareness and showing people that where they have a choice, why not consider how beautiful and outstanding their homes could be—and comfortable and modern—if they restored them rather than doing all those other things to them. It's just not something we've provided creative programs for to give the incentive to do that.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): On that same note, are your regulations for heritage integrity for the whole building or just the facade?

Mr. Michael Clair: We're more interested in the outside.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: We don't have provincial regulations. But various municipalities like St. John's and lots of communities have municipal regulations, which are erratically applied, in my view. From a provincial point of view, we don't have legislation or regulations on that. There's a huge gap. That's not a federal problem, it's provincial.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): In the province of Manitoba there is a regulation that if it's designated municipally—of course municipal governments do the same thing—and you want funds, you have to go through the province. But they demand that the outside—

Mr. Michael Clair: It is the same thing here. If you have money from a grant, you have to sign an easement on the property.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: One of the things the federal government did very effectively a few years ago in the area of general health and fitness was create the participACTION program. It put an all-out, full frontal assault on the couch potato syndrome and, in innovative ways, got people to think differently.

It isn't that we've caught up to the 65-year-old Swede—or nobody's told us we have—but the awareness around fitness and the need for exercise and physical activity is certainly there. There's awareness about smoking, and drinking and driving. That's all been a result of a full concerted effort to raise public awareness.

One of the things the federal government could effectively do, which would be of benefit to the entire country no matter where you lived, would be to devise a creative, innovative program of some kind to expose people on a frequent and regular basis to the whole issues of culture and heritage in a fun way, not in a dusty old “let's now have a collective snore while somebody raves on about culture” kind of way. That would be a great advantage, because people would be exposed to the kinds of things they understand when you talk to them individually but that collectively they don't think about in their lives. ParticipACTION was good for it; why not this?

Ms. Shelley Smith: Right now we have to depend on the Bronfman Foundation to do our CRB Heritage Moments in the movie theatres, so when we all go to see our American films we get that little piece of Canadian content.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: We've had a heritage moment.

Mr. Michael Clair: The discussion we had a few minutes ago about HRDC slides us into one point I wanted to make, that it's good to have a department of culture. We have one provincially and there is one federally, but what those departments control is relatively limited in the field of culture.

• 1900

In this province, for example, HRDC plays a major role in culture. As Liz said, sometimes they do the wrong thing, but they have money and they can deliver things that fall into the cultural or heritage fields.

ACOA in this province is a big investor in culture. So is Canadian Heritage. Foreign Affairs and International trade is a big a player in culture through the multilateral agreement on investment, through funding artists to go outside the country for performances, and so on.

Fisheries and Oceans in this province is a big player in culture because shipwrecks, airplane wrecks, and so on are controlled essentially by that department.

Revenue Canada is a big player by giving charitable status to non-profit groups. They're not doing it here, but what they do in Ireland, for example, is that artists are exempt from paying personal income tax. Is that something we would like to see in this province?

Industry Canada is a big player through the Internet, both in terms of putting cultural products on the Internet and in terms of electronic commerce. Culture is a knowledge industry, and knowledge industries flow very well through the Internet and other ways, so the more improvements we can make to electronic commerce, the more that's going to help our agencies, who need to make money because the government is giving them less money.

So there are a number of different departments at the federal level that have a very important role to play in culture, and the coordination is less than it should be. The same situation exists at the provincial level, so I'm not just pointing fingers. We're trying to work that out fairly well. Again, we're looking at the Quebec model, where they seem to have that coordination down to a further degree than we do or the federal government does.

So if the Department of Canadian Heritage can play an additional role, it would be one of coordination between the various federal government departments. That's something we would like to see done. Then you coordinate things at the provincial level as well as at the national level.

Another point I'd like to make is that if indeed there is a federal surplus—

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: You never know.

Mr. Michael Clair: —we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Confederation in this province this year. We have a major project—and Mary Pratt made reference to it earlier—building a new museum, archives, and art gallery. It's a very expensive project. The province will do its share in terms of funding. Any assistance the federal government could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Was that your informal pitch?

Mr. Michael Clair: Not yet. I'm just preparing the ground.

Ms. Shelley Smith: This is just a heads-up.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Okay.

Mr. Michael Clair: One thing, though, that I think is of more immediate importance is that the Canada Council does not presently have geographic representation. There is no Newfoundland representative, no P.E.I. representative, and so on. As we mentioned earlier, because of the importance of culture in this province, we would certainly like to have a Newfoundland representative permanently on the Canada Council. Whether the policy is that every province is represented or not, we would certainly appreciate a provincial representative on that council.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I think it's more a regional representation than provincial.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Regional, right.

Mr. Michael Clair: The last point I want to make is this. The museum assistance program is one with which I'm familiar. It's probably the same case with the archives. That program has been battered around a fair bit in the last little while. If we put an application in, we don't know when we'll hear back or what the state of the program was. Last year there was a bit of a crisis situation. I think we made application in February, and we were supposed to hear in June. We heard in October. We lost a lot of time there. Whatever efficiencies could be made to that program in the future would be greatly appreciated.

Ms. Shelley Smith: Speaking to the archives program, the counterpart of the museum assistance program is the Canadian Council of Archives funding program. It was mentioned a number of times.

It actually is not on a par with any of the other federal programs that have been mentioned in terms of the amount of money that gets put into it. It's much smaller than any of the other funding programs for any of the other sectors. Even though it was always smaller, it has shrunk enormously over the past few years.

• 1905

When the program started, Newfoundland's allocation was $100,000 per year, and it's now down, I think you heard Larry Dohey say earlier, to about $58,000 or $60,000. At the same time as the funds are shrinking, the demand is increasing because of what we've talked about in terms of community archives and museums, the demands created by the demographics, and people having more of an interest and awareness and all of that.

Now, there's been some real concern, in the past three or four years particularly, that the guidelines around the funding have become more and more restrictive, and we have people—small archives run by volunteers in this province—who no longer even apply, because their volunteers just find it impossible to deal with the application process. And I think there's a feeling among some of them that this is the strategy that has been used so there won't be too much asked of these dwindling funds, and therefore there won't be too much of an outcry that there's not enough funding there to do the job. There's a real frustration with that.

I think at the national level the program is very well run, so we don't have the confusions that the MAP program has suffered from. The deadlines and the guidelines are very clear. But they've become more and more restrictive, so the matching funds are harder and harder to come by, as well as the understanding of how you can actually devise a project that fits into the guidelines. I might add that we're expecting people to do this amount of work for between $2,000 and $7,000.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): I wanted to ask you a question about the national associations and organizations in the cultural field. Do you feel they're doing a good job in terms of lobbying on your behalf at the national level?

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: What kind, specifically?

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Say, the Canadian national association of museums—the national bodies.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: I would certainly like to speak to the Canadian Museums Association. I think they're an incredibly effective organization and serve the museum community extraordinarily well. And I'm very happy to see the federal government has been using them more proactively in the last number of years.

The Canadian Museums Association has, within my memory, which goes back 20 years, assisted in delivering some of the dollars for the museum assistance program, and more recently they've been helping with the Young Canada Works and related programs. That has worked really effectively because they understand the sector and can target that work to really effective projects. So that's worked well, and yes, they do represent the museum community very reasonably.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): I've met with many of them in Ottawa in the national group. I just wondered what your perception was in terms of whether they should be assisting the determination of how funding should be delivered.

Ms. Penny Houlden: Yes and no.

They have a very good national perspective. I think they are not necessarily well able to see a regional perspective. Because of economic restraint, they themselves have had to limit their board. They don't have regional representation on their board either. So I would be concerned that in the development of criteria, they may not understand the local circumstances as well as they ought to.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

Suzanne.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: We are perhaps getting away from the specific objective for which we came here, but you stated in your presentation that your department was almost a copy of Heritage Canada; in other words that you deal have more or less with the same areas, including parks. You do have parks, don't you?

A voice: Yes

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Have you been informed about Bill C-48, aimed at creating marine conservation areas, in Bonavista, for assistance? Does your government have an official position on this matter?

[English]

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Yes. The province actually signed an MOU with the federal government a couple of years ago to participate in examining all the details, the feasibility, and the local and provincial reaction to all of the issues around the possibility of a marine conservation area or areas in the province. We have been reasonably close to that endeavour. In my view, it is not clear that there is any position on whether this should or shouldn't be done, as much as there is on the desirability of investigating the pros and cons of doing so.

• 1910

In the current climate in Newfoundland regarding what are called the inshore waters, I think there's going to be a tremendous battle to give any comfort at all to local people that a marine conservation area wouldn't be anything more than just another restriction against their getting on or in the water. I think there's a long road ahead to establish what that MCA will be and how it will relate to the local situation.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Very good.

On behalf of the committee members, we thank you for your time. You've taught us a lot about the workings of government in Newfoundland. All of your comments will certainly help us to continue to define how we should enhance and promote Canadian culture in this country.

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: It's been a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to you, and to also to have an opportunity to hear and participate in the public process. When we were preparing for this endeavour, we were in an interesting position in that all our politicians were on the road on the election trail for three weeks. Most of our department people have also been out of the city. They're up in Corner Brook for the Canada Games. We had the choice of either bringing a formal presentation to you that was sanctioned by everybody, or speaking from the heart. You got the latter, and with any luck at all it is in line with... This is too important a forum to talk in bureaucratese when straight talk is required.

Mr. Joe Jordan: We don't understand it anyway.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Ms. Elizabeth Batstone: Thank you very much.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.