CHER Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, February 23, 1999

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[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark (Dauphin—Swan River, Ref.)): On behalf of the committee, let me welcome our table guests, as well as our audience, to the second session today of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. This committee is travelling through the eastern part of Canada, listening to you, the people of the country, give us advice in terms of what we need to do to enhance and strengthen Canadian culture in this country.

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If you were here in the last session, it was very interesting in terms of the dynamics. Previous to declaring a recess, I indicated that hopefully this session, which will run for two hours, will be more of a dialogue.

I believe the round table process is about dialoguing and talking to each other rather than presenting briefs, so I would ask you to submit any briefs you have to our clerk and they will be part of our data.

I would ask you to be sure to turn your cell phones off and keep your comments to around two minutes so everyone has an opportunity to intervene. Later on I will certainly ask for interventions on the audience's part, because we found over the last two sessions that audience participation was fairly important to this process.

I will begin by asking our clerk to introduce himself, and then we will go around the table and introduce ourselves.

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

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): I'm Inky Mark, vice-chair and chairman of this meeting.

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

Mr. James Lorimer (Book Publisher, Formac Publishing Company Limited): My name is Jim Lorimer. I'm a book publisher in Halifax.

Mr. Russell Kelley (Executive Director, Nova Scotia Arts Council): My name is Russell Kelley. I'm the executive director of the Nova Scotia Arts Council.

Mr. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.): My name is Joe Jordan. I'm an MP from eastern Ontario.

Mr. James MacSwain (Board Member, CCA for Nova Scotia): I'm James MacSwain. I'm the Canadian Conference of the Arts representative in Nova Scotia.

Ms. Catherine Phoenix (Director of Operations, Centre for Art Tapes): I'm Catherine Phoenix, director of operations at the Centre for Art Tapes here in Halifax.

Ms. Ann Verrall (Independant Producer-Director, Flashfire Productions): I'm Ann Verrall. I'm an independent producer-director of Flashfire Productions, and I run the Shortworks training program.

Mr. Walter Forsyth (Arts Coordinator, Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative): My name is Walter Forsyth and I'm the coordinator of the 25-year-old Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative.

Ms. Johanna C. Montgomery (Head of Independent Production, Atlantic Canada, CTV): I'm Johanna Montgomery. I'm the head of independent production for Atlantic Canada for CTV.

Mr. Michael Elgie (Vice-President and General Manager, ATV): I'm Michael Elgie. I'm the vice-president and general manager for ATV and ASN, a division of CTV.

Mr. Bruce McKenna (Screenwriter; Representative, Writer's Guild of Canada): I am Bruce McKenna, a screenwriter and also a representative of the Writers Guild of Canada.

Ms. Ann MacKenzie (Acting Chief Executive Officer, Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation): I'm Ann MacKenzie. I'm the acting chief executive officer of the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation.

[Translation]

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

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): On that note, if you need interpretation devices they're available. If you need them, just raise your hand and we'll get them to you.

I'm also actually a member of Parliament from Manitoba.

If I may, to begin and perhaps just frame the discussion, there are three basic questions we need responses to.

I believe you've received the five questions in a package that was sent out to you. The first question deals with the range of federal cultural support programs in the past and your evaluation—plus or minus, whatever it is. The second one deals with the impact technology, trade, and changing demographics will have on culture. The key question is what we think the role of the federal government should be in terms of supporting cultural industries and the culture sector in the field. Should the role be one of legislator, regulator, owner and operator of national institutions, funding partner, patron of the arts, business developer or promoter? If you frame all your comments in terms of those three questions, we will have a very interesting dialogue here this afternoon.

I invite your intervention at any time.

Would you like to introduce yourself, Madame?

Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): I'm Wendy Lill. I'm the member of Parliament for Dartmouth. I'm sorry I'm late.

I'm very happy to have everybody here today to talk with us about Canadian culture, what it means to you, and where we have to go within the federal government to nurture it and make it even more of a reality.

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I don't know if some of you were here for the last conversation, which was really quite different from the one we had yesterday. Each one of these sessions, depending on the people and their passions, will sound different and come up with different things. I think that's great because at the end of the day it will all become a much stronger accord, in terms of what we're trying to do here.

Thank you for coming. Let's begin.

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

Mr. Mike Elgie: We have a short presentation. I know you've asked us to not make presentations, but it's not long.

Ms. Johanna Montgomery: That's all we have.

Mr. Mike Elgie: Otherwise, we're going to sit here and look kind of silly.

Members of the standing committee, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Michael Elgie. I'm the vice-president and general manager at ATV/ASN, the CTV presence in the Maritimes. With me today is Johanna Lunn Montgomery, CTV's development officer here. We welcome you to Halifax and wish you fruitful discussions.

The questions you have asked are highly relevant to our future.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Does the witness have another document for the interpreters? He's reading too quickly.

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Do you have an extra copy for the interpreter? It's very difficult for the interpreter when you're reading quickly.

Mr. Mike Elgie: We have one.

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

Mr. Mike Elgie: The questions you have asked are highly relevant to our future. We have always known how important culture is to human well-being, but today in our growing knowledge economy we have gained a healthy respect for its growing role in our economic well-being. Here in Nova Scotia, for example, the cultural factor generates direct and indirect economic inputs of more than $650 million, or 4.1% of our gross domestic product. It also employs nearly 30,000 people or 7.1% of the provincial labour force.

The direct impact of culture on GDP is greater than fishing, trapping, logging, and forestry combined, and almost as much as mining, quarrying, oil wells, and agriculture combined. So much for the stereotypes. The good news is it is creating jobs faster than any other sector, and faster here in Nova Scotia than in any other province.

Over the seven-year period from 1990 to 1996, the cultural labour force in Nova Scotia increased by almost 20%, at a time when overall employment was actually shrinking here. The film and television sector has been a particularly dynamic component of that growth. The province's film business generated about $7 million a year seven or eight years ago; last year it passed through the $100 million mark. Nova Scotia is now Canada's fourth-largest production centre.

Among the many productions that will be created here, the National Film Board is profiling Wendy Lill and other women in politics. Wendy, of course, is also known to us here as a noted director and playwright. The Music Industry Association of Nova Scotia has grown 400% in one year, and the East Coast Music Awards have become a phenomenon followed by a significant national audience.

Your first question relates to the federal cultural support measures currently in place or used in the past. There are many ways of looking at that answer. There are the fundamental measures that allow us to have a Canadian broadcasting system. These would include the presence of the CRTC, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which regulates our industry, and the existence of the requirement for simultaneous substitution, which allows Canadian broadcasters to ensure the respect of the program rights for which they have paid.

Not many people know that in the U.S. market, where rights are purchased for geographic regions, they simply black out the signal of a broadcaster who does not own the rights for that given market.

The existence of funding bodies, such as Telefilm and the Canadian Television Fund allow us to finance programming that is primarily intended for the Canadian market. If such financing were unavailable, we would have no choice but to always finance our programming offshore, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.

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When programming is primarily designed for foreign audiences, it will not reflect the experiences and the needs of Canadians as its top priority. It's as simple as that.

The CTF is the single most important initiative. Its mix of private and public sector funding leverages over $600 million in television product. It helps create top-quality Canadian programs and thousands of direct and indirect jobs.

The production tax credit attracts production here, although we believe these credits should be primarily for productions for which the intellectual property rights remain in Canada.

Bill C-55, the income tax rules that create a disincentive for Canadian advertisers to place ads south of the border, helps us slow the flow of Canadian advertising dollars out of the country.

On an underlying level, the existence of public funding and support through institutions such as the Canada Council, the National Film Board, and the CBC has provided generations of training and support to our writers, artists, and creators. We all reap the benefits of that support and suffer the consequences when it's not there.

Our approach to regional production is unique to our company in private broadcasting. As we have built CTV into a more powerful national force, we have leveraged our presence in places like Halifax and Vancouver to bring regional voices to a national platform. As in Vancouver, we have developed an officer in Halifax. Johanna Lunn Montgomery is the person who manages that function here in Halifax.

Johanna.

Ms. Johanna Montgomery: Thank you, Mike.

The art and craft of creating television involves a broad range of individuals: writers, musicians, set designers, costume designers, photographers, cinematographers, actors, and on and on.

In part, the Atlantic region is making such great strides in television production here because of the wealth of talented people here. Many of the writers and musicians who have been so integral to the development of the television industry have benefited from federal and provincial initiatives that have allowed them to grow and develop their craft. This has been extremely important to the growth of this region.

Recognizing the talent that exists here, CTV opened the development office in Halifax a year ago. In that short time, we've commissioned, from independent producers, the following four documentaries that will be coming to air this spring.

Loyalties is a story of two women, one black, one white, who met at work and discovered their ancestors were bound together as slave and slaveholder from South Carolina. The exploration of this bond has given back to the descendants of black Loyalists in Tracadie, Nova Scotia, a history that was once lost.

Another of our documentaries, Songs in Stone: An Arctic Journey Home, recalls 50 years ago when James and Alma Houston introduced the world to Inuit art and created the first print-making co-op in Cape Dorset, Baffin Island. The story is told by their son, John, of his journey back home to Cape Dorset to scatter his mother's ashes.

We also have a program called Military Wives, which is an intimate portrait of civilian life on military bases and examines what can happen when things go wrong.

Lastly, we have The Perfect Hero, which is a playful look at the romance novel industry.

We also feel that it's important to support and encourage the development of emerging talent. To this end, we've commissioned a half-hour drama called Shelter, a wonderful story of how a pained and difficult relationship between father and son is healed through a chance encounter in a mystical cabin. This too will be broadcast this year.

This year we're looking forward to producing five more documentaries and another half-hour drama, and the future holds some interesting potential, since currently in development are three television movies, two dramatic series, and three more documentaries. All of these projects are Atlantic stories, but they're all world-class stories that will have a national audience—and in some cases an international audience.

All in all, we have been responsible in this past year for close to $2 million in production and development activity. We're fortunate in that the Telefilm office in Halifax has existed to serve independent producers here for 15 years. This obviously makes a tremendous difference in the ability to produce and finance Atlantic productions.

Thank you.

Mr. Mike Elgie: Thank you, Johanna.

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With respect to your questions about the impact of new technology, trade liberalization and globalization abroad, we wish to leave time for questions and answers and would be happy to address these issues more specifically then. Suffice it to say that they represent both a threat and an opportunity.

Digital television will present a major investment requirement for private broadcasters in the next few years, and globalization requires larger, more integrated entities in order to compete. We believe that in the future the federal government's roles of legislator, regulator, owner and operator of the national institutions, funding partner, patron of the arts, business developer and promoter will have to evolve rapidly to meet the changing needs of this large and ambitious country. We see tremendous efforts at the CRTC and elsewhere to adapt and to speed up processes to make them more responsive.

Much more needs to be done, of course, but it is a very positive sign that you and your committee have taken the time to meet with us today to discuss making federal cultural policies the kinds of assets that will do as much for the quality of life in Canada in the next century as they have up to now.

Thank you.

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

Joe, do you have comments or questions?

Mr. Joe Jordan: In terms of the nuts and bolts of implementing a policy, one of the things we heard yesterday—and I guess it speaks a little to your references to an eastern Canadian base from which you're generating and telling stories—is that the provincial boundaries are in a sense cultural and geographic boundaries too, and the model that might work is one where the federal government works in cooperation, in partnership, with the region or the province to develop very broad guidelines, while the province has autonomy over where it directs those resources. The federal government's role, then, is to make sure the different regions are connected and synergies are created to put the mosaic back together. Does that model make sense to you?

Ms. Johanna Montgomery: Yes, very much so. I think the cooperation agreements in both culture and economic development were very helpful to this region, specifically the cultural cooperation agreement. It fostered a lot of activity in the music and publishing industry. I can't recall all of the things it funded, but it seemed to me that it came at a very opportune time, which mirrors the time when the production industry started taking off here as well. All these other people were able to really start developing their individual crafts that then fed into this industry that I'm now involved in. It seemed to be an excellent model.

Mr. Joe Jordan: I guess one of the arguments is that the federal government can't be all things to all people—

Ms. Johanna Montgomery: Right.

Mr. Joe Jordan: —and we can't have a sort of cookie-cutter approach that is going to be applicable across the country, because one of the strengths of the country is its diversity. Are you comfortable that at a provincial level that won't be the case? I'm just wondering if the criticisms are valid about a central government dictating this throughout the country. Or do you find that a provincial government is in a much better position to respect the regional differences within its geographic boundaries?

Ms. Johanna Montgomery: That question has a number of different layers to it. There is what I do. I work with independent producers and develop stories and programs. At that level, where writers are so terribly important and the development of ideas and so on is really essential to making good television, it's the support to individuals for development of their craft that's really important.

This is by no means my area of specialization, so I'm really speaking as someone who has a portal on this world but isn't completely of it. I think the things that do support individual skills and the ability for an artist to develop his craft can be done well at the provincial level, because it is the level at which you can identify more rapidly who those people are. I think there's also an important role for federal organizations like the Canada Council to play.

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So I guess there's not a simple formula that can address all arts across the board.

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

I'll recognize Russell and then James. And if you want to raise your own questions in your comments, please do so. We welcome that.

Mr. Russell Kelley: Thank you.

Responding to your question, because that's a very terrific and probably extremely pertinent question, I've had the opportunity to work both at the national and provincial levels as a funder. There's no doubt the country is diverse and it's distinct by province or by region. That distinctness is the richness of Canada, and those individual voices must be recognized and heard.

The strength we're living in right now in Nova Scotia is that we are able to tell ourselves and each other very, very good and serious stories that allow us, as a community, to grow stronger, and then those stories go outward. At the same time, a really important component of that ability to tell those stories is the recognition that those stories have importance on a national basis. When artists are recognized nationally, it starts to talk about another level of...another set of standards or benchmarks that are achieved.

In the arts community, and in the cultural industries as well, that's a very, very important thing. They both build on each other. To have one without the other would be to either look too inward or to avoid that sense of the individual voice.

I'll stop there. Thank you.

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

Mr. James MacSwain: Do I really go now? That was too short, Russell. I'm still off in dreamland.

First of all, I want to say what a pleasure it is to be here today and to welcome you to Halifax. I think it's a wonderful idea for a Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to come to Halifax and across the country to soak up the atmosphere of all our various communities. I think, from the diversity of all of us here, you are going to have food for thought for months to come, hopefully.

As the Canadian Conference of the Arts board member for Nova Scotia, I want to lead off by advocating the Canadian Conference of the Arts paper entitled A Working Group on Cultural Policy for the 21st Century: Phase 2, which was tabled in June 1998. I want to table it right now as a blueprint for a federal cultural policy. Within this paper are many recommendations that have a direct impact on the non-profit and cultural industries.

I want to single out one of the recommendations, just because I think it refers to the questions you're asking us at the moment.

This recommendation states:

That the Government of Canada confer upon the Department of Culture and Heritage full authority to establish and administer foreign investment measures in the arts and cultural industries.

This recommendation is for myself the most crucial aspect of a federal cultural policy. I'm sure in your cross-country tour you will hear this time and time again, the great fear that artists and cultural industries have a foreign investment ownership, or the subversion of our Canadian cultural sovereignty.

We are terrified, and you've heard this in the last session, particularly in the media industries, of the United States and the tenacious hold that Hollywood has on our cultural imagination, not to mention on the imagination of the entire global, corporate entertainment business. I'm sure you will hear that while Canadian production of media images is at least continuing to establish itself, distribution of our moving images is as low as 4% to 6% of the available screens in Canada for feature films. Any time Canada has tried to legislate screen time, the roars of American distribution monopolies have undermined our courage.

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If Canadian feature films are having a difficult time, think of the experimental documentary and animation work that is not being seen, or of the work that comes from the artist-run media centres and from small producers. The speciality cable channels and educational broadcasters—such as TV Ontario—as well as the CBC all support programs of independent work, but is this enough? Of course not. We want Canadians to have access to all our cultural production, including those films and videos and new media that are smaller in scope but no less wonderful.

This theme of access will run like a deep wound throughout these presentations. For instance, in the preamble to the recommendations of the Working Group on Cultural Policy for the 21st Century, this is articulated in powerful prose. It states:

The theme of access by Canadians to their artistic works and cultural products is a recurring one throughout the Final Report of the Working Group. The entire objective of maintaining a vibrant community of artists and producers is to ensure that Canadians have ready access to the stories and reflections that stem from our shared experiences, aspirations and the diverse and sometimes provocative interpretations of them.

I've stressed the word “provocative” because I will return to it in a short while.

As another example of access in my own sector's strategic discussions, I will wear my hat as a board member of the Independent Film & Video Alliance. The alliance is a service and lobby organization for the artist-run media cooperatives across Canada. I received an e-mail from Peter Sandmark, our national director, and I want to share it with you. He wrote:

There is a key question which the Heritage Committee has asked we consider. This question asks about what support measures work well for our “sector”, so this would be a good place to comment on how Telefilm is not adequately serving the independent film and video community. I think the main point to make is that if we want a brilliant Canadian media industry in the future then we must nurture the rising, unknown talents here and now. With regards to feature film and video projects there is a huge gap between what the Canada Council can fund and what Telefilm does fund. In that gap lie the independent low-budget features, and from that foggy gap come such talents as Atom Egoyan, Thom Fitzgerald and Lynn Stopewich. These people are individual talents who succeed despite the odds and despite the fact that Telefilm programs are not designed to support these creators.

He wrote that in an e-mail. Isn't that beautiful? I was so shocked to see such...you know, it's all there.

Now is a good time to go back to that word “provocative”. Atom Egoyan's last film is entitled The Sweet Hereafter. It's about how one man tries to exploit a British Columbia community tragedy as a business transaction or commodity. Thom Fitzgerald's film The Hanging Garden mixes time past with the present in presenting a gay man's reunion with his Nova Scotian family. Lynn Stopkewich's film Kissed, which is based on a Canadian short story, presents a young woman's obsession for making love to cadavers. All these stories are provocative, yet these are the stories that win the prizes and that move juries at international media festivals. To explain why goes beyond the scope of this brief. Yet how many of these stories are waiting to be realized because our cultural policies are inadequate?

Another question concerning my sector is around the rapidly changing and challenging technological breakthroughs in film and video, as film and video are transformed by the digital revolution. Included in that revolution is the development in cyberspace of the Internet and its unregulated commerce and communication through the World Wide Web and e-mail. As an independent player on the web, I will be able to encode my moving images on a web page and sell them to anyone who desires them. Already, Canadian distributors, both non-profit and commercial, are doing just that.

So on the one hand, Canadians have no access to their movie screens. On the other, we will have the opportunity to download on the World Wide Web any film, video, or new media in the world if we have the money to pay for access.

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This globalization of culture on the Internet, as well as the pressures of economic trade agreements, is asserting enormous pressures on the nation-state, so much so that people are already predicting that the 21st century will see the withering away of the national agenda as we now understand it. Do we want this to happen? No, we do not. At least the artist and cultural industries of Canada have said no. We do not want our cultural creations reduced to only commodities, nor do we want our stories to be simple black and white, good versus evil, shoot 'em up, violent spectacles. As people who inhabit a nation, we are more complex than that.

This is what a cultural policy should defend: the complexity and confusion, the struggle and the joy, the paradoxes and distress, the transformations and transcendence of those individuals, and the collective memories of the state. Only when we stand revealed in all our sordid glory do we have the chance to affirm our humanity.

Don't you think the words “sordid glory” are just fabulous? I thought they were very poetic.

As you probably know, Nova Scotia is experiencing a well-publicized growth in media all across the sector. Feature films, dramatic and comedy television series, independent work in all genres of media are at an all-time high. All our regional institutions, the CBC, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, the newly created Nova Scotia Arts Council, and even the downsized National Film Board and our own regional Telefilm office are doing the best they can in a climate of fiscal restraint and recent cuts to the arts. Our training programs are constantly expanding and developing new workshops. We might even have our own film school in the near future.

The Atlantic Film Festival focuses all this expansion in one wild week in the fall. Each year the audience grows and clamours for more. Obviously, with some money and a lot of dedication, the future seems rosy, but all this is supported by a tenuous web of freelance contracts and available government largesse. It could collapse in one small moment of neglect. So let's create a national cultural policy. Let's give our artists and cultural industries the legislative support they deserve, and let's revel in the fascinating complexity of our Canadian culture.

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

Again, if you have briefs, I would be happy if you would submit them. If they're lengthy, perhaps try to summarize them and keep them to four minutes or so.

Mr. James MacSwain: Lengthy?

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): I'm just making a statement.

We'll listen to the other James now.

Thank you.

Mr. James Lorimer: I'd just like to make reference to the point you were raising about whether or not it is appropriate to think about the federal government stepping back and allowing the provinces to play a larger role and be the drivers of cultural policy. My own view is that it's one of those ideas that may be superficially appealing to people who come at it from a political point of view. As soon as you know about the reality of what cultural policy and politics actually amounts to in Canada, though, you see how impossible it is to talk about that kind of approach.

If you think of magazines and books, the federal role means copyright, which is clearly not going to be devolved to the provinces. The things that Bill C-55 kind of protects are not provincial-level kinds of things, yet that bill is essential in terms of what is going to happen to the magazine industry and so on. And you can go on. I think there are lots of examples that show it's the sort of big idea that, when you get down to the ground, doesn't really fly very well.

What I wanted to talk about just briefly here today actually picks up on what Johanna was saying about the federal role in Nova Scotia as exercised through the economic development strategy of the federal government—which I'm sure is not one of the things you're generally talking about here. My exposure to this came since I'm in the book publishing business.

I do books that relate to tourists, because the tourist market in Nova Scotia is as good as the home market. That led me to the tourism industry, and I've become active a bit in the association. Anyway, the tourism industry had a working group that looked into cultural tourism in Nova Scotia, and we tried to get an understanding of what is happening in the area where tourism connects to the cultural world. It's obvious in Ontario. Cultural tourism is Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake, and they are huge engines of economic development as well as very important cultural presences.

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In Nova Scotia, the same thing is very true. The last time there was a big shutdown of the mines in Cape Breton was what produced Fort Louisbourg, which turns out to be a very significant cultural tourism attraction here.

But what we found out when we brought people together, not from government so much but from the actual groups and organizations that are in the cultural sector and would like to do more work, more programming, that would appeal to tourists, is there's this incredible barrier to development. The barrier is a simple one and I describe it as access to financing. But what I mean by financing isn't necessarily in some respects financing in the form of equity for cultural organizations, which could be grants. In a lot of respects, it's actually debt financing that people can't get access to.

I think the film industry is a good example of what happens in a cultural field when there is financing; you get development and lots of it. The smallest number in Johanna's brief was the amount of money that CTV puts into local production, but all the other numbers are serious numbers and show how the cultural sector has grown. And that's without anything like a substantial involvement from the federal government, which is involved in supporting regional development in Nova Scotia, as across the country.

But when you look at what's concretely happening, it turns out that a federal development agency, in this case of course it's ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, knows they should be doing things about culture, but they don't know how to do it. They say they're going to do it and they want to do it, but the concrete reality is that very little is happening.

There was a success in the mid-1990s in terms of a cultural subagreement in Nova Scotia, which had a tremendously dynamic effect and produced all kinds of new activity, but it was declared a success and shut down. It was definitely our observation that whatever part of the province you're in, and whatever cultural discipline you're in, there's a tremendous barrier to growth and expansion, and the barrier is lack of access to financing. The organizations are generally small to medium, and even in the private sector those are the people who have the hardest time getting access to financing.

The other problem that cultural organizations tend to have is they're more likely to be non-profit than profit, or government rather than private sector. Of course, for those organizations, getting access to financing is also a big conundrum. For a drama festival, the Atlantic Theatre Festival, how do you finance an organization like that in a responsible way?

There are two hundred and some odd million federal dollars promoting development in Nova Scotia in these five years. A very tiny amount of it is going into culture, and the way it's being done is totally haphazard and disorganized. The end result is that the cultural sector isn't doing what it could be doing and the tourism industry, which badly needs new attractions to appeal to visitors, thinks we're running down on our capital and new things aren't being done. So that's my contribution.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Allow me to respond. It is not often I get to ask a question, but I will today. Who should make that decision as to where the distribution of money should be placed?

Mr. James Lorimer: The way it's done now, I'm sure you know, is there are bureaucrats from Ottawa and from the province who are like a little banking committee. It's amazing to me that middle-level bureaucrats have two-hundred-and-some-odd million dollars to spend over five years, but that's the way it happens. It isn't actually at the political level, I was surprised to discover; it's at this mid-level. They're general economic development types who have backgrounds in economics, the sort of thing you would expect if you were promoting aerospace or call centres, like the one across the street here.

What we heard from people was that when the decision-making was happening at the level of bureaucrats, but bureaucrats who have actual knowledge of the sector they're trying to address, we got good results in Nova Scotia. I think the same is true in other parts of Canada too. For example, in Quebec, the SODEC organization, which is targeted at the cultural industries and has expertise in the cultural industries, is able to do a whole range of financing for cultural organizations that is way more efficient and able to develop and find opportunities than you can expect from general economic developers.

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

To continue the discussion, I'll recognize Ann, Wendy, and then Catherine.

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Ms. Ann MacKenzie: I wanted to address Joe's earlier question, but I'm going to backstep a bit.

I think broad guidelines on the federal side that are then regionally tailored at the provincial level work quite well. This year, through the economic diversification agreement, which is a federal-provincial agreement that I think worked very well, we accessed roughly $650,000, which supported $1.7 million in special programming that included the Atlantic Film Festival, the MIG training, AFCOOP training, all those special types of programs. So for that $650,000 investment, it turned around to $1.7 million in the community.

Through that program we accessed $400,000 in a film industry training assistance program. The local producers contributed the same amount of money, so that worked very well. It is creating a whole new crew base, which is necessary to grow our industry even more.

Through the economic diversification agreement we accessed money for the film school feasibility study. That has progressed quite well with community support, and hopefully the end result will be a film school, which is definitely needed to develop the industry.

So I think federal programs, with the broad guidelines, but then later regionally developed at the provincial level, would work well.

On the first question, I also think the cable television fund did a tremendous job in helping our local producers tell local stories. Last year Atlantic Canada accessed 17% of that fund. That's quite impressive for our population.

The CBC works tremendously well. Programs like Black Harbour, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Street Cents, Theodore Tugboat, and Pit Pony—those are only a few of them—have really given voice to regional stories and they've pretty much put us on the map in television.

I have to say that having a local office of Telefilm is a tremendous benefit for the local producers, to be able to get in there and talk personally to the people at the Telefilm office. They are very much involved and they very much care for the local producers.

All of those programs I think have added a tremendous amount of value to the local industry.

At the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation we tend to look at ourselves as being located in economic development and tourism, both as an economic story and a cultural story.

Johanna mentioned our statistics last year. We were close to $100 million. This year we will probably be over $130 million locally. We will create more than 1,400 direct jobs and more than 2,000 indirect jobs. I think that's it for our statistics.

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

Wendy, then Catherine.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Russell, maybe you could answer this, or anybody else can as well.

I'm interested in knowing how you think federal training money is actually being dispersed now at the provincial level and whether it's working out. I know there was certainly a whole lot of money that seemed to have moved from the federal to the provincial level with the CHRC last year, but I don't know what happened to it. I'm wondering if you know what happened to it and how we can make that work.

Mr. Russell Kelley: That's a very good question, Wendy.

As you know, there is the cultural network that is trying to be the receptor or focus of some of the issues around how those dollars are devolved. At some point I would hope that Andrew Terris would speak directly to your question, but it is a dilemma having cultural training recognized. Other than to say that Andrew should address this, I'm going to stop there.

Ms. Catherine Phoenix: There are a number of points I want to pick up on, one of which is about the question of the federal government's role that Joe asked about earlier involving further funds and responsibilities to the province.

In some respects the three or four of us over here represent the raw materials of culture in terms of working primarily with individual artists. Jim leaned over and said no to me, and I was thinking the exact same thing, although the people who said yes are coming from a slightly different perspective in terms of more of the industry perspective, and I agree with the things they mentioned in terms of how it does and can work.

I would hate to see the money come from further weakening things like the CBC and the Canada Council. The initiatives that have been mentioned are positive, but not if it means taking apart a federal structure, in my opinion. One of the things that relates to that, for instance, is the fact that in Nova Scotia we just got an arts council last year. I think most of us as artists don't trust the political will of any provincial government—I don't mean the existing one or any others—to put the money where we would ask them to.

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Another thing is that I don't think of myself as only a Nova Scotian artist. Russell brought up a very good point, I think, that we see ourselves within a national structure, and then of course—we're hitting the 21st century—hopefully in an international structure. I think to be restricted to that and to have the potential that all cultural productions be measured within only a provincial boundary is really problematic.

I'll be a lot shorter than James and about half as funny. But a couple of things I want to mention are that, likewise, we support the adoption of—mine is much shorter and photocopied—the CCA's report on cultural policy for the 21st century, which I believe includes the recommendation that the national agencies, such as the Canada Council, the NFB, the CBC, and Telefilm, remain in place but be revisited. I think many positive things have happened in recent years in terms of collaborations between private and public sector funding, but I also believe, in terms of my experience with the Canada Council, they've been cut back so far they're standing on stilts now. If I were an emerging artist just beginning and trying to access the information and funding that's available, which everyone has already identified as crucial in terms of developing our emerging artists, I'd be terrified. I don't think I'd find my way through the maze of telephone access codes.

So I think that's problematic. I think everything's been cut down to such a minimal structure that the way we're delivering money and programs has actually become a threat to the health of our cultural community.

Just let me double-check anything else that... I think I'm probably going to repeat something Ann is about to say as well, but I want to reinforce it. It has to do with training.

Regarding the training money that did come, one of the initiatives involved the organizations having to pay 50% of the salaries for trainees. In the non-profit sector that's virtually impossible. So again, in terms of how money is distributed and how it's meant to be effective, things like the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative centre for archives are the primary sources of training on the ground for independent writers and producers in this city and this province. We are often unable to access much of that money.

That's it for now.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): We'll go to Ann, Walter, Bruce, and Suzanne, and then perhaps we can go to the audience for some comments and questions.

Ann.

Ms. Ann Verrall: I also want to address the training issue.

For a bit of history, the Moving Images Group, which is an umbrella industry-based group that deals with professional development, actually got off the ground with a grant that was received from the CHRC, which has since basically moved on. That money is no longer available, and I'm assuming that is the money that supposedly has come to the provinces. It seems, from the kind of work I'm involved with, that there basically is no more training money to be accessed. That's how it seems.

The opportunity that was there when the money was with the federal government no longer exists, and Moving Images had to go elsewhere to other sources of funding for their program. This was a discussion that came up not so long ago, when we were talking on a provincial level. This whole thing about the 50% really makes it... It's basically money that is just not a reality for us to access.

The other thing I'd like to address, in terms of the federal-provincial issue, is another example of something that's happening here. A lot of these organizations—the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, the Centre for Art Tapes, the Atlantic Film Festival, the Moving Images Group, Shortworks, which is a program I run, and the Linda Joy Media Arts Society—have all, over the last two years, moved into and are now housed in the CBC, except for the film festival, which has been there for awhile. . That is a significant development within the cultural community. It's the first time all those organizations have been together and it means there's a really increased amount of support to those organizations.

• 1615

It has also meant an amazing partnership with the CBC, which has brought together our national public broadcaster and the independent arts community. A lot of exciting stuff is happening there. What's really nice about that situation is it is a national body, but there is a regional office here, and it is the people in the region who, at this time, have the vision and openness to work with the community in this way. It's very important to have that national perspective, but also to be available so you have the personal contact with people in your own area.

So that's the thing about the CBC. It seems to be a rather unique arrangement. It's just beginning and there is a lot of excitement about it. There's a lot of potential there to have really new and different things develop.

The other thing I'd like to say is for all of the organizations I just mentioned, or most of them, the Canada Council is almost singularly the reason they exist. A lot of creative people don't move into the industry as writers, producers, directors, or even technicians. It starts, to a large part, with funding from the Canada Council for smaller projects. Even if you want to be a grip or a gaffer, you often get your first experience working on Canada Council-funded programs.

As Catherine said, a lot of us feel we are artists who work within a broader context than just the province, and it's really important to be sort of adjudicated by your peers. In some ways, because the community we come from is quite small, when you think of just Nova Scotia, with the arts council in Nova Scotia we are being adjudicated in a mixed group with painters and all sorts of other people, which is fine and valid, but if that were the only way we were adjudicated for the work we do, it would certainly lead to that feeling of being cut off or that people don't really understand who and what you are.

I guess those are the main things.

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

Walter.

Mr. Walter Forsyth: I want to reiterate the importance of the Canada Council, the National Film Board, Telefilm, the Nova Scotia Arts Council, and other organizations in other sectors, like music with FACTOR, for the people to begin to tell their stories.

I'm here representing an organization, the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, which, like the Centre for Art Tapes, is very entry-level. Everyone in the communities across Canada has stories to tell, and it's important for the federal government to realize they need a place to start telling those stories.

I remember a few years ago one of the national banks, in their annual report, stated the reason they had such a financially profitable year was because they didn't give money to small, high-risk businesses. I think we can compare that to some of the decisions you may be making, or helping to suggest the government make, on the National Film Board or Telefilm, where they are beginning to decide whether they should be giving money to production companies or continue to support the small organizations across the country that help new people begin to tell the stories and develop that. It's important to just reiterate that to you.

An example would be how the Canada Council, through the media arts, were able to come and see us—and I thank you for being able to do that as well—and sit down with us this year and say, “We've been given a little more money than we thought, and we may be able to help you out some more this year.”

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I realize on the grand scale it might not be a lot, but it can have a huge impact on an organization such as ours, to be able to go back, rewrite our acquisitions proposals, and rewrite what we can do for administration to help those artists see their stories come to life. I'd like to thank the government for allowing that to happen, and emphasize the importance of that continuing. That's all.

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

Bruce.

Mr. Bruce McKenna: I would just like to make a couple of disclaimers first. I came here to be part of the audience and not to be sitting at the table, so I don't have a brief. I will be brief.

I'm concerned as a writer, and I'm not fully versed on all the government policy because I spend a lot of my time working on my craft and trying to run my business, which is a one-man operation writing scripts as a freelance writer. First of all, it's virtually a no-brainer that the federal support of the industry has had a tremendous positive impact. That impact has been better for some than for others in the categories.

A case in point was when productions in Canada were looking for Canadian content and the Americans screamed that there were no directors in Canada and they couldn't have unknown directors who didn't know what they were doing. But they were forced to use Canadian directors, and Canadian directors evolved and developed.

We can talk about training and schools, but people really develop their talents through working, being paid for that work, and not feeling like they're getting it as a charity. At one time in television there were large orders of many episodes, and the episodes of a series where virtually stand-alone. That era has changed to more and more continuing story lines through a series, which has put pressure on producers to have the writing done more and more in-house, using a very tightly knit small group of writers, which takes the opportunities away from the freelancer. The freelancer has to get a job on staff and concentrate only on the show or be out in the cold.

We talk about cultural content, and that content really has to start with the writer. Whether that writer happens to be the director as well and a filmmaker, the act of starting it off is the writing. A number of the shows that are very successful here in the region are also written out of the region. A number of the shows that are written in Toronto are generated out of Los Angeles.

I would just hope for some policy that would encourage the writer to be included, as the director is, in the push for Canadian content.

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

Madame Tremblay.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I would like to take this occasion to ask you a question.

[Translation]

I put the same question to the groups that were with us yesterday afternoon. I had perceived four major dimensions in the cultural field. I will add a fifth one today, because I learned yesterday that there is a fifth. Therefore, the five dimensions are creation, production, promotion, distribution and the conservation of cultural products.

We have very little control over some of these elements, such as distribution. In some areas we control it, in others we have less control. I would like to see how each of you in your respective fields sees this.

I would also like you to comment on another question. We have seen the development of technology in the past 10 years. What is likely to happen in the next five years in your particular fields? How can you be hurt? What impact could that have on you? How could we help you in relation to technology?

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): I recognize Russell.

Mr. Russell Kelley: Thank you. When you talk about the flow of creation to productions through distribution and the other points, right now in Nova Scotia we're looking at developing a cultural sector strategy coming from the growth of activity here, helped by the fact that we also have a cultural policy.

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The sector strategy is an attempt to do a number of things, but I think one of the key things we're trying to do, which may be something we can also look at nationally, is to simply recognize the cultural sector as a sector. We tend to have programs, policies, and actions that are directed at individual parts of that chain of creation, production, and distribution. We tend to have actions that deal with cultural industries over here, actions that deal with distribution over here, and some actions that deal with creation over here.

What we don't seem to have and what we're trying to do right now is to see if there are some comprehensive strategies that would allow us to be able to look at the entire sector and recognize what are the proper balances. If there's a lot of action in cultural industries, do we have enough action on the creation side? Where are the balances so that you have individual voices building those creations being identified with particular regions and feeding into the cultural industries, who produce the product and then sell and distribute it?

On a provincial level that's what we're attempting to do right now.

It's an enormously difficult undertaking to try to do that on a national level. But I suspect that one of the reasons we're all here today is because there's a general sense of dissatisfaction with what we currently have, and depending on who you talk to, you get various levels of response.

The ability of both federal and provincial governments to deal with cultural industries seems to work reasonably well with some problems, and the ability of the industries to interact with the private sector and the various levels of programs also seems to work very well. On the other hand, the creators are always the ones who seem to be the most starved, and you can just look at the salaries of artists to know how starved they are. They are the ones who feed into that chain. They are the start of the chain you described, and that balance has to be the proper one.

In response to your specific question, right now we are trying very hard to look at doing that at a provincial level. As far as we know, we're the first ones to try it. What we do know is that it's enormously difficult. People bring their own languages. The language of the industry and the language of the arts are not necessarily compatible at this point, and that's part of what we're working on right now, so that people within the culture sector can talk to each other.

Jim mentioned something that is also very important, and it has to do with training. It's not about the devolution of training in the arts. It has to do with the training of those who are responsible for operating the programs that deliver funds. There are some real questions about that. There's a meeting of all of the arts councils coming up at the end of April, and that is something that, hopefully, we're going to put on the agenda. How do you have the skills to make the decisions that feed into this process? What are they? How do you hire the right people to do those sorts of things? I think one of the difficulties we've faced as a sector is that there has been no consistency there either.

Peer review is something else. There are many versions and descriptions of peer review, and part of that is based on the fact that again people have not tried to come to a common definition of what it is, how it works, how it should be facilitated, and what are the roles of the people responsible for delivering it.

• 1630

The last thing I wanted to say goes back to something Ann mentioned about the CBC here, specifically. The CBC here is doing things that the rest of the CBC is beginning to look at. Radio here has the greatest listenership, because it touches people directly. The programs are about Maritimers and Nova Scotia, and they're for Nova Scotia. The regional management of the CBC understands that and makes sure the programming accomplishes that. It is the primary way that musicians in particular are heard in Nova Scotia. They actively seek out and help to develop the musicians and writers. They seek out people. There is a very regional voice to regional radio here.

The director of television here has looked at the success of radio and is now trying to figure out how to emulate that immediate contact with the people. In any spare time the CBC has, they use initiatives such as art spots, which is a way of presenting visual artists in a 30-second clip in PSA time, so that you're giving a face to people who are generally faceless in terms of visual arts.

Those types of regional initiatives give the CBC a presence that, if you read the mandate of the CBC, is what it's supposed to be about. A way of looking at that is that when you have a national identity, it is made up of those regional voices. I hope that at the national level the CBC understands what's being accomplished here and can then encourage that type of action in the various regions around the country. It's another way of looking at what is national. It's another way of saying how do you empower the regions and the creators in the regions to be able to best accomplish what they need to accomplish, which is our sense of identity. Then you share it. It's the national direction that allows you to share that across the country.

When you look well into the future—I'm a science fiction reader and always have been, so five years is today—and look at globalization, you will see that information technology is absolutely changing the world. You can live in Africa and talk to somebody in Cuba or northern Alberta through the Internet, and you can have real interaction. The other part that goes with it is the low rates on long distance telephone calls. Now people are actually physically talking to each other more than they ever have, which is very important. It is a significant change in the world. Also, people are moving in waves across this globe to an extent they haven't done before.

The scenario I hope doesn't happen is that this becomes a commercialized entity when you start talking about culture, but the possibility for that really exists. I think no matter what happens in the future, at some point you're going to have a global culture. Being involved in the arts at this point, my interest from an administrative point of view is to make sure that whenever that global mix occurs, whatever it is that is special about Canada has the opportunity to be a part of that global mix. When you allow creators to develop their voice, that voice is us, and that voice becomes a part of that larger mix, and that larger mix will happen.

You see those fusions right now in Toronto or Montreal when you listen to the music. One of my favourite bands was made up of a South African guitar player, a Latin rhythm player, a Latin drummer, and a French Canadian bass player. They were marvellous. That type of diversity and sharing is what is coming in the world, and it's coming in all the various art forms. That voice that happens in Montreal or Toronto is very distinctly and uniquely Canadian and has to be captured. You capture those with a national policy that allows those things to come together.

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

We'll go to Ann MacKenzie, who has been waiting patiently, and then we'll go to the audience.

Ms. Ann MacKenzie: I'd like to address Madame Tremblay's two questions. In the area of creation and production, I think Nova Scotia, in fact Canada's, film and television producers are more than capable of creating and producing great programs. In the area of distribution they are completely shut out. They are dominated by the American companies. If you look at the feature film industry in Canada, Canadian feature films represent roughly 2% of the total gross box office receipts. That means 98% of the money that Canadians pay to see a film is going directly out of the country. How we address that I'm not sure. I think there has to be a way of ensuring channels of distribution for our producers, and right now they're just not there.

In the area of technology and how it will affect our industry in the future, with all of the Internet-delivered programming and with digital and high definition television, which is coming, training is going to be key. What they're going to require is very technical, very specialized, people and these people will have to be trained. Where is the money going to come from for that? It's also going to require capital outlays in the beginning for a lot of people, and again, assistance in that area would probably be required.

Back to the feature film area, I should have mentioned—and I want to choose these words carefully—I think it is in dire need of new money, not recycled money but totally new money directed to the Canadian feature film industry so that we can generate great feature films. I read somewhere that the average feature film budget in the United States is around $70 million. A Canadian feature film is around $1.5 million. Where they will spend $20 million on promoting a film, Canadian producers are lucky to have $20,000 to $100,000 to promote their films. So I think new money in the area of feature film is definitely needed.

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

Before I recognize Al, I invite other members of the audience to intervene, if they like. There's another microphone, so please stand up.

Al, go ahead.

[Editor's Note: Technical Difficulty]

Mr. Al Chaddock (Individual Presentation): ...to the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

What is going on here today is hopefully not Ottawa's feeble and last-ditch effort to define what we mean in Ottawa when we talk about Canadian culture and why we want it excluded from NAFTA, which the Americans have been arguing against from day one. They do not want to accept our interpretation. They're insisting that we describe our concerns for Canada through its culture in American language and American terms, as pre-described by their trade agreement through their Congress.

I would expect you're not going to be able to clearly define and forever exclude from NAFTA what Canadian culture is because it's a forever-changing thing, as we are. So I would urge you to adopt a United Nations language and approach. Take a precautionary approach.

What can you do, while you still have the leverage to do it as a national sovereign government, to encourage the foreign national economic players within our boundaries to invest in, at the private sector level, the development and furtherance of Canadian perspectives through Canadian cultural properties.

• 1640

It's a fork in the road and you have to take both forks. You don't choose one or the other, because we don't have that option anymore; we have a gun held to our head and it's called full implementation of NAFTA. We're discussing Canada here, as I spoke of earlier, and we cannot define ourselves in any way sufficiently to say no, we're not going to be subject to American trade law. That's above and beyond business. This is something theological. This is religious. This is who we are. We are not for sale.

Many have argued, oh no, water isn't subject to the agreement. I advised our previous minister of the environment for this province, when I was in a session on the provincial round table on the environment and the economy, that he had better read the agreement and read it fast, because I had already seen that Nova Scotia fresh water had already been quantified and assessed for how much we could afford to sell out of our ecosystem. All the provincial governments, all the governments in this country, have to delineate what they do not want subject to NAFTA by the time of full implementation. I don't think most Canadians understand what kind of a gun we're really under here. This is a desperate situation our country is in. It's nothing less. We're fighting for Canada as a way of being and the rug is being pulled out from under us fast.

There is another issue you haven't addressed here yet and it's the growth of monopolism in media in this country, all fired by the rationale afforded by NAFTA that unless we get bigger, we're going to disappear; we can't compete with the Americans. The banks are using it. Everybody is using it. Mr. Conrad Black is using it. Roger's is using it. The more centrist those huge media monopolies get, the more marginalized and the more disenfranchised Canadians are getting all across this country, and the less chance there's ever going to be for Canadians to encounter Canadian perspectives in anything from their neighbours, because no matter how big the issue of monopolies gets, they're never going to be anywhere near big enough to handle what's going on outside of our borders in terms of monopolism and media.

So far in Europe the only ally we have as a nation in our concerns for our culture under trade agreements is France. That's a scary thought to me. It's a scary thought that the only ally we can count on at the moment is France in challenging American cultural imperialism. It's hard to use that phrase without sounding like a Marxist, but I'm not; I'm just a Canadian who thinks we're about to lose something very valuable.

You've got to deal with these issues. I don't think you're going to achieve a definition of what Canadian culture is to the degree that you can successfully exclude it from implementation of NAFTA.

You've got to take another approach as well. You've got to advise our government to start figuring out ways to encourage, as the Americans have done through tax considerations and other things, greater private sector participation in nurturing a Canadian perspective and what it means to live on this planet.

Thank you.

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

Would any of the guests like to respond to any of the comments? Go ahead, James.

Mr. James Lorimer: I would like to just reflect the experience in book and magazine publishing. To get back to the original question about how the chain works in terms of production and distribution, of course our problem is in being crowded out. We were crowded out from the start and we created some Canadian space. We're constantly being pushed to the edge by imported product, because obviously there are more books and more magazines in the world without taking into account of Canadians. Canadians could be perfectly happy if they didn't know Canadian books existed. There are so many other books and magazines in the world. I think it is extraordinary the way in which the cultural exemption in the trade agreements obviously has had no real effect in terms of what Ottawa has been doing.

In book publishing there's been this slow sort of stealthy retreat from a tough policy that was actually put in place by the Conservative government when Marcel Masse was the Minister of Communications. There's a stealthy retreat going on. By far the biggest book publishing company in Canada is owned by Bertelsmann, and the federal government has just allowed this to go ahead in the face of a policy that's supposed to prevent indirect takeovers, to stand in the way of indirect takeovers.

• 1645

On the magazine side, we can see what the Americans are doing with respect to Bill C-55: trying to create as much space as possible.

I do definitely agree with the general point that, first of all, technology is making globalization possible. That seems to be the case. The threat that we face through technology, to my way of thinking, is the threat to there being any Canadian space inside this.

Certainly at the practical level, in book publishing today there's far less room for Canadian-owned companies to allow Canadian writers to reach the Canadian public than was the case when the foreign-owned companies were pretty well ignoring Canadian writers in order to distribute their foreign books here.

Now we have a much more sophisticated foreign presence that is mixing the two together and creaming off the Canadian product—which is quite profitable if you just take the successful product—and then adding into it their foreign product. The result is less space for Canadian material.

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

I will recognize the gentleman from the floor.

Mr. Andrew David Terris (Individual Presentation): My name is Andrew Terris. I'm the executive director of the Nova Scotia Cultural Network. We are funded in part by Human Resources Development Canada, also known as HRDC. We deal with issues of training and professional development in the cultural sector.

I am on the panel tonight, so I just want to briefly answer some of Wendy Lill's questions about what is going on here in terms of devolution of responsibility for training and for funding for training in Nova Scotia.

Briefly, not too many years ago within HRDC there was an annual budget of $1 billion for training. A lot of that was tied to EI, but not all of it. That has been cut back severely. I'm not even quite sure where it stands now, but two years or so ago it was down to about $600 million. It's being cut back quite drastically, and I think that is in the name of deficit reduction and debt reduction.

Simultaneously, there is also the process of devolution of responsibility for training to the provinces. Various provinces have come up with various different solutions to that problem. One has been to completely integrate HRDC staff into provincial bureaucracies. In Nova Scotia, there has been relatively little movement in that regard. My sense is that the province really has not figured out how to deal with this and, almost in protest against the whole way in which devolution is being done, is refusing to cooperate.

I think the province sees the devolution issue as one of being given responsibility for training without being given the resources. When I've talked to the people at the province who are looking at these issues and I talk about the possibility of some kind of fund for training in the cultural sector, the heads shake.

So I don't think the news is very good. We're seeing less money for training and we're seeing a province that really doesn't want to deal in any substantial way with the cultural sector in terms of any kind of separate priority for training.

The network itself has run a small program with HRDC funds, an internship program, which has required 50% from the host institution or business. These are the terms that have been given to us by HRDC, and the problem with a lot of these HRDC programs is that they're here today and gone tomorrow. We have the Moving Images Group, which got a one-time grant for training. HRDC pulled the plug on that one.

With respect to our internship program, which in our opinion was very successful and had a province-wide base, we are now being told that a lot of the HRDC money that was being administered at the provincial level is now going to be given out to local offices.

Who knows what that means? It means that every little group across the province has to go and badger its local HRDC office, and I can tell you that those offices are all over the map in terms of their priorities for culture.

The news is not great.

• 1650

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much, David. I also want to thank you for putting in the local paper an announcement that due to the CBC strike the hearings are located in the Westin. We appreciate that very much.

Wendy.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Thank you, Andrew.

I'd like to address a couple of people's comments around the CBC. I'll tell you something. I feel very badly about the fact that we couldn't be at the CBC today, but we can't be there because there's a technicians' strike on.

Russell, you have a really romantic view of the CBC, and I must say I share it. I share it in so many ways.

But the fact, Catherine, that you and Ann are able to have spaces in that building right now is because the CBC has been hacked and slashed. It's lost $400 million and there have been 3,000 job cuts at the CBC. There are lots of empty offices there and that's why you're there. I'm very glad to hear that the people who are still surviving at the corporation are able to see fit to really embrace the people, the real grassroots creators, in the community.

The battle to save our public broadcasting system has never been more important than it is right now, and I don't want us to be too fuzzy about the present state of affairs because I don't think it's good at all. So I say there are picket lines all around that building and take a turn on the line.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Could I ask if there are any further interventions on this issue? Go ahead, Joe, and then James.

Mr. Joe Jordan: I'll touch on a couple of points, because I think we've headed into an interesting direction.

Essentially what I'm hearing is that we desperately need a cultural policy in this country. I think the first step towards that is to reaffirm the value of this entity, because it can be defended and argued about and supported on virtually any level. But then we also need to be prepared for the effects of globalization. We want to protect it, but then at some point it has to leave the incubator and be able to play in the band, I guess the analogy is. I think that's important.

On the whole area of the MAI, on which the speaker was correct, it was France's insistence on the cultural carve-out that collapsed that thing. But under NAFTA too...and I say this as somebody who has an MBA from an American business school. I think I have a pretty good window into their world, and I think one of the problems we face when we enter into negotiations and talk about culture is that we are dealing with a society that is so egotistical that their culture is essentially a belief that they don't have one. They're normal; that's normal. In my riding we have something we celebrate called the Battle of the Windmill. It was, unfortunately, about 18 Americans who crossed the ice on the river. They arrived in Canada to liberate us from the British and were surprised that we didn't necessarily want to go, and they were all arrested.

I think they really, on a very fundamental level, think they're doing us a favour by eliminating these minor regional annoyances to their “white bread” world. I don't know whether the people we put across the table from them understand that dynamic. I don't know whether they do, and I say that hypothetically in the cultural sense. But I know for a fact that in terms of the agricultural side of things, our negotiators viewed supply management as the propping up of inefficient mechanisms and they were prepared to trade that off. It was just in their ineptness they never had the chance.

So when you talk about the training for people who give out the money, I think part of a cultural policy needs to also train the people who enter into these deals, which we're not going to be able to not enter into, so we can make sure we agree on its value and then we stand up for it and protect it. The details can come later, but I think that seems to be a theme I'm picking up on here.

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

James and then Ann.

Mr. James MacSwain: To go back once again to the technological revolution that's happening within film and video, I did talk about the Internet, that it is unregulated and that at the moment we do have a copyright law, a bill going through Parliament based on trying to sort out electronic media kinds of copyright. I would like to reiterate that the CCA would really like to see that copyright bill go through Parliament as quickly as possible in order to at least have something on which to react to, whether against or for. I would think that would be one of the ways the heritage committee could take something back to Parliament and say that the artists and cultural workers and industries of Canada would like to see the bill processed as quickly as possible.

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

Ann and the gentleman on the floor, but Ann first.

Ms. Ann Verrall: I wanted to add something to what Wendy said about the CBC. It's that I think we all acknowledge the mixed blessing in a sense, that we are there because a lot of people lost their jobs. The positive side of having us there is that it has enlightened us to the reality of the CBC. For the community we come from, which has in the past seen the CBC as this big monolith that would never even look at them or didn't care anything about them, it has shown us that there is a place for us, that there is a desire to have a relationship with us. It means that when the CBC is in trouble there is a whole other group of people who care about what happens to the CBC, who see it as a really important part of the fabric of our cultural community. We hope we'll be able to do something or can contribute to the battle that's going on out there.

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

The chair recognizes the gentleman on the floor.

Mr. Allan Ruffman (Individual Presentation): Mr. Chair, I'm Allan Ruffman, a local person who often gets labelled as an activist. I'm here today out of sequence. I first got out of sequence by going to the CBC. I'd warned Francis Scarpaleggia that there would be pickets around the CBC on Friday. Obviously, somebody learned the lesson and changed the site, but it didn't get through to me. I had intended to appear in the heritage section, and I won't speak if there are other people indeed in the audience who would like to contribute vis-à-vis your section, which is film right now. So I would ask your indulgence to speak, but I'll wait to see if there are others.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): I'd appreciate it if you would wait. We have agreed to meet a group.

Wendy, do you know the group we're meeting after the meeting?

Ms. Wendy Lill: That's right. I think there's time for him, for Allan.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Really it's a labour issue and we're dealing with culture issues here. We have said that we—

Mr. Allan Ruffman: I'm not dealing with labour. No. I wanted to deal specifically with something dealing with heritage, specifically marine artifacts.

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

Mr. Allan Ruffman: I'm probably the only fellow who would appear before you who stands convicted not only of not putting in his tax forms, but also convicted before the judge in the U.S. court in Virginia. I was named in an amended notice of criminal contempt for ignoring a judge in Virginia for assisting people by taking them to visit the Titanic and to in fact work in that area.

What I really wanted to raise by mentioning this is that we do have something called the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, which is designed to allow our museums and archives in Canada to have the first crack at artifacts and documents that might leave the country. In fact, I would like to note that group I, which is defined as items “recovered from the soil or waters of Canada”, is what I'm concerned about. I'm afraid we seem to define “waters” as being fresh waters, and I suspect the interpretation of this is very much written by bureaucrats in Ottawa who perhaps haven't seen the ocean or tasted salt.

• 1700

I'd like to ask this committee to find some way to get into the mix a suggested revision so that we define “waters” as being the fresh or salt waters of Canada out to the limit, the juridical limit, and I'll come back to that very briefly.

I won't read something; I'll try to speak from my notes.

It's not clear at all what Canada means by “waters” or its “marine waters”. It may be that we're only limited to a cannon shot—the three nautical miles. In fact, all the wrecks we have worked with in Canada, that Parks Canada or any other parties have worked with—the Le Chameau, done by a private person; the San Juan in Red Bay; the wrecks that are at Bay Bulls; or the one in the Miramichi—are all within a few hundred metres, maximum maybe one kilometre, offshore.

We've not begun to think of wrecks that are well offshore and are in fact now accessible to any technology you might use. I give as an example the vessel called the Central America. The Central America was attempting to sail off the east coast of the United States. It foundered in a serious storm in the mid-1800s, with great loss of life, and it sat there completely unknown and lost. It was at 1,500 metres of water. Obviously, no one could get at it. It happened to have gold on board. It's been found. It's been totally salvaged, totally remotely by an instrument on the end of a long cable in the mile of water.

There is no part of the world's oceans that is not accessible.

I'll give you another example. You don't have to have gold onboard a wreck. There was a wreck that was sitting...an Argus aircraft noticed a vessel sitting on the U.S.-Canadian boundary in the gulf of Maine. What was interesting about this vessel is it was not moving. Today, we would normally think of that vessel as being one that's doing a drug drop, but this happened to be 20 years ago. This vessel also had a very large A-frame over it and it had a moon pool—a hole in the middle of the vessel.

Canada went out and visited this vessel and it turned out it had tracked a World War II vessel that had a cargo of aircraft on its deck. These were Americans who were interested in that cargo of aircraft because these are now antique aircraft under a great deal of demand. They were very well packed in grease in World War II, and here these fellows were spending a huge pile of money to try to get them back. I don't know whether they did.

If they'd known the German submarine that sank that freighter is directly next door—it had been sunk by a depth charge and was directly virtually touching the wreck—they probably would have been salvaging the submarine as well.

On the other end of the extreme is that search for the Titanic. A huge amount of money was spent, mainly by Americans, to find a wreck. Eventually they found it. It has now been salvaged by ROVs, the ones you see in Cameron's Titanic film, on five different occasions. About 5,000 artifacts have been brought up, probably at roughly a cost of $5 million. Now, who the hell cares about artifacts from the Titanic?

Let me tell you about another artifact that this act should have kept in Canada. There are only about seven or eight life jackets from the Titanic. Up until about a few years ago, half of them were in Canada. One of those was resident on Cape Breton Island. It had been offered to our local marine museum. The price was a little high; it was about $14,000 Canadian.

As Canadians, we in this museum didn't act. But lo and behold, in January 1997, a British collector landed at Halifax and met a Memphis exhibit organizer. The two of them rented a car. They paid cash—American—and that life jacket was in Memphis by that evening, or maybe the next morning. It then was viewed by 610,000 people as part of a large exhibit. It went on to St. Petersburg and was viewed by 800,000 people. It literally bailed out that museum, because of the fabulous attendance records. I think it's now in Minneapolis; it's not in Canada.

Madame Tremblay, you may not realize it, but in the Musée maritime Bernier right now there is a bouée de sauvetage that held the body of Harold Reynold, the last body collected by the Montmagny. The Montmagny was a Canadian vessel that went out collecting bodies from Quebec. It is owned by a private individual and is on loan to the Musée maritime Bernier.

Also in Quebec is the third deck chair of the Titanic, owned by a private individual.

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In the interpretation of this act by the bureaucrats in Ottawa, there is nothing at all to prevent either of those two private owners from selling those to Americans. When they do decide to sell them, they will most certainly go south of the border. It would appear we have taken the view that the Cultural Property Export and Import Act does not cover marine artifacts, and I have letters from various bureaucrats indicating that.

What I am really suggesting is that we change the act, or maybe we can in fact shame the bureaucrats into interpreting the act such that marine artifacts are covered and, if necessary, change “waters” to mean fresh and salt waters out to the jurisdictional limit of Canada. That will cover it to the article 76 limit, which presently is being interpreted by Canada to not cover wrecks, and that will cover us out to depths of about 4,000 metres. But it needs someone, in effect, to impress that upon Canada.

I know the chair of this committee, Clifford Lincoln, has a particular interest, it so happens, in the Titanic. But I think I've politicized him to realize that if I as a Canadian or any other person in the world were able to find John Cabot's vessel—because he didn't make it home on his last trip, and it's sitting somewhere northeast of Newfoundland, perhaps in 4,000 or 5,000 metres of water—there'd be nothing within Canada to stop me from salvaging it and exporting those artifacts.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much. May I apologize to you for my confusion at the beginning of your presentation.

Mr. Allan Ruffman: That's not a problem.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Perhaps you could put it in a brief, and it would certainly become part of the data gathered by this committee.

Madame Tremblay, I believe you have a question.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I'm a little bit surprised at what you are saying.

[Translation]

No, I am not tired.

[English]

I am surprised.

[Translation]

I'm not bored. I'm surprised, that's not the same.

[English]

I am a little bit surprised at what you said, because in my riding I have the Empress of Ireland.

Mr. Allan Ruffman: Yes, I know it very well.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Many people were diving, and they were taking pieces out of the ship.

[Translation]

Finally, Minister Andy Mitchell, who is responsible for Parks Canada and of the application of this Act, decided to ask the government to issue an order, which was done. Anyone who now dives on the Empress of Ireland and takes any part of it is obliged to give it to the Canada government. It cannot be kept. Therefore, the Empress of Ireland is protected. However, I was told that the Titanic is not in Canadian waters. It is outside the 200-mile limit and, thus, cannot be protected by Canadian legislation because it is outside our waters.

[English]

Mr. Allan Ruffman: That is very recent. I'm pleased to hear that about the Empress of Ireland. It's a relatively modern wreck, 1914.

But in fact that is quite a recent view of both Parks Canada and, I presume, the Government of Quebec.

As recently as three years ago, it became known that at the mouth of this harbour is a vessel called the British Freedom. It's in about 70 feet of water. Already it has lost its armament and a number of its bells and whistles.

In effect, we have very little ability to enforce this act, and the one way of doing that is to have a few test cases. I can show you documentation where two life jackets, in this case from the Titanic, and one deck chair have left this country through the hands of reputable dealers on both ends, and there has been no permit and no prosecution. We do need some prosecutions in order to make this point.

But it may be that because it had a museum and a population that was very interested, the Empress of Ireland was able to get that protection.

We have not had a Canadian government that has been willing to protect the majority of the wrecks that are under water well offshore. There hasn't been the publicity to generate that, unless someone comes up with a valuable one, let us say, off Sable Island.

I am delighted to hear this is happening in the estuary of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I hope to see the museum very shortly.

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

It's 5.05 p.m., and I believe it's time to close, as members have another brief meeting to go to.

On behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank our table guests and also our audience for their contribution to this dialogue about our great culture. We look forward to sharing this with you when the draft is put together.

Before we adjourn until our next meeting, I will leave the last word to your local member of Parliament, Wendy Lill.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Thank you. This is great, because I get to say the first thing and the last thing.

I think we heard some very important things today about the need for control of foreign ownership and the whole issue of Canadian content, which are parts of the same problem. We've heard about the need around the training focus and how we can get that cleared out. I look forward to hearing further from Andrew Terris in the next sector. Also mentioned was the strengthening of the Copyright Act. I just got a little lesson on the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, and I think we're all alerted now to some problems there on the heritage level that have to be dealt with.

Thank you very much for everybody's participation here. It will end up in the report in some fashion. It's all because of people like you that we're going to come up with, I think, a very strong report. Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Inky Mark): Thank you very much. I'll declare this session closed.